How is your career going?

Holman · Post by **Holman** » Mon Feb 02, 2015 5:18 pm

Captain Caveman wrote:I'm a tenured-track assistant professor at a research university. It's been a long, neurotic ride, filled with anxiety about publishing and securing grants, but I've almost made it to the promise land. My tenure review occurred last semester and went really well. It'll hopefully be official soon. After that, as long as I don't embezzle money or date my students, I should have a job for life. Not a bad gig.

Great news, congrats!

Jeff V · Post by **Jeff V** » Mon Feb 02, 2015 5:57 pm

Holman wrote:
Captain Caveman wrote:I'm a tenured-track assistant professor at a research university. It's been a long, neurotic ride, filled with anxiety about publishing and securing grants, but I've almost made it to the promise land. My tenure review occurred last semester and went really well. It'll hopefully be official soon. After that, as long as I don't embezzle money or date my students, I should have a job for life. Not a bad gig.
Great news, congrats!

I'm impressed that there's such a thing a track professor, much less an assistant one. I guess that's what you get when the coaches actually attend class?

Captain Caveman · Post by **Captain Caveman** » Mon Feb 02, 2015 6:04 pm

Holman wrote:
Captain Caveman wrote:I'm a tenured-track assistant professor at a research university. It's been a long, neurotic ride, filled with anxiety about publishing and securing grants, but I've almost made it to the promise land. My tenure review occurred last semester and went really well. It'll hopefully be official soon. After that, as long as I don't embezzle money or date my students, I should have a job for life. Not a bad gig.
Great news, congrats!

And my wife is already tenured, so the job security for both of us is a big relief. We're very fortunate.

As an aside, she now works in my department, just a few doors down from me. We're also research collaborators. Here's a recent fluff piece by my university about our latest grant.

MHS · Post by **MHS** » Mon Feb 02, 2015 6:29 pm

Carpet_pissr wrote: It's also very humbling to see how much working in such a mushroom-esque environment stagnated/stunted my "business IQ" if you will, after so many years of working in a bubble. It's like I was in a time warp, and talking to modern colleagues with this new, progressive, huge company is like talking to aliens. We literally do not speak the same language, so that cultural part is a bit rough (and embarrassing).

Yep, this is one of my biggest fears. Basically all of my work experience (aside from 3 years with a non-profit country job) since finishing college has been with this one company, and it's a weird working environment in a very, very niche market. I fear that despite the fact that I am extremely good at what I do and very smart, I will be unemployable if/when I leave here because of the circumstances.

Binktopia · Post by **Binktopia** » Mon Feb 02, 2015 6:37 pm

I dream of having a career.

Post by **godhugh** » Mon Feb 02, 2015 6:48 pm

I'm two years into my nursing career, all of it spent in a large urban hospital in the neonatal ICU, and it's been great. Compared to when I was in IT, I get paid more, have much higher job satisfaction, and an incredible amount of stability. I love working with the babies and (most) of the parents. I also see enough insane stuff to keep me on my toes and make sure the job stays interesting

. That said, there are some downsides. I work straight nights and weekends and it's affected my mood to a degree. I'm having to really focus on my diet and exercise to make sure I don't fall into a depression. Also, the job takes an emotional toll. I've seen more tragedy in two years then I thought I would ever see in my entire life and there are times where it gets to you and you need some time to re-focus. The callouses are forming though and the bounce-back time is less now then it used to be. From a personal standpoint, I get along with my co-workers (99.9% of which are women, which presents it's own challenges), I'm active on a number of committees that I enjoy, I've started mentoring new RNs, and am working toward someday earning a promotion to charge nurse. So, overall, I'd say it's been the best change I could have possibly made in my career.

Zaxxon · Post by **Zaxxon** » Mon Feb 02, 2015 7:20 pm

Captain Caveman wrote:As an aside, she now works in my department, just a few doors down from me. We're also research collaborators. Here's a recent fluff piece by my university about our latest grant.

This is awesome.

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Mon Feb 02, 2015 7:44 pm

godhugh wrote:I'm two years into my nursing career, all of it spent in a large urban hospital in the neonatal ICU, and it's been great. Compared to when I was in IT, I get paid more, have much higher job satisfaction, and an incredible amount of stability. I love working with the babies and (most) of the parents. I also see enough insane stuff to keep me on my toes and make sure the job stays interesting . That said, there are some downsides. I work straight nights and weekends and it's affected my mood to a degree. I'm having to really focus on my diet and exercise to make sure I don't fall into a depression. Also, the job takes an emotional toll. I've seen more tragedy in two years then I thought I would ever see in my entire life and there are times where it gets to you and you need some time to re-focus. The callouses are forming though and the bounce-back time is less now then it used to be. From a personal standpoint, I get along with my co-workers (99.9% of which are women, which presents it's own challenges), I'm active on a number of committees that I enjoy, I've started mentoring new RNs, and am working toward someday earning a promotion to charge nurse. So, overall, I'd say it's been the best change I could have possibly made in my career.

Excellent. My wife is a nurse of 16 years or so and I get lots and lots of stories. It's a challenging field.

msduncan · Post by **msduncan** » Mon Feb 02, 2015 11:38 pm

I am a Business Analyst supporting a major core business unit in my company. The role of business analyst can be rather different at various companies, so I'll describe what I do:

-- New technology needs analysis by request from business
-- keeping other business units (and customers separated geographically) aware of what others are doing with solutions
-- Business cases to be presented at the executive level
-- Updates and status reports to management on projects
-- Account manager duties (solving problems, connecting people with the right IT resources, etc)

I've been in this role for 7 years. It's probably time for me to move on, but I've been pretty happy in the role. It's considered a part of the 'leadership'. One of the problems that has kept me from moving out and up is that all of my sponsors and mentors have left. I had two CIOs that were sponsors. One left the company and the other was busted down and moved out into another role. I had a customer VP that was a sponsor, but he left the company. Finally, I had an Executive Vice President (part of the top leadership reporting to the CEO) and he decided to commit suicide one day. Suddenly I looked around me and realized I had no sponsors. Apathy set in. Here I am.

I am highly aware that moving any further up the chain will directly impact my after-hours and weekend time. Not sure how I feel about that at the moment.

em2nought · Post by **em2nought** » Mon Feb 02, 2015 11:51 pm

I'm the Colonel and only member of my militia group. When we have 10,000 members and armaments we plan to lay siege to DC. Doesn't matter whether it's a democrat or republican in office at the time, we consider them both enemies of the people.

Hopefully we can pick up some A-10s as the dopey Air Farce don't want them.

dbt1949 · Post by **dbt1949** » Tue Feb 03, 2015 12:01 am

My stepson is a captain of his militia group. He has a full company under his command. The went out for some map reading and hiking exercises here a while back. They all got lost and members were complaining how tired and hurt they were.
Then a few people hiking the trail came by and showed them the way back to the parking lot.
The hikers didn't have a map. Or a compass. I'd be willing to bet none of them owned an assault rifle and 2000 rounds of ammunition either.

Kraken · Post by **Kraken** » Tue Feb 03, 2015 2:39 am

em2nought wrote: Hopefully we can pick up some A-10s as the dopey Air Farce don't want them.

I am intrigued by your ideas and would like to subscribe to your newsletter. I am also authorized to offer your organization up to $100 for an unwanted A-10.

Chaz · Post by **Chaz** » Tue Feb 03, 2015 7:12 am

dbt1949 wrote:My stepson is a captain of his militia group. He has a full company under his command. The went out for some map reading and hiking exercises here a while back. They all got lost and members were complaining how tired and hurt they were.
Then a few people hiking the trail came by and showed them the way back to the parking lot.
The hikers didn't have a map. Or a compass. I'd be willing to bet none of them owned an assault rifle and 2000 rounds of ammunition either.

It's good to know militia intelligence is just as good as military intelligence.

Odin · Post by **Odin** » Tue Feb 03, 2015 8:58 am

About 5-6 years ago, my old boss and I mutually decided I should leave my job as an IT helpdesk director. Due to obsessive money-hoarding, my wife and I actually had a decent amount of savings set aside, and some belt-tightening meant we could get by pretty well during that time. Not paying $20k/year in daycare helped quite a bit, too. I'm not exaggerating that figure - it's amazing some people can even afford to work.

Anyway, my kids are now mostly in their teens, meaning they don't need a full-time dad hanging around the house. I did do some small-business consulting, social media stuff, and IT training during my mid-career retirement, but mostly I was just taking care of the kids and training in karate. Last summer, I worked at the local Renaissance Faire quite a bit, which was fun as hell.

Last fall, we decided I should probably go back to work. Around the same time, I got a call from a local business through a mutual friend, and took a job there. It was nice to not have to go through the job-hunt process. It's a very small company (I was employee #9, I think, not including a few who have come and gone over the last 10 years) so I get a bit of flexibility, but I'm also making less than half of what I made at my last job. The stress is a bit less, but not a lot, so I'm not sure whether I'm going to stay for the long haul. If I'm working at an office, being stressed out, and generally applying all of my expertise and talents, then I kind of feel like I ought to at least be raking in the dough. I do like the company and the people, so we'll see - I'm giving it until my first new-employee review (which is at 3 or 6 months, I think - I can't remember which). If they feel like I'm adding enough value to bump me up even to 75% of what I could be making elsewhere, I'll probably stick around. Otherwise, probably not.

zinckiwi · Post by **zinckiwi** » Tue Feb 03, 2015 10:47 am

godhugh wrote:I'm two years into my nursing career, all of it spent in a large urban hospital in the neonatal ICU, and it's been great.

Three of my four were NICU babies. Your work is much appreciated.

Carpet_pissr · Post by **Carpet_pissr** » Tue Feb 03, 2015 10:48 am

dbt1949 wrote: I'd be willing to bet none of them owned an assault rifle and 2000 rounds of ammunition either.

So there is a bright side to that story!

hentzau · Post by **hentzau** » Tue Feb 03, 2015 12:44 pm

Had my review. Promotion has been approved by my manager, my senior manager, and my director, but the new process is that we now need to have all promotions of my level approved by the CIO. No clue how long that is going to take, and there is no guarantee that it will be approved. One step closer.

Once I hit this level, my upward path is pretty well done. No more promotion opportunities, but this level makes me a bonus level employee, and that's where I really need/want to be in the company to both help pay for my kids college and to help position me for retirement. Fingers crossed.

Octavious · Post by **Octavious** » Tue Feb 03, 2015 12:53 pm

Who knows at this point. My company is so up and down that you don't know if we're doing good or doing bad from week to week. We're shedding pharma companies like crazy, but grabbing huge consumer goods clients in their place. CG pays less though so there's that.

I got reassigned to help another person and have been plowing through work at an insane pace. The biggest news is that I was able to get access to a competitor system. I spent 40-50 hours reviewing the system and doing write ups of what I found. Last week I had to do a 2 hour presentation for the CFO and all the other big wigs in the company. Everyone said it was great. Probably doesn't amount to anything except few pats on the back.

WYBaugh · Post by **WYBaugh** » Tue Feb 03, 2015 1:25 pm

I'm hitting a life quandary and would welcome any feedback.

I'm 51. My title is Lead Software Engineer (programmer) and work for a fairly small company of around 200 people with offices on both the east and west coasts. I've been here 8 years and have spent 95% of that time being the sole owner of a huge .NET application that is critical to the functioning of the business. (It's really like 10 separate programs with upwards of 20 WCF services AND it exists on two code bases between East and West coasts and is stuck in .NET 3.5). So mainly I have been a maintenance developer and 24x7 support lackey. I was a developer for a grocery chain for 17 years and was also 24x7 support during my time there as well.

My quandary is that first, I'm sick of support. The powers that be have decided to fully embrace agile and scrum for our production support/maintenance work with me being the Lead over a fluctuating group of 2-3 other developers. We are responsible for 90% of the other applications in house (adds up to around 30). So now I'm not only responsible for the huge beast of an application but all the other apps and have to play scrum manager, BA, PM, etc for our small projects. Having said this I am paid very well.

What I find concerning myself now is that I'm getting old, my skills are falling behind the ever growing .NET curve and have new manager of a year and half that is just clueless on how to run a development shop and also lives on the west coast (90% of the devs are on the east coast).

So he wants to have a higher title and then have minion managers on both coasts. I managed for 6 years at the grocery chain and really didn't enjoy it much. He's been heavy-handing me to become his minion but I've been refusing. As others have stated, not that I've become complacent but I don't want the sheer shit that will come from this arrangement. Plus I have to put up with enough people crap just being team lead and I really don't think the jump in money will make it worth it (read small jump).

So do I move on? For the first time in my life I'm really questioning my development skills and not sure how marketable I would be at my age and this being a young man's game. Do I retool to another part of IT like security? One major issue is that I am very good at troubleshooting so that always leads me into getting stuck with too much support.

What should this old guy do? Just kick back and let it ride? Find something else? Retool?

dbt1949 · Post by **dbt1949** » Tue Feb 03, 2015 2:09 pm

Can you say age discrimination? I knew you could. If you don't want to manage a 7-11 stay where you are and grow mean and senile with a decent paying job.

Jeff V · Post by **Jeff V** » Tue Feb 03, 2015 2:19 pm

WYBaugh wrote: What should this old guy do? Just kick back and let it ride? Find something else? Retool?

Retooling might leave you competing with young'uns. You may get some benefit if you are staying in an IT discipline but for the most part you get paid for experience. Your main problem is the thing you're most marketable in you hate doing.

It might be possible to add other skills, then whore yourself as a contractor. You might still occasionally have to do what you do now to justify big bucks, but it could allow you to develop other skills too.

Smoove_B · Post by **Smoove_B** » Tue Feb 03, 2015 2:35 pm

WYBaugh wrote: The powers that be have decided to fully embrace agile and scrum for our production support/maintenance work with me being the Lead over a fluctuating group of 2-3 other developers.

Probably not helpful, but the agile process is why my wife left her last job. They didn't fully embrace it, but it was enough to make everyone miserable. I think after a year she just decided to pack the hell up and leave as she was miserable. In theory it should be a great thing but only if you (personally) can work under that type of model. The idea of being locked in a room all day with other people was not something I was interested in and the fact that they half-assed the agile process didn't help. They were agile when they wanted to be but when it wasn't working, they reverted to having people work weekends and evenings.

If I were in your position, I probably wouldn't be interested in making any sudden moves. I'd probably be looking at other options (more schooling, certifications) and doing whatever it takes to stay afloat at the current job. If there's something else you think you might enjoy doing (a specific job like you mentioned) work backwards - figure out what it would take to get you to be able to perform that job and start doing stuff to get yourself there.

Regardless, I think the worst thing you could do is sit around and passively let things happen. Be proactive and come up with a plan - even if it's just getting your resume in order and trying to figure out where you'd like to be this time next year.

coopasonic · Post by **coopasonic** » Tue Feb 03, 2015 2:39 pm

If you are staying in IT, don't let agile be the reason you leave your job because good luck getting away from it. I will say I think Kanban is generally a better fit for a prod support environment than Scrum.

WYBaugh · Post by **WYBaugh** » Tue Feb 03, 2015 2:56 pm

The company decided to align the development groups to a business line. There are 4 dev teams that have 1 business lead each and one business line. My team has 3 business leads and 3 business lines. Where things didn't fit in the other groups fall to my group. We're using a bastardized adaptation of scrum/agile where the dev groups work on projects that are less than 80 hours as well as any production issues that arise. So we have a backlog with these small projects that we use on the kanban. The problem is that the business lead on the west coast is a technical nerd who is all up in the bizness of running the kanban board, etc for that team. Since the dev manager is out west coast, he see's this involvement and expects it of all teams. My business leads are managers and really couldn't care less about how we do things just so they get done in a timely fashion.

So even though I'm supposed to be a developer and just a scrum master, I am expected to do all of the sundry things that go along with keeping this process moving along. As well as support and trying to squeeze development in when I can.

When my old boss put me in the position of working on the monster program he said that it would be for a year or so because having to support and work on it daily becomes a huge grind. I'm now 7 years into it so I feel that that's a huge part of my issues as well as the added responsibilities of the above. Just not exactly what I pictured myself doing.

Definitely will not do anything sudden. My wife doesn't work so I'm the sole bread-winner and my company is awesome as a whole...just personnel movements over the past couple of years in dev have made it be more of a drag.

I have voiced to the CIO about doing something different but the only thing that came out of it was being manager of the devs.

But as y'all wrote above, I need to get off my ass and start getting my skills back up.

LordMortis · Post by **LordMortis** » Tue Feb 03, 2015 3:01 pm

And this is another reason why I cling to my job hoping to one day make it to retirement.

You guys are speaking a foreign language. As far as I know Agile means quick on your feet and Scrum is what people do to a random generator in a video game when they keep reloading after save until they get the results they want.

I have never heard a coworker, vendor, or customer refer to Agile and Scrum work environments related to software or anything else.

EvilHomer3k · Post by **EvilHomer3k** » Tue Feb 03, 2015 3:05 pm

Chaz wrote:
dbt1949 wrote:My stepson is a captain of his militia group. He has a full company under his command. The went out for some map reading and hiking exercises here a while back. They all got lost and members were complaining how tired and hurt they were.
Then a few people hiking the trail came by and showed them the way back to the parking lot.
The hikers didn't have a map. Or a compass. I'd be willing to bet none of them owned an assault rifle and 2000 rounds of ammunition either.
It's good to know militia intelligence is just as good as military intelligence.

The military would have a compass. Unfortunately, that compass would cost the government $4,500 and would only point north from 5:00 AM to 11:00 AM.

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Tue Feb 03, 2015 4:11 pm

LordMortis wrote:And this is another reason why I cling to my job hoping to one day make it to retirement.

You guys are speaking a foreign language. As far as I know Agile means quick on your feet and Scrum is what people do to a random generator in a video game when they keep reloading after save until they get the results they want.

I have never heard a coworker, vendor, or customer refer to Agile and Scrum work environments related to software or anything else.

Agile means no design and no documentation.

Oh, and also developing directly in Prod.

EvilHomer3k · Post by **EvilHomer3k** » Tue Feb 03, 2015 4:14 pm

I thought agile meant scope creep that goes on forever.

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Tue Feb 03, 2015 4:18 pm

EvilHomer3k wrote:I thought agile meant scope creep that goes on forever.

That too.

PLW · Post by **PLW** » Tue Feb 03, 2015 5:26 pm

I'm Caveman +1 year. Unless you go deadwood, tenure just means more work and responsibilities. But it's nice that I won't get canned.

Smoove_B · Post by **Smoove_B** » Tue Feb 03, 2015 6:00 pm

I'm the anti-Caveman. 6 years now as a higher-ed Ronin with zero chance of tenure. I like to think of myself as "Winston Wolfe" -- I show up, perform my specialized services and then I'm gone. Pay is respectable, though the lack of benefits is causing some family stress. Not really at all where I thought I'd be but I'm grateful for every opportunity and try to perform in earnest. If this arrangement can hold for another decade I'd be happy. Not really sure what I'd do for money at that point, but maybe robots will be in charge of everything by then and we'll all be millionaires...or married to millionaire robots.

noxiousdog · Post by **noxiousdog** » Tue Feb 03, 2015 6:17 pm

I am a Database Ops Team lead supporting 3 database platforms in 6 data centers. We just decided to unify our business unit so that means we are world wide with support staff 24/7. Our current footprint is 45 terrabytes of data and 455 some-odd applications. I THINK that is supposed to double.

Within two years we'll have infrastructure in the public cloud. My job is a hybrid of DBA and management. While I'm not technically the boss, if there's any issues with the Ops team or their performance (soon to be 22 people) it's my responsibility to clean it up, review what went wrong, and make sure it doesn't happen again. On the other hand, I don't have to worry about finances at all.

Octavious · Post by **Octavious** » Tue Feb 03, 2015 6:20 pm

GreenGoo wrote:
EvilHomer3k wrote:I thought agile meant scope creep that goes on forever.
That too.

I have to write the crazily detailed contracts with clients now because of scope creep. Nothing is worse then spending x number of hours building something and they come back with more crap that they thought should have been included. Now the contracts are almost as detailed as the specs.

Captain Caveman · Post by **Captain Caveman** » Tue Feb 03, 2015 6:28 pm

PLW wrote:I'm Caveman +1 year. Unless you go deadwood, tenure just means more work and responsibilities. But it's nice that I won't get canned.

"The tenure track: A pie-eating contest where the prize is more pie." source

Captain Caveman · Post by **Captain Caveman** » Tue Feb 03, 2015 6:30 pm

Smoove_B wrote:I'm the anti-Caveman. 6 years now as a higher-ed Ronin with zero chance of tenure. I like to think of myself as "Winston Wolfe" -- I show up, perform my specialized services and then I'm gone. Pay is respectable, though the lack of benefits is causing some family stress. Not really at all where I thought I'd be but I'm grateful for every opportunity and try to perform in earnest. If this arrangement can hold for another decade I'd be happy. Not really sure what I'd do for money at that point, but maybe robots will be in charge of everything by then and we'll all be millionaires...or married to millionaire robots.

Your cheap, exploited labor benefits people like me. Thank you. Now go teach my class... and no dental for you.

theohall · Post by **theohall** » Tue Feb 03, 2015 6:35 pm

Retired from the Navy after 20 years as an Avionics Tech doing mostly management/quality assurance stuff for about 15 of those 20 years.

Got hired on at a Li-Ion battery plant doing line work. 6 months later got hired on as a Quality Tech at the same plant. Been doing that for almost a year and half now. The Quality Engineer who was my boss got bumped up to Quality Manager recently which opened her spot, but they are in a temporary hiring freeze. My boss basically said finish my Quality Engineer Certification in June and her old job is mine - which would be awesome! Love the work. Most of it is data analysis using Excel and Mini-tab. The Engineering level stuff is more interesting and she's been gradually having me do more and more of her stuff over the past 6 months anyway. Lots of process improvement type stuff - and once again the Navy helped prep this stuff by providing Lean and Six Sigma training starting way back in 2001. This plant heavily relies those two things.

PLW · Post by **PLW** » Tue Feb 03, 2015 9:47 pm

Captain Caveman wrote:
PLW wrote:I'm Caveman +1 year. Unless you go deadwood, tenure just means more work and responsibilities. But it's nice that I won't get canned.
"The tenure track: A pie-eating contest where the prize is more pie." source

Don't get me wrong. I love pie.

PLW · Post by **PLW** » Tue Feb 03, 2015 9:48 pm

Smoove_B wrote:I'm the anti-Caveman. 6 years now as a higher-ed Ronin with zero chance of tenure. I like to think of myself as "Winston Wolfe" -- I show up, perform my specialized services and then I'm gone. Pay is respectable, though the lack of benefits is causing some family stress. Not really at all where I thought I'd be but I'm grateful for every opportunity and try to perform in earnest. If this arrangement can hold for another decade I'd be happy. Not really sure what I'd do for money at that point, but maybe robots will be in charge of everything by then and we'll all be millionaires...or married to millionaire robots.

At Clemson, the prospects for non-TT lecturers are better and better every year. We are now allowed to offer longer-term contracts, and we have a promotion sequence/raises for Senior Lecturers. And, in the business disciplines, at least, the compensation can be quite good, especially in the MBA program.

Smoove_B · Post by **Smoove_B** » Tue Feb 03, 2015 9:57 pm

I'd love for there to be some differentiation in title, though I can appreciate that might confuse non-academics and students. It's just unfortunate that a person that teaches one class a year is an adjunct....and a person that teaches four classes a semester, developed an online class and created an entirely new course as part of an effort to achieve program accreditation is also an adjunct. I've heard horror stories from adjuncts around the U.S. about how they are treated and I certainly don't have those kinds of problems. But being a permanent temporary contract employee is a bit strange. Even having a simple designation as Junior or Senior would be appreciated (and helpful). My adjunct brethren teach ~30% of all credit hours where I work but you'd never know it. I have to believe we're saving them millions each year.

hepcat · Post by **hepcat** » Wed Feb 04, 2015 10:07 am

IT system admin monkey working for a small consulting firm. I get to try a lot of different things, but none of them extensively. I really do need to start seriously upgrading my skill set though. I've been stagnating for the last 5 years or so. If I were to lose this job, I'd probably end up working phone support somewhere. That would drive me nuts.

I'm not sure how I ended up going down this career path. I guess I just moved into and through it thanks to networking (friends, coworkers who liked me and dragged me with them to other firms, etc.).

Honestly, I'm just biding my time until I can retire...in 17 years or so.

Then it's off to pursue my one true passion...animal husbandry.