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Rhino
TheRhinLOLRegistered User regular
TheRhinLOLRegistered User regular
I work with computers now. The pay is good; but stress levels are also high.
(I like working with computers/programming, just hate working 12+ hour shifts and getting paged at 4 in the morning).
I don't know if I could see myself doing this when I'm older and grayer.
What does everyone do?
Are you happy?
Are you stressed out?
How long have you been doing it?
I've been thinking about going back to school and getting a degree in math. Anyone have a math centric career? do you like it?
I was also thinking history. I love reading about history, but would probably hate writing reports all day. What can a history degree get you in terms of jobs?
(I like working with computers/programming, just hate working 12+ hour shifts and getting paged at 4 in the morning).
I don't know if I could see myself doing this when I'm older and grayer.
What does everyone do?
Are you happy?
Are you stressed out?
How long have you been doing it?
I've been thinking about going back to school and getting a degree in math. Anyone have a math centric career? do you like it?
I was also thinking history. I love reading about history, but would probably hate writing reports all day. What can a history degree get you in terms of jobs?
Rhino on
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I'm quite enjoying it. I have responsibility, but because its of my team, and the more strategic overview of what we provide - I don't feel the stress as directly.
I always assumed that this was where my career was headed. I enjoy what I do - but its a high energy job - and I've gained a lot of experience now, which has lead to an interest in the "bigger picture". Having said that - I'm younger than the people I manage... It's not an issue, more an indication that some people obviously don't think the same way as me.
As far as I know, Maths and History are examples of "academic" subjects. If you're expecting a job with History, it'll be in teaching. There may be some jobs out there where it's needed, but the competition would be FIERCE and you'd probably want a doctorate. Maths will have more practical applications, but again - the number of people studying it would outweigh the number of jobs in it.
What's your profession?
I didn't like management. What I'm doing now is fulfilling for the most part, but very stressful. I didn't find management fullfilling at all, plus I still had a lot of stress. I tend to work best alone on problems/programming and figuring things out. I like challenging problems, I didn't like managing a bunch of people.
Quick background: I've been working for software/hardware development companies for the last 19 years, and just got out of the industry to go back to school. I've mostly done QA jobs, because developers get screwed.
I will expand on this:
Salaried software developers have the worst jobs in the computer industry. They get paid well, and usually have tremendous amounts of latitude when it comes to things like dress codes, but they get worked harder than anyone else and get virtually zero recognition for it. That nice paycheck doesn't look so good when you're talking 60 hour weeks.
I was on the development track once. Then, I compared the number of times QA got asked to work the weekend to the number of times the developers got called in and realized that I was making a bonehead move.
(As an aside, game industry types have things even worse, because they get worked harder and paid less than the guys with the boring jobs. I once compared salaries with a friend - we were both doing QA jobs, with roughly the same responsibilities, only his was with Activision, working on games and mine with Xerox, working on laser printer firmware. I was getting $30/hour, he was making $18K a year.)
On the other hand, it sounds like you like development, and I have to admit that QA is godawful boring at times, so that's probably not a path for you.
Oh, and I managed a development team for about three months, hated it, went back to QA where I could actually get stuff accomplished instead of spending 6 hours a day in meetings, so I'm totally with you there.
So, my next point: I couldn't tell if you were hourly or salaried, but if you're on salary and doing 12 hour days, you are getting thoroughly worked over, yet your job knows that you're willing to do it and has no incentive to shift you to hourly - and if you're in a "Creative" position, depending on your state, they probably don't have to.
If you're hourly and working 12 hours a day, your company is throwing tons of money at you and should probably hire a second guy to do your job with you, unless they're drastically underpaying you in the first place and the overtime doesn't make any difference.
If I were in your shoes, I would send my resume to a couple of local contracting agencies. Maybe not Volt, EDS, or Robert Half, but smaller joints because they're likely to want to place you quickly. Some folks do independent contracting because they don't mind being technically self employed; I always preferred finding a contracting agency that handled stuff like billing the client, taking out my taxes, and paying me. Wherever you wind up working for will take care of working over your resume, padding it with neat buzzwords, and setting you up with interviews. This should never cost you anything; if it does you should walk away. They'll be getting 40% of your hourly rate when you get placed (In the "Xerox" example, my contracting firm was getting $50/hour and taking 20 off the top), so they shouldn't try to nickel and dime you up front.
Then, I'd try to get into a nice hourly contract with a local LARGE company, in a nice boring industry like banking, or shipping, or healthcare, because the kind of crazy OT you're talking about is generally a hallmark of smaller companies or companies that have release cycles tied to holidays.
Pay no attention to the "term" of the contract, by the way. Firms like to float positions around as "30 day contract", but once you get in the door at a suitably large firm you tend to get bounced around to new projects as old projects end; it's more of a pain to hire a new guy than to just move you a desk or two. My record is turning a 3-week contract into 2 and a half years.
Big companies don't tend to have crunch time as often as smaller ones, and when they DO have crunch time, they are probably going to dump the weekend hours on the salaried joes instead of the contractors. I've only been in one that sent the salary guys home after 8 hours but felt no qualms about dumping OT on the contractors because, well, we were getting paid for it and no bitching allowed.
Anyway, ideal world, you get a nice cog-in-the-machine sort of programming job at a big joint and settle into the background of the corporate world while you soak up disturbingly large paychecks and plot your next move from a position of strength.
PSN Hypacia
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This depends a lot on your employer. I've worked in development for almost 10 years, and I can count the number of times I've had to come in on the weekend on one hand. I will agree with you on the zero recognition bit, but that's probably true with most jobs in Corporate America.
In terms of jobs opportunities with a BA in history, its very important to note I am also now in law school. Still, I always wanted to be a lawyer, its the history degree that sort of snuck up on me. Without further education, a history BA ain't gonna get you far. Most of my classmates took one of these paths: sought postgraduate degree, got a job teaching K-12 history, unrelated/semirelated liberal arts stuff. Lots of people seemed to have history as their "second major"
Well, my father had a minor in history when he graduated college. Jobs were few and far between at the time, so he joined the air force and was made the base historian.