Dealing with a Career rut in well paid support job

Question

I currently feel in a bit of a career rut and am looking for advice.

I've been working in IT for 9 years. Spent 5 years working as a consultant and trainer for a major multinational for a couple of companies. Eventually the travel and corporate stress involved led me to quit for something new. However my boss offered me a new job as an account manager with no travel.

Basically I now do technical support for six named customers. It's well paid. I'm based in the UK. I earn 64k GBP + 6k pension contribution. So a 70k (GBP, 100K dollars) package + 27 days holiday + 8 days public holiday.

I work from home and have a huge amount of freedom. Obviously I never have to commute. i can easily fit in a gym session during the day. Work levels vary from very quiet to fairly busy. It's not uncommon for me to have several days with not much to do work-wise and I am completely free to do whatever I want to do as I am at home.

Other similar jobs pay around half my salary and are mostly office based.

However despite having in many ways a dream gig I'm bored and I particularly dislike the support function. I spend far too much time taking flack, communicating corporate nonsense, promoting poor but company profitable technology. I just don't enjoy the core of the work.

I'm kind of at a loss where to go now. I love the salary and benefits of home work but dislike the job and am conscious that I only get one shot at life and it is eking away even as my bank account fills up.

I really enjoy being involved in technology - just not from a support "only call when you have problems" perspective. I enjoy public speaking and would ideally like a career involving a lot of conference presentations. I have done these in the past, well, and I enjoy them.

So I'd appreciate any advice. Anyone been in a similar situation? Should I just appreciate the salary and benefits and keep my head down? What would you do in my situation?

Answer 1

Save as much as you can while you can, figure out what you actually want to do, then figure out how to convert your savings into your new life (e.g. training course(s), working for little/no money as a sort of apprenticeship, giving up work to teach yourself new skills at home, etc.)

The difficult thing is figuring out what you actually want to do, but money will make that easier as well - you can try things out to see if you like them, without having to get paid. Off the top of my head I can't think of a career that just involves public speaking - most of them seem to require you to be an expert in the subject as well, so you'd have to pick a field as well, and become expert in that. Presumably a field that you will enjoy becoming an expert in.

The rut you're stuck in seems to be quite a deep ditch between "bored" and "stressed" therein lies your problem. Personally, I think you should err on the stress side; maybe go back into training?

Answer 2

In this economy, I wouldn't dream about ditching a job like that.

Could you work on an open source or pet project during the downtime you have?

Answer 3

Oh man, I've been there. In fact, I'm in there at the moment. It's awfully tough to go through the motions of a job that you no longer enjoy, even though the money is good. Also, working in IT doing stuff that you dislike tends to suck all your energy away so you're not motivated to do anything of your own. Painful.

What I'm doing is lining up a complete career change -- something that I think will give me sufficient interesting work to do, whilst being completely unrelated to computers. That way I can have both a job and a hobby, without one crushing the other.

Answer 4

Ever consider starting your own consulting company? With your current salary, you could likely put away a good nest egg to get started. And it'll give you time to put together a solid business plan while you talk to others in the same field/area of expertise to understand the ins and outs. If you're in a larger city, you may not have to travel at all.

Answer 5

Absolutely, yes, quit; you shouldn't spend your life doing something you hate. But with things the way they are economically (i.e., still a tremendous mess), don't do anything hastily; just quietly plan what you'd like to do next, and do it. Hundred-thousand dollar incomes aren't as hard to come by once you've had one, somehow.

Two years ago, I had a job I totally hated. In my case, though, the pay wasn't great -- but the stability was excellent; I'd just bought a (rather expensive) house, so knowing my job was safe helped me sleep fairly well at night. But the stress of it all, the meanness of the people there, the laziness and absolute lack of imagination pervading the entire company -- it all just slowly chipped away at my soul until one day, I could no longer stand it, so I quit, just like that. I had a mortgage, a fiancee (who was vociferously encouraging me, it must be said), and almost no savings at all -- and I just bailed. Totally unlike me. I was terrified.

But in retrospect, it was an amazing experience, and somehow things just worked out: I went out, started consulting, and six months later had a roster of clients and a handful of great projects, plenty of income, and an office of my own, with a mini-fridge stocked with beer. From there, things only got better. Quitting was the first step in that process.

Good luck to ya.

Answer 6

I agree with ceejayoz, the way things are at the moment it sounds like a dream job. You get to go to the gym and other stuff and it sounds great. It maybe a bit boring at the moment but like you said if you move you'll get paid less, have to commute to work and loose the freedom which you currently have. I'd take the opportunity to just enjoy going to the gym etc. and saving some money.

I like the idea of getting involved with an open source project or working on some pet projects; wish I could do that with the salary you're on :-) If you don't want to go down that route and you're really interested in a specific part of technology why don't you look into writing a book and/or presenting the material at tech events as you said you like public speaking? Once you get some events under your belt you could look to get a job as a technology evangelist when the economy starts sorting itself out a bit.

Just a few ideas, hope this helps :-)

Answer 7

I am exactly in same situation.Diff is I ma earning in canadian instead of GBP so its not like $100K but 30 % less then that. If person who asked question has come out of it then please let me know. not sure what to do :(