How is your career going?

[Jeff V]

But being a permanent temporary contract employee is a bit strange.

It can also be illegal, at least in some states, which have limitations on how long someone can be at that status. Why would any business that is not suffering a labor shortage hire otherwise?

[Smoove_B]

I don't pretend to understand it and I don't know what types of exclusions exist for people in education, but I'm given a 15 week, 4 or 6 week contract depending on the time of year. When it's up, I'm done and there's no future promise of another contract being offered. I guess permanent is in quotes as there really is no official chance of being offered another contract. However, that's been the line for 6 years and every time one contract ends, another is offered. The only thing that's changed is that apparently they were supposed to be letting us know we can qualify for unemployment based on the number of months worked before not being offered another contract. It's nice to know, but I would have to believe for my family things would need to be rather dire for that to become a consideration.

[Jeff V]

Before filing for entitled unemployment? If I had any gaps between contracts, there'd be no reason not to file unemployment unless whoever is handing out the contracts tells you they will not offer you another if you file.

[Ralph-Wiggum]

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.

I am Caveman - 9 years. I just today scheduled my PhD defense (March 30!) and it seems probable, although not official so anything can happen, that I now (finally) have a postdoc lined up for at least the next year. So TT is a ways off for me.

[ImLawBoy]

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.

That would be what would do me in. We spent a month in the NICU with my oldest, and I can't imagine having to deal with some of negative outcomes every day.

As for my career, I'm an Executive Negotiator focusing on Network Sourcing opportunities with a somewhat well-known telecommunications company (initials are A, T, and T). I like the job, although I'll have to wait to answer how the career is going for another month or so when I find out the results of our latest "Force Management" move.

[Jeff V]

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.

That would be what would do me in. We spent a month in the NICU with my oldest, and I can't imagine having to deal with some of negative outcomes every day.

I'm still amazed how my wife handles this. "One of my patients died today" is a regular topic of conversation. A card she wrote (using her limited English writing skills) to a dying patient was read by their children at her funeral service. I'm not sure she could so easily be aloof if she was working a children's ward and dealing with tragedy to kids, though.

[geezer]

I'll chime in.. but I don't really even know how to describe my career, or my job, such as it is. My mother-in-law, a career counselor in NYC, says I'm 100% unemployable

Anyway, I'm sort of a hybrid angel investor/startup consultant. What that basically means is that I find small companies (like 1 or 2-person shops, and actually they find me these days) and help them identify their most likely profit centers. In exchange for my time and sometimes limited funding, I get a minority equity share. The upside is that if a company takes off, I get ongoing income for limited part-time work. The downside is that the company really has to go for me to make my investment work, and sometimes that means stepping in with a larger time and/or money commitment.

Right now I'm getting crushed with work - I'm on a new cycle of companies (both about two years in) that are on the verge of stability but requiring a TON of work and significant capital, so right now I'm leveraged like crazy and working 18 hour days with maybe a weekend day off if I'm lucky.

Wheee!

[GreenGoo]

Fascinating, Geezer.

[LordMortis]

I was ten minutes late a meeting held by my boss' boss' boss this morning. So things are probably not going well. A little thing called work getting in the way of meetings, possibly the most important useless meting of my tenure here. Not good.

[Matrix]

Its going meh, i am transitioning from core business aka local coaching company, to start up type more scalable company. Will see how it goes, we part launching on Friday. A lot of work.

[GreenGoo]

Had a small whiff of career motivation (totally different from work motivation) earlier today. That scared me a little. It involved making myself more marketable and improving my skillset.

We'll see, but don't hold your breath.

[LordMortis]

My boss' boss just now: "I've never seen you move so fast as you moved this morning. I've haven't heard anything about letting you go yet" and he laughs.

[Kraken]

I don't pretend to understand it and I don't know what types of exclusions exist for people in education, but I'm given a 15 week, 4 or 6 week contract depending on the time of year. When it's up, I'm done and there's no future promise of another contract being offered.

Same story for my wife. She never knows if she's going to get one class or two, or whether they'll be the full semester or the intense half-semester version, or if they'll be on-site or online or hybrid. It's not her livelihood, thankfully. Of course adjuncts don't get any benefits.

She started teaching for a second college with a better class of students and slightly better pay last year, intending to transition away from the inferior first school. They had hired her friend, another former adjunct, as a department head to start up a new program, which should have provided steady contract work for my wife. Then something turf-related happened and the friend was laid off after half a year. Becoming unexpectedly unemployed is not a jolly thing for a 60-year-old woman, especially since she had quit a good job with bennies to take this one. My wife is still an adjunct there but has learned how reliable that's likely to be.

[coopasonic]

Congrats.

My review for 2014 hasn't been scheduled yet, but I expect the worst review of my career since I was promoted to Corporal in 1992. That is a primary driver for my recent job change. We're still getting started on that.

Confirmed, worst review ever.

On the plus side, the bonus for the worst review ever is still about 6%. 2 years ago when I got the best review ever it was around 20%.

[GreenGoo]

My boss' boss just now: "I've never seen you move so fast as you moved this morning. I've haven't heard anything about letting you go yet" and he laughs.

Assuming everything you've written here is true, they are doomed if they let you go. DOOOOMMMEEEDDD.

[Default]

Work went down from 65 hours to about 55-60.

[Zarathud]

Waiting for my annual review/bonus. I have been saddled with increasing administrative duties as well as first chairing matters for other attorneys without a junior backup. A part-time use of a part-time attorney is not going to be enough help.

I like the legal work, but hate the politics and management of a legal practice. Becoming a Senior Counsel was supposed to ease the stress and allow me to actively manage my life without the liability and business demands of partnership. If the situation doesn't change, I will have to make change happen.

[geezer]

Fascinating, Geezer.

It's interesting work, but it's feast or famine, and there's no such thing as a "salary" or job security. And I really am unemployable at this point. Anything I'm qualified for would be a massive pay cut, and anything that would match my actual income I'm not in any way qualified for, and anything like a 401K or retirement investments are pretty much unpossible because my cash situation is so fluid, but being just on the wrong side of 40 I probably need to stop floating my security into risky investments and at least slice some off into a retirement fund. Then again, I can't really picture what I'd do if I were "retired" anyway except dabble in new little companies, which is exactly what I do now.

It was all good until my wife got the "start a business" bug too. but and Luckily she seems to have a knack for it. Im actually pretty proud of her making the jump

[GreenGoo]

Fascinating, Geezer.

It's interesting work, but it's feast or famine, and there's no such thing as a "salary" or job security. And I really am unemployable at this point. Anything I'm qualified for would be a massive pay cut, and anything that would match my actual income I'm not in any way qualified for, and anything like a 401K or retirement investments are pretty much unpossible because my cash situation is so fluid, but being just on the wrong side of 40 I probably need to stop floating my security into risky investments and at least slice some off into a retirement fund. Then again, I can't really picture what I'd do if I were "retired" anyway except dabble in new little companies, which is exactly what I do now.

It was all good until my wife got the "start a business" bug too. but and Luckily she seems to have a knack for it. Im actually pretty proud of her making the jump

And that is why it's so fascinating. Not in any way a main stream approach to making a living, and certainly well outside of anything in my experience. I'm the very definition of education->work for big corp/goverment->pension->die. It's as staid, vanilla and safe as it gets.

You on the other hand, are living a very scary but also what must be a very exciting and rewarding (and potentially lucrative) way of generating income. That alone deserves some congrats in my opinion. My life has no imagination in it at all. Like, 1950's leave work with briefcase, sit at desk all day (there is some imagination and fun in this part) for 8 hours, come home with briefcase. Repeat for 30 years kinda life. I chose this and I'm actually fairly happy in it, but that doesn't mean I can't appreciate people that take a different path. And if they are successful at it, then more power to them.

[Zarathud]

High risk, high reward. Right, geezer?

I understand the way to make that gig work long-term is using other people's money.

From time to time, I kick myself for not joining one of the high-speed electronic traders who were moving into the exchanges after college back in 1994. My wife ran a long-distance resale business in college and didn't get any equity. She would have earned equity at a company that created a secure mobile system, but their management didn't have the business sense to look beyond powering remote ATMs. They didn't last.

[Arcanis]

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.

I wanted to thank you for what you do. Shortly after my daughter was born we pretty much lived in NICU, PICU, and CICU for literally 4 months. Being there and knowing a good nurse will take care of your child so you can leave and begin to decompress and absorb the reality of the situation you are in is incredibly important. We have been there to witness some of the horror stories as well, imagine parents going get drunk for Mardi Gras in New Orleans while their child is in ICU, so I can understand the emotional toll you go through as well. Even now when we have to go to the hospital in NO we bring little blankets my mom made for the NICU unit to use and give to families.

[Arcanis]

Well I think my career is going pretty good. We certainly are busy as sin doing IT for about 30 companies with a small staff, really only about 5 on the support side and we often are pulled into projects and development. I'm actually almost done with a week long class on server 2012r2, I've been working with it almost since release but they wanted to get me certified. I'm basically the tier 3 guy on the help desk, help desk manager, and centralized admin (manage AV, our RMM solution, ticket system, backups, etc..) guy all rolled into one. I'm probably under paid for as much as I do, but I make enough that we live relatively comfortably though not saving like I know I should be.

There are other up sides outside of money though. Like today my bosses wife knowing I would be in class and that my daughter had a cardiologist appointment, made sure my wife had her cell phone so she could come pull me out of class if I couldn't be reached and something were going on. We are a pretty small group and enjoy each other's company so it makes the day go by, plus it is always good to have a nerf fight and the owner jumps in too. I also feel really satisfied with growing in my profession and that i'm now mentoring some of our guys and seeing them grow. Right now once a week me and one of the guys take a night to stay late and just really go over how something works or what something means. Last week we reviewed a new exchange server install for an implementation guy and got into a discussion of how DNS works due to an odd DNS setup they used on that server.

So yeah I still think I can say pretty good after talking through it.

[pr0ner]

12.5 years in the same place - most likely here until retirement. Zero complaints.

[hepcat]

Good stuff.

More good stuff that reaffirms my belief that folks are basically good.

Thanks for that. I needed that whole exchange this morning to brighten up my day.

[Jeff V]

Good stuff.

More good stuff that reaffirms my belief that folks are basically good.

Thanks for that. I needed that whole exchange this morning to brighten up my day.

Now get back to work at your job at the insect petting zoo. It's your turn to feed the scorpions.

[msteelers]

I got a job in publishing right out of college. It wasn't what I went to school for, but I enjoyed it and was planning to make a career out of it. I took on a lot of responsibility and worked long hours for months on end helping to pioneer a new work process that allowed us to do the same amount of work at 10% of the cost and even do it faster. But instead of a promotion at the end of the project like I expected, I was laid off. I ended up being brought back to the company less than a week later and was even paid for my time off... but any motivation I had evaporated. As I grew disgruntled I decided it was time to make a major change in my life. I quit my job and moved back in with my parents so I could try and pursue a career in radio. And somehow, I actually have a career in radio!

Four years ago I was hired by a small station to do play-by-play for their high school sports broadcasts. That quickly led to producing the afternoon shows, and somewhere along the way the owner of the station started calling me Sports Director. About a year and a half ago I was promoted up to co-host of the morning show and about 6 months ago I was bumped up to a full time employee with a salary and everything.

I have been extremely lucky to get the opportunities I have had, and I'm doing my best to make the most out of it. It's a small family of stations with struggling sales, so the threat that suddenly the station gets sold is always there. Once I get married in the fall I plan to start looking for other jobs in a bigger market. But in the meantime I'm perfectly happy with where my career is at this point, even if I have to get up at 4am every morning.

[GreenGoo]

Wow, it only took 4 years for them to start paying you? In the radio biz? That's unheard of. You *must* be good!

[msteelers]

Wow, it only took 4 years for them to start paying you? In the radio biz? That's unheard of. You *must* be good!

Heh. I should have said I went from an hourly position to a salaried position. But some stations around here are run on an army of unpaid interns.

[GreenGoo]

Wow, it only took 4 years for them to start paying you? In the radio biz? That's unheard of. You *must* be good!

Heh. I should have said I went from an hourly position to a salaried position. But some stations around here are run on an army of unpaid interns.

We understood, but I sorta vaguely know that radio is one of those fields that doesn't pay all that great unless you happen to make it to megastar status. People do it because they love it, not because it's a great and easy way to make a living.

[Carpet_pissr]

The callouses are forming though and the bounce-back time is less now then it used to be.

Does that worry you at all? I guess you have to put up some emotional walls to be able to handle that kind of a job, psychologically, but I also wonder what long term toll it might take. My MIL is/was an oncologist, and my wife is constantly telling me how tough she was when it came to them getting hurt, etc.

[Drazzil]

Suuuuuuuuuuuuuucks!

[Moliere]

Harvard University Bans Sex Between Professors and Undergraduate Students
What's the point of tenure if you can't have sex with your students?

[GreenGoo]

Harvard University Bans Sex Between Professors and Undergraduate Students
What's the point of tenure if you can't have sex with your students?

Apparently Grad students are still fair game. They might be older and wiser, but you've still got control over their thesis, so that'll give you some leverage.

[Paingod]

I started out of college with an Associates in Computer Science and struggled to break into a market where every job posting seemed to have "5 years service, required" as a prerequisite. I skipped past the dead-end street of "Help Desk" and bumped along into Desktop Support, which led to Junior Network Engineer, then IT Administrator for another company that eventually promoted me to IT Manager.

Now I'm an IT Manager at another company and feeling pretty secure here, but it's just me with 6 sites and 85 users. Some days it's dead quiet, other days it's insanity. I spend a lot of time trying to think of ways to improve what the business is doing, technologically, and trying to make plans to poke holes in and see if they still float. I handle everything from help desk type work to designing new backup systems for us to implement.

I'm planning to move on from here in a few years, as long as it holds out, and try to establish myself somewhere actually running people in an IT department and not just being the IT department. Somewhere down the road I'd like to pull in IT Director and eventually CIO, maybe.

I enjoy my work and the challenges it presents, and it doesn't cause me a lot of personal hardship or stress I can't leave at work.

[tiny ogre]

20 years into my career in an industry known for high turnover, and the last 14 years (anniversary was just a few weeks ago) at one company. I'm about as far up the ladder as I care to go. I manage two other people and spend most of my time programming. That number might double in the next couple of years. I know from having done it that I don't ever want more than that. I don't think I really know what the rest of the industry is like any more though, and I have no intention of finding out any time soon. I do hope to "retire" and make one or two-man garage games at some point (I'd most likely contract out art and music). That's not imminent, but it would be nice to be a stay at home dad when the baby ogre gets a little bigger and still have a modest income.

[godhugh]

The callouses are forming though and the bounce-back time is less now then it used to be.

Does that worry you at all? I guess you have to put up some emotional walls to be able to handle that kind of a job, psychologically, but I also wonder what long term toll it might take. My MIL is/was an oncologist, and my wife is constantly telling me how tough she was when it came to them getting hurt, etc.

Maybe a little bit. I hope I don't end up being hard on my kids because of it, but in the end it's really a job requirement. You simply can't survive long term in the high-stress NICU that I prefer to work in unless you're able to develop those barriers and callouses. I think the key for me will be to learn how to take those walls down when I step out of the hospital. It's still tough right now, but I'm hopeful that I'll get better as time goes on.

Thanks to everyone for the kind words, as well .

[killbot737]

Recently got a promotion that is a year late due to re-orgs and other management BS. You might think I should be happy that it came through at all but I don't believe in trickle-down (aka "urine-on-your-head") theory and I am not wired that way.

I earned it, I deserved it, and due to management obstinance and actively creating roadblocks I was repeatedly screwed.

I do what I can to avoid a Pyrrhic victory. My relationship with some of my "direct chain" management is room temperature at the moment but they know exactly why, as do their higher ups.

[FishPants]

Got a mediocre review this year in an impossible job with high stress and a 2 hour commute each way every day... And got a 25% bonus...

A couple more years at best, then something has to change -- I'm paid as an insurance scapegoat these days. Might be time to buckle down and finish my masters degree. Just not sure I want to stay in this field, I'm rapidly closing on 40 and there's got to be a less stress career option than information security -- something right out of IT.

[Jeff V]

Got a mediocre review this year in an impossible job with high stress and a 2 hour commute each way every day... And got a 25% bonus...

A couple more years at best, then something has to change -- I'm paid as an insurance scapegoat these days. Might be time to buckle down and finish my masters degree. Just not sure I want to stay in this field, I'm rapidly closing on 40 and there's got to be a less stress career option than information security -- something right out of IT.

25% bonus? My company can scarcely bring themselves to grant a 1% annual increase and any bonuses are in the fraction of a percent category. You might like our ITG/InfoSec department though...all they do is pass edicts that my department has to struggle to implement.

2 hour commute? I did that...once. As in I had a job, it moved, and the commute via public transportation (the only option for my broke-ass college self) took two hours...which I did exactly once. Until I moved last September, I worked less than 10 minutes away for two years...and will never underestimate the benefit of a short commute.

[Octavious]

25% bonus seems pretty nice. 4 hour commute? Not so much. Mine is around 2 hours and it drives me nuts most of the time.