How is your career going?

[Isgrimnur]

That's what I'm turning up too. I suppose I just need to smile, break out the lubricant, and write off a hundred dollars a month.

Which works out to an effective pay cut. And if you can still itemize, even the IRS will take it as one, lessening the sting by whatever your effective rate is.

[Moliere]

Anyone ever done a digital interview? Interviews are stressful enough, but talking to a webcam and answering questions while watching a timer countdown is even worse. At least phone and in-person interviews give you some back and forth feedback.

[ImLawBoy]

I did a Telepresence interview once, but I already knew the people who were doing the interviewing, so it wasn't too bad.

[Zarathud]

I came into my firm's office and did a split web conference interview where the Indiana and Ohio partners were both onscreen at the same time. It SUCKED because you're trying to present well (and can see yourself onscreen), while having to judge reactions to the in-picture screens. It helped once I realized you have to focus on the webcam, ignore your own picture and use only peripheral vision to read the other participants. Very awkward, but I got the job.

Having a timer onscreen is pretty damn cruel.

[gbasden]

I thought the Republicans nerfed the unreimbursed employee expenses deduction. No?

It doesn't benefit the plant owners, so chances are it got chopped.

[Zarathud]

The Republicans suspended until 2025 the miscellaneous itemized deductions exceeding 2% of income, which is where you report unreimbursed employment expenses, home office deductions, tax preparation expenses, or theft and personal casualty losses.

[malchior]

I came into my firm's office and did a split web conference interview where the Indiana and Ohio partners were both onscreen at the same time. It SUCKED because you're trying to present well (and can see yourself onscreen), while having to judge reactions to the in-picture screens. It helped once I realized you have to focus on the webcam, ignore your own picture and use only peripheral vision to read the other participants. Very awkward, but I got the job.

Having a timer onscreen is pretty damn cruel.

I currently work at a client that loves videoconferencing. I had to do a strategy interview with the CIO/CTO and then the COO of a major financial services firm via a slightly out of sync videoconference yesterday. Super fun.

[Jeff V]

I've conducted video interviews before but never was the victim of one. I don't get the timer thing; then again, when I am interviewing someone, I try to keep things conversational and not rigid Q&A.

[Moliere]

This is not a video interview or video conference. It's an app that displays the question and records your video response to that question with a timer showing how long you have to answer that question. Some random HR recruiter will then watch your video and decide if your responses were good enough to deserve an interview with an actual person. Stupid since a person's ability to be animated and look good in this format is not likely to have anything to do with their potential job performance.

[Smoove_B]

So it's like you're making a dating profile for those VHS-based dating services of the 1980s, but for work? F that.

[LordMortis]

R&P ahead....

Spoiler:

If we maintain the present pace of the stock market I could retire today. That means I'm also due for 20% trickle down raise to keep up with economic growth that is keeping with rising insurance, tech provider, and healthcare costs, right?

[RunningMn9]

Of course, we can’t (and won’t) maintain the present pace of the stock market, so no worries.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

[Moliere]

Of course, we can’t (and won’t) maintain the present pace of the stock market, so no worries.

Why do you hate 'Merica?
#MAGA

[LordMortis]

Of course, we can’t (and won’t) maintain the present pace of the stock market, so no worries.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

I've been going up like 1% a day, every day. If our corporations are making that kind of money to grow like that, how can we possibly not maintain that pace? There's money everywhere. Whoohoo!!!! I'ma be rich!

[RunningMn9]

I've been going up like 1% a day, every day. If our corporations are making that kind of money to grow like that, how can we possibly not maintain that pace? There's money everywhere. Whoohoo!!!! I'ma be rich!

I know you're being sarcastic. So was I.

[LordMortis]

I'm telling you. 1... percent... a day... My 401k is growing more daily than I make in my semi monthly paycheck. This is what it's like to be part of the one percent. I need a yacht.

[Kraken]

The top 1% own 40% of the stocks. The top 5% own 80%. They're partying like it's 1999.

The rest of us are going to pay for it through the Medicare and Social Security cuts that are coming next.

I haven't looked at our retirement accounts for a couple of years now. I really ought to rebalance things.

[Jeff V]

Last time I checked mine, it was doing a great job bucking market trends. It must be invested in our company stock, which is down about 50%'in the past year.

[Kraken]

Ours are mostly in index and retirement date funds, so they just follow the herd. As long as the general markets are rising, I don't have to think about it.

[Isgrimnur]

Assuming that I don't manage to tank the system conversion on the merger, boss thinks I'll be a lock for the AVP slot when the end-of-April shuffle comes along. Maybe I can actually max out my IRA contributions with the raise.

I'm bucking for the minion to get moved to Senior Developer, which would be 2.5 years out of the gates from school. She's taken on a lot of tasks that have had some complexity to them, handled them well, and been the sole point of contact with upper management stakeholders. She's been a tremendous asset.

[stessier]

Wow - I just found out about a group reward at work that is leaving out a bunch of people who did a lot of the work (including me). My morale didn't just plummet - I'm actively angry. Well done, Management!

[EvilHomer3k]

I just found out my job is being eliminated. My boss is giving me a good recommendation and said he'd give glowing reviews. I do get a decent severance package and am going to use the time to look into teaching. I applied for the renewal of my teaching license (which expired in 1998) and have completed my Mandatory Reporter training. I went to school for teaching but never did it (got a job in IT and have been there since). Now I have to wait 4-6 weeks for the license to be renewed and then I can apply to sub. Thankfully, our youngest starts school in the fall so no daycare after summer. Still going to be a shock to our budget as I'll be making considerably less than I do now.

[naednek]

I work for the State of California. One of the things that have been hindering hiring or employee retention is the disparity between government wages and the private side. I personally didn't complain too much because for me the benefits such as health and pension is more valuable for me, especially healthcare with Ethan and his CF... But that's now also in jeopardy due to many factors.

Our union has been in talks with the State HR about reducing the many different classifications in IT and adjusting the pay to help with parity. They reached an agreement with the state about the class restructure, but the pay is still in negotiations. Instead of waiting for that to be resolved, they decide to move everyone in the new classification. Which is fine at first glance, it's just a title change, and now instead of being on top of my range I can now keep growing each year for a few more years.

But looking at it more, they have now made my new class Exempt. Meaning no paid OT. There has been no discussions with management about this change. All my info is from the union, and from a friend who works in HR. I had about 5 OT projects lined up between March and June and now instead of being paid time and half, they get my time for free. They essentially took my position and combined with the next position up who was exempt and made it exempt. It sucks because I was counting on this extra cash and I didn't have any control over any of this or any notification.

My only hope is after they come with an agreement on the new pay structure, they will retroactively pay us our new wages, but I'm sure that's not going to happen, because it's the state.

Happy to have the job, just wished there was communication ahead of time.

[EvilHomer3k]

I finished everything I need to sub. Have my first sub job on Wednesday, teaching computer classes to middle school kids for the day. Seems like a good place to start.

[tjg_marantz]

I finished everything I need to sub. Have my first sub job on Wednesday, teaching computer classes to middle school kids for the day. Seems like a good place to start.

Got your gun?

[EvilHomer3k]

I finished everything I need to sub. Have my first sub job on Wednesday, teaching computer classes to middle school kids for the day. Seems like a good place to start.

Got your gun?

R&P is over here.

[Paingod]

While I'm still looking for a new job, I'm at least getting a little perk in a couple days - a small corner office.

One of the owners decided that the corporate office in the practice had gotten too small and wanted to put a couple other "administrative" people there, so we're moving into the empty office space next door, which will about double our space. I've had the space rewired from Cat5 (not even 5e) to Cat6 and when the senior staff were allowed to select their offices, I jockeyed for the corner and got it. It's not the smallest, but it's got a window view over a river and a workbench on one side I can use for builds and repairs. The biggest bonus, though, is that I'll be able to dub off a little - read the news, check email, visit OO - without fear of prying eyes looking over my shoulder. My current setup puts my back to three other people, all of whom can see both of my screens when they turn around and get up.

As someone who spends all day troubleshooting and planning and researching, brain breaks (cat videos!) are imperative.

[Kraken]

A few weeks ago I agreed to edit the Boston Globe's annual "Salute to Nurses" package, which is actually produced by a contractor, making me a subcontractor. They expected about 400 letters of nomination, which I would clean up and organize. Their offer was on the low side, but in the ballpark of my time estimate, and since I'm likely to get more assignments from these people, I accepted.

The letters trickled in at first, and I found that I could process 4-5 nurses an hour, versus the 6 that I had estimated. As time went by the trickle turned into a flood. Fully half of them arrived last week, and I'm now 60 nurses behind. Once I finally have them all compiled, I've got some cleanup and manipulating to do, and my role should be finished by the end of next week. I hope the boss lady likes my work because she hasn't seen anything I've done yet, and I only had vague general directions.

Holy hell, the general public cannot write! That's why they need me, sure, but the general level of literacy is lower than I would have guessed. As of this afternoon I'd finished 368 of these things, and I am at the point where I don't ever want to see another one. A large fraction of the submitters don't even spell their own names right, most of them mangle the name of the nurse's employer, and every single nurse is a "compassionate" "angel" with "amazing clinical knowledge" who "goes above and beyond" to "advocate" for "patients and their families." Part of my job is cutting out the cliches and boilerplate language, and sometimes there's nothing left. Still, I'm discouraged from rejecting letters because the more they print, the more advertising they can sell, and that's what it's all about.

If they hire me to do this again next year, my price is going up. I'm regretting accepting the lowball offer because I hadn't factored the abysmal quality of the submissions into my time estimate. Also, most of the stories are about or from sick and dying people, and that gets depressing.

[wire]

I've worked in higher education for sixteen years now and feel like I really need a career change. I started off as an Admin Support Coordinator for the film school, moved to the Class Scheduling Office at the same classification and after 2 years was promoted to Admin Analyst, which brought a sizeable pay raise. I put in a total of three years in the Scheduling Office before landing a job in the Registrar's Office as an Information Technology Consultant - Career and working title of Records Functional Analyst. I'm now the Lead Records Analyst after 8 years and pretty much make sure that all of the Peoplesoft processes run and that student data is audited and correct and project coordinate the occasional modification of the baseline product. In those sixteen years I'm pretty much at the highest level I can achieve and have a pretty decent salary.

After sixteen years I really want a career change and i kind of feel like I'm stuck with higher education now. We want to move back to the Pacific Northwest and I'm having a hard time finding any jobs in higher ed that appeal to me. Has anyone else done a career change at 50?

[Isgrimnur]

Peoplesoft should be portable outside of the higher education realm.

[Tao]

I did good work for 20 years, learned a lot and developed my skills to a fairly high level, but I took no risks, played it safe and allowed my wheels to fall in to a rut. Your age should not be a deciding factor in a decision to change careers, in my opinion it's irrelevant. What is relevant is do you have another set of skills you can employ, where are you willing to start; entry level, middle or back at the top? If not are you willing to re-train, whether back in school or on the job and most importantly do you have the financial stability to take an 18 month to 2 year risk. That last one is what keeps 90% of people in their current job when they are no longer satisfied. When I made an attempt at a career change I had no kids, very little debt, a second income and a decent cushion of liquid capital to fall back on. If you can check a couple of those boxes I would say go for it. 50 is not what it used to be, at the very least you probably have another 15 to 16 years left before retirement. That's a whole new career.

[RunningMn9]

wire - it isn’t clear to me that you are looking for a career change so much as an industry change? Higher Ed isn’t your career (since it doesn’t sound like you are higher ed’ing people). It sounds like Higher Ed is the industry in which you do what your career is (sounds IT-ish, but you can correct me if I’m wrong).

In any case, I went through a similar situation back in 2010 when I got laid off, albeit at the tender age of 36. I had spent my entire 16 year career to that point in the telecom industry, and beyond that it focused almost entirely in programming telecom equipment at the device driver level (with some other embedded work alongside that).

When I got laid off I took a step back and thought about what I wanted to do, and at the time I wanted to move higher up the stack to do application development in a more modern programming language.

The challenge then was to properly craft my sales pitch. I have a ton of experience in my field, applied to the telecom industry. I have a ton of desire to apply that to this new area (different industry, but same field - software engineering).

If you can figure out how to map your experience to a new challenge, and you can genuinely demonstrate enthusiasm for it, that will go a long way. I got two offers, both letting me do what I wanted rather than what I was best at, so it worked out for me on that front (couldn’t be happier than I am now at my current position).

If you are talking a completely different field, rather than just an industry change, that’s not impossible, but it’s harder and probably requires re-training. Best of luck on whichever path you choose!

[EvilHomer3k]

I have been substitute teaching for the past two months. No job yet for next year but I start a long term sub assignment on Monday that lasts through the end of the school year. I also got a thanks but no thanks on a position I applied for teaching technology classes at a middle school (not even an interview). Subbing has been fun despite the fact that many kids try to take as much advantage of the sub as they can. I've had to repeat myself dozens of times, kick kids out of class, call the office for support, break up fights, and dump pee out of a garbage can (bathroom in the classroom of a 3rd grade). Despite that it was more fun than I've had in a while.

[Kraken]

I finished the "Salute to Nurses" letters and drew high praise. There will definitely be more projects from that company (for the Boston Globe).

Today I finished editing a paper that a MIT researcher submitted to the IEEE's journal. It was already laid out for print, and I had to get access to Acrobat to edit the PDF. When they sent it to me for evaluation, I told them that I (a) could not understand the half of it that was written in mathematical and scientific notation (literally lots of Greek characters), and (b) the sections that I could understand were already in very good shape and didn't need further editing. They hired me anyway because I gave them my low low proofreading rate, and they just wanted a layman's eyes on it. I routinely edit stories ABOUT science and technology; this paper actually IS science and technology.

I haven't heard back from them yet, but if they're satisfied there will be more papers from more researchers.

Not bad for an English major with little training and no professional experience. It turns out that STEM people still need us word nerds, and there aren't that many people who can bridge those worlds. At age 61 I have found a niche.

[Isgrimnur]

Evaluations went in today. Both I and my minion garnered an ‘Exceeds Expectations’. Boss told me that I kicked ass through our merger. While not under his control, there’s hope that the Chief might approve my promotion to AVP, I’m trying not to get my hopes up on that one, but it’s difficult.

[pr0ner]

I finished the "Salute to Nurses" letters and drew high praise. There will definitely be more projects from that company (for the Boston Globe).

Today I finished editing a paper that a MIT researcher submitted to the IEEE's journal. It was already laid out for print, and I had to get access to Acrobat to edit the PDF. When they sent it to me for evaluation, I told them that I (a) could not understand the half of it that was written in mathematical and scientific notation (literally lots of Greek characters), and (b) the sections that I could understand were already in very good shape and didn't need further editing. They hired me anyway because I gave them my low low proofreading rate, and they just wanted a layman's eyes on it. I routinely edit stories ABOUT science and technology; this paper actually IS science and technology.

I haven't heard back from them yet, but if they're satisfied there will be more papers from more researchers.

Not bad for an English major with little training and no professional experience. It turns out that STEM people still need us word nerds, and there aren't that many people who can bridge those worlds. At age 61 I have found a niche.

Man. I sometimes read IEEE journals for research in my job, and they can make my eyes glaze over via dry prose and boredom. I'm impressed that you, as a layman, could do a proofread edit for them. Well done.

[Default]

Thanks to Amazon ripping off the Post Office, my last check had 140 hours on it for 2 weeks. I'm on pace to hit 6 figures this year, if something doesn't fall off.

[Kraken]

I finished the "Salute to Nurses" letters and drew high praise. There will definitely be more projects from that company (for the Boston Globe).

Today I finished editing a paper that a MIT researcher submitted to the IEEE's journal. It was already laid out for print, and I had to get access to Acrobat to edit the PDF. When they sent it to me for evaluation, I told them that I (a) could not understand the half of it that was written in mathematical and scientific notation (literally lots of Greek characters), and (b) the sections that I could understand were already in very good shape and didn't need further editing. They hired me anyway because I gave them my low low proofreading rate, and they just wanted a layman's eyes on it. I routinely edit stories ABOUT science and technology; this paper actually IS science and technology.

I haven't heard back from them yet, but if they're satisfied there will be more papers from more researchers.

Not bad for an English major with little training and no professional experience. It turns out that STEM people still need us word nerds, and there aren't that many people who can bridge those worlds. At age 61 I have found a niche.

Man. I sometimes read IEEE journals for research in my job, and they can make my eyes glaze over via dry prose and boredom. I'm impressed that you, as a layman, could do a proofread edit for them. Well done.

Thanks. "Network Operation Strategies for Efficient Localization and Navigation" was not what you'd call spellbinding and slogging through 32 pages of it was hard. I made it clear that I couldn't edit for content or do any fact-checking, but I do know how to make sentences work better. The author wanted improved readability, and I think I delivered that by simple things like changing passive to active voice and substituting simple words for jargon where I was sure it didn't change his meaning. It was especially challenging because the IEEE editors had obviously already had their way with it -- his paper had already been accepted and was ready for the printer. Basically, he hired me to dumb it down a little.

[Punisher]

Evaluations went in today. Both I and my minion garnered an ‘Exceeds Expectations’. Boss told me that I kicked ass through our merger. While not under his control, there’s hope that the Chief might approve my promotion to AVP, I’m trying not to get my hopes up on that one, but it’s difficult.

So... Are you hoping to get the Alien or Predator position?

[Isgrimnur]

Predator suits my analytical nature better. And I'm technologically oriented.