Have you ever changed your career?

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I've done this twice already in my life, and am thinking about doing it again. Do other people do this? Have you found yourself penalized for doing it? Is it better to do something you find boring but which is more stable vs. something that is brand new?

― Orbit (Orbit), Wednesday, 27 October 2004 22:58 (twenty-one years ago)

I used to be a boxer.

― RJG (RJG), Wednesday, 27 October 2004 23:01 (twenty-one years ago)

shorts.

― Orbit (Orbit), Wednesday, 27 October 2004 23:02 (twenty-one years ago)

on occasion.

― RJG (RJG), Wednesday, 27 October 2004 23:03 (twenty-one years ago)

I'm trying to do this right now.

Which is to say, I'm being (and have been being) trained for a career in academia, had a job in it that I hated and was bad at, and I've now decided to reject it in favor of a profession (bookbinding) I've always enjoyed doing but which I have no degree in. I think it's my best shot at being happy with a job...I don't know what else I'd do if I didn't have this goal.

― sgs (sgs), Wednesday, 27 October 2004 23:06 (twenty-one years ago)

I also was an academic for a while, and fled because I hated it. A former colleague is trying to get me to go back into it, which is yet another issue.

― Orbit (Orbit), Wednesday, 27 October 2004 23:23 (twenty-one years ago)

i want to do this but i have no idea what the brand new thing i want to do is :(

― bulbs (bulbs), Wednesday, 27 October 2004 23:24 (twenty-one years ago)

i was an engineer for a little while, now i'm doing mortgage shit. will eventually get an engineer job again.

― Sir Kingfish Beavis D'Azzmonch (Kingfish), Wednesday, 27 October 2004 23:31 (twenty-one years ago)

How hard is mortgage shit? I'm somewhat interested in it (and real estate).

― The Ghost of Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Wednesday, 27 October 2004 23:56 (twenty-one years ago)

I worked 7 years in the forgeign affairs office, hated it (I wasnt doing anything glam like diplomatic travel, just a shitty admin job). Took a voluntary redundancy, did a diploma in professional writing at RMIT, found out I loved and was good at IT (internet/DTP stuff) and started getting IT style jobs, after never having even touched a PC before about 1994.

I'm about to leave the IT/telco job Ive had for almost 6 years and I'm thinking of a change again - I'd like to do something *interesting*. I've thought about IT freelance writing (though the freelance industry seems perilous), Ive thought about assistant librarian work, teaching IT to maybe older people or kids at short course schools... web content writing is the big interest at the moment tho.

I really could do all kinds of things, I dont know where to start!

― Trayce (trayce), Thursday, 28 October 2004 00:05 (twenty-one years ago)

what kind of an engineer?

― RJG (RJG), Thursday, 28 October 2004 00:13 (twenty-one years ago)

Choo-choo! (He wishes!)

I think I want to change. I don't know to what though. But I think that my whole writing career would be better as a side thing than as something I kill myself trying to make work and no benefits or holidays and crappy part-time job.
I think I should learn a trade. I know a guy who's an upholsterer and he seems very happy. I don't know him well, so he's maybe just being polite.

― Huk-L, Thursday, 28 October 2004 00:29 (twenty-one years ago)

i am in the process of changing mine right now. although they (my current job and my proposed new career) are somewhat related. i'm leaving my current (fairly) well paid and career track job to return to full time study next year. it's scary but in a cool way!

― gem (trisk), Thursday, 28 October 2004 00:53 (twenty-one years ago)

mortgage shit is hilariously eary, mainly cuz you deal with (mostly) finance guys. i'd never be a broker, since i hate sales guys and that mindset. both of the lending companies i've worked for have had plenty of educated folks who wound up working there out of a lack of getting a job in their field, and people who were far less educated and with 2-3 kids by age 23. i had a job in a tiny brokerage office for 2 weeks when i first moved here, which wasn't too bad since the owner was cool and both his wife(a new loan officer there) and the lady i was taking over for were both reps for Sony Records during most of the 90s.

i got my decrees in aerospace and electrical engineering, but am too cowed to look for an entry level job seeing as how my degrees are rotting on the vine after 4 years with a grand total of 3 months experience. hopefully, working in this office will get me back to some sort of financial solvency, so's i can take a class or three to refresh and hunt for another engin job.

― Sir Kingfish Beavis D'Azzmonch (Kingfish), Thursday, 28 October 2004 01:01 (twenty-one years ago)

Good luck Fishee; that sounds like a pretty marketable skill. My problem is making the "transferable skills" cover letter to contextualize a resume that jumps between the music business, academia, and educational consulting. I'm afraid I'm starting to look like a directionless freak.

― Orbit (Orbit), Thursday, 28 October 2004 01:25 (twenty-one years ago)

Shifted from secondary school teacher to newspaper journalist to management to college professor back to newspapers and then to professional nutcase. The career route might have had something to do with it. :)

― Hey Jude, Thursday, 28 October 2004 14:17 (twenty-one years ago)

I tried and I failed, and I feel like going home.

― Marcello Carlin, Thursday, 28 October 2004 14:18 (twenty-one years ago)

I'm on my third career, ignoring the many other little jobs - I was an accountant for years, then a comic book editor, and now a systems analyst.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Thursday, 28 October 2004 23:19 (twenty-one years ago)

I was a financial services bod, crunching numbers and dealing with grumpy corporate insurance customers, and am now involved in mentoring and assisting unemployed kids into work. I fell into the latter by accident through a two-week temping assignment and can't believe I never did something as worthwhile as this before.

― ailsa (ailsa), Thursday, 28 October 2004 23:24 (twenty-one years ago)

five years pass...

I'd like to hear about more jobs/moves like Ailsa's above. Stuff that wasn't hard to get into but feels worthwhile. (Ailsa, are you still doing that kind of work?)

― ljubljana, Saturday, 12 December 2009 04:22 (sixteen years ago)

haha, no, I'm not. It stopped being worthwhile when I left the company I was with there. I ended up going through three or four progressively shittier companies who treated the punters as commodities rather than people, and I ended up having a mini-breakdown at the thought of having to do it any more. It was as results-oriented as a sales job, with targets to be met - I ended up being asked to do things like bribe people with cash and/or gifts to stay in jobs they didn't want to do in order that targets for employment retention were met, etc. I do exceptionally dull public sector admin now.

The first company I was with though were great, except they had a major streamlining exercise which resulted in my job being removed from the equation. They went tits up about a year later :-) I really do miss that job though, and the feeling of usefulness that went with it.

― ailsa, Saturday, 12 December 2009 09:33 (sixteen years ago)

Wow, bribes?! That's mind-boggling, although I guess I'm being very naive about those kinds of companies. Sorry they had no regard for your health, or the lives of their participants.

In about 2 years when I come back from the US I want a change to something where you get to use a bit of empathy and also develop some expertise.

ENBB to thread?

― ljubljana, Saturday, 12 December 2009 12:53 (sixteen years ago)

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