I quit mah jorb

Post by **Foo** » Wed May 16, 2007 4:34 pm

...So stories from Bizarro 3rd line tech support and the technical manager menagarie will hopefully become a thing of the past.

Thought it'd be more satisfying quitting but eh, I was more relieved to be doing something instead of just coasting along with the situation unresolved.

Post by **R00k** » Wed May 16, 2007 4:38 pm

You don't have anything else lined up?

If not, don't waste any time.

Good luck.

Post by **Pext** » Wed May 16, 2007 4:45 pm

mah jorb? trying to sound cool?

Post by **GONNAFISTYA** » Wed May 16, 2007 4:46 pm

Hey, now you can become the street whore you always wanted to be.

Post by **Foo** » Wed May 16, 2007 4:53 pm

R00k wrote:You don't have anything else lined up?

I have things planned out but I'm not heading straight back into employment. I'm intending to shift career paths into PHP/MySQL dev work, of which there's a lot of positions available in my area and the pay scale starts further up the ladder than where I am now, by about £5k... and that's just the starting positions. 3 to 5 years down the line an increase of around £10k over that figure is about the average. Plus the geographical areas in which the web dev positions are available are in far, far cheaper areas than I'm stuck in now. Half my net pay goes into my accomodation, and that's too much when I'm trying to pay off a student loan.

The biggest risk I'm taking right now is that I have to put in some work to build some example code and sites as a showcase before I seek employment. Also, I need to get my head into learning materials and get myself up past my hobbyist level of knowledge and up to an employable standard of coding knowledge again, which is going to take me a few months of dedicated work.

I had tried to make a go of it while working the 9 to 5, but the job was leaving me mentally drained (sadly, because it lacked variety and not becuase it was challenging) and when I got home I was more apt to sleep for 4 hours than concentrate on learning serious stuff. I envy people that can do that.

Post by **Foo** » Wed May 16, 2007 4:54 pm

Pext wrote:mah jorb? trying to sound cool?

Does 'mah jorb' sound cool?

Post by **GONNAFISTYA** » Wed May 16, 2007 4:56 pm

What you're planning will take a while.

Do you have a ton of cash saved up (because you're living expensive and paying bills) or are you really gonna become the street whore you always wanted to be?

Post by **Foo** » Wed May 16, 2007 5:16 pm

GONNAFISTYA wrote:What you're planning will take a while.

I'm budgeting about 3 to 6 months without work to get my knowledge level back up to a decent baseline and get a few portfolio sites up and going. If I need more time then I'm planning to jump into contracting in IT support for a while (Plenty of it around here, fortunately).

My main plan now is tieing up my affairs in Ripon then shifting back with the parents (oh god) and dropping my outgoings down to absolute zero for a while.

Failing that yeah, I'm gonna have to budget for a basque and fishnets.

Post by **bitWISE** » Wed May 16, 2007 5:17 pm

I got really fucked when I quit my last job. I ended up charging a lot of bills to credit cards that I'm still paying off

Good luck foo.

Post by **phantasmagoria** » Wed May 16, 2007 6:01 pm

how rash. gl man. Temping is always an option, just so you know there's work there if you need it. I'm thinking of quitting and temping to big up my portfolio.

Post by **4days** » Wed May 16, 2007 6:06 pm

well played foo.

there is plenty of cash to be made on contract work. just remember not to do the job too well or too quickly if the contract's through an agency

Post by **Foo** » Wed May 16, 2007 6:09 pm

Why is this?

And thanks for the support, its appreciated. It was an easy decision to make but I didn't take it lightly.

Post by **scared?** » Wed May 16, 2007 6:09 pm

lol...jobs...

Post by **Tsakali_** » Wed May 16, 2007 6:09 pm

Foo wrote:
R00k wrote:You don't have anything else lined up?

I was more apt to sleep for 4 hours than concentrate on learning serious stuff. I envy people that can do that.

I try to do that (no social life what so ever atm so no big deal), sometimes it's physically impossible, as I get tired...I only get 5 hours of sleep at night, but I think it cuts my iq down to half, I feel like a wondering zombie sometimes.

Post by **plained** » Wed May 16, 2007 6:10 pm

if you could already do ur own thing, whyd you start work there in the first place anyways?

Post by **Tsakali_** » Wed May 16, 2007 6:11 pm

scared? wrote:lol...jobs...

lol

Post by **Don Carlos** » Wed May 16, 2007 6:12 pm

GL dude!
You seemed really unhappy there so it was probably for the best

Post by **Tsakali_** » Wed May 16, 2007 6:12 pm

plained wrote:if you could already do ur own thing, whyd you start work there in the first place anyways?

it's not easy going itno business for yourself, the number of different hats you have to wear , can leave you bold.

there's a soothing feeling of care free comfort in a 9-5 job that you wont ever get to see working for yourself.

Post by **plained** » Wed May 16, 2007 6:22 pm

i feel no soothe in those and thats too bad its not easy for yourself.

i do have the odd hat tho mostly just for sun and rain.

Post by **Foo** » Wed May 16, 2007 6:22 pm

plained wrote:if you could already do ur own thing

I don't get this bit

whyd you start work there in the first place anyways?

The position was sold to be something quite different to what it turned out to be. In summary:
- I interviewed and understood that he would be my boss. Turns out, I end up working for a guy underneath him that's basically incompetent.
- I interviewed in the main IT offices, but turns out that the support team I'm in works in a windowless server config room down the back of the building. Its full of old compaq DL rackmounts and sun servers on bleed testing, and there's no desks, just a work surface round the edge of the room that's about high enough to stand at.
- There's IT support run properly in a big company, and there's what this turned out to be - Instead of healthy doses of generating and maintaining relevant documentation, knowledge sharing with other infrastructure teams, developing skills and servicing the 3rd line aspects of the support network, my daily job ended up to be constantly re-imaging PCs using our broken set of RIS images, without the power to alter them in any way. And I do mean constantly. To give you an idea of why this was frustrating, a typical imaging job for one PC takes me about 4 hours working as fast as feasible. Under ideal conditions, these could be pared down to about 25 mins per unit. That gets frustrating after about the 5th month or so....

Anyway go go gadget rant.... its not important now, but in summary the reason I took the job was because it seemed attractive, but I got suckered into a bait-and-switch. Outside of this, my own financial situation has proved to be a problem that I need to do something about. Even if this job was perfect I would still have to resolve the issue of my outgoings being too high to repay my loan, and its not as if I'm living a rockstar lifestyle right now.

Post by **Foo** » Wed May 16, 2007 6:25 pm

Oh and after I told my boss this afternoon he started talking about a replacement, and his first choice is a girl from the finance department upstairs because apparently she 'fancies trying IT'.

That gives you a pretty good idea of his mentality, and the state of our small team.
The only other guy on the team with skills has been there for 3 years and is strongly considering packing it in too.

Post by **plained** » Wed May 16, 2007 6:27 pm

about the not of getting- if you could already make ur cashes by contract code, why didnt you just do that?

and that whole other thing about re-whatevering and a stand desk, you dint see that ten mile away?

dunno have fun

Post by **Grudge** » Wed May 16, 2007 6:27 pm

good move, dude

support is for losers anyway, try to get a more creative job

Post by **plained** » Wed May 16, 2007 6:29 pm

yea like imagineing how to get money!

Post by **Foo** » Wed May 16, 2007 6:31 pm

plained wrote:about the not of getting- if you could already make ur cashes by contract code, why didnt you just do that?

The downsides of contracting are reliability of income, lack of development (companies wont train you), the need to set yourself up as a company or go via an agency, lack of benefits (no pension, unions etc) and lack of attachment (Can't build solid working relationships if you're only around for 3 months, or in the community if you're moving constantly).

Also contracting usually involves variable commute distances, and I hates teh commuting.

On the other hand, there's the potential to make some pretty good scratch as a contractor.