Basically I’ve been running my employer’s IT helpdesk for 10 years. In those 10 years I’ve gotten some (minor) raises and perks, but never a promotion or job title change. I just “failed” my second year performance evaluation which comes down to “we know you’re already overworked and understaffed but we need you to give 150% daily, every day”.

As a result the opposite has happened and I basically don’t GAF anymore. I close maybe half of the tickets I used to because I just can’t bring myself to care anymore. Also, if after 10 years nothing has fundamentally changed, it would be madness to assume it somehow magically will.

Thing is, I used to be very enthousiastic about my field (IT) but lately I’ve fallen completely out of love with it. Every single month there are changes and evolutions to the many tech stacks we use and I just can’t be arsed to keep up anymore. The enthousiasm has been completely replaced with mostly apathy and a side dish of simmering resentment.

I’m not immediately afraid of getting shitcanned because:

  • there’s a lot more work to do than there are hands available to do it
  • company has been looking for people for my role for over 5 years but never hires anyone
  • I’ve been there a decade which would mean making me redundant would cost the company a pretty penny in severance
  • no one currently employed there would want to take over my job duties. In IT, the helpdesk is the lowest of the low. Always has been, always will be.

Regardless, I’m in my 40’s now with one degree that doesn’t have anything to do with IT and without joking, I would rather die tomorrow than keep doing this until pension age. Any of you have decent tips or examples of where someone in my position could aim to end up for the second half of my life’s career?

If money were no object (it is) I would go back to college and pick up archaeology/history. That was what I wanted to do as a child but I had to give it up because “it wasn’t a realistic life path”, dixit my parents and every counselor I spoke to in that era.

I don’t even work fulltime right now and still I feel like I would want to spend those 2,5 days a week doing something marginally less painful, like stick my dick in the oven.

  • corsicanguppy@lemmy.caEnglish
    17·
    13 hours ago

    I hit that in year 6.

    I was hired with the mandate “make Linux suck less here” and it was a mighty mandate. It was a stuffy shell organization that recently discovered it had a lot to protect and its IT was guided by Finance people without the first clue why even updating systems is valuable. And they built an IT exec who itself built an IT team. I was the only full-time Linux guy, like so many times before, but I got to choose which part of the goal pie I could eat next.

    The team was understaffed, carefully-funded and had huge goals. And they did it very well: if your PoC was good, you could get funding to roll it out. Every new development needed to survive a figurative shark-tank pitch to the 3-person exec. And like a start-up group protected under an umbrella by- and from bureaucracy, it was magical. I took Linux from “patching? huh?” to “98% of matchines update automatically on the schedule we’ve set without interaction; new machines are ready in 7 minutes if we need something.”

    Then, in a financial coup, the leadership of IT was deposed one by one and replaced by Financial twats with the same lack of clue. And they hired a shit team of micromanagers not used to dealing with Union IT staff who actually put the tools down at 4:49 if they didn’t have anything exciting on the go. It was comical, and then it was sad; for the financial group wanted the excellent new digs that IT got after IT lived in basements until the new building was ready, and the basements were also no good now so IT had to move to some (short-)cube wasteland like it’s The (US) Office with such noise and nowhere to stare and nowhere to debate and nowhere to talk about “needing to shut off Dave’s access tomorrow becau-- oh, Hi Dave.”

    I stopped working on new stuff and just kept the lights on. I usually give it a year to unfuck itself when it’s happened in the past, and this one took 18 months because #covid changed how we interview and there was less job churn going on.

    And on a Monday I came in with my company gear to leave behind (secured) and I peaced out. They had no dedicated linux staff to speak of after that moment. I trained one guy how to patch HANA - the 2% that was just too snowflakey to patch automatically - the day before, and that was the last thing on my list. Turned my badge into HR and all but walked onto a bus. And got covid; probably from that ride home. (Don’t worry, kids; I was vaxed to the gills, so all good)

    So here’s my recommendation:

    1. punch the clock and live by it. “It’s been recommended by a professional,” and never elaborate. You need your rest now anyway.
    2. start looking for another job. TLDR, your dismissal will be constructed, you want to be ready with another job, and the only way that happens is if you get one first.
    3. present your issues. Give them a few weeks to think they can make statements to keep you. They won’t change, they won’t keep you, but let them make statements for others to ask about later.
    4. go. Try to make them sever you for the severance, but some constructions are not worth fighting, so call that severance a write-off if, for example, you’re in America. And go.
    5. I hope your next post is a good one. I’m proud to tell my story of warning my boss for 18 months that the current situation was still untenable and unsustainable before I left, and I’m okay telling my new boss that I quit the old place with the same warning that they fired their staff so it’s only fair.