Between a Rock and Hard Place
TLDR:: I want a change in career, but as the bread winner, I don't feel I can.
Long Story::
Before I got into IT, I was a land surveyor. 2 Years at TAFE/working and then another year working. It was an interesting job, but the outdoors didn't suit me.
During my last year at TAFE, we did a project to transfer all of the data from our programmable calculators into a computer and into Civil CAD for drafting purposes.
I was good at it, and I really enjoyed the straight up logic that programming provided.
So I decided to get out of Surveying and into IT.
My first IT job was at a student helpdesk at a university, pretending to study while I worked. I was gaming a lot with friends as well, so I was quite familiar with everything user related. While I was "studying" I also did some more programming in the form of Visual Basic, C++ and some SQL. I was good at them. Unfortunately I was terrible at maths and the uni was making me study it.
And thus I decided that studying was for me, and I went to work full time.
I moved on to my first corporate role, working the late afternoon shift and supporting everyone from plumbers to the CEO. After working at the uni, I found it easy to communicate with all walks of life and was able to break down technical concepts to anyone. I also got quite close to the other technical teams and broadened my knowledge.
My manager saw something in me and promoted me to team leader. This wasn't something I had been planning as I was planning to go down a networking path, thinking backend work was where I belonged.
Turned out I was a good team leader as well and soon after my manager left, I moved on to another company into another team leader role.
Things were going great here, I had now been working in IT for about 10 years, I was managing people and progressing the way I felt I should. I had decided that Service Management was where I belonged. I was good at it, I enjoyed the work, I loved helping people, and there was progression available.
Then the dark times hit. I got my first redundancy 2 and a half years into that role and was out of work for the next 6 months. I had 2 kids, a wife and a mortgage.
I borrowed money from family to pay for things, I was applying for just about anything in IT I was vaguely qualified for.
I ended up being offered 2 roles. One was a 6 month contract that I didn't feel was likely to renewed due to upcoming political changes, the other was a permanent role at HP 5 minutes from home. Obviously I took the HP role.
That was another great role as a Service Reporting Analyst, creating weekly and monthly reports for a client, not managing any people and not having to deal with any day to day troubleshooting.
After 6 months, I was made redundant.
Off to another Service Desk Team leader role. Redundant 9 months later.
Now I was a Interim IT Manager, doing desktop work and managing an outsourced IT team. Instead of being offered the permanent role they decided to offer me a desktop support role for almost half the salary I was getting.
Off to a software reseller as a Service Desk Team Leader again. I started to get back into some programming, and I discovered Python. This just seemed to stick. By now I had tried learning a little Ruby and JavaScript through CodeAcademy, I had been trying to learn C# through Microsoft Virtual Academy, but none of it stuff. Python and I just seemed to click. I got friendly with the dev lead and he helped me through some tough spots. This was an interesting company but after 18 months I started pointing out some issues with the way management was doing things and I was forced out.
So I went to a software company.,Customer Success Manager. This started out great, I was managing a small team, we were driving customer success and improvement, I got to work closely with the dev team (they were using ruby which I could kinda read but not write it. Again, I became a translator, explaining technical concepts to the accounting team, and then explaining business concepts to the coders.
Unfortunately, I again came to blows when I started pointing out that management was going the wrong way. So I was again forced out.
And then we get to now. I've been working the last 8 months as a Service Manager. Yes, exactly where about 12 years earlier I had wanted to be. I work on a client site with some great people. I've been progressing my code skills by self learning and feel like I'm getting comfortable. I have people in the business I can talk code to but none of them are coders.
Don't get me wrong, I enjoy being a Service Manager, but unfortunately my day to day is 80% desktop work. I keep the client happy and relations are at an all time high.
But I feel like coding is that thing that wont go away, and the itch is getting to that point where I'm scratching as much as I can in my free time, but its not enough. I need more. I need to do it for my job.
And there's the kicker.
I've come full circle and decided again that coding is where I need to be. I've now got some ability to back up my need.
Now I don't have the time or the freedom to follow what I should have done 20 years ago.
20 years I've been in support services this year. 20 years, I've been interacting with customers/users/non-IT-people. 15 odd years of those, I've been managing other people.
Now I want to do something for myself, without having to deal with other peoples problems. Now I want to make, create, design, put my headphones on and just get in the zone.
I'm sure it will come, and hopefully it will be soon. My kids are all in school now (3 of them for those that haven't read my other posts), my wife is starting to get back into part time work, so there's a little less pressure on me "bringing home the bacon".
I'm gonna keep on plugging on, keep on learning, build up a portfolio, and one day soon, I'm going to get my coding job.
For those that read it all, thanks for listening to me.
Long Story::
Before I got into IT, I was a land surveyor. 2 Years at TAFE/working and then another year working. It was an interesting job, but the outdoors didn't suit me.
During my last year at TAFE, we did a project to transfer all of the data from our programmable calculators into a computer and into Civil CAD for drafting purposes.
I was good at it, and I really enjoyed the straight up logic that programming provided.
So I decided to get out of Surveying and into IT.
My first IT job was at a student helpdesk at a university, pretending to study while I worked. I was gaming a lot with friends as well, so I was quite familiar with everything user related. While I was "studying" I also did some more programming in the form of Visual Basic, C++ and some SQL. I was good at them. Unfortunately I was terrible at maths and the uni was making me study it.
And thus I decided that studying was for me, and I went to work full time.
I moved on to my first corporate role, working the late afternoon shift and supporting everyone from plumbers to the CEO. After working at the uni, I found it easy to communicate with all walks of life and was able to break down technical concepts to anyone. I also got quite close to the other technical teams and broadened my knowledge.
My manager saw something in me and promoted me to team leader. This wasn't something I had been planning as I was planning to go down a networking path, thinking backend work was where I belonged.
Turned out I was a good team leader as well and soon after my manager left, I moved on to another company into another team leader role.
Things were going great here, I had now been working in IT for about 10 years, I was managing people and progressing the way I felt I should. I had decided that Service Management was where I belonged. I was good at it, I enjoyed the work, I loved helping people, and there was progression available.
Then the dark times hit. I got my first redundancy 2 and a half years into that role and was out of work for the next 6 months. I had 2 kids, a wife and a mortgage.
I borrowed money from family to pay for things, I was applying for just about anything in IT I was vaguely qualified for.
I ended up being offered 2 roles. One was a 6 month contract that I didn't feel was likely to renewed due to upcoming political changes, the other was a permanent role at HP 5 minutes from home. Obviously I took the HP role.
That was another great role as a Service Reporting Analyst, creating weekly and monthly reports for a client, not managing any people and not having to deal with any day to day troubleshooting.
After 6 months, I was made redundant.
Off to another Service Desk Team leader role. Redundant 9 months later.
Now I was a Interim IT Manager, doing desktop work and managing an outsourced IT team. Instead of being offered the permanent role they decided to offer me a desktop support role for almost half the salary I was getting.
Off to a software reseller as a Service Desk Team Leader again. I started to get back into some programming, and I discovered Python. This just seemed to stick. By now I had tried learning a little Ruby and JavaScript through CodeAcademy, I had been trying to learn C# through Microsoft Virtual Academy, but none of it stuff. Python and I just seemed to click. I got friendly with the dev lead and he helped me through some tough spots. This was an interesting company but after 18 months I started pointing out some issues with the way management was doing things and I was forced out.
So I went to a software company.,Customer Success Manager. This started out great, I was managing a small team, we were driving customer success and improvement, I got to work closely with the dev team (they were using ruby which I could kinda read but not write it. Again, I became a translator, explaining technical concepts to the accounting team, and then explaining business concepts to the coders.
Unfortunately, I again came to blows when I started pointing out that management was going the wrong way. So I was again forced out.
And then we get to now. I've been working the last 8 months as a Service Manager. Yes, exactly where about 12 years earlier I had wanted to be. I work on a client site with some great people. I've been progressing my code skills by self learning and feel like I'm getting comfortable. I have people in the business I can talk code to but none of them are coders.
Don't get me wrong, I enjoy being a Service Manager, but unfortunately my day to day is 80% desktop work. I keep the client happy and relations are at an all time high.
But I feel like coding is that thing that wont go away, and the itch is getting to that point where I'm scratching as much as I can in my free time, but its not enough. I need more. I need to do it for my job.
And there's the kicker.
I've come full circle and decided again that coding is where I need to be. I've now got some ability to back up my need.
Now I don't have the time or the freedom to follow what I should have done 20 years ago.
20 years I've been in support services this year. 20 years, I've been interacting with customers/users/non-IT-people. 15 odd years of those, I've been managing other people.
Now I want to do something for myself, without having to deal with other peoples problems. Now I want to make, create, design, put my headphones on and just get in the zone.
I'm sure it will come, and hopefully it will be soon. My kids are all in school now (3 of them for those that haven't read my other posts), my wife is starting to get back into part time work, so there's a little less pressure on me "bringing home the bacon".
I'm gonna keep on plugging on, keep on learning, build up a portfolio, and one day soon, I'm going to get my coding job.
For those that read it all, thanks for listening to me.
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