4 ms·
Interesting article. I fall on the love work side. It is always nice to see situations from multiple frames of reference however. I left banking compliance alm
by epalmer 10y ago
Interesting article. I fall on the love work side. It is always nice to see situations from multiple frames of reference however.
I left banking compliance almost 10 years ago to get back to web development and development management at a university and never looked back. I took a gigantic pay cut and left some serious grants money on the table. My health improved. My happiness improved and my now grown kids say I stopped being a grumpy dad. I've been able to be part of my family's life in seriously fun and meaningful ways.
At the bank I ran projects as the lead systems analyst and sometimes business analyst to bring some situations into compliance as viewed by bank examiners. I won corporate awards, had bank examiners exclaiming surprise at how fast and well the projects met or exceeded expectations.
But after killing a project across 7 business units for 3 to 6 months and working 70 to 80 hr weeks my boss would say thanks that was really great. Now here is another crazy can't really get this done but we need it done project.
So now writing backend code and running 140+ subdomains for a small university, I work most weeks 45 hours, love my team and the extended scrum team and only despise maybe 5% of my work such as performance management.
I'm nearing retirement (in 5 years) and am so happy I made this final career move. Oh I should mention, I am pretty good now at boxing my opinions and emotions about the stupid things that go on at a University. I see a lot of dysfunction at the cabinet level and think we are lucky that students don't get inculcated by these idiot savants.
- branchless 10y agoWhy did you work 70 hours? I've worked at two major us investment banks and both inculcated a full-time culture. Did you join the cult?
- epalmer 10y agoReally two reasons. 1) When I moved from IT to the Compliance side I did not realize what a bank examiner response project looks like in terms of timing and intensity. The examiners gave us a schedule and we had to fulfill on that schedule regardless... 2) At the time I was an all in person. 120% or 0%. After having chest surgery I came to the realization that I needed to slow down and enjoy life better. And I and so glad I had that chest event. So I adopted a "less is more", "slow down to speed up" mentality and started looking for more satisfying employment. You could sum it up as: >Did you join the cult? Yes.
- branchless 10y agoHah, thanks for your candid response, and I'm glad you've seen the light. Enjoy.
- _yosefk 10y agoYou actually sound like you fall on both sides similarly to the way I (TFA's author) do, seeing that you did high-paid less lovable work and then more lovable work for less pay. (At the moment I program 3 days a week and during the other days I animate without any plans to get paid for it.) My point was mostly that one could be equally valuable (or, conversely, pernicious) at both types of jobs having either sort of motivation.
- epalmer 10y agoWorking for the bank at times was very fun. I love problem solving and getting work done across large and small teams. But in the end my passion waned and it became a well paid job that was a burden. Thanks for the thought provoking post.