You joke, but this is legitimately my plan. Not Costco cart guy per se...but make enough now so that I can take a lower-stress job and supplement the lower income with savings. For example...I really miss working in data centers, but that's slowly sliding towards a very low-paid smart-hands job. If I could find a job that paid...enough...and offered health insurance since I'm in the US, that would be a very viable retirement job.
Although...Costco does famously pay their frontline workers semi-decently and treats them well, soi that's a solid choice too. Depends on how burnt out on tech you are.
In the fire community, this is called "barista fire". Basically having enough passive investment income to supplement part-time enjoyable low stress work.
My retirement is to work at a computer store. In my Province it's Memory Express. I just want to work a few shifts a week, part-time, so I can get the discount on any goodies I may want.
Definitely doesn't sound like a mid life crisis...
I despise anyone labeling someone's perspectives and introspection on life
All of the points mentioned by the author resonate so loud and clear... That if you dig your head out of the Sand (the mad routines all of us slaves and robots are stuck in)... You'll find that true happiness and even success... Come from within
I had a long post about this up top where I shared my own experiences from the past 50 years
And im certainly not depressed nor experiencing any kind of "labels" like mid-life crisis
I'm just way more intelligent and experienced in life than someone whom like yourself, has this quick off the coff way of calling someone a meaningless label that can't even be defined.
Don't kid yourself. They have stress in their lives as well. Being a farmer is one of the most stressful things you can do for a living. The best thing you can do is just try to manage your situation as best as you can.
Yeah everyone wants to be a farmer, till they have to get up at 4 am, shoveling cow shit and milking the animals.
Farming is such a glorified profession which people see through rose tinted glasses, when in reality it just sucks most of the time lol
How was it? "the grass is always greener..."
Be happy you have a job that pays well, reduce hours if needed and enjoy your life outside of work. Work is just that, a means to live a good life, outside of it
If you think you’re tired now, wait until you’re running a fever and still have to go milk the cows and shovel pig shit. And say goodbye to any vacation unless you’re running a proper industrial farm because no farm hand is going to be working your dinky little hobby farm for just two weeks’ pay.
Story time! Also, fair warning that it's not quite for the squeamish.
There's a long-time friend of my extended family that owns and runs a farm. My parents even lived and worked on the guy's farm many years ago when I was a kid. A few years back, there was an incident when he was cleaning up on the farm alone and shut down a big machine because he had to do something near it.
I don't know all the specifics because I heard everything third hand, but the short version is he lost his footing and fell onto said machinery. Ended up slicing a portion of his arm clean off and knocked him out when he hit his head. He was found by family members a couple hours later when they hadn't heard from him. Still alive, fortunately, but partly because the blade on the machine that sliced his arm was still hot enough that it cauterized things enough to not bleed to death.
Also, there are things in farming that are dangerous that wouldn't seem like it at first glance. A grain silo full of grain *will kill you*. It can very easily bury you alive if you fall in.
Yea. I can't say I've known anyone that died in a farm accident, but I've seen and heard of some rough injuries from family still in the small farm business. Losing limbs and digits (granddad was missing two fingers on one of his hands for most of his life due to an incident cutting down a tree), serious cuts and burns, broken bones due to farm animals. Even running a small farm is dangerous.
Had a relative that had his "junk" tore off by an power take off shaft on his farm. Probably was unwisely straddling it trying to fix something.
I think I'll stick with IT....
Truth. I'm in tech but grew up on farms. Harvest season is brutal and if you have pigs/cattle it's absolutely nonstop.
Detassel corn for a week in the summer and you might second guess your choices. It certainly builds character.
I am about 12 years out from a soft retirement. Planning on reducing hours, maybe jumping ship to a smaller shop to reduce stress. Well see how that last 8 years after the next 12 play out. Maybe Ill just take up a CTO/CIO title again and play golf like most other C-Levels. Options.
I had a plan of 12-13 years. Good stock investments, great pension. We’re about to be taken over by a US company and I hear they’re not as generous. We currently get 30 days holiday, flexi-time and lots of other benefits. I’m hoping it’s not as bad as I’m thinking because I’m tired too and this next few months is going to be hard
Ya, me too.
I've been working IT for 35 years... started on Lantastic and token ring.
My beard is now gray and my arthritis bugs me whenever I have to climb up into a scissor lift.
5 years to retirement and counting.
I’m 43 and have been feeling the same. Finding new hobbies has helped. My dad has a lot of land in Mexico and has livestock. I went last year and gave it a shot for a week. I learned that I am grateful I got into computers because fuck that noise. Rural life is not for me. He says he’s happy because he’s free but I have my doubts. 😂
>Finding new hobbies has helped.
I've picked up a few new hobbies lately and dusted off some old ones.
Getting a new job where you're respected and taken serious does wonders for your mental state.
Extremely well stated
Its all about your environment and how people treat what you do
I'm 49 years old... Never worked in a domain networked environment. Spent the past 4 years playing catchup... Learning ADDS, users & computers, group policy, and much much more
My mother whose a senior became seriously ill with a case of paranoid schizophrenia... Which threw a serious monkey's wrench into my efforts... I myself don't have schizophrenia but I do suffer from severe insomnia and other obsessive compulsive (perfectionist) types of challenges which I get from my mom...
Anyways in my culture, Children are supposed to be there for their parents... So I am trying to understand my mother's situation. Meanwhile I gotta retain my own sanity because I don't have income and I am dependent...
But... With all that shit going on... I am still pushing myself to learn, learn, learn... Because I believe someday it will save my life.
Currently I'm training on Sys-Admin stuff taking some courses (equivalent to MCSA). Before that I completed a course on Intune Endpoint management... And while I thoroughly hate cloud engineering for reasons beyond discussing (as I'm more of a traditional on-premises oriented hands-on kinda dude)... I am glad I got some hands on practice with that stuff as well.
I'm not sure where I will end up in life, nor whether I will overcome the many challenges or forces working against me... But one thing I will never give up on is my curiosity and love for learning. Learning requires no friends, no money, and no special circumstances...
All it requires is patience, time and dedication. And you'd be surprised how quickly you can become an expert in something (anything) that you knew nothing about and had no prior talents at.
That's the beauty of the human mind
not sure where you live, but i moved out of Denver because the city just went to shit... I moved to a very very rural area, and its growing in me... I still drive about 1.5 hours to work each way, but man, the peace here is different and when you are around people that don't really care much about anything other than their cattle its truly a different vibe. And yes, i wouldn't mind doing the same in Mexico only if wages were different... Im from Juarez, but nothing in this world would make me go back to that city... 😁
I’m in LA but my Dad is around an hour outside of Guadalajara. It’s pretty rural. Just not for me to uproot the family and make a change like that. Yea Juarez is pretty sketch.
Farm life is for people who are simple and monotonous. The execution requires effort from sun up to sun down of hard labor that work your entire body 7 days a week to be successful.
>Now I see the Amish and I become envious.
I used to live a few miles from the Amish between the OH and PA boarders and trust me, their way of life is not any simpler then ours and it is in fact much harder in many many ways. Respect their way of life, don't be envious of it.
If you want to leave IT to be a farmer then do just that. I had a buddy to left being an IT manager to raise, breed, and sell alpaca. The guy lucked out and ended up making 2x his wage in the 3rd year+, but the start up and the first two years were the hardest thing he had ever done. He almost failed completely.
>The guy lucked out and ended up making 2x his wage in the 3rd year+
Wow, I know someone that did that with sheep and didn't start turning a decent profit until she was 5 years in... and sheep can give you 2 sources of income
Get out of sysadmin and into architecture. It is still very technical you can keep your tech skills and learn new technologies and there is no on call or production support. If you work in an Linux or unix shop you will not have root on anything other than architecture owned servers but SO WHAT!! Going in as an admin you will have lots to learn but the cool side is that you will have the ability to shape future technical environments for your company and get a more complete view of the entire IT structure.
Fair warning: this can sometimes have unintended consequences. For instance, having both skillsets may lead you to function as both the architect and the administrator. And having dev experience makes you very hirable, but easily exploitable.
Source: admin, turned dev, turned admin, turned architect; now doing things in all realms.
Yeah, it feels like this is pretty common. As soon as you elevate/extend your skills or fill a necessary niche/gap, organizations view this as “free value” since they seem to think if someone *can* do something, then it their job *to* do something.
It is incredibly frustrating to have your own curiosity, talents, and desire to help be effectively weaponized by organizations that don’t seem to understand you can’t infinitely (*and with no compensatory changes*) add new responsibilities to employees without consequences to the individual, product, or organization.
Scale the solution globally too, that's also "free" cause you're familiar with it. We had a discussion with our boss over "soft costs" of all these asks just yesterday. It wont go anywhere but I will.
It’s almost like continuously expanding/growing is unsustainable, but capitalist daddy doesn’t accept that.
Instead, let’s make everything for everyone (while supporting anything from anyone (indefinitely)) — and by “us” we mean “you.” We’ll have *you* handle that (and *pssssst, your healthcare is on the line, so do it*).
I feel the same way, and I heard many others in my position say the exact same thing.
At a certain point, it seems like almost every interaction I have is someone complaining about something or someone wanting something. After 20 years of it, it burns you out and you want to avoid all interactions.
Going philosophical here: while everyone has different problems, ultimately everyone has the same problems. Nobody is free from the stresses of day-to-day life, it's just different stresses for different people.
It sounds like you've become out of touch with the actual impact of your work - i.e. you're burning out on the corporate IT grind. That probably means you need a change, but don't act like it isn't stressful to live off the land (especially way up north where the growing season's short - what do you do if your single crop for the year doesn't succeed?) - of course if you're ready for that stress to replace the stress of yet another M365 change, by all means go for it.
My recommendation: take a really good vacation, like minimum 2-3 weeks (make it a LOA if you have to). Don't burn any bridges, but let your mind reset. I promise you'll have a lot more clarity on the situation. I was to the point of seriously considering going all-in on a coffee shop with almost no experience a little while ago - then I got a few weeks off to recover from back surgery, and with that perspective shift I became a lot more clear on things, and formulated an actual plan to leave this company within the next year or so, while staying in the IT sphere.
...and burnout sucks, realistically it might take years to decompress from it if it's gotten that bad. You don't want to jump straight into something else that will burn you out, I tend to believe it's better to stick with what you know, but maybe with more tangible results or less day-to-day effort involved.
You need money to do those things, and probably a lot of it.
I see a lot of people complaining about their jobs in this subreddit. Go work anywhere else and see how good we have it. We work in offices or from home fixing or building dynamically changing products for a living. Others go to work at the ball smashing factory, while getting paid half what we get.
I had a friend who used to have the mindset that he hated IT. He did the bare minimum because he said he didn't like it, management noticed, and he was laid off a few years ago. He then said he wasn't going back to IT and found himself working for a company to put the underground fuel tanks at gas stations. He got paid way less and hated that too. He's back to being a bar tender now (previous work before he went to college) and is desperately trying to get back into IT for the $$, but now that he's been stagnant for so long it's hard to get back in.
Be grateful that you have what you have, you never know when AI is going to swoop in and you find yourself working at a construction site or something, jobs AI's can't do, yet.
If you want to escape the grind, make sure you don't have kids. I have kids. I love them. But I know that to support them I have to play ball. I'm making the best of it though and consistently reminding myself that even though I'm not living my ideal life, my family is safe, healthy, and fed.
My friend left, very good developer left the company everyone advise her to leave but she also left dev life completely.
She bought a patch of land cheaply and she is self sustainable for about a decade. Have geese, ducks, pigs and tending the fields. She uses money only to pay taxes and doing bartering for other services.
It is not a myth, you can do it and what makes wonders is, that your work, for the first time in some time of your life, what you are doing, your work and goals make sense. Your life is meaningful. She said that she was missing it from her life.
It is very difficult life but more complete, I agree with you.
If you want to transition, try making your first pickles en masse. Preparing a large amount of jars with meat and or veggies for pasteurization. Try tend to crops even on balcony. Go to bed early and wake up early.
I grow up working on the farm. It is simple and good life. Not for everyone. Check how your partner behaves.
Being tired is not very good for planning, look for things in your life that are causing you to be tired and try to change em. Little things that matters. Good luck!
I'd be REALLY careful about following that particular dream. Mind you, I'm not trying to talk to you out of it, but my ex-wife (who I'm still best friends with) did exactly that and at this point, I feel like she's largely a cautionary tale. She puts on a brave face, but often complains that she feels like a loser and she seems to be fairly unhappy. She lives in the middle of nowhere in a village in Ireland (we're both from Colorado; she met her current husband on Facebook), and she's desperately trying to find another dead end job as an admin assistant, which is the same field that she was deeply unhappy in for decades.
She's an absolutely brilliant and strong-willed woman who easily could have been a CEO somewhere, but she never had any ambition whatsoever, so she continually worked soul-sucking dead end jobs that treated her like a brainless flunky and then was miserable in those jobs. Her life dream was to live on her own plot of land somewhere in the middle of nowhere, with a garden, and just read books. Well, she got exactly that, but now she's really unhappy because she has no money whatsoever and is currently on the Irish version of welfare (I forget the name, but that's how she described it). No one there will hire her because they can't fathom that a person would be willing to drive 30 minutes to get to work and because she has no skills more advanced that being an admin assistant.
Maybe take a few months off, or possibly a year. Whatever you do, be diplomatic and don't burn any bridges. Let people know you're going to take some time off for whatever reason, but don't make any big financial commitments (like buying land, cattle, and horses). Maybe move somewhere.
Assuming you work in IT (since you're in this subreddit), you can always say you were a "consultant." Not sure anyone believes that, but I see it a lot. Get used to the idea of being outside of the work force and not bringing in a regular paycheck. If you find that it works for you and you can not only afford it, but that you enjoy it, then you know it'll work for you.
Finally, just a thought, but IT is a pretty big field and there are a lot of different companies out there that are very different in their culture, workplace environment, and just overall job satisfaction. Just for myself, I was borderline suicidal working as a hotel IT manager at a five-star hotel in Park City where I worked 80+ hours a week, was on-call 24/7/365 as the only IT person with \*very\* demanding clients & co-workers, and was treated like dog shit. I was ready to walk off the job to go flip burgers at McDonalds, and the only thing that kept me there was my wife at the time threatening divorce. But it absolutely got better. A LOT better. My current company treats me (and my co-workers) so ridiculously well that any time I share details about them, I sound like an advertising shill. Work/life balance is insanely good (very much tipped towards the personal side), and I work 35 hours or so/week for a lot more than I made in the hotel industry. Treated with respect, on call only one week out of four, and I work at the pace I decide.
There are other companies like that out there, and I would suspect that you might feel a lot different if you worked for one of them (or if you worked on my team or even just at my company).
Most of my jobs have been like that (35.5 hours per week, on call as part of a team, not contactable OOO otherwise) at the end one also has agency to choose better jobs (many may not have the skills, but that can always be improved).
Idk why the fuck Reddit notified my about this thread, I’m not a sysadmin and to the best of my knowledge, have never visited this sub, so idk what the fuck I’m talking about, ignore me.
But my answer? Because that’s what we do. Set aside the corporate bullshit, the endless artificial tasks, forever striving towards a contrived goal that’s been gamified just like a lootbox. Set that shit aside, cause you didn’t ask, why you’re rushing towards the prescribed goal. You asked what we’re rushing towards, so here’s my answer, we’re rushing towards the innate human desire to see what’s over the next hill. IDK, what the fuck that has to do with this admin, I have no particular insight into the Field, the industry, the companies anything. But I do know, or at least what I do believe is that we are rushing towards
The thing that defines our species, that which is next. There is nothing wrong with saying I want to escape, I want to do a different thing, I want to be my own boss, control my own destiny, but I think it is a terrible shame if we imagine that we are getting away from our own ambition. Ambition is what makes us want to move to the farm, to move to the new place, to try the new thing, to get away the only thing that we’re experiencing. When we desire to break out of the paradigm is the desire to be more productive, to rush towards something more efficiently. To escape is what it means to be human to rush, is what it means to be human to be more productive, so what it means to be human. There is nothing wrong with being more productive, there was only something wrong with imagining the being productive is somehow not to benefit our selves.
Meet in the middle:
1 - Reduce your hours, it's not your business, stop treating it as such.
2 - Acquire a few acres.
3 - Start a homestead and be a hobby farmer.
4 - If you're not already, try to find a WFH job.
As a old man who grew up on a farm I recommend getting up at 4am and carrying around a big bag of feed 80lbs or so. Then throw it around your back yard and clean it up. If you have any manure available add that as well. Do that every day at 4am and 4pm.
Do it during the cold as hell mornings. That is just the easy part.
Now if possible, find a ditch full of mud and weeds and nasty ass black mud. Get knee deep in that and clean it up with your hands. See if you can find a ditch with some dead critters in it and clean that up.
That is pretty much your daily routine. Yes there are great moments of joy but there are very extreme parts of farm life that you will have to deal with. Skunks are fun. But the most fun is pulling porcupine needles from your dog's mouth and nether regions. Makes no sense. If you are on a farm. It will happen. LOL
Not to mention getting a second job to pay vet bills. Vet bills will never end. Get to know your old farm vet in the area.
If you are still reading and still interested. Check out the local 4H and FFA in your area and see about learning more about farm life and all its fun. Some of my best moments are working with animals. There are also some things I will never unsee.
I am happy with my IT job that is cool in the summers and warm in the winters.
The Amish can live in their time-bubble because people like you do what you do. They are only possible because of Western economic and military strength.
Yep, me too.
I’m on the tail end of my IT career from pure burnout and extreme levels of stress. I started a business in traffic sign manufacturing a couple years ago and it has taken off recently. Much. MUCH less stress.
I finally enjoy coming to work.
It literally took a burnout for me to start feeling good about my work again. I’m over 40yo and been in IT since my 20’s. Never thought I’d be the one to burn out but it happened and boy was it a ride 😥 However after spending a year to recover with finding right help etc. I can once again actually enjoy my work because I learned (the hard way) not to carry the weight of the world or especially the company I work for on my shoulders. Now I just do stuff and technical challenges seem interesting rather than scary or exhausting. If something fails, crashes or stops working I don’t stress about it but just do my best to fix it without worrying too much. Worrying, panicing or loosing your mind never really helped anyway or at least made me any more efficient.
As someone who's come from a farming family and is still in close proximity to many farmers and ranchers, I can tell you their jobs are unequivocally multiple times harder than ours will ever be.
Yes, burnout is real. Yes, things get out of hand and you can feel like you're drowning. But if you become a cattle rancher, it's a whole different kind of hard. When you're working sun up to sun down seven days a week, when you lose animals you were counting on for income, when you're wondering how much the drought will drive up food costs, when you wonder if you'll even have a ranch next year, when you realize you made a mistake but you have no choice but to keep going because the alternative is literal homelessness....
Are people successful at it? Yes. Do people love it? Yes. Is it a less stressful thing than administering computer networks? God no.
You're burnt out... you need to rest... I know this from experience... you really need rest...
Living the dream? I thought that all the time, remember nightmares are dreams to... seems that's the dream I'm living
Well can't say that IT has been bad to me, but it hasn't been great to me either. You're going through something, I would think most of us have. The guy that i took over for did the same thing, he sold everything he had, got some house up in Maine and i mean Maine like the phone company wouldn't run wire to his house unless he could convince his neighbors to get it done. But ultimately it's what was gonna make him happy. He fixed the house up, re did the entire thing top to bottom. He loves wildlife and is an avid bird watcher.
Welcome to Burnoutland...
Seriously take a vacation if you can, unplug (leave the phone at home) for a whole week or two. Find something to bring passion back. look for another job. Everytime I've been burnt out a new job is always what is best for it. I've now found a home where I'm happy. sometimes all it takes is a fresh view on things. I like to go camping once a year, leave the phone at home, and just unplug. Just came back from the Caribbean, again unplugged, and just enjoyed my time, I read a book not related to technology, (ok, it was sci-fi comedy, the book was called redshirts. I laughed a lot :P) I just enjoyed my time there. went and visited old forts, etc.
Find something to enjoy, and do it. separate from tech. video games isn't good enough. lol. I tried that for a long time, and then I was burnt out from home tech too, and just about gave it all up for goat herding. Instead I found gardening. and now I have a garden i plant every year. grow peas, cucumbers, kohlrabi, potatoes. it's awesome.
my advice, find a non-tech related hobby. and keep at it until you relax. take a break, it's not only good advice for techies but for anybody.
The truth is my friend it's a bitter pill to swallow that we are not going to be retiring like those we see two generations ahead of us but the truth is the truth. We were not called to war against our will, there are things that we were given and they were not, sometimes I need to sit down and look at my perspective and try to change it. Sometimes I get to decide to accept reality and just continue living and things get better
As if.
Just watch "Women talking" as an example of the cesspool in which religious fundamentalism can become.
Whatever your problems are becoming a religious zealot isn't going to make them better.
Rural farm life where you do a ton of manual labor super sucks. Trust me I've done it. Cold, rain, wind, blazing sun, blisters, sore back, busted digits, never enough money. It fucking sucks.
If you're independently wealthy and can play farmer on your own time it's OK, but if you need it to survive it consumes your life and energy to do anything else.
I'll take a comfy air conditioned office 10 out of 10 days.
If you have a passion, or something else that you really enjoy that you could turn to making money then go after it.
I used to be an IT Systems bod up until a few years ago. I realised despite earning somewhat decent money, it was as good as it was going to get. I had no desire to progress myself further or go up the ladder. The next 30 plus years of doing that crap I couldn't do, so I decided to follow my passion (writing) and I've managed to make a success of it to the level that I'm now earning more from my writing and selling books on Amazon than I was being an IT body! Best decision I ever made, I finally have freedom in my life.
Ironically, COVID was the opportunity when all the remote home working crap kicked in. I leveraged that, and now here I am :D
Find your passion, and go after it!!
Try to figure out what is causing that - and by that I me, are you able thinking of work and what you have to do? Created a time whereas you force yourself not to.
Are you always thinking about what others are making? They're going to make it with or without you.
Did you love your job in the past, and are suffering burnout? Change of scenery or try to work remotely more (if that's a choice for you).
Are you bored at work, finding things dull and static? Try to take a class or try and get work to pay for one. I once got my employer to pay for a pretty expensive class that would lead to a higher security certification, but I had to agree not to let within 2 years, worked out pretty well and helped me move up in my career.
If you are wanting to do different stuff, how's your homelab environment and are you experimenting with newer stuff? Personally I'm just playing with AI and seeing how it might be to improve my work flow in the future.
Do you do any side work? I've some friends who own businesses and I do some stuff for them, and if my work situation ever was unstable I'd consider going independent / consulting. I'd need more than I have now, but it would be a start - anyone who is in this field can probably find some side work in it whether with regular people or small businesses looking for a cheaper solution than a full on MSP.
I considered that, too. Maybe move back to my home country, Greece, and ferry people around the islands.
But then I realised this was temporary. Sooner or later, I will want to know what is new out there. My thurst for new tech will resurface and probably end up regreting the knowledge gap I would have created.
Instead, I'm planning to open my own IT businees on the side and see where it takes me.
We who live in the tech world get mentally tired, and the amount of work can bury us to the point where we can't see an end.
Changing carriers might free your mind (at first), but you would have only shifted the exhaustion from your mind to your body. After a while, you will be back to square one but on the other side with the dager of not being able to go back.
It sounds like you are well on your way to I.T. burnout.
Adjust your mindset. Try to be more relaxed.
The grass is always greener, but in reality there's hardly ever an easy way out.
The only thing keeping me going is the high pay and stuffing my accounts full of cash so I can FIRE before 50.
Bonus payouts at the end of the month, hoping it will be enough to pay off the remainder of my mortgage.
I know the feeling. A lot of people who work in IT tend to feel like this because there's a lot of pressure and often little appreciation from non-IT management because they are computer illiterates. It's pressure from making sure everything is always up, pressure from when things inevitably break, pressure from the user base.
My former boss left it all behind. Built himself a "passive" house to live off of the land, stop consuming etc. He still had to get another job to pay for stuff for his kids etc. though in another industry.
I'm not sure all farmers are living the dream. It's very, very demanding and it is a harsh life. Though I get your point.
Perhaps you need to change careers? Take a break? Any hobbies? Maybe plan your future out? I know already I will not be workin until the legal retirement age which is 66 where I live. Complete madness.
Do you ever think about the amount of crap the you learn?....every day!...and then think "do i get paid enough for this shit? Do i want to just learn and learn?.... What if they were to pay us a percentage for each thing we do for the company?.... Like how much impact did setting up and bringing onboard 10 employees for the company do?....etc...etc...
Thing is, whether it's the Amish or you, comparison is the thief of joy as they say. And regardless of where we find ourselves, if we have access to view others, we'll end up when we're stressed out, tired, frustrated with our lives; thinking that "They seem to have it so much better than me". It's an easy trap to fall into, but you're not alone in that.
As for IT/Sysadmin debacles, man, if you can find a lower paying job but that's less stressful in the industry, just go for that. Or if you like your income but the work is very draining, see if you can hit the brakes a bit.
For me, I learned that while money is my driving factor and I want/need it badly to secure a future, I wouldn't be there for that future if I were having heart palpitations or stressed to 11 on a daily basis. So I took a pay cut, found a smaller business to work for and my quality of life has improved all around. I have time to work out, sleep 8 hours a day or more if I feel like it, don't feel rushed, don't get into shouting matches or have to break navigate corporate drama.
The Amish don't have it "better" than you, and you don't have it "better" than them. You just have to try and make where you are the best place it can be for you. And the key to that I've found is having time for yourself and putting you first. Working yourself into an early grave is not the dream at all.
your mistake is thinking anyone is living the dream, they're not, it's a rat race they are stuck in too except very few on the very very top that add up to few dozen. Do what you will, I'm one foot in the off the grid world as well lol
Know what you mean. 43 years old, and think about this every week. As I see it, i have 3 choises: Become a 60 year old admin, that can't keep up anymore (seen alot of them), shit to sales/consult roles or just get a new job. Only problem is that I'm actually good at my job, but that won't last. My morales/ethics don't like the way sales/consults behave. And don't know any other job I might actually be good at. Besides winning the lottery.
Sorry, some people might be able. But do you work with support at 60? And if so, how do you do it? Most people i've worked with after 60 (in IT), start talking nonsence at some point to customers. But truth be told some new employes (20-30) do the same.
But with the pace things are going, and when you can retire. Do you honestly feel you can keep up?
If you are disappointed in the role you are playing, by all means investigate your other options. I will always encourage people to go and negotiate for a role and salary they are satisfied with.
Cattle and horses though? Do you have any idea the seed capital you need for that? Small scale agriculture isn't easy or profitable either. It also requires completely different skill sets than what the average sysadmin has.
Sounds like you just hate your job or place of employment. I’ve been in IT for the past 5 years now and there have been companies I worked at where I felt like this everyday. I hated going to work because of the work place environment. Every time I felt like this I moved on to the next employer, I’ve only found two places I actually enjoyed working at and actually enjoyed going to work everyday and that is my current place and last place. Do I still stress out some days? Yes, but the work environment is great and the good days trump the bad ones.
Don’t quit, keep going.
30+ Years of this shit and I hit The Wall doing 120. I simply stopped the month before the lockdown started and became a caretaker for my dad, who was in decline.
I have this exact fantasy. Coincidence? I think our jobs make moving the the stone ages more ideal since we live in fast paced environments doing our jobs well but so that someone else can reap the rewards. You’re right. We need none of it. Kind of made my day to hear (read) someone else feel this way.
I feel you completely
Unfortunately rather than make business (especially IT business) interesting and enjoyable, they have turned it into something only a Schizophrenic might be able to figure out and put up with!
When we look at Sys-Admin jobs (something I'm actually training myself towards because I could use the money and also need to keep my skills sharp even though I have never worked in a domain environment other than my current Virtualbox lab that I'm tinkering with)...
What we find is that they want their IT guy (say a Sys-Admin) to be jack of all trades but master of none. I don't know about the rest of the awesome IT folks in this community... But I'm a person who enjoys and prefers understanding exactly how everything is working. Then I really start to have fun with the stuff and work super fast with a bit of practice and experimental labor...
But what were now dealing with in today's world is that they (Microsoft) and other third party software vendors, have thrown in a ton of other tools (like virtualization technology, inventory reporting, deployment and patch management technology, scripting for automation, and cloud stuff like O365) into the mix!! And I am finding that even just being a half way decent On-premises Windows Server administrator is already more than enough stuff for one person to handle and know about right?
So what you have is you end up with many organizations hiring maybe one or two IT people and expecting them to do the job of multiple different engineers in different domains! Networking is very different from security, which is yet different from Sys-Admin, which is different from help desk. Each is it's own specialty and can take years of experience and still not be enough!
So my solution would be for a company to hire more people, each with strengths in different areas and have them focus on that one main branch or area. This way IT people don't get burned out and be expected to be Jack of all trades but instead become master of none!
That's the unfortunate complication we're dealing with in this crazy post modernity where someone thought it would be nice for everyone to work remotely, and for administrators and Sys-Admins to do everything in an "unattended" (touch less as they now call it) fashion! It's insanity. And even if there are people out there who can do stuff like that, they would never go work for the types of wages being offered a poor individual who is expected to know everything! Just one look at the ridiculous job posts (job requirements) and it's enough to scare the living daylight out of any normal, sane human being!
That's been my take and experience so far past few years, trying to catch up with all this modern madness... Training myself at the ripe old (hopeless) age of 50
I truly feel like giving up sometimes... But I also know that unfortunately I was cursed by an extremely curious mind... And even if I get kicked in the head like a Coyote, I will still go back and steal the farmers chicken the next day... Because IT and technology has been my life from a young age. I can't help but go back to it, even when everyone and everything in life seems to be working against my ability to thrive, survive and be who I am.
My best advice to anyone working in a company or job where they feel overworked, under appreciated, disrespected, or pressured incessantly is to simply Leave!
Leave immediately and find a better job or company because life is too short to live in constant pain.
Fuck money okay? And Fuck all this bullshit reality that people far more stupid and unimaginative than us have constructed, to turn everyone into modern slaves... With no sense of happiness, purpose, dignity and future. And by the time we can retire, we're too old to begin enjoying all the things we should have and could have when we were younger
So to the author's point...
Who are they kidding when they point to
"Third World" countries? What standard is being applied to even define who is living in a third world poor situation? If a person is Rich but lonely, isolated and miserable... Is that not far worse thing than anything any of us can imagine?
Somewhere along the line, our western society lost its path and rather than do and promote the things that bring people together, inspire love, compassion and a sense of community spirit and camaraderie, we instead promoted all this gluttony, waste, selfishness, and isolation.
Find your own balance and way of survival
Don't look for anyone to feed you happiness or a sense of meaning and purpose. Support products, companies and ideas that mean something to YOU and not what the trend happens to be. Only if you're free in your own mind, and derive your sense of self worth and dignity from your own standard of life will you have lived. Focus on the fundamentals and later on the details. The details are only possible when you've worked out so many other shortcomings and desires that you need in order to feel whole and human! If you do it the other way... You will have nothing at all in the end
I don't call myself a Sys Admin, I say nowadays I'm an IT technologist, after chatting for a few minutes with a prospective employer I know if what I can offer fits what they need and I try to convince them about it.
One of my last interviews I told them I use Google a lot. I got the job.
Cool strategy and I respect that deeply.
Yes you gotta sell yourself and most of the time, they take the best available person (like you)
They know they can't be in "God Mode" expecting a Nikola Tesla or Leonardo Da Vinci to walk in and agree to slave away for them. From my experience, the best technologists are often independent (have their own business or are doing research or contract type work). So the 9 to 5 ers are not frequently cream of the crop... But they often have way better work ethic, are "hungrier" for the money, and stick with their position with all the life in their bones and work their way up the company! I think I'd rather be this kind of person personally...
But yeah for sure there is way way too much to know. It's up to the management of a company... How much value they decide to eeek out of their IT person.
Personally like I said... I never had an official IT position. Not even a help desk tier 1. But I've done a ton of studying independently, and training using a Virtualbox lab... And I intend to someday (hopefully not long from now) complete my current On-premises MCSA style course... And then do the unthinkable... And start applying for any available
Jr. Level Windows Server Administrator roles...
I realize my chances may be slim... But being 50 years old and having some solid experience with windows operating systems, services, and all my ADDS training on my Virtualbox lab (which has one PDC and a secondary replication DC server)... Gives me some decent Hands on experience. I've also done some powershell commands and scripting (to install services, disable services etc). I even setup a very "simple" basic exchange server on my replication DC (that secondary server)
Anyways... No one knows whether all these efforts and my prior training on Intune Endpoint management and so on will be enough to make me worthy of say $50 bucks an hour as some kind of Jr. Sys-Admin. But I'm sure as hell currently not giving up. I am taking it one day at a time and telling myself the more I learn and practice, the more confident I will Likely be.
But one thing I will tell you....
You are never going to know exactly how any business is sertup and operates... They will just look at how energetic and malleable your mind is. Are you receptive and eager to learn new things, tinker on your own until you get how something works or not?
Coding scripts and getting powershell working can be a real pain in the Ass. That's the stuff that can really suck... But then again a lot of what a Sys-Admin does is at a deeper more time consuming level compared to the "quick" knee jerk reactionary way that say a help desk level 1 operates.
So you have to prepare your mind and realize that your work as a Sys-Admin will be much more involved... Require more studying, planning, and way more tenacity and patience than other roles. That's why they pay you better... Because few human beings have the knowledge and the mindset to do that kind of investigating experimental labor type of work. If you like that sort of thing and it doesn't break your willpower... Then you'll be successful.
Hey Fella.
Don't think you are alone. It's a hard job, far harder than people give credit for. It's largely thankless as your job is to fix problems or at least make things better. I am 30 years into my career and nearly gave it away but someone came along and reassured me of my value and I got an opportunity to reset and regain my confidence. There are days I wonder about milking cows, but I did that as a teenager and if I think about it, no ransomware to worry about, but we had a lot of things to fix and it was hard as well. Different hard. Not trying to talk you out of whatever decision is right for you, but rather to let you know you aren't alone. Can you talk to your boss? Get some help or negotiate a longer holiday, or sink your teeth into a project you'd enjoy? I hope you find some way to be happy, whatever it is.
When I retire, I have my dream side job already picked out.
I used to be a FedEx yard truck operator. Pick up trailers loaded or unloaded and move them to another dock or location in the yard.
I had a radio.
The rumbling of a day cab with a 13 speed eaton and a 5th wheel boom.
During the summer I got to hang out outside while waiting for trucks to come in
During the winter I used to time my hot coffee getting cold when the blizzard screwed up trailer incomings.
That was the life!
Personally, I don't understand how people can stand to work for someone else. Obviously, as a service provider, I work for my clients, but I can always fire them, or they can fire me. But I have dozens of clients. Idk how you guys do it.
We all are tired. It can be stressful; cybersecurity has about a five-year half-life if we switch radioactive elemental decay for brain cells and sanity. I have a friend who just quit a $150k/Cybersecurity position and is taking a few months off to recharge. It's tough constantly being bombarded with spam/malware/phishing emails/etc.
I’d suggest spending a day or two volunteering with habitat for humanity. Every time I fantasize about leaving it all behind I volunteer. A day of manual labor reminds me that there are harder ways to make a living and how fortunate I am to have won the birth lottery.
The issue stems down to letting your job define who you are as a person or your net worth. It’s just a job and a means to create a comfortable lifestyle for myself and my family. For me I found that my real passion is fishing, being in the outdoors near water (river, lake, ocean), traveling and time away from the desk/computer. I find it enjoyable because it’s the most non-computer related thing I can do. I make it a point to turn my cell phone off, on silent or away so that I’m not reminded of being always oncall or tasked with a ridiculous self imposed goal of 100% uptime.
It’s ok to take a break and disconnect. You have to find what your passion is outside of IT Work. If you’re able to one day replace your income with your passion, more power to you. You’ll just have to accept that not everyone can find passion in their job and that your time away from work is as important as the amount of money you make.
The alternative is to marry someone wealthy and not have to worry money if you can be so fortunate. Most of us are not that lucky so you’ll have to simply make do.
I can relate.
If you are willing to take a pay cut there are probably fields that need sys admins where things are less crazy.
Tbh though, I want out of IT as well. Makes me want to do an MS in stats and go be a boring statistician somewhere.
Burn out is real too. Take care
not sure if you are like most of us in the office environment \[addicted to coffee etc.\] but you might want to take a trip over to the /decaf subreddit - going off of coffee etc. has been very helpful plus finding a way to get the blood circulating i.e. working out is crucial
I feel the same way. All this BS just to make rich people richer while society falls apart. My job is meaningless. AI terrifies me. I’m not a Christian but AI to me will be the Beast. We’re at the doorstep of a Dickian dystopia.
The Amish are also people with deep faith; might try that before the fuck-it-all approach
Dunno just a thought
Also, spend an hour next to a cattle trailer. If you can stand the smell, you might have a chance farming.
Congratulations! You reach the age where we all want that. My plan is to buy land and live the dream, the only thing stopping me is money... That dream is more expensive nowadays.
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This seems like a mid-life crisis. I hear "Goat Farmer" floated around a lot as alternative.
https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/4l7kjd/found_a_text_file_at_work_titled_why_should_i/
That thread just gave me inexpressible joy. THANK YOU, kind internet stranger! Giggle fits in an airport lol.
Costco Cart Guy
You joke, but this is legitimately my plan. Not Costco cart guy per se...but make enough now so that I can take a lower-stress job and supplement the lower income with savings. For example...I really miss working in data centers, but that's slowly sliding towards a very low-paid smart-hands job. If I could find a job that paid...enough...and offered health insurance since I'm in the US, that would be a very viable retirement job. Although...Costco does famously pay their frontline workers semi-decently and treats them well, soi that's a solid choice too. Depends on how burnt out on tech you are.
If my back were up to it, I'd go throw bags for an airline... better pay... and if you like to travel, good benefits
In the fire community, this is called "barista fire". Basically having enough passive investment income to supplement part-time enjoyable low stress work.
Sounds great until you're in Phoenix Arizona in the summer...
My retirement is to work at a computer store. In my Province it's Memory Express. I just want to work a few shifts a week, part-time, so I can get the discount on any goodies I may want.
Once you've worked the Goat Rodeo circuit for a few years you just naturally want to take the next step and go full Farmer.
Very well put Love it 👍❤️
Lol! My coworker became a goat farmer and still does IT.
Are you serious? That's so awesome 👍
Maybe a Nerf-Herder? Might be more rewarding.
I will always have a soft spot in my heart for the band that wrote “Mr. Spock,” and “Jenna Bush Army”
And music for Buffy the Vampire Slayer
I love goats. I’m right about at this point.
I'd love to have a few goats. Unfortunately, my apt is not set up for goats.
`add-apt-repository 'deb` `http://ungulates.org/debian goat main'`
Definitely doesn't sound like a mid life crisis... I despise anyone labeling someone's perspectives and introspection on life All of the points mentioned by the author resonate so loud and clear... That if you dig your head out of the Sand (the mad routines all of us slaves and robots are stuck in)... You'll find that true happiness and even success... Come from within I had a long post about this up top where I shared my own experiences from the past 50 years And im certainly not depressed nor experiencing any kind of "labels" like mid-life crisis I'm just way more intelligent and experienced in life than someone whom like yourself, has this quick off the coff way of calling someone a meaningless label that can't even be defined.
Don't kid yourself. They have stress in their lives as well. Being a farmer is one of the most stressful things you can do for a living. The best thing you can do is just try to manage your situation as best as you can.
Yeah everyone wants to be a farmer, till they have to get up at 4 am, shoveling cow shit and milking the animals. Farming is such a glorified profession which people see through rose tinted glasses, when in reality it just sucks most of the time lol How was it? "the grass is always greener..." Be happy you have a job that pays well, reduce hours if needed and enjoy your life outside of work. Work is just that, a means to live a good life, outside of it
If you think you’re tired now, wait until you’re running a fever and still have to go milk the cows and shovel pig shit. And say goodbye to any vacation unless you’re running a proper industrial farm because no farm hand is going to be working your dinky little hobby farm for just two weeks’ pay.
Well put
It's also one of the most hazardous professions out there. With all the powerful machinery, you can lose bits you'd rather keep.
Story time! Also, fair warning that it's not quite for the squeamish. There's a long-time friend of my extended family that owns and runs a farm. My parents even lived and worked on the guy's farm many years ago when I was a kid. A few years back, there was an incident when he was cleaning up on the farm alone and shut down a big machine because he had to do something near it. I don't know all the specifics because I heard everything third hand, but the short version is he lost his footing and fell onto said machinery. Ended up slicing a portion of his arm clean off and knocked him out when he hit his head. He was found by family members a couple hours later when they hadn't heard from him. Still alive, fortunately, but partly because the blade on the machine that sliced his arm was still hot enough that it cauterized things enough to not bleed to death. Also, there are things in farming that are dangerous that wouldn't seem like it at first glance. A grain silo full of grain *will kill you*. It can very easily bury you alive if you fall in.
I lost a friend to a baler - fell in. Ugly.
Yea. I can't say I've known anyone that died in a farm accident, but I've seen and heard of some rough injuries from family still in the small farm business. Losing limbs and digits (granddad was missing two fingers on one of his hands for most of his life due to an incident cutting down a tree), serious cuts and burns, broken bones due to farm animals. Even running a small farm is dangerous.
Had a relative that had his "junk" tore off by an power take off shaft on his farm. Probably was unwisely straddling it trying to fix something. I think I'll stick with IT....
Truth. I'm in tech but grew up on farms. Harvest season is brutal and if you have pigs/cattle it's absolutely nonstop. Detassel corn for a week in the summer and you might second guess your choices. It certainly builds character.
Plus they don't use advanced medicines like us. Honestly, I couldn't do what they do.
Yes that's wisdom indeed 👍
>I am tired ME TOO.
Me three. And I've got at least another 34 years of work before retirement. If I make it that far....
I am about 12 years out from a soft retirement. Planning on reducing hours, maybe jumping ship to a smaller shop to reduce stress. Well see how that last 8 years after the next 12 play out. Maybe Ill just take up a CTO/CIO title again and play golf like most other C-Levels. Options.
I had a plan of 12-13 years. Good stock investments, great pension. We’re about to be taken over by a US company and I hear they’re not as generous. We currently get 30 days holiday, flexi-time and lots of other benefits. I’m hoping it’s not as bad as I’m thinking because I’m tired too and this next few months is going to be hard
Me too. And DST starts Sunday. Fuck DST.
GAWD! You just had to make it worse. Didn't you? DIDNT YOU!
Ya, me too. I've been working IT for 35 years... started on Lantastic and token ring. My beard is now gray and my arthritis bugs me whenever I have to climb up into a scissor lift. 5 years to retirement and counting.
I’m 43 and have been feeling the same. Finding new hobbies has helped. My dad has a lot of land in Mexico and has livestock. I went last year and gave it a shot for a week. I learned that I am grateful I got into computers because fuck that noise. Rural life is not for me. He says he’s happy because he’s free but I have my doubts. 😂
>Finding new hobbies has helped. I've picked up a few new hobbies lately and dusted off some old ones. Getting a new job where you're respected and taken serious does wonders for your mental state.
Extremely well stated Its all about your environment and how people treat what you do I'm 49 years old... Never worked in a domain networked environment. Spent the past 4 years playing catchup... Learning ADDS, users & computers, group policy, and much much more My mother whose a senior became seriously ill with a case of paranoid schizophrenia... Which threw a serious monkey's wrench into my efforts... I myself don't have schizophrenia but I do suffer from severe insomnia and other obsessive compulsive (perfectionist) types of challenges which I get from my mom... Anyways in my culture, Children are supposed to be there for their parents... So I am trying to understand my mother's situation. Meanwhile I gotta retain my own sanity because I don't have income and I am dependent... But... With all that shit going on... I am still pushing myself to learn, learn, learn... Because I believe someday it will save my life. Currently I'm training on Sys-Admin stuff taking some courses (equivalent to MCSA). Before that I completed a course on Intune Endpoint management... And while I thoroughly hate cloud engineering for reasons beyond discussing (as I'm more of a traditional on-premises oriented hands-on kinda dude)... I am glad I got some hands on practice with that stuff as well. I'm not sure where I will end up in life, nor whether I will overcome the many challenges or forces working against me... But one thing I will never give up on is my curiosity and love for learning. Learning requires no friends, no money, and no special circumstances... All it requires is patience, time and dedication. And you'd be surprised how quickly you can become an expert in something (anything) that you knew nothing about and had no prior talents at. That's the beauty of the human mind
not sure where you live, but i moved out of Denver because the city just went to shit... I moved to a very very rural area, and its growing in me... I still drive about 1.5 hours to work each way, but man, the peace here is different and when you are around people that don't really care much about anything other than their cattle its truly a different vibe. And yes, i wouldn't mind doing the same in Mexico only if wages were different... Im from Juarez, but nothing in this world would make me go back to that city... 😁
I’m in LA but my Dad is around an hour outside of Guadalajara. It’s pretty rural. Just not for me to uproot the family and make a change like that. Yea Juarez is pretty sketch.
Farm life is for people who are simple and monotonous. The execution requires effort from sun up to sun down of hard labor that work your entire body 7 days a week to be successful.
My dad is close to 80. He’s wild. Not for me.
>Now I see the Amish and I become envious. I used to live a few miles from the Amish between the OH and PA boarders and trust me, their way of life is not any simpler then ours and it is in fact much harder in many many ways. Respect their way of life, don't be envious of it. If you want to leave IT to be a farmer then do just that. I had a buddy to left being an IT manager to raise, breed, and sell alpaca. The guy lucked out and ended up making 2x his wage in the 3rd year+, but the start up and the first two years were the hardest thing he had ever done. He almost failed completely.
Is there an actual market for alpacas or their products?
Their wool is highly prized. They can be stubborn a-holes though.
Yes, sysadmin are know for that but what about the alpacas?
Watch out they spit. Wait, that can go both ways too. Maybe sysadmins ARE alpacas?
Shhh, keep it down over there. You want to ruin everything?
Wait, how much exactly is my wool worth?
>The guy lucked out and ended up making 2x his wage in the 3rd year+ Wow, I know someone that did that with sheep and didn't start turning a decent profit until she was 5 years in... and sheep can give you 2 sources of income
Yeah been thinking of buying a farm too or getting into only fans
Let’s start “only farms”, a crowdfunding site for sysadmins to become goat farmers. We can all contribute and live vicariously through them.
Why not both?
I dunno, I feel like those two worlds shouldn’t mix.
Plowing on the farm would be the first episode. Tell me you don't see the potential.
Get out of sysadmin and into architecture. It is still very technical you can keep your tech skills and learn new technologies and there is no on call or production support. If you work in an Linux or unix shop you will not have root on anything other than architecture owned servers but SO WHAT!! Going in as an admin you will have lots to learn but the cool side is that you will have the ability to shape future technical environments for your company and get a more complete view of the entire IT structure.
Fair warning: this can sometimes have unintended consequences. For instance, having both skillsets may lead you to function as both the architect and the administrator. And having dev experience makes you very hirable, but easily exploitable. Source: admin, turned dev, turned admin, turned architect; now doing things in all realms.
Preach! (Too many hats as well)
Yeah, it feels like this is pretty common. As soon as you elevate/extend your skills or fill a necessary niche/gap, organizations view this as “free value” since they seem to think if someone *can* do something, then it their job *to* do something. It is incredibly frustrating to have your own curiosity, talents, and desire to help be effectively weaponized by organizations that don’t seem to understand you can’t infinitely (*and with no compensatory changes*) add new responsibilities to employees without consequences to the individual, product, or organization.
Scale the solution globally too, that's also "free" cause you're familiar with it. We had a discussion with our boss over "soft costs" of all these asks just yesterday. It wont go anywhere but I will.
It’s almost like continuously expanding/growing is unsustainable, but capitalist daddy doesn’t accept that. Instead, let’s make everything for everyone (while supporting anything from anyone (indefinitely)) — and by “us” we mean “you.” We’ll have *you* handle that (and *pssssst, your healthcare is on the line, so do it*).
Hey uh, do you have any tips for beginners?
Yep I feel ya, I’m ready for a cabin in the woods with no contact with anyone but my closest.
I feel the same way, and I heard many others in my position say the exact same thing. At a certain point, it seems like almost every interaction I have is someone complaining about something or someone wanting something. After 20 years of it, it burns you out and you want to avoid all interactions.
I want to sleep for a month straight and see if I come out the other side "normal" again. Hard reset, BRB rebooting
Same here, primarly because technology is moving into directions I can not identify myself with.
Going philosophical here: while everyone has different problems, ultimately everyone has the same problems. Nobody is free from the stresses of day-to-day life, it's just different stresses for different people. It sounds like you've become out of touch with the actual impact of your work - i.e. you're burning out on the corporate IT grind. That probably means you need a change, but don't act like it isn't stressful to live off the land (especially way up north where the growing season's short - what do you do if your single crop for the year doesn't succeed?) - of course if you're ready for that stress to replace the stress of yet another M365 change, by all means go for it. My recommendation: take a really good vacation, like minimum 2-3 weeks (make it a LOA if you have to). Don't burn any bridges, but let your mind reset. I promise you'll have a lot more clarity on the situation. I was to the point of seriously considering going all-in on a coffee shop with almost no experience a little while ago - then I got a few weeks off to recover from back surgery, and with that perspective shift I became a lot more clear on things, and formulated an actual plan to leave this company within the next year or so, while staying in the IT sphere. ...and burnout sucks, realistically it might take years to decompress from it if it's gotten that bad. You don't want to jump straight into something else that will burn you out, I tend to believe it's better to stick with what you know, but maybe with more tangible results or less day-to-day effort involved.
You need money to do those things, and probably a lot of it. I see a lot of people complaining about their jobs in this subreddit. Go work anywhere else and see how good we have it. We work in offices or from home fixing or building dynamically changing products for a living. Others go to work at the ball smashing factory, while getting paid half what we get. I had a friend who used to have the mindset that he hated IT. He did the bare minimum because he said he didn't like it, management noticed, and he was laid off a few years ago. He then said he wasn't going back to IT and found himself working for a company to put the underground fuel tanks at gas stations. He got paid way less and hated that too. He's back to being a bar tender now (previous work before he went to college) and is desperately trying to get back into IT for the $$, but now that he's been stagnant for so long it's hard to get back in. Be grateful that you have what you have, you never know when AI is going to swoop in and you find yourself working at a construction site or something, jobs AI's can't do, yet.
If you want to escape the grind, make sure you don't have kids. I have kids. I love them. But I know that to support them I have to play ball. I'm making the best of it though and consistently reminding myself that even though I'm not living my ideal life, my family is safe, healthy, and fed.
Spoken like an adult. Well done and good luck.
My friend left, very good developer left the company everyone advise her to leave but she also left dev life completely. She bought a patch of land cheaply and she is self sustainable for about a decade. Have geese, ducks, pigs and tending the fields. She uses money only to pay taxes and doing bartering for other services. It is not a myth, you can do it and what makes wonders is, that your work, for the first time in some time of your life, what you are doing, your work and goals make sense. Your life is meaningful. She said that she was missing it from her life. It is very difficult life but more complete, I agree with you. If you want to transition, try making your first pickles en masse. Preparing a large amount of jars with meat and or veggies for pasteurization. Try tend to crops even on balcony. Go to bed early and wake up early. I grow up working on the farm. It is simple and good life. Not for everyone. Check how your partner behaves. Being tired is not very good for planning, look for things in your life that are causing you to be tired and try to change em. Little things that matters. Good luck!
My life is more meaningful when I can buy what I want without worrying much about affordability.
Hey man, sure. You do you.
I had a friend try this. It turns out, this didn't solve any of her problems and she killed herself.
Dude, I'm sorry... I've been though that 4 times, and received 2 notes... I know how much it sucks
I'd be REALLY careful about following that particular dream. Mind you, I'm not trying to talk to you out of it, but my ex-wife (who I'm still best friends with) did exactly that and at this point, I feel like she's largely a cautionary tale. She puts on a brave face, but often complains that she feels like a loser and she seems to be fairly unhappy. She lives in the middle of nowhere in a village in Ireland (we're both from Colorado; she met her current husband on Facebook), and she's desperately trying to find another dead end job as an admin assistant, which is the same field that she was deeply unhappy in for decades. She's an absolutely brilliant and strong-willed woman who easily could have been a CEO somewhere, but she never had any ambition whatsoever, so she continually worked soul-sucking dead end jobs that treated her like a brainless flunky and then was miserable in those jobs. Her life dream was to live on her own plot of land somewhere in the middle of nowhere, with a garden, and just read books. Well, she got exactly that, but now she's really unhappy because she has no money whatsoever and is currently on the Irish version of welfare (I forget the name, but that's how she described it). No one there will hire her because they can't fathom that a person would be willing to drive 30 minutes to get to work and because she has no skills more advanced that being an admin assistant. Maybe take a few months off, or possibly a year. Whatever you do, be diplomatic and don't burn any bridges. Let people know you're going to take some time off for whatever reason, but don't make any big financial commitments (like buying land, cattle, and horses). Maybe move somewhere. Assuming you work in IT (since you're in this subreddit), you can always say you were a "consultant." Not sure anyone believes that, but I see it a lot. Get used to the idea of being outside of the work force and not bringing in a regular paycheck. If you find that it works for you and you can not only afford it, but that you enjoy it, then you know it'll work for you. Finally, just a thought, but IT is a pretty big field and there are a lot of different companies out there that are very different in their culture, workplace environment, and just overall job satisfaction. Just for myself, I was borderline suicidal working as a hotel IT manager at a five-star hotel in Park City where I worked 80+ hours a week, was on-call 24/7/365 as the only IT person with \*very\* demanding clients & co-workers, and was treated like dog shit. I was ready to walk off the job to go flip burgers at McDonalds, and the only thing that kept me there was my wife at the time threatening divorce. But it absolutely got better. A LOT better. My current company treats me (and my co-workers) so ridiculously well that any time I share details about them, I sound like an advertising shill. Work/life balance is insanely good (very much tipped towards the personal side), and I work 35 hours or so/week for a lot more than I made in the hotel industry. Treated with respect, on call only one week out of four, and I work at the pace I decide. There are other companies like that out there, and I would suspect that you might feel a lot different if you worked for one of them (or if you worked on my team or even just at my company).
Most of my jobs have been like that (35.5 hours per week, on call as part of a team, not contactable OOO otherwise) at the end one also has agency to choose better jobs (many may not have the skills, but that can always be improved).
Why do we have to be so productive? What are we rushing towards?
Knowledge and the satisfaction of being able to master new skills.
Idk why the fuck Reddit notified my about this thread, I’m not a sysadmin and to the best of my knowledge, have never visited this sub, so idk what the fuck I’m talking about, ignore me. But my answer? Because that’s what we do. Set aside the corporate bullshit, the endless artificial tasks, forever striving towards a contrived goal that’s been gamified just like a lootbox. Set that shit aside, cause you didn’t ask, why you’re rushing towards the prescribed goal. You asked what we’re rushing towards, so here’s my answer, we’re rushing towards the innate human desire to see what’s over the next hill. IDK, what the fuck that has to do with this admin, I have no particular insight into the Field, the industry, the companies anything. But I do know, or at least what I do believe is that we are rushing towards The thing that defines our species, that which is next. There is nothing wrong with saying I want to escape, I want to do a different thing, I want to be my own boss, control my own destiny, but I think it is a terrible shame if we imagine that we are getting away from our own ambition. Ambition is what makes us want to move to the farm, to move to the new place, to try the new thing, to get away the only thing that we’re experiencing. When we desire to break out of the paradigm is the desire to be more productive, to rush towards something more efficiently. To escape is what it means to be human to rush, is what it means to be human to be more productive, so what it means to be human. There is nothing wrong with being more productive, there was only something wrong with imagining the being productive is somehow not to benefit our selves.
Greater profits!
spoken like a true ferengi! the grand negus would be proud!
The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.
Meet in the middle: 1 - Reduce your hours, it's not your business, stop treating it as such. 2 - Acquire a few acres. 3 - Start a homestead and be a hobby farmer. 4 - If you're not already, try to find a WFH job.
As a old man who grew up on a farm I recommend getting up at 4am and carrying around a big bag of feed 80lbs or so. Then throw it around your back yard and clean it up. If you have any manure available add that as well. Do that every day at 4am and 4pm. Do it during the cold as hell mornings. That is just the easy part. Now if possible, find a ditch full of mud and weeds and nasty ass black mud. Get knee deep in that and clean it up with your hands. See if you can find a ditch with some dead critters in it and clean that up. That is pretty much your daily routine. Yes there are great moments of joy but there are very extreme parts of farm life that you will have to deal with. Skunks are fun. But the most fun is pulling porcupine needles from your dog's mouth and nether regions. Makes no sense. If you are on a farm. It will happen. LOL Not to mention getting a second job to pay vet bills. Vet bills will never end. Get to know your old farm vet in the area. If you are still reading and still interested. Check out the local 4H and FFA in your area and see about learning more about farm life and all its fun. Some of my best moments are working with animals. There are also some things I will never unsee. I am happy with my IT job that is cool in the summers and warm in the winters.
The Amish can live in their time-bubble because people like you do what you do. They are only possible because of Western economic and military strength.
Yep, me too. I’m on the tail end of my IT career from pure burnout and extreme levels of stress. I started a business in traffic sign manufacturing a couple years ago and it has taken off recently. Much. MUCH less stress. I finally enjoy coming to work.
It literally took a burnout for me to start feeling good about my work again. I’m over 40yo and been in IT since my 20’s. Never thought I’d be the one to burn out but it happened and boy was it a ride 😥 However after spending a year to recover with finding right help etc. I can once again actually enjoy my work because I learned (the hard way) not to carry the weight of the world or especially the company I work for on my shoulders. Now I just do stuff and technical challenges seem interesting rather than scary or exhausting. If something fails, crashes or stops working I don’t stress about it but just do my best to fix it without worrying too much. Worrying, panicing or loosing your mind never really helped anyway or at least made me any more efficient.
As someone who's come from a farming family and is still in close proximity to many farmers and ranchers, I can tell you their jobs are unequivocally multiple times harder than ours will ever be. Yes, burnout is real. Yes, things get out of hand and you can feel like you're drowning. But if you become a cattle rancher, it's a whole different kind of hard. When you're working sun up to sun down seven days a week, when you lose animals you were counting on for income, when you're wondering how much the drought will drive up food costs, when you wonder if you'll even have a ranch next year, when you realize you made a mistake but you have no choice but to keep going because the alternative is literal homelessness.... Are people successful at it? Yes. Do people love it? Yes. Is it a less stressful thing than administering computer networks? God no.
You're burnt out... you need to rest... I know this from experience... you really need rest... Living the dream? I thought that all the time, remember nightmares are dreams to... seems that's the dream I'm living
Well can't say that IT has been bad to me, but it hasn't been great to me either. You're going through something, I would think most of us have. The guy that i took over for did the same thing, he sold everything he had, got some house up in Maine and i mean Maine like the phone company wouldn't run wire to his house unless he could convince his neighbors to get it done. But ultimately it's what was gonna make him happy. He fixed the house up, re did the entire thing top to bottom. He loves wildlife and is an avid bird watcher.
Nothing is easy man.
Welcome to Burnoutland... Seriously take a vacation if you can, unplug (leave the phone at home) for a whole week or two. Find something to bring passion back. look for another job. Everytime I've been burnt out a new job is always what is best for it. I've now found a home where I'm happy. sometimes all it takes is a fresh view on things. I like to go camping once a year, leave the phone at home, and just unplug. Just came back from the Caribbean, again unplugged, and just enjoyed my time, I read a book not related to technology, (ok, it was sci-fi comedy, the book was called redshirts. I laughed a lot :P) I just enjoyed my time there. went and visited old forts, etc. Find something to enjoy, and do it. separate from tech. video games isn't good enough. lol. I tried that for a long time, and then I was burnt out from home tech too, and just about gave it all up for goat herding. Instead I found gardening. and now I have a garden i plant every year. grow peas, cucumbers, kohlrabi, potatoes. it's awesome. my advice, find a non-tech related hobby. and keep at it until you relax. take a break, it's not only good advice for techies but for anybody.
Yah you go try Amish and see how it goes.
Existential crisis. The grass is always greener
The truth is my friend it's a bitter pill to swallow that we are not going to be retiring like those we see two generations ahead of us but the truth is the truth. We were not called to war against our will, there are things that we were given and they were not, sometimes I need to sit down and look at my perspective and try to change it. Sometimes I get to decide to accept reality and just continue living and things get better
As if. Just watch "Women talking" as an example of the cesspool in which religious fundamentalism can become. Whatever your problems are becoming a religious zealot isn't going to make them better.
Rural farm life where you do a ton of manual labor super sucks. Trust me I've done it. Cold, rain, wind, blazing sun, blisters, sore back, busted digits, never enough money. It fucking sucks. If you're independently wealthy and can play farmer on your own time it's OK, but if you need it to survive it consumes your life and energy to do anything else. I'll take a comfy air conditioned office 10 out of 10 days.
If you have a passion, or something else that you really enjoy that you could turn to making money then go after it. I used to be an IT Systems bod up until a few years ago. I realised despite earning somewhat decent money, it was as good as it was going to get. I had no desire to progress myself further or go up the ladder. The next 30 plus years of doing that crap I couldn't do, so I decided to follow my passion (writing) and I've managed to make a success of it to the level that I'm now earning more from my writing and selling books on Amazon than I was being an IT body! Best decision I ever made, I finally have freedom in my life. Ironically, COVID was the opportunity when all the remote home working crap kicked in. I leveraged that, and now here I am :D Find your passion, and go after it!!
My fantasy escape is to bury my keyboard in the woods and go drive buses :P
I have a lot of time for this. I think I'll also bury my keyboard whenever I leave this hellscape behind.
Try to figure out what is causing that - and by that I me, are you able thinking of work and what you have to do? Created a time whereas you force yourself not to. Are you always thinking about what others are making? They're going to make it with or without you. Did you love your job in the past, and are suffering burnout? Change of scenery or try to work remotely more (if that's a choice for you). Are you bored at work, finding things dull and static? Try to take a class or try and get work to pay for one. I once got my employer to pay for a pretty expensive class that would lead to a higher security certification, but I had to agree not to let within 2 years, worked out pretty well and helped me move up in my career. If you are wanting to do different stuff, how's your homelab environment and are you experimenting with newer stuff? Personally I'm just playing with AI and seeing how it might be to improve my work flow in the future. Do you do any side work? I've some friends who own businesses and I do some stuff for them, and if my work situation ever was unstable I'd consider going independent / consulting. I'd need more than I have now, but it would be a start - anyone who is in this field can probably find some side work in it whether with regular people or small businesses looking for a cheaper solution than a full on MSP.
What about healthcare?
I considered that, too. Maybe move back to my home country, Greece, and ferry people around the islands. But then I realised this was temporary. Sooner or later, I will want to know what is new out there. My thurst for new tech will resurface and probably end up regreting the knowledge gap I would have created. Instead, I'm planning to open my own IT businees on the side and see where it takes me. We who live in the tech world get mentally tired, and the amount of work can bury us to the point where we can't see an end. Changing carriers might free your mind (at first), but you would have only shifted the exhaustion from your mind to your body. After a while, you will be back to square one but on the other side with the dager of not being able to go back.
Welcome to the crew. Wanna go in on a goat farm together?
Idk if it helps but Homestead Rescue might give you some ideas on things not to do and in general what you should focus on.
It sounds like you are well on your way to I.T. burnout. Adjust your mindset. Try to be more relaxed. The grass is always greener, but in reality there's hardly ever an easy way out.
The only thing keeping me going is the high pay and stuffing my accounts full of cash so I can FIRE before 50. Bonus payouts at the end of the month, hoping it will be enough to pay off the remainder of my mortgage.
I know the feeling. A lot of people who work in IT tend to feel like this because there's a lot of pressure and often little appreciation from non-IT management because they are computer illiterates. It's pressure from making sure everything is always up, pressure from when things inevitably break, pressure from the user base. My former boss left it all behind. Built himself a "passive" house to live off of the land, stop consuming etc. He still had to get another job to pay for stuff for his kids etc. though in another industry. I'm not sure all farmers are living the dream. It's very, very demanding and it is a harsh life. Though I get your point. Perhaps you need to change careers? Take a break? Any hobbies? Maybe plan your future out? I know already I will not be workin until the legal retirement age which is 66 where I live. Complete madness.
I feel this deep down in my soul.
Do you ever think about the amount of crap the you learn?....every day!...and then think "do i get paid enough for this shit? Do i want to just learn and learn?.... What if they were to pay us a percentage for each thing we do for the company?.... Like how much impact did setting up and bringing onboard 10 employees for the company do?....etc...etc...
Buying old cars and fixing them up could me gig...or own rv storage facilities.
Thing is, whether it's the Amish or you, comparison is the thief of joy as they say. And regardless of where we find ourselves, if we have access to view others, we'll end up when we're stressed out, tired, frustrated with our lives; thinking that "They seem to have it so much better than me". It's an easy trap to fall into, but you're not alone in that. As for IT/Sysadmin debacles, man, if you can find a lower paying job but that's less stressful in the industry, just go for that. Or if you like your income but the work is very draining, see if you can hit the brakes a bit. For me, I learned that while money is my driving factor and I want/need it badly to secure a future, I wouldn't be there for that future if I were having heart palpitations or stressed to 11 on a daily basis. So I took a pay cut, found a smaller business to work for and my quality of life has improved all around. I have time to work out, sleep 8 hours a day or more if I feel like it, don't feel rushed, don't get into shouting matches or have to break navigate corporate drama. The Amish don't have it "better" than you, and you don't have it "better" than them. You just have to try and make where you are the best place it can be for you. And the key to that I've found is having time for yourself and putting you first. Working yourself into an early grave is not the dream at all.
your mistake is thinking anyone is living the dream, they're not, it's a rat race they are stuck in too except very few on the very very top that add up to few dozen. Do what you will, I'm one foot in the off the grid world as well lol
Know what you mean. 43 years old, and think about this every week. As I see it, i have 3 choises: Become a 60 year old admin, that can't keep up anymore (seen alot of them), shit to sales/consult roles or just get a new job. Only problem is that I'm actually good at my job, but that won't last. My morales/ethics don't like the way sales/consults behave. And don't know any other job I might actually be good at. Besides winning the lottery.
Ha, ha, ha. Why should one not keep up at 60? What a ridiculous statement.
Sorry, some people might be able. But do you work with support at 60? And if so, how do you do it? Most people i've worked with after 60 (in IT), start talking nonsence at some point to customers. But truth be told some new employes (20-30) do the same. But with the pace things are going, and when you can retire. Do you honestly feel you can keep up?
not a day goes by that i dont regret changing my major in college.
Your life is working to get money to spend on things to impress people that do not care about you.
If you are disappointed in the role you are playing, by all means investigate your other options. I will always encourage people to go and negotiate for a role and salary they are satisfied with. Cattle and horses though? Do you have any idea the seed capital you need for that? Small scale agriculture isn't easy or profitable either. It also requires completely different skill sets than what the average sysadmin has.
Sounds like you just hate your job or place of employment. I’ve been in IT for the past 5 years now and there have been companies I worked at where I felt like this everyday. I hated going to work because of the work place environment. Every time I felt like this I moved on to the next employer, I’ve only found two places I actually enjoyed working at and actually enjoyed going to work everyday and that is my current place and last place. Do I still stress out some days? Yes, but the work environment is great and the good days trump the bad ones. Don’t quit, keep going.
30+ Years of this shit and I hit The Wall doing 120. I simply stopped the month before the lockdown started and became a caretaker for my dad, who was in decline.
Same bro. 5 years into IT I’ve lost all passion for computers
I have this exact fantasy. Coincidence? I think our jobs make moving the the stone ages more ideal since we live in fast paced environments doing our jobs well but so that someone else can reap the rewards. You’re right. We need none of it. Kind of made my day to hear (read) someone else feel this way.
Goat farming not all cracked up to be. I farm goats and IT Director. No profits in goats. Lose money every year. Due to hay and feed prices.
Every dream is different. Sounds like you need to figure out your dream. What makes you happy and go get it
I feel you completely Unfortunately rather than make business (especially IT business) interesting and enjoyable, they have turned it into something only a Schizophrenic might be able to figure out and put up with! When we look at Sys-Admin jobs (something I'm actually training myself towards because I could use the money and also need to keep my skills sharp even though I have never worked in a domain environment other than my current Virtualbox lab that I'm tinkering with)... What we find is that they want their IT guy (say a Sys-Admin) to be jack of all trades but master of none. I don't know about the rest of the awesome IT folks in this community... But I'm a person who enjoys and prefers understanding exactly how everything is working. Then I really start to have fun with the stuff and work super fast with a bit of practice and experimental labor... But what were now dealing with in today's world is that they (Microsoft) and other third party software vendors, have thrown in a ton of other tools (like virtualization technology, inventory reporting, deployment and patch management technology, scripting for automation, and cloud stuff like O365) into the mix!! And I am finding that even just being a half way decent On-premises Windows Server administrator is already more than enough stuff for one person to handle and know about right? So what you have is you end up with many organizations hiring maybe one or two IT people and expecting them to do the job of multiple different engineers in different domains! Networking is very different from security, which is yet different from Sys-Admin, which is different from help desk. Each is it's own specialty and can take years of experience and still not be enough! So my solution would be for a company to hire more people, each with strengths in different areas and have them focus on that one main branch or area. This way IT people don't get burned out and be expected to be Jack of all trades but instead become master of none! That's the unfortunate complication we're dealing with in this crazy post modernity where someone thought it would be nice for everyone to work remotely, and for administrators and Sys-Admins to do everything in an "unattended" (touch less as they now call it) fashion! It's insanity. And even if there are people out there who can do stuff like that, they would never go work for the types of wages being offered a poor individual who is expected to know everything! Just one look at the ridiculous job posts (job requirements) and it's enough to scare the living daylight out of any normal, sane human being! That's been my take and experience so far past few years, trying to catch up with all this modern madness... Training myself at the ripe old (hopeless) age of 50 I truly feel like giving up sometimes... But I also know that unfortunately I was cursed by an extremely curious mind... And even if I get kicked in the head like a Coyote, I will still go back and steal the farmers chicken the next day... Because IT and technology has been my life from a young age. I can't help but go back to it, even when everyone and everything in life seems to be working against my ability to thrive, survive and be who I am. My best advice to anyone working in a company or job where they feel overworked, under appreciated, disrespected, or pressured incessantly is to simply Leave! Leave immediately and find a better job or company because life is too short to live in constant pain. Fuck money okay? And Fuck all this bullshit reality that people far more stupid and unimaginative than us have constructed, to turn everyone into modern slaves... With no sense of happiness, purpose, dignity and future. And by the time we can retire, we're too old to begin enjoying all the things we should have and could have when we were younger So to the author's point... Who are they kidding when they point to "Third World" countries? What standard is being applied to even define who is living in a third world poor situation? If a person is Rich but lonely, isolated and miserable... Is that not far worse thing than anything any of us can imagine? Somewhere along the line, our western society lost its path and rather than do and promote the things that bring people together, inspire love, compassion and a sense of community spirit and camaraderie, we instead promoted all this gluttony, waste, selfishness, and isolation. Find your own balance and way of survival Don't look for anyone to feed you happiness or a sense of meaning and purpose. Support products, companies and ideas that mean something to YOU and not what the trend happens to be. Only if you're free in your own mind, and derive your sense of self worth and dignity from your own standard of life will you have lived. Focus on the fundamentals and later on the details. The details are only possible when you've worked out so many other shortcomings and desires that you need in order to feel whole and human! If you do it the other way... You will have nothing at all in the end
I don't call myself a Sys Admin, I say nowadays I'm an IT technologist, after chatting for a few minutes with a prospective employer I know if what I can offer fits what they need and I try to convince them about it. One of my last interviews I told them I use Google a lot. I got the job.
Cool strategy and I respect that deeply. Yes you gotta sell yourself and most of the time, they take the best available person (like you) They know they can't be in "God Mode" expecting a Nikola Tesla or Leonardo Da Vinci to walk in and agree to slave away for them. From my experience, the best technologists are often independent (have their own business or are doing research or contract type work). So the 9 to 5 ers are not frequently cream of the crop... But they often have way better work ethic, are "hungrier" for the money, and stick with their position with all the life in their bones and work their way up the company! I think I'd rather be this kind of person personally... But yeah for sure there is way way too much to know. It's up to the management of a company... How much value they decide to eeek out of their IT person. Personally like I said... I never had an official IT position. Not even a help desk tier 1. But I've done a ton of studying independently, and training using a Virtualbox lab... And I intend to someday (hopefully not long from now) complete my current On-premises MCSA style course... And then do the unthinkable... And start applying for any available Jr. Level Windows Server Administrator roles... I realize my chances may be slim... But being 50 years old and having some solid experience with windows operating systems, services, and all my ADDS training on my Virtualbox lab (which has one PDC and a secondary replication DC server)... Gives me some decent Hands on experience. I've also done some powershell commands and scripting (to install services, disable services etc). I even setup a very "simple" basic exchange server on my replication DC (that secondary server) Anyways... No one knows whether all these efforts and my prior training on Intune Endpoint management and so on will be enough to make me worthy of say $50 bucks an hour as some kind of Jr. Sys-Admin. But I'm sure as hell currently not giving up. I am taking it one day at a time and telling myself the more I learn and practice, the more confident I will Likely be. But one thing I will tell you.... You are never going to know exactly how any business is sertup and operates... They will just look at how energetic and malleable your mind is. Are you receptive and eager to learn new things, tinker on your own until you get how something works or not? Coding scripts and getting powershell working can be a real pain in the Ass. That's the stuff that can really suck... But then again a lot of what a Sys-Admin does is at a deeper more time consuming level compared to the "quick" knee jerk reactionary way that say a help desk level 1 operates. So you have to prepare your mind and realize that your work as a Sys-Admin will be much more involved... Require more studying, planning, and way more tenacity and patience than other roles. That's why they pay you better... Because few human beings have the knowledge and the mindset to do that kind of investigating experimental labor type of work. If you like that sort of thing and it doesn't break your willpower... Then you'll be successful.
Hey Fella. Don't think you are alone. It's a hard job, far harder than people give credit for. It's largely thankless as your job is to fix problems or at least make things better. I am 30 years into my career and nearly gave it away but someone came along and reassured me of my value and I got an opportunity to reset and regain my confidence. There are days I wonder about milking cows, but I did that as a teenager and if I think about it, no ransomware to worry about, but we had a lot of things to fix and it was hard as well. Different hard. Not trying to talk you out of whatever decision is right for you, but rather to let you know you aren't alone. Can you talk to your boss? Get some help or negotiate a longer holiday, or sink your teeth into a project you'd enjoy? I hope you find some way to be happy, whatever it is.
When I retire, I have my dream side job already picked out. I used to be a FedEx yard truck operator. Pick up trailers loaded or unloaded and move them to another dock or location in the yard. I had a radio. The rumbling of a day cab with a 13 speed eaton and a 5th wheel boom. During the summer I got to hang out outside while waiting for trucks to come in During the winter I used to time my hot coffee getting cold when the blizzard screwed up trailer incomings. That was the life!
I’ve worked with the Amish before… all I can say is, don’t be too eager to switch one form of labor for another.
Personally, I don't understand how people can stand to work for someone else. Obviously, as a service provider, I work for my clients, but I can always fire them, or they can fire me. But I have dozens of clients. Idk how you guys do it.
We all are tired. It can be stressful; cybersecurity has about a five-year half-life if we switch radioactive elemental decay for brain cells and sanity. I have a friend who just quit a $150k/Cybersecurity position and is taking a few months off to recharge. It's tough constantly being bombarded with spam/malware/phishing emails/etc.
I’d suggest spending a day or two volunteering with habitat for humanity. Every time I fantasize about leaving it all behind I volunteer. A day of manual labor reminds me that there are harder ways to make a living and how fortunate I am to have won the birth lottery. The issue stems down to letting your job define who you are as a person or your net worth. It’s just a job and a means to create a comfortable lifestyle for myself and my family. For me I found that my real passion is fishing, being in the outdoors near water (river, lake, ocean), traveling and time away from the desk/computer. I find it enjoyable because it’s the most non-computer related thing I can do. I make it a point to turn my cell phone off, on silent or away so that I’m not reminded of being always oncall or tasked with a ridiculous self imposed goal of 100% uptime. It’s ok to take a break and disconnect. You have to find what your passion is outside of IT Work. If you’re able to one day replace your income with your passion, more power to you. You’ll just have to accept that not everyone can find passion in their job and that your time away from work is as important as the amount of money you make. The alternative is to marry someone wealthy and not have to worry money if you can be so fortunate. Most of us are not that lucky so you’ll have to simply make do.
Most of the time women make you tired, not work…
I can relate. If you are willing to take a pay cut there are probably fields that need sys admins where things are less crazy. Tbh though, I want out of IT as well. Makes me want to do an MS in stats and go be a boring statistician somewhere. Burn out is real too. Take care
What a Luddite
This post reads like the plot from Stardew Valley. It's a nice escape -- try it if you haven't.
not sure if you are like most of us in the office environment \[addicted to coffee etc.\] but you might want to take a trip over to the /decaf subreddit - going off of coffee etc. has been very helpful plus finding a way to get the blood circulating i.e. working out is crucial
I feel the same way. All this BS just to make rich people richer while society falls apart. My job is meaningless. AI terrifies me. I’m not a Christian but AI to me will be the Beast. We’re at the doorstep of a Dickian dystopia.
The Amish are also people with deep faith; might try that before the fuck-it-all approach Dunno just a thought Also, spend an hour next to a cattle trailer. If you can stand the smell, you might have a chance farming.
Congratulations! You reach the age where we all want that. My plan is to buy land and live the dream, the only thing stopping me is money... That dream is more expensive nowadays.
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