Ask the Readers: What If Your High-Paying Job Makes You Miserable?

Wow, that’s a toughy, even more so because he has dependents to worry about. When I hit that point in my career it was just me, but I was in the process of buying a house – loss of income wasn’t really an option. But when I really thought about it, it wasn’t the company or the people or the hours, it was just that I’d been doing the same thing for 5 years and needed to move to something that required more detail and attention. Faster paced if you will.

I lucked out. While I was searching internally for another position, my manage was approached by another who was looking to fill positions in his group – I was able to accept the lateral move directly after the interview!

And Mike – even if it is a lateral move within a company or industry, just that move can open up doors. I ended up with a job that I love (even with more OT being regular) a mid year raise and a lot more attention from upper management – all adding up to opportunity.

I think FMF might be right – you’ve built up a lot of knowledge and reputation in your current field. See if you can parlay that into a new area of the field and maybe you’ll rediscover why you went into in the first place. Just looking for the opportunity can sometimes lead to it falling into your lap. Good luck!

I think it makes it easier to do something when you know it’s for a limited amount of time. Read Your Money or Your Life, and you don’t have to do the whole thing, but set up a plan to work your way out of the income requirement over the next year (like poster 1 says). You’re in a good position with the salary, take advantage for a period of time and then get out. Maybe by that time, you’ll have a better idea of what you’d like to do. I have the same problem myself. I think the idea is I’m just going to have to try a few things.

Read a book called “Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work” by Matthew B. Crawford.

I was in Mike’s shoes!

In my twenties, I had a career as a web app developer. Long hours, on call, but good pay and benefits. The work was interesting but not for me. I needed to work with my hands. Bread called to me, though and I had to give it all up for baker work.

Advice for Mike? You want to work with you hands. Do you like the smell of sawdust or metal or food? Have you flipped through the phone book or walked around town, looking at all the different companies and their vocations? Have you ever met someone who worked with their hands and said “Wow, I wish I did what you do?”

The first thing I’d suggest is narrow it down a little. You said you’re handy. Okay, do you like little projects (remodeling a kitchen) or big one (remodeling a house or building fresh)? Are you actually interested in cabinetry or do you geek out on finish work? You shouldn’t specialize off the bat, but if you start in construction but are really a cabinet maker you might wind up in the same situation you’re in now.

Next, sit down with your family. Explain what you think you want to do. When I was explaining my career change to my fiance, I told her it’d make me happy, and she wouldn’t have to worry about a mid-life crisis. They love you and want to see you happy. Remember, it’s for better and for worse. Their sacrifices now will hopefully lead to a better life tomorrow.

What I did next, the scariest step for me, was find a baker looking for part time weekend help. This is where it becomes real. It will be hard and a pain in the ass, but get a part time weekend job in your new vocation. Find out if you like it. You’ll have to cold call employers. You’ll have to explain you’re wanting to switch careers and this is what you’re passionate about. You’ll have to start off at the bottom. Be humble and open to learning. Read building codes, classic how-to books, etc… Immerse yourself.

(Many tradesmen and craftsmen I know are open to training new craftsmen. Often times we’re passionate about what we do. We’re skeptical of people wanting to learn, too many people who say they want to learn, wimp out when they find out that it’s work, work unlike what most people are used to now days.)

Work the part time job a few months. Use those few months to change lifestyle habits and sock away savings.

So let’s say you’ve found that area you want to work in and you’re ready to quit IT. Quit. If you’re enjoying the new, part time job, then quitting IT will be easy. That first paycheck will be shocker, your bones will ache like never before, but you’ll sleep well.

I made the switch from IT to baking, about seven years ago. It was a leap of faith. I was scared sh*tless. So scared, I took a bit my last IT paycheck and got a tattoo to commemorate the fear. It was the hardest thing I had ever done in my life.

I agree with some of the posting. If you hate your job you need to analyze a few things though.

Do I get support from upper management?
Does upper management back me up when I make a decision?
Do the people I work with throw me under the bus when a mistake is made?
Do I work with a team or a group of individuals?
Does the company value what I do?

Depending on how you answer these questions you might be in a situation where you could like the work but the environment is so bad you are unhappy and want to get out all together. If so look for a different job. Yes the economy is down but there are a lot places looking for IT people, I know we are.

I have worked in IT for 12 years and I still love it. There have been seasons but those periods were working for companies that did not value what IT was providing. The company I work for now places a high value on what we do and treats the employees very well.

Before giving up on a promising career look around. As was mentioned earlier there are also a thousand different sides of IT you might need to explore making an emphasis change.

I partially agree with Snowballer, sometimes you have to do an attitude check as well.

Ross

31 and he’s worried that if he switches careers he won’t make as much as $75,000 a year? Excuse me? Try being 56 and *loathing* your career — when you are the *sole* support for your dependents! Or 55 and not having had paid employment for the last *8* years, because of various disasters including health problems! I would *love* to be in Mike’s position. Absolutely — please may I switch lives right now? He has enough time ahead of him for, oh, at least two full careers, training and all, if not more. My mother, who is now 88, had *three* careers after the age of 50 — and three careers before that. The very first thing Mike needs to do is get some perspective, followed by some humility. Then, using the info at this and related sites, cut his family’s expenses so that they are living on only his wife’s salary and saving all of his, while he explores what he wants to do. There are many books about finding out what your talents and interests are. Once he’s figured out what he wants to do, then make a plan to achieve it — there are many books about how to do that, too. Alternatively, if he quits his job and stays home with the kids, they won’t have daycare costs. They should also consider selling their house and renting for a lower amount — there’s really no virtue in having “a pretty hefty mortgage”: no house is actually worth that much money. In any case, he should *expect* to have more than one career during his lifetime, and actually plan for it.

was* in Mike’s shoes a few years ago.  I had a high profile job that paid extremely well in the career of my “dreams”.  My husband was also in the same field and also had a fairly high profile job.  For a while, I relished the demands and rewards of my industry (as did my husband), but then we decided to start a family.  Suddenly our perspective changed 180 degrees.

Without going into a long litany of complaints, I started to realize that my field was not “family-friendly”, and that I no longer had the stomach for the vicious politics that went along with people willing to devote their entire life to their work.  While I still liked the work itself, I began to find myself increasingly disenchanted with the general atmosphere in my industry.  At the same time, my husband was realizing that he also was losing the desire and heart to put himself through the daily grind in such a demoralizing way.

Right as I was coming to terms with all of this, two major incidents happened that brought clarity to my life.  The first was that the day before I returned from maternity leave, my company announced that my division was being laid off in a few months.  Three days later, still reeling from the news that I would soon be out of work, I found myself in a 42nd story conference room watching the WTC burning right in front of my eyes.  

After the initial terror of that day subsided, and we had some time to reflect, we both realized that we had been too scared to change the status quo, out of a fear of the unknown.  The “gift” of 9/11 for us was that we suddenly realized that there are worse fears to face than changing a job or leaving a career. 

I won’t sugar-coat it. There were a lot of difficult adjustments, especially learning to live on greatly reduced salaries. We didn’t have the luxury of taking a few month to scale our lifestyle back in advance–and making matters worse, our previous salaries (with no child at the time) had enabled us to develop horrid money habits with few repercussions. In addition, our choice involved a complete relocation and purchasing a house. It would be kindest just to say that those mistakes at least led me to the PF world, and have taught me a much healthier way to handle my money.

OTOH, we have never been happier. My husband stayed in our industry but became a full time instructor. I took my skills an adapted them to a new field. We have sane working hours, and our stress levels are much lower. Our salaries are greatly reduced from what we used to earn, but between our move to a lower COL area and our healthier approach to budgeting, we don’t feel the pinch as much as we might have feared. I do keep my old industry connections fresh by continuing to volunteer with the professional organization, but talking with my old colleagues really has just cemented in my mind that I made the right choice.

My recommendation is to not be scared of making a change. Chances are that if it just was a dissatisfaction with your company, you’d already have been looking for a new job. There are a lot of ways you can shift, from teaching like my husband, to adapting your skills like me, to even going back to school for additional classes. Just do some research before you change, and talk with people in the new field to male sure your impressions are realistic. Oh, and do the whole “salary reduction” test now, to get ready for the possibility of a lower income!

One exciting avenue to explore: energy efficiency in data centers. Put these words into google: “energy efficiency data centers” and take particular note of the Energystar links. Watch/listen to DOE and Energystar webinars. I think it could be interesting because it’s growing fast, it’ll tap into your IT background, you will get to learn about energy and facilities management, and I think you could get some hands-on if you play it right – neat stuff.

General Advice: Find a few growing areas that are linked to IT in some fashion- that is your IT skills will be respected but you get to branch out into a new area – locate somebody who is up-and-coming in that area and take that person out to lunch/for a coffee and ask what they like about the work/the field. Ask what the steps would be for somebody like yourself to get there. Take notes. If you have no clue how to get in touch with people in these fields: go to meetup.com and see what professional groups are already gathering in your neck-of-the-woods, search LinkedIn.com, or start networking with local business groups and just ask around.

Other thoughts: If you are not an entrepreneurial person, focus on getting training that directs you into a job OR team up with somebody you trust who is more business-minded. From what you wrote, you do not sound self-directed enough to lead a business.

If you are still frightened as heck, start seeing a counselor-career counselor, head shrinker, medicine man, personal coach: somebody who will prod you along so you get out of your comfort zone and start making a plan and start living again.

And-Try to get some buy-in from your wife and make plans to shrink that upper-middle-clas lifestyle down to something more sustainable. The boom times are over, so you should be doing that anyway.

OK. Very bossy advice, I know. Hope there is something in here of use to you!

I want to just re-emphasize what some others have said that I strongly agree with.

1. Stay in your current position for now, but start the research/soul-search. Read “what color is your parachute” type books, go out and FIND those mentors who you are looking for and invest in some lunches with them. Once you start to form a plan, your current job will feel less miserable.

2. Try out some of your future opportunities in small ways — shadowing, weekend work, or just spending time with those in the field.

3. Once you’re convinced you’re ready to make the switch to something new, your family will be too.

It might be possible that you are never ready, and maybe that means that you should re-focus your energies on hobbies that make you happy and set a plan to check-in with yourself on the career every few months to see if things have changed.

I think the bottom line may just be that Mike does not want to work in IT. He says he is not passionate about it. So therefore a person like will not be happy by reevaluating a different area of IT to go into.

I’ve been in IT for quite awhile and as others have stated, there are ways to see if the job you’re in is good for you. Such as – does management support you, etc etc. Honestly, the job I am in now I could answer no to all the questions because nobody really understands IT. But I do. I may get frustrated with the grind or the people, but at the end of the day I do have a passion for IT. I know I’ll never leave this field. I also know just how important I am to the organization, even if they do not.

In general though, I am not sure if now is the time for soul-searching – especially with a family. I do like the “mini-projects” or consulting ideas that someone mentioned. That may relieve some of the tension till you can full-out find your passion.

- James

I have to say I am a little shocked that higher education is referred to in this discussion as only “a good school” or “University of Phoenix”.
I would urge the folks here to take a look at this blog: http://elearningpundit.com/, read more about the improved quality and improved opinion of online education, and go from there.
For some quick examples of respected big leauge online schools: University of Arizona MBA, Penn State -undergrad and graduate degrees. Ivy League: Cornell has a number of online certificates. Highly regarded in this geographic region: University of Wisconsin-Platteville, Cardinal Stritch.

Do you not know what you love, or do you not dare doing it?
Most people do know what they enjoy. Most people do have dreams.

If you’re one of those who haven’t found out what they would really love doing, I would suggest taking some beginner classes in a variety of fields, and see how you like them. Or you can borrow books from the library.

If you like handyman stuff, you can try and learn how to make…well, whatever you want, really.

The real question is, can your family live on your wife’s income alone? And if so, would she be willing to support you all while you try and find yourself?
It might only come to you once you’re not working, but on the other hand if you quit your job there might be no turning back. Are you ready for that?

To be on the safe side, I would suggest to figure out what you want to do before quitting your job. But sometimes you need an electroshock or you never change your ways.

Do you like writing? Acting? Singing? Have you always wanted to create things? Or teach? Or… what?
Nobody can really figure it out for you, only you have the answers, but you need to really ask yourself the right questions, and let go of your fear of failure. If you can survive on your wife’s income alone and she’s willing to support you, you will possibly have hard times not earning any money or hardly any, while you start your passion from scratch. You might feel inadequate and like a dead weight. You need to consider that before making a decision.

You can also get the best of both world and reduce your hours to free more time but still earn some money.

Good luck!

This is exactly the type of situation I am trying to avoid! I see so many people start down one thing and end up hating it, only to find they’re too trapped to get out. Because of this, I’m working on making sure I always build myself an “out,” so that I never have to feel trapped by my job.

Heck, I already feel fairly trapped by my current job, but it’s just a college retail job that really pays peanuts. I know I’m gonna get out of it in the next year or so, so there’s not much sense in rocking the boat yet. I’m just making the best of it and working on my other passion — automotive writing & photography. All I can say is, if I don’t like the job that pays peanuts now but I stick around for the money, I want to do all I can to make sure money’s no longer a factor!!

I was in a situation similar to Mike’s in 2005. I was 34 and a single mother of a 6-year-old boy, but I was pretty well off. I was making six figures in IT, and I also had a mortgage and child-care expenses, but the finances were fine. The problem was the job – I was burnt out by IT after 13 years in it, and the stress was literally killing me.

The company I worked for encouraged volunteering, and after doing some of that I decided that I wanted to become a teacher. I was ahead of Mike in that I had an idea of what I wanted to do, but I wasn’t sure (and I’m still not sure, honestly) that I’m truly passionate about it and want to do it until age 65.

Like Mike I had a supportive partner, but at this point he was still a boyfriend. We decided to get married and bought a house together, with the bank approving us for a mortgage based on our two incomes.

Around here the finances got strange. My fiance’s condo sold, but my house did not, so we had two mortgages when we moved in to the new place. On the day the house sale closed I couldn’t take it anymore, and quit my job. A month after that we were in a highway head-on collision, my trusty 10-year-old Civic (our only car) was totalled, and I got only $6000 from the insurance company to cover it. I bought an old beater with the $6000 to avoid taking on a car payment. I was too late to apply to teacher’s college for the fall, and was faced with TWO years before I could start work in my new chosen field.

For the first year my fiance (now my husband) supported us. I did carpentry and painting work on my house to get ready for the following spring market, so after carrying two mortgages for 8 months we finally sold it and I was able to make my contribution to our new house. I picked up a couple of IT contracts to bring in extra money, plus math tutoring and did grunt work on a math textbook to make money and get experience I hoped would help in my career. We started practicing being frugal!

The second year my husband continued to support us. I was in school, so there were tuition expenses on top of the regular expenses. I continued to do tutoring, since it worked around my class schedule. Daycare got a little cheaper as my son got older, and that helped. Money was incredibly tight, especially that final summer.

There were no teaching jobs when I got out of school, so in my first year in my new career I took a one-year contract as an intern, making 75% of the pay of a regular teacher. Fortunately they recognized some of my years of work experience, so I started a few rungs up from the bottom of the union salary grid. (Let me point out as a side note how weird it is to go from a merit-pay system to union-negotiated salaries.)

In my second year I got another one-year contract as a regular full-time teacher, and I’m now in my third year and have been hired on permanently. Early on I took a good look at the salary grid, and made a plan to get myself into the highest-paid category. That meant taking the time and paying the tuition to take extra courses, which I’ve done now, although it took a couple of years. I make about 70% of my former salary, although it’s probably less than that if you consider the pay increases I would have gotten if I’d stayed in the IT industry.

Am I happy with the change? Overall, yes, although I’m not going to pretend to y’all that everything is peaches and cream. Teaching is even more stressful than IT, but the fact that I picked it is worth something, and once you’ve got a position for a year, teaching is largely self-directed.

So, for what it’s worth, that’s my story of what I did in a similar situation. I don’t feel qualified to give advice, but I can provide a perspective!

I will say that the book “Your Money or Your Life” was pivotal for my husband and I. Since learning to live on one income we’ve continued our frugal lifestyle. We allow ourselves vacations and eating out now, but we are plowing 40% of our income into retirement savings.

I would also encourage Mike not to think of it as an all-or-nothing choice, the way I did it. I have a friend who is in IT and actively involved in volunteering in Haiti. She isn’t ready to quit her job and move to Haiti, but she’s investigating options – taking a leave of absence for a few weeks, and working part-time. Perhaps there are creative things Mike could consider with his employer? It’s cheaper for the company to retain a good employee than a hire and train a new one, so he should be able to leverage that in the short-term while he experiments with contracting, if that ends up being what he decides to do.

Now I will hit “Submit”, then go back and read the other poster’s comments!

My advice is to do what you WANT to do! Life is waaaay too short to be miserable at your job, and your job in IT does sound pretty miserable.

$75,000 is a pretty darn good salary, but it is not a great salary. I mention this in my post “Fortunes, Fortunes, Everywhere”, where a TON of people make 6 figure salaries, and these jobs are everywhere. Police officers, educators, firemen etc.

Do what you want to do and don’t get stuck. 31 years old is still young enough to change.

Be free!

This is interesting to me. My boyfriend thought about the “get paid to do what you love” advice, and decided there was absolutely no work that he liked doing. So he became an attorney for the money.

Now he hates his job, but he has to keep it because he has $100K in student loans and $40K in credit card debt, all accrued while earning the degree.

We live in a tiny apartment that costs us $976/mo., so no lifestyle inflation going on here. He is thinking he will try a move to another company to see if that helps things, perhaps in another city (he grew up where we are now and is sick of it), but what if it doesn’t? We think about this all the time…

There are too many choices in this world to stay in a job you do not like. They are just hard to come by now. Lay out all your options and go for it! There are plenty of suggestion here to get you started. That can be the scariest. I have been laid off for a year now, but have no intention of returning to my previous career, which I did enjoy but was at a deadend road. I was in a similiar situation as you. The advancement opportunities were not there, and I was wanting to move on but because of financial reasons was planning to stick it out for 6-12 months longer. But then the economy made my decision for me. I have returned to school and hope to start in a new field after graduating. It may involve stepping out of your “comfort zone” but having the support from your wife and family will make it worth while. If financially you can handle it then GO FOR IT!

Wow! I am baffled at the comments that are telling Mike that he is selfish and immature and a job is just a job, suck it up. Apparently, these comments come from people who do not LOATHE their job. Come on people it is horrible to get up day after day and hate your job and have no passion for what you do. 35 hours to 50 hours is A LOT if you hate it. It just is, point blank. I have been in the insurance industry for a number of years and I hate it. I’ve had times were I had to step outside and cry because it just felt so meaningless. I am still at that point. I haven’t left my job because I need the money and I know to go into something else I will take a huge paycut. Will I leave yes. I have to because otherwise my health and mental well being will suffer simply because I HATE my job. I searched my soul and I do believe that I need to be in a field where I am a “helper/counselor.” I’m thinking social work, but I don’t know how to get into the field without any experience.

It really helped me quite a bit when I first graduated from college to write out a list of every single characteristic that I wanted in a career. I started out with general type things and then refined them to become more specific. Once I had my list then it was easy for me to evaluate each potential job or business opportunity based on my list. I now am a serial entrepreneur and wouldn’t have it any other way but if I hadn’t taken the time to write out exactly what I was looking for then I likely wouldn’t have found it.

There is a point in one’s life where once you pass a certain level of income, it’s difficult to go back to a lower salary. I make $95k/year, plus an average $20k bonus in an non-management position working for a large corporation. I manage a multi-billion dollar product portfolio and make multi million dollar decision that directly affect the bottom line almost every day. My job has it’s good and bad parts. The challenges come, mostly, from managing other people and how their decisions affect my ability to function well in my position. I do, on occassion, fantasize about having less responsibility and the associated lower income.

However, the reality is taking a $20+ paycut isn’t in the cards for me. I’m the sole provider for my wife and stepson and pay around $15k in child support each year to my own son. A lower salary would not reduce my child support payments and at this point, I wouldn’t consider a lower paying job because of that. Not that I’m complaining, it is just a fact.

In addition, I max out my 401k contributions, pay premiums on life insurance, fund a 529, and am still able to save money for a rainy day fund and the eventual downpayment for a house.

I used to have a poor attitude in many of my positions, but eventually realized I am responsible for my own happiness in any job I have. My experience is a great boss can make all the difference in the world, regardless of pay.

One day, when my obligations are not as high, I will definitely pursue a lower paying and, hopefully, less stressful work environment. But, for now, I do my best to make the best of it. To use a phrase one my my VP’s has used many times, “It’s not like we’re saving babies in our line of work. Keep it in perspective.

Best!

So much good advice already. I’d add, don’t assume that your hobbies will make good jobs for you. I explored that and discovered that I like my hobbies to be hobbies.

Another option (although the economic climate may not make this a good choice right now) is contracting. I took this option and it’s proved fantastic. I took skills I already had, and started selling them into related industries where they are highly valued because most people in the other industries don’t have them. I have learned a ton of new skills because every job is different, and I’ve gradually discovered what I’m really good at that others will pay me for.

I guess what I’d advocate is evolution not revolution.

It depends a lot on whether you really hate your job or you’re just not inspired. In the former case, where your life is being sucked from you and you’re miserable to be around, it’s to everyone’s benefit to get you out of there asap. That means cutting expenses, finding a short-term “bridge” job, doing whatever it takes for you to quit. In the latter case, where passion is missing, you can keep the job while you figure out what you need; whether it’s an attitude adjustment, or training in a new field, or just learning to ask for what you need at work.

Which is it, Mike?

To Catherina in comment #43: the comment you made about hobbies should sometimes just be hobbies couldn’t be a more true statement. I got into the IT industry because I started messing with computers at an early age. When I was in high school, most kids worked at Wal-Mart or Hardee’s. I worked for my ISP repairing PCs and doing web design. It seemed like I was destined to work in the IT industry. Then I went to college. It was there I started wondering if it was for me. Then I graduated and got my first real IT job. I was only there 4 months, but by the time they let me go, I hated working on PCs so much, I didn’t even want to use my own PC at home. I made the decision to leave the industry and I still stand by that decision today. Ironically, lately, my career has slowly turned into my hobby. I’m an aircraft assembler right now and I am currently working on my private pilot’s license and have started working on my own homebuilt aircraft.

it’s amazing how we focus on the wrong things. it isn’t the job he hates, it is the fact he feels unappreciated or un-noticed. His wife gets attention, he feels like he doesn’t. he needs to address the problem why he feels unappreciated or unnoticed. switching jobs isn’t going to resolve that issue either. if you are an attention whore, then it goes without saying that you are going to have to do something to gain attention.

i find people’s mentality towards work is a bit off, and we choose to focus on symptoms rather than the underlying problem. i also think that we simply like to complain how much we hate our jobs, etc. the grass isn’t greener. i’m sure there are plenty of moments for those who find their job rewarding that they absolutely feel miserable at times. it’s impossible not to. “rewarding” job isn’t a function of the job, it is a function of your perception about the job.

if you are that miserable then change jobs. the problem is people focus again on a symptom, which causes them to think that they can’t switch jobs. symptom being they’ve fit a lifestyle to what they make and the security of what they make. i think some people are simply masochists and like to be angry about their job. that in itself is a motivator for going to work. if you aren’t pathetic in your life, then others must be too.