I am trying to figure out and process my aversion to pursuing a career change.

What I have surmised is that I come to the conclusion, "well, in your past, most of the jobs you have studied or trained for, were not, in fact, what you thought they would be like in practice, so how do you know this is not the case with your new interest in career?"

What I'm looking for is people to challenge or confirm my assumptions: Example: "No, actually, your perception is distorted, most jobs are what people expect them to be."

I'm also looking for, validation or commiseration, "yeah, I feel that way too, it sucks" and am open to some problem solving, "I was once in your position and I did X,Y,Z and here were my results, YMMV"

Thank you for reading!

I have a bit of a curveball for the kind folks of tildes. I have a fairly successful, flourishing and comfortable business of manufacturing-export in India which I handle with my dad.

I handle communication with customers, some documentation work like invoicing, the wages for the workers (we employ a 150 people). I also handle the manufacturing schedule, the quality team and the product development along with planning for material.

It is a fairly technical line of business ;processes range from press stamping, welding, milling, drilling, turning, hot forging, polishing, chrome plating, zinc plating, powdercoating etc.

Alot of my work is just looking over what my team does and just guiding them, motivating them and making sure they are taken care of.

I have worked hard to reduce the Labour turnover and uplift my workforce financially. It's a big family, albeit with hiccups from time to time.

But I have learned from mistakes and kept on improving.

Now on to the advice bit. I got married and my partner moved from the UK to be with me. We discussed all the challenges and thought we could make it work.

But it has been extremely difficult for her to move here. Quitting her job, leaving her family and not being able to settle here is affecting her mentally.

Seeing the state of the country she doesn't want to raise our kids here. Which I wouldn't mind either, but it will be extremely difficult for me to start afresh in another country.

The business is very hands on, and I'm not sure I can handle it remotely even if I find someone to handle the supervisors. Training someone alone for that role will take a lot of time, trial and error.

To find someone who will care for the work and put in the effort will want a good amount of money, and finding someone you can trust in itself is a challenge for a small business.

30% of my revenue goes into salaries, rent and electricity. About 40 to 50%% into material and maintenance, not to mention unanticipated expenses like bribes. So there isn't a lot of margin to experiment with big hirings anyways.

A big reason for our profitability is because we're quite lean.

Winding up the business would also be difficult. It would take a few years to do, it would be difficult emotionally for my parents and me. I know the amount of work my dad put into it.

They will want my happiness so it's not impossible to do. They could live their retirement years on rental income and me taking care of them.

The final challenge would be finding a job in UK or Europe (wherever we move). I'm not sure how employable I will be in a corporate environment. I don't have any other work experience other than an internship in Toyota in supply chain during my mba days (I have an economics background with an mba in marketing)

I know ultimately only I myself can figure this out. But I just needed a sounding board and just share as much as I could.

If anyone read this far ahead, thanks for taking out the time, really appreciate it.

Posting for a friend

My company just acquired another company, and there is restructuring. A good work friend was let go today with no warning. She had been talking about the upcoming office gathering next month, and in the afternoon I got the notice to cut off her security access. I haven't spoken to her yet, her phone has been turned off. I'm still in the office processing this....this....sudden and unacceptable throwing away of a human being. I don't care what they say about how this is necessary for success and how the rest of us are safe and whatever. It doesn't make me feel better even if they tell me she'd been failing PIP or whatever (not what they said but just an example). How are we supposed to live in a society where money absolutely rules everything, where we must pay crazy amounts of money to live close to work, often making 25-30+ year mortgage commitments, when the company has no such commitments to us?

How do you cope with job security?

I have a lot of angry words and cynicism but that's probably not helpful for my friend right now.

So I've hit on this a bit before here, but it's been a while—I stopped looking for jobs last summer & spent the rest of 2024 getting some things sorted in my own head about what I actually wanted to be doing, what I valued, and why I wanted to change anything in the first place. I love my job, not just because it's remote but honestly mostly because it's remote, but it does not pay enough & may not for a long time, so I have sort of collected together online weekend/evening/contractor part-time gigs on top, which altogether come out to around 90k. After all my soul-searching (& getting on the millenial ADHD meds train, whew), I'd reeeeally love to focus all of that into one job instead, as the downfall of the gig economy approach is not just the time investment required, it's that there's no opportunity for advancement—if I could keep one or two side hustles going, great, but that way I'd be free to let them go as needed as well, which would be a huge relief.

So that's the source for my very specific number; I would of course take more money lol.

I have experience in: adult training/instruction, CRM management, writing/editing, process analysis/efficiency/optimization, video/content creation (doesn't really fit with the rest but my resume is kind of nuts unfortunately)

I am really good at: soft skills/written & verbal communication, IT support, learning new things real quick but also very thoroughly & being able to teach them to others, making things work better/faster

I have degrees in: library science/research, education (no comp sci : / feel like that was my big mistake career path-wise, I've tried some online options more recently & am currently making headway with claude as a coding partner lol).

The real sticking point is I am currently remote & would have to make way more than 90k to be willing to go back to an office every day. My current job was an out-of-left-field career move that I wouldn't have even guessed existed, so I am open to literally any suggestions.

I was contacted by a recruiter regarding a job in my field but they wanted someone with data analytics skills. I'm taking this as a sign that I should improve my skill set. Does anyone have advice for where or how to start with a very small budget?

Thanks for your help.

I find myself very bored at work. I have nothing on my plate to do, and I have exhausted everything I can think of doing on my phone. Browsing Tildes, and a little reddit though I hate Reddit now, making spreadsheets on Google drive for hobbies, catching up on any news, playing a dumb phone game, watching YouTube (though this is much harder and I can only do something audio based when I sneak away to a private corner which I can only do for limited amounts of time), browsing LinkedIn for other jobs/career path.

I'm at a loss for what else to do. I'm at the point where I have many hours in my day with nothing to do, and boss doesn't care I'm on my phone as long as my shit is done, which it is.

Obviously can't do much video watching or actual video game playing or anything requiring audio.
Also phone games have to be vertical so it isn't obvious I'm playing a game if a client walks in. Any suggestions?

So I get the theory of what they are supposed to do. inform and educate folks on what to do and what not to do.

But my viewpoint on their effectiveness has changed since I learnt about Daryl Davis and Nonviolent Communication, my general appreciation for comedy which touches taboo topic as well as watching a DEI meeting that my workplace had before I started working there.

So my understanding of DEI is that it's aim is broadly to help individuals who may not be aware of the nature of the societal and systemic issue that give people of marginalized society a disadvantage so that we can help prop them up better and therefore put them on an equal footing with the rest of society.

And this is a good idea in theory but I have become more convinced overtime that in reality, it's just not appropriate for the workplace unless it undergoes a major reform because of a general uncomfortableness I have noticed.

When I was watching the DEI meeting that my company had had, the DEI advocate they brought in was talking about the issues faced by racialized individuals (she was at the time specifically referring to black people), and some people shared opinions and one white woman shared her perspective that having grown up in a poor household and being ridiculed for that most of her life as she was growing up, that she thinks that society places too much emphasis on helping out racial minorities when its actually people's socioeconomic status that is an indicator of how disadvantaged they are.

And the DEI advocate just did her best to dismiss that opinion and quickly get back to her slides.

And as I was watching this, I got really disappointed. If there is one person who should be trained in how to have those sorts of uncomfortable conversations about how best to tackle handle the issues of racial discrimination vs being unable to provide for yourself in a capitalist society, I really would have expected the DEI advocate to be perfect for such a discussion.

Instead she just stuck to her slides.

She was unable to engage with someone who had a different perspective in a respectful way.

and it got me thinking, let's say I was a bigot or a misogynist. I did think my black colleagues were just diversity hire or that I have a bias against women. I doubt I will be convinced by the cookie cutter slides they present at the DEI meetings why I am wrong and I know that if I voice my opinion, I will be shunned and shamed which leads to me just ignoring the DEI information and not taking anything in and therefore the DEI meetings are just a waste of time.

So what's the point?

I get the argument that if they allow those kinds of uncomfortable discussions at work, it can create tension and can cause a hostile work environment but then, all the company is doing with DEI is pretending to be solving the issue when in fact its just masking the issue and the people who disagree are just gonna continue disagreeing and maybe even double down more cause they're being actively told they are backwards rather than someone having a conversation with them.

The other day I had to get new glasses, and I braced myself for my lenses to be incredibly thick and expensive to boot again - but then I had them made, they look normal, and they barely cost me a Benjamin. Clearly, the optometrist crowd has made some major developments in the past decade or so, which leads me to ask - if you're working in an industry most people don't really think about, what's happened in your space in the past ten years?

I am at the end of a phase of my life in which for many years, finding contract work was as simple as contacting 5 or 6 people and letting them know I was available. This work is no longer tenable for me and I am attempting a career transition.

Edit: I wasn't sure whether to mention, but over the last 10 years I have come to suspect that I have undiagnosed ADHD. Any advice from that perspective would be greatly appreciated.

Asking people with more recent experience than me, what methods do you use to job hunt? How do you manage your time while unemployed? If you are willing, would you please share advice?