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  • Showing only topics in ~life with the tag "careers". Back to normal view / Search all groups
    1. Any friendly entrepreneurship communities that aren't rotten with the whole "grindset," hustle culture stuff?

      I've always been interested in entrepreneurship, and I think I want to get serious about doing something. I checked out the Millionaire Fastlane forums, and it's just completely saturated with the...

      I've always been interested in entrepreneurship, and I think I want to get serious about doing something. I checked out the Millionaire Fastlane forums, and it's just completely saturated with the whole "grindset" BS. I tried reading a couple of threads, and my eyes almost rolled out of my head. 🙄

      I've also hung around on the entrepreneur subreddit, and it just seems like a bunch of people without much experience trading unproven advice and people trying to sell courses.

      Does anyone know of a better community? I'd like to find some friendly, welcoming adults with actual experience to talk with. Are entrepreneurship and hustle culture always a package deal?

      34 votes
    2. Higher education teaching career advice

      Greetings Tildeans! I am wrapping up my Ph.D. and am pursuing a teaching-focused career in higher education. I am currently in talks for a 4-year institution teaching faculty position that would...

      Greetings Tildeans!

      I am wrapping up my Ph.D. and am pursuing a teaching-focused career in higher education. I am currently in talks for a 4-year institution teaching faculty position that would revolve around teaching a subject I am passionate about and could provide a lot of intellectual stimulation. Unless something wild happens the offer is there and we are just negotiating the parameters. I also have a position that is in 2nd-phase interviews for a community college tenure track position that would be teaching general biology, anatomy, and physiology. I feel optimistic that they are going to offer me a position, but nothing is concrete yet.

      I'm at this impasse because both have really good reasons for doing them and would provide experiences unique from the other. I am trying to balance the pros and cons between these two positions and consider what might be good for my career in the long run, and so I was hoping I could get some advice. Even if you're not in academia I think it would be helpful to get some outside prospective. I'm gonna list my thoughts on it below.

      4-year University

      Pros:

      -Teach upper level and domain specific courses with opportunity to design courses I am passionate about.
      -Integrated into scientific community if I want to to do more research/keep abreast of scientific advancements.
      -Great community of teaching faculty with lots of support.
      -Could be good curriculum vitae experience if I want to stay teaching at a 4-year institution, and could open up teaching psychology courses.
      -Option to develop a community outreach project I am passionate about, not sure if there is support for me but there is infrastructure there.
      -Partner's family is in the area, and it is a big metropolitan area with lots to do.
      -Can get tuition at 25% cost for my partner and I incase we want to get some other degrees.

      Cons:

      -Pay is not great (does have option of picking up extra summer online classes to earn more).
      -My partner and I don't want to live here long term, primarily because of climate, and cost of living is increasing. We are already ready to move, but this is a good opportunity.
      -Is contract based, so not as much job security. Having said that, many of the teaching faculty have been there a long time and it seems like the student body for this department is generally growing.

      Community College

      Pros:

      -Pay is pretty good, and there is a baked in growth of salary as long as you stay there long term. Pay could be as much as $15K more starting out than the 4-year institution.
      -Small class sizes, so better teacher:student ratio means more involved education.
      -Cost of living in the area is pretty cheap (so far).
      -Beautiful area and would put us closer to a part of the country we would like to live in long term.
      -I do like biology and physiology, just not as much as neuroscience.
      -From my understanding there is lot of support and easy options to get into administration if so desired. All the faculty I briefly met had been there at least 7 years.

      Cons:

      -Only lower levels courses, with little room to develop new ones.
      -Not sure how this would impact my ability to switch to a 4-year institution if I end up craving that intellectual stimulation.
      -The area is in a part of California that does have issues with forest fires (not the town proper), and the county swings hard in the opposite direction of my politics.
      -Small town so there isn't as much to do.

      Overall, the community college looks best on paper. We're not planning on having kids so family support isn't as big of a deal. My main concern is if I could switch back to a 4-year institution if I feel like I'm missing something. So if anyone has any thoughts please let me know, in particular if there are other things I'm not considering that you think are worth examining.

      Edit: Just to add some additional information. As part of making myself a good candidate for higher education, I have worked as a teaching assistant for several courses during grad school and I have taught online physiology as an adjunct professor at a community college, so I have some experience in both environments.

      Thanks ahead of time!

      20 votes
    3. Career advice (or success stories) thread

      I've seen a few posts on Tildes now about careers - sometimes personal posts about burnout and how to manage it, other times links to articles about layoffs. The end result of both of these is...

      I've seen a few posts on Tildes now about careers - sometimes personal posts about burnout and how to manage it, other times links to articles about layoffs.

      The end result of both of these is often a need to find a new job. For some it may be as simple as applying for the same title at a different company and having success, for others it may be a long process of determining what type of career to go for next and perhaps education or other factors that can help them get there.

      I wanted to try starting a thread to see if those of us who are struggling can ask for advice, and perhaps those who are doing well can help or even post their career journey to show how they got where they are today.

      37 votes
    4. Layoffs, survivor guilt, and existential dread

      The company I work for laid off half of my office this week. I'm one of the survivors, and trying to process what happened. The company has been transparent about revenues. However, we had no idea...

      The company I work for laid off half of my office this week. I'm one of the survivors, and trying to process what happened.

      The company has been transparent about revenues. However, we had no idea that we would be so badly penalized for management choices that created significant operating cost overruns in the face of a projected short-term demand decline. I've lost half the members of my immediate team, good friends, people whose work and thoughtfulness I deeply respected. The entire department structure is being upended. The harshness of the selection for people who were being laid off included a teammate who's in the hospital, parents of young children, people on the edge of retirement. I'm suspicious and extra hostile towards the company - it's very significant to me that all the people of color and people who've had recent medical leave are among the lost.

      It's not the first time I've watched and survived a company's poor management and bad choices, but this is by far the worst. I've worked very hard at staying professional with the customers this week. I'm still inwardly seething with rage. I'm trying to figure out how to be supportive to the people who are leaving. I'm trying to figure out how to help a team lead who's in his first management job, and is totally devastated and nearly frozen with helplessness. I'm decent at my job, but don't know why I was kept and others with equal or greater skills were let go. I don't feel good about what qualities I might have had that corporate desired to keep - dutifulness, compliance, amiability, reticence?

      At the same time, I'm looking at months of double workload even though corporate management claims they'll outsource part of the duties (so that's another symptom that I'm replaceable) and manage the task pipeline. There's a frankly insulting retention bonus if I stay for another year. We've gotten the usual anodyne HR garbage about the employee assistance program and coping skills. The corporate management's left us with the ominous "stay tuned for further announcements over the coming weeks".

      I don't have a lot of choices here. I'm trying hard to stay focused on the present, without looking over the cliff of dread at the future. At the moment, I'm the sole support for our household and source of health insurance. My spouse is badly burnt out, and I don't want him to look for work a minute before he's healthy and enthusiastic about a job. I'm a late-50's end-career professional who wouldn't normally have much interest in restarting yet again elsewhere. I very deliberately chose this company, job and location, liked the work I was doing, the people I was doing it with, and I was looking forward to building on it. There's still the possibility that our half-vacant remote office will be closed and consolidated with the corporate headquarters. I have less than zero interest in relocating, and plan to keep separated coworkers who live here as personal friends.

      I'll be grateful to hear any advice on coping with this situation, and hope the replies will be helpful to others in future.

      47 votes
    5. Career advice: Getting into data engineering or similar

      Hey all. I'm looking for a little career advice. For the past 1.5 years I've been working as a full-stack web developer for a proprietary eCom framework. It's LAMP and pretty antiquated and not...

      Hey all. I'm looking for a little career advice. For the past 1.5 years I've been working as a full-stack web developer for a proprietary eCom framework. It's LAMP and pretty antiquated and not very interesting. However, I have been able to work on a fun (for me) project parsing sales data with Python and Pandas. Before this job, I worked for myself for a good amount of time doing something creative outside of tech, and before that I was a Senior IT Consultant in a big market.

      I'd really like to get out of web development. I don't really enjoy frontend work, and I don't really care about the web or eCom that much. I've been considering moving toward DevOps as I've got a lot of skills in that department, but I've also recently started thinking about Data Engineering. But when I look into jobs in that world, a lot of them require higher degrees in mathematics or science that I don't have. I've got a bevy of tech skills, I'm very into Linux, and I really enjoy working with data. I have some personal experience with Prometheus and Grafana, though nothing professional.

      Ultimately, I'm not sure how I should be breaking into Data, or breaking out of web development. Maybe there's a career path I'm neglecting to look at, but would be perfect for. I would be looking for remote only jobs, as I live in a very small market that has very few tech jobs. I'd really love to work in Python. I'd like to learn Rust. I've read on here comments from users saying there are a ton of opportunities in this world, but I'm not quite sure how to frame myself on a resume to make me look like a good candidate. My education isn't in tech, but much of my work experience is. Maybe I'm just overthinking it all. Admittedly, I've been so exhausted from work and life recently that I haven't had the time to really start applying for anything.

      Anyhow, any advice would be greatly appreciated.

      14 votes
    6. I'm looking for some career advice

      Apologies if this isn't in line with the spirit of the group/site but I'm just looking for some advice really. I'm 27m and just feel really stuck career wise. I didn't do very well in school and...

      Apologies if this isn't in line with the spirit of the group/site but I'm just looking for some advice really.

      I'm 27m and just feel really stuck career wise. I didn't do very well in school and it took me a lot longer than everyone else to figure out myself. I have a degree in a redundant subject (very niche, no value in any career). Before COVID I was finally able to get my live music photography work off the ground but then that came crashing down. Other than that I mostly only have experience in retail and hospitality, and I've been a manager in both fields.

      I'm looking for a work from home job for multiple reasons, mostly customer success/account management jobs and have had a few interviews too. I even got down to the final 2 for a promising one a few months ago. Every single job basically said that it was only down to my lack of experience compared to other candidates, but they did like me.

      What is there I can actually do to aide this? I'm just worried that the older I get with only retail management work the harder it will be for me to start a real career path. The whole thing is getting me really down and I just don't know what to do.

      Thanks.

      26 votes
    7. Is there a glass ceiling for ethnic minorities to enter leadership positions? Evidence from an Australian field experiment with over 12,000 job applications.

      https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1048984322000583 Abstract We submitted over 12,000 job applications, to over 4,000 job advertisements, to investigate hiring discrimination...

      https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1048984322000583

      Abstract

      We submitted over 12,000 job applications, to over 4,000 job advertisements, to investigate hiring discrimination against six ethnic groups for leadership positions.

      For leadership positions, applicants with English names received 26.8% of positive responses for their job applications, while applicants with non-English names received 11.3% of positive responses. This means ethnic minorities received 57.4% fewer positive responses than applicants with English names for leadership positions despite identical resumes.

      For non-leadership positions, applicants with English names received 21.2% of positive responses for their job applications, while applicants with non-English names received 11.6% of positive responses. This means ethnic minorities received 45.3% fewer positive responses for non-leadership positions despite identical resumes.

      Ethnic discrimination for leadership positions was even more pronounced when the advertised job required customer contact.

      25 votes
    8. Folks in the biotech industry, what do you do and what is it like?

      I've been doing a postdoc in molecular biology in academia for a little while now, and getting ready to take next step. I'm looking into industry careers, but it's difficult to know what they...

      I've been doing a postdoc in molecular biology in academia for a little while now, and getting ready to take next step. I'm looking into industry careers, but it's difficult to know what they entail since we don't often get exposed to them.

      If you or someone you know works in biotech, I'd love to hear about it.

      How did you get into it? What do you enjoy or not enjoy? Where do you see the industry heading? What are some of the positions like?

      15 votes
    9. How are you actually supposed to network / LinkedIn?

      I've been having a particularly rough time finding a new job in the field I graduated in. I'm doing pretty much everything most job sites have told me but networking is kinda hard. I don't...

      I've been having a particularly rough time finding a new job in the field I graduated in. I'm doing pretty much everything most job sites have told me but networking is kinda hard.

      I don't currently work in my field so I don't know anyone that would be particularly useful. Everyone I know is already aware of my situation and some of them have even found leads for me but no luck yet.

      I have gone to events related to organizations I'm interested in and spoken to people there but it feels super weird to just approach people and tell them I'm looking for a job.

      Similarly Linkedin is super foreign to me. This post is literally the most I've ever interacted with a social media site. What do I do once I open that app? Am I supposed to just stalk people on there that might hire me someday? I tried joining a "group" but it's been pending for a week now.

      59 votes
    10. How do I figure out what it is I want to do with my career?

      This week marks my 8th year of working in IT, and I have been feeling more and more that I am ready to move onto something different. Both my undergraduate and masters degrees were in the arts...

      This week marks my 8th year of working in IT, and I have been feeling more and more that I am ready to move onto something different. Both my undergraduate and masters degrees were in the arts (Japanese, and Linguistics respectively), and I just sort of fell into IT as a job because I was always good with computers and it seemed like it had a pretty great pay-to-effort ratio. Now that I am approaching the decade mark, I feel like it's not what I want to do any more. Even my current job (which I once described as my dream role) has lost its sheen, and the prospect of spending the rest of my working life having to study and learn new technologies, and keep up with the latest developments just fills me with dread. I don't want to be in my fifties and reading endless documentation to try and understand why MacJibbleGPT is now the preferred way to skilter a virtualised quallock. In short, I would like to relegate my computing to the level of "hobby."


      The problem is, I really don't know what I would like to do instead. The last time I had an idea of a career that I wanted to follow was as a teenager when I wanted to be a doctor, but I didn't get the grades. Since then I've just sort of fallen from thing to thing, and been a bit directionless, just assuming that IT would be enough to carry me through my working life, and focus on my hobbies for fulfilment. Well my hobbies are now very fulfilling, but they just make the slog of the work day even harder.

      So how do I go about figuring out what it is that I want to do? I have done a few quizzes online (via reputable organisations), I've contemplated the jobs of my friends and family, and I still just feel like nothing is inspiring me. There are a few problems that I need to try and work around with finding something new as well:

      • At least for the next 6 years or so, I am geographically fairly restricted to being within a reasonable driving distance to my daughter's home
      • Shit is expensive, so I need to minimise the hit to my salary
      • I do not have the money to get a degree or similar vocational qualification
      • I would like stable hours, and not to work weekends or evenings (this is more job-specific than it is career-specific)
      • Hybrid working is preferable to full-time in the office or full-time WFH (ditto)

      So I ask my fellow Tilderen, have you ever pivoted into a completely different career after several years of investing your time into another? How did it go? How did you go about figuring out what you wanted to do instead? What advice would you have for me, a nearly-31-year-old who still has most of her working life ahead of her?

      30 votes
    11. How can an operations manager break into tech?

      I'm a few years out of college and just landed my first "career" job last fall as an operations manager at a non-tech company. I enjoy the work and am learning a lot, but the work/life balance...

      I'm a few years out of college and just landed my first "career" job last fall as an operations manager at a non-tech company. I enjoy the work and am learning a lot, but the work/life balance leaves a bit to be desired with very limited PTO days. My girlfriend and I want to move to the Denver area about a year from now and I want to try to get a job in the tech industry doing operations or project management.

      Have any of you been in my position before? What kind of jobs can someone with about 2 years of operations management experience find to get them on the project manager track at a tech company?

      7 votes
    12. How did you make the career pivot?

      This is a general ask for those that successfully made pivots in their overall careers. What was your experience like? Why did you make it? Did you feel like when you made the pivot you were...

      This is a general ask for those that successfully made pivots in their overall careers. What was your experience like? Why did you make it? Did you feel like when you made the pivot you were starting from the bottom? or did you gradually change roles within a single company to ease yourself into the transition?

      I'm currently trying to make a change of career (hence the question). My goal is to pivot out of a market research role into a software engineer focused role. Worry constantly creeps in about feasibility. I make good money in the role I'm in so could I take a possible hit to my salary if I had to start in a junior role? I turn 29 this year, and part of me worries if I'm too far down the path to make such a big change. Now, I've tempered some of the fear as I know I could apply my knowledge of research to create tools I've seen the industry in need of. I've dabbled in common languages like HTML, CSS, Lua, JS, Python, and R during my time in research.

      Now, I think I've compiled the 3 hardest questions regarding my specific apprehension of moving into software development:

      1. Is there like a collectively agreed all-around language that everyone should start with?
      2. Is there a formal way to learn a coding language?
      3. Even with such little experience, could I still build a solid career in the field?

      I don't expect anyone to answer those last three if they don't want to, but I'd love to hear about any and all experiences with career pivots.

      22 votes
    13. Looking for advice for starting out as a freelance software engineer

      Beginning of next year I am setting out as an independent software engineering consultant. As such I am interested in hearing from others who have already done something similar! I have been...

      Beginning of next year I am setting out as an independent software engineering consultant. As such I am interested in hearing from others who have already done something similar! I have been working as a developer and team lead for more than 10 years of which the last 5 have been focused mostly on the .Net stack. Now I want to expand my horizons a bit more, preferably with a new domain or another tech stack.

      What are some suggestions/advice you'd give someone just starting down this path? Anything I should avoid doing? Anything I should definitely do? I suppose the specifics will vary a bit by country, but are there some general things I should be thinking about?

      Oh, if you happen to have a need for a senior developer/tech lead, give me a ping!

      9 votes
    14. I need career advice

      Long story short I am a web developer that currently makes more money than I've ever made in my life to this point. The downside is that my benefits package is sub-par. Very few vacation days, no...

      Long story short I am a web developer that currently makes more money than I've ever made in my life to this point. The downside is that my benefits package is sub-par. Very few vacation days, no health insurance (though we do get $ on our checks to go toward costs), fairly bare-bones retirement plan, etc. I also feel kind of aimless at this job. There is no clear path for raises or promotions. It's too small of a company for that.

      I got an offer today for a job with a company that a former manager of mine works at (We both left our previous jobs around the same time, so no poaching concerns there). It's an opportunity to change my specialty from backend development (databases, server-side code) to frontend development (HTML, CSS, JS). I've always enjoyed frontend development more than backend. Feel free to giggle about this terminology because it's definitely ridiculous. The job basically resolves all of my benefits issues. Unlimited vacation, pretty good health insurance, and a more robust retirement plan. There are also very clear paths for raises/promotions. In fact one of the first things you do when you get hired is sit down with your manager and department head and plot out a career track for yourself. So in my case I'm aiming for team management or something along those lines in a few years. So they would cater my training and promotions around that. There's a guaranteed yearly raise, plus a nice 5% bonus at end of the year.

      So what's the problem? Because the second job seems perfect, right? Well the second job pays nearly 12% less a year. So what's the problem? Because that's an insane drop in pay, so clearly stay where I'm at, right? Well I was told by my former manager (and potentially new department head) that the plan would be to fast-track me into something closer to my current salary once I'm there for a few months and start excelling at my job. And I trust this guy because he fought for me to get raises twice when I worked under him before. It's rare to work under someone who will go to bat for you, and he was always that guy for me and I've no reason to think he wouldn't be again.

      Because the way I see it, once I get a raise or promotion under my belt I should be pretty close to where I'm at now, but with substantially better benefits. And in a place with more of a future for me than my current job.

      I just really don't know what to do here. I've "made a decision" in my head about a dozen times today, going back and forth between options. I kind of feel like it's worth taking the hit in the short term to be working at a place that will pay off better in the long term. Not just financially, but I'll get to broaden my skill set and actually have a concrete plan for progressing in my career.

      Looking for any advice, or opinions, or whatever. I'm completely torn here.

      edit -- Just wanted to thank everyone here. I decided to accept the job offer. My wife and I are working on a plan to weather the loss of income. Next step is writing the resignation letter....which always sucks. I hate disappointing people and it's a small company that I'm leaivng so my departure will be felt.

      14 votes
    15. Anyone ever get an international job?

      First off, fuck job applications. It's an awful and tedious charade. Creating accounts on hundreds of websites for the resume parser to not work and have to manually upload that all again, to then...

      First off, fuck job applications. It's an awful and tedious charade. Creating accounts on hundreds of websites for the resume parser to not work and have to manually upload that all again, to then write a cover letter that's skimmed at best, for a word to be missing from the resume which their detection tech passes before you're given a real shot.

      But regardless that's not why I'm here. I'm in the process of applying to jobs, but for the first time I'm applying to jobs internationally (I'm US based). Have any of y'all applied for and received jobs abroad? What was successful and what wasn't? I'm primarily looking into pharmaceutical research or pharmacovigilance/drug safety because that's where English language jobs are in my area of study, but hope to eventually become fluent enough in a different language so I can move back into infection prevention or disease surveillance.

      16 votes
    16. Canadian colleges: Lethbridge vs. Manitoba for Computer Science?

      Hi everyone, I recently got accepted into University and Lethbridge and University of Manitoba for Computer Science second degree. Both of them have co-op programs, but I don't know which would be...

      Hi everyone,

      I recently got accepted into University and Lethbridge and University of Manitoba for Computer Science second degree.

      Both of them have co-op programs, but I don't know which would be better for me. Ideally, I want to go the uni with a better job market for CS, so Lethbridge seems to be the winner since it is close to Calgary. But I am also looking to immigrate to Canada in the future, and I know that Manitoba has easier requirements for Permanent Residence nominations.

      I am in a bit of a bind, and I am trying to gather as much information as I can before I make a decision. Anything you have to share would be much appreciated. Thanks!

      P.S. I know Toronto and Vancouver are much better places for jobs, but sadly I missed the deadline to apply to most of the colleges there. I do plan on applying for jobs in those cities though.

      7 votes
    17. I need life/career advice

      Hi friends. I need your advice. For the past 7 years I've been self-employed as a writer. I self-publish books on Amazon and other platforms and I've had a lot of successes as well as a lot of...

      Hi friends.

      I need your advice. For the past 7 years I've been self-employed as a writer. I self-publish books on Amazon and other platforms and I've had a lot of successes as well as a lot of failures. It's been amazing and weird and fun and stressful. But I'm just not where I hoped I'd be this far into my career. Being a professional artist is really hard.

      I write under a pen name and the stuff I write--while I do think is good and I am proud of it--it's also slightly embarrassing. I don't share it with anybody, friends or family. Most people understand when I tell them why I can't share, but I know over the years my close friends have felt a little jilted that they don't get to know my secret.

      I've dabbled with leaving professional writing behind, but after so long it feels like a daunting prospect to get back into the job market. My background is in IT consulting (6 years), sysadmin and jack-of-all-trades type stuff. So I understand managing servers, virtualization, networking, troubleshooting, and so on. I do have a minor background in programming, and last year I spent a lot of time learning Python, I learned Docker, I learned Git, I spent some time diving deeper into SQL. I'm skilled in Linux (and love it, actually). I don't have any certs. This past summer, I applied to a handful of local IT jobs (I left the big city years ago and now live in a very small market, almost 3 hours away from a larger city) and didn't hear anything back. I spoke to a recruiter who wasn't very helpful at all beyond saying he thought my resume looked good. I disagree, though... I don't think my resume is that good at all.

      I just don't know what to do, though. I'm 40 years old. I've always wanted to be a writer, and I'm doing it. But I'm not writing the stuff I really want to write, and it's hard to pivot. Partly because of the sunk-cost fallacy, but also because starting a new pen name is very difficult and can take years to really gain traction. A lot of days, even though I work hard and push, I still feel like I'm failing. I'm not making the kind of money I'd like. The last two COVID years were pretty hard and I didn't work as much as I should have.

      My partner works at a small company on the web development team, and I'm considering trying to get a meeting with her boss (who actually really likes me) about possibly getting some kind of junior developer position. They're currently having a tough time finding developers because their pay isn't really competitive with the current market and they don't offer work from home. They mainly do PHP for client websites, and while that's not my jam, it would at least be a foot in the door for a development role. I learned to program in high school, understand a lot of the fundamentals, and had a blast with Python last year (it came very easy to me). I taught myself HTML in the 90s, know CSS, and have some basic PHP experience from my WordPress days.

      When I think about having a tech job again, I really just envision being able to work in Linux full-time, work on backend problems, and just solve higher-level issues. Not really a client-facing position. In a development role, I really don't know what I'd prefer. Just command-line, backend stuff maybe. I don't really care for frontend UX stuff. I'm most concerned with a good work-life balance, being able to leave my job at the office, and feel like I'm learning and doing and helping. I've got no FAANG aspirations or any desire to be some hot shot. I just want a chill life with chill people.

      But I'm really just feeling lost. What do you think I should do?

      12 votes
    18. Help me think about the next step in my life

      Hello, I am a late 20s person from Europe who works part-time at a low-skilled job and is nearing completion of a masters in Financial Mathematics (FM). I also have an undergraduate degree in...

      Hello, I am a late 20s person from Europe who works part-time at a low-skilled job and is nearing completion of a masters in Financial Mathematics (FM). I also have an undergraduate degree in Economics and a post-graduate degree in Finance.

      Previously I’ve worked full-time as an IT consultant, in R&D at an asset management company and in operational risk at an investment bank. I stopped working full-time in early 2018 due to mental health issues such as depression, anxiety disorder and possible Asperger’s. But even before then it was obvious my health was deteriorating and I actually got fired from my second job partially due to these problems. Since then I’ve been slowly working (or at least trying to) on my health, which has improved substantially but not as much as I would like. So in early 2018, with way too much time in my hands, I decided to get the part-time job to partially offset my expenses and also decided to go back to school to study FM.

      I went back to school for multiple reasons. I was tired of doing work that was not very technical or quantitative. While working on my health I realized that I don’t do well with work that is subjective, unstructured or involves little interaction (for example doing a lot of reading, specially when I have no clear goal). I did a little programming at previous jobs and more during the masters. So, I can say with some confidence that I enjoyed it. But going back to the FM masters: it is very technical, I was fascinated and curious about it plus it has an excellent track record with regards to employment prospects. I also considered “going back” and doing an undergraduate degree in computer science but decided that it was just too long (minimum 3 years).

      So with this “introduction” out of the way let’s get to the heart of this post. I don’t know what to do after I finish my masters. Of course I could just apply for jobs related with what I am studying. However, I think I really want to try working in the technical side of IT. I will admit I don’t know much about the different aspects and careers in IT but I find it interesting. Every time I was doing non-technical work I just wanted to understand and do the work of my technical colleagues. I think it both better suits my personality and aligns well with my long term goals of increased freedom and flexibility (IT generally pays well and you can do a lot of work remotely). I have this idea of maybe becoming a freelancer but I can understand that is not realistic in the short-term. So, working in IT inside a company is probably my best bet at this time. Regardless, another objective of mine is to be able to work less than 40h per week. I think it would be great for me, specially health-wise.

      I have to say I got more excited about my ideas when I saw this post here on Tildes: https://tildes.net/~comp/quj/would_any_tilderino_be_interested_in_tutoring_me_in_programming. I am willing to put in the work and it would be awesome to have some tutoring. Another point I took from that post is that IT is a very big field and I honestly don’t know specifically what I want to do inside that space. However, I do know I don’t like dealing with UI or graphical/design aspects.

      I guess I will finish by asking direct questions to help people structure their answers around (but if you want to talk about something else I wrote, be free to do so):

      • First of all, what technical areas within IT do you think would suit me? If it’s not much of a hassle, please provide a brief description of what people actually do in those areas.
      • Is it realistic to start working as a technical IT freelancer and learn as I go? Or are the odds very slim?
      • Alternatively, if I decide to take the "safer" and more probable route of nailing a technical IT job, what should I do to put myself in a better position to attain that goal?

      Thank you =)

      10 votes
    19. How do you get a promotion when you work in a remote office?

      Some years ago, I wrote a book about telecommuting, including a section about the reasons people don't want to be remote workers. High on the list was, "It's too hard to move up in the company"...

      Some years ago, I wrote a book about telecommuting, including a section about the reasons people don't want to be remote workers. High on the list was, "It's too hard to move up in the company" because if you're out of sight, you're out of mind.

      Well, now suddenly nearly everybody is a telecommuter, whether or not they like the idea. So that particular skill is particularly relevant. And I've been assigned an article on "How to 'manage up' when you work from home." I'd like your input.

      My article is meant to compile practical how-to tips for people working from home on “how to stay on your boss's radar.” What advice do you have to share?

      Ideally: Give me a bullet point (“Do XYZ”), why (“It accomplishes this”), and perhaps an anecdote sharing how it made a difference.

      Please don’t expend energy telling me why it’s important, or what the barriers are. Take that as a given. I’m looking for solid “Do this” suggestions.

      17 votes