Job thoughts

I’ve been in the same job for 8 years now. Same company, same team, same role. I have been promoted to Senior in that time, but that’s it.

I had some things going on outside of life in that time, along with covid happening, but it is also a reflection on prioritising comfort over change and also of the sort of guilt I feel at not completing a job and “abandoning” something halfway through. A lot of what I do is very specialised and tends to end up with one person on the project doing the actual analysis. So I often felt that I couldn’t leave until the project was complete. But then other projects would start before the first had ended, and I ended up with this chain of never finding the right time to quit.

I can go into the guilt, and what might cause that, in another post, but recently I took what is for me a big step, and told my manager I am going to start applying for other roles. Primarily the idea was to apply internally, but my thoughts on that are already changing.

Anyway, like many things in my life that I put off for a long time and have visions of how terribly they’re going to go, it turned out to be fine. Of course, it sounds completely reasonable to announce after 8 years in a role that you are after a change, so my manager seemed to understand, and also asked if there’s anything in the current role they could change to help me find something else internally.

As a quick aside, they would prefer if I stayed internal because I have a lot of specialist knowledge; but being relied on for that knowledge is another reason I feel a bit stuck, and a bit bored, and a bit guilty. I don’t really want to be the go-to person for this specialist knowledge for the rest of my life, and it already leads to me performing iterations of the same analyses over time!

Anyway, my thoughts are evolving on the whole thing, and I am a bit stuck on how to find a way forward, so I thought writing it down might help me.

Just to note, everything I say below comes from place of privilege: I have a good job, that I do often enjoy, is convenient to get to, is an overall positive contributor to society. So I am lucky. And I don’t want to come across as ungrateful, but nonetheless, I feel things need to change.

I am bored of working 9-5 (or more like 9:30-6:30/7), 5 days a week. Just having evenings and weekends to fit in relaxing, fitness, hobbies, family and friends, reading, hiking, etc. The relentlessness has got to me. Maybe it’s low level burnout, I don’t know. And I don’t feel I’m growing at work, or have learned new skills, and I don’t think my boss brings out the best in me, and I don’t feel the job plays to my strengths.

There’s a lot in there, I know! Some of it is on me. Have I pushed to learn those new skills, have I been ambitious and tried to excel? No, not always. I can coast; I am not ambitious; I’m not always the hardest worker. But there’s the idea of being motivated by your job, by the new things you are learning and building.

Anyway, the overall important point is that something needs to change. I have taken steps to start that change, and I have actually applied for two internal roles already (quite different to my current role), but have been unsuccessful in both applications.

I think I need to take a step back though, and not rush into a new internal role purely for the sake of change.

As I see it, I have a few options; some easy, some more uncertain.

1. Ask to go down to 4 days a week: use the extra day to explore my career, or for fitness or hiking or developing other hobbies such as this blogging, or writing/making music – this could be the easiest, as I think my boss would be inclined to say yes, even though we always have so much work to do that projects never go as fast as my manager would like
2. Go on sabbatical: this has recently become a policy at my work, so could be an option. But I don’t know if I want to come back to the same role. And I think the prep to leave would be quite stressful (which is different to if you are actually leaving the job completely I suspect)
3. Move internally: again, a sensible and potentially easier option, because I know the company and can leverage that knowledge. But the two rejections show me that I need to build more skills if I want to move roles. Plus, I think overall there is a boredom around being in the same company for 8 years. But perhaps this would disappear if I move from the current role into something more exciting
4. Move externally, to a similar role to what I currently have: this might not be as easy as it sounds: the job market is not great out there at the moment. Plus I kind of feel I’m bored of my whole job area! When I look at external roles similar to my current role I don’t feel much motivation. Quite the opposite, I think, “god, not more of that thing”! Again, could just be a result of being in the same role for 8 years
5. Career break: potentially the most uncertain but most rewarding. Stopping work without another job lined up. Taking the time to try to plan the next step. But also to take a rest, to see if it is a bit of burnout I’m experiencing. Take some time to travel, to write, to explore career ideas. But the scary side would be to not have an income, to feel a loss of the societal value I believe and hope I am contributing, to become unemployable. I would have to plan this option in fine detail, because unfortunately I am not the most personally motivated of people. I generally need a job where someone tells me to do something and if I don’t do it I get in trouble (although that might not be true; for example, no one is forcing me to write this blog!)

Anyway, those are the options I see at the moment. As it’s nearly my bedtime, I think I will break them down further in another post – the last option in particular could fit over many posts. But I’ll leave things there for now.