Who has made a career change?

Fiddleback said:
I did a complete career change a bit over a year ago. I was an electrical engieer, and hated it. The work was OK, but the constant studying was getting old, and the layoffs really sucked. So, last year they proposed cutting our hours in half (and pay) so they could keep us on. I just went and scoured for ANY job I could find. I got hired in a company that does metal castings. (I have a thing for metal). We had to tighten the belt a bit, but after a year, we're better, and I really scored a cool job. This company treats people like gold.

I dunno. Don't let work define you. My passion is my knives. Those are the stories I will tell.
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Now that was very lyrical, young man! Made me smile. :)

I'm a scientist. Seems like I always have been ... and always will be.

But it can be used in many ways. I spent decades in the military -- science, project management, program management, test and evaluation, system engineering, intelligence, teaching, executive support, command, acquisition. Today, I'm a peculiar sort of aerospace engineer/scientist.

I've made a career ... out of an ever-changing array of mini-careers.

It's not so bad. :)
 
Wow what a great bunch of posts. IMHO Life is way too short too always worry about the what ifs!! Follow your heart, gut, bliss, inner voice or whatever you want to call it. Most people know what will make them happy/content but they don't act on it because of expectations from family/others or because we don't believe we can do it or that it isn't socially acceptable.

Poppycock -- there are no rules when it come to careers and timing or age. Do what YOU need/want to make yourself happy and content.

Personally -- straight out of university I worked my way up to VP in a commercial mortgage lending company (construction & land financing etc) Doing the big $$$ deals was fun and kinda satisfying but I wasn't feeling intellectually challenged.

I went back to university and became a Psychologist -- haven't looked back since. Love what I do -- that I get to keep learning all the time and that I get to help people, especially young people.

I just read a great book along those lines that I highly recommend --

U-Turn: What If You Woke Up One Morning and Realized You Were Living the Wrong Life? by Bruce Grierson

Editorial Review From Booklist
What Grierson dubs a wake-up call others may deem a religious epiphany. Either way, it means the call to live an authentic life. For this richly anecdotal book, Grierson interviewed dozens who have heard such a call, religious or otherwise. He asks why wake-up call recipients make U-turns in their lives, and about forming, creating, and sometimes reinventing one's identity. Some of those he profiles are famous (e.g., astronaut Edgar Mitchell, who underwent a profound religious experience in space), but as many and perhaps most are ordinary men and women who dared to turn their lives around, such as the Harvard psychologist who, in an afternoon, completely changed his mind about his life's work and how he wished to spend the rest of his life. Grierson also looks at the neuroscience behind what he calls the aha moment. What all the U-turners he presents seem to have in common is the ability to take a leap of faith and make a commitment to an uncertain future. June Sawyers

http://www.amazon.com/U-Turn-Mornin...=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1224192746&sr=1-2


What Color is Your Parachute -- is also a great resource to use as a starting point.

http://www.amazon.com/What-Color-Your-Parachute-2005/dp/1580086152/ref=cm_lmf_tit_4
 
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This is one of the best threads I've ever read.

One piece of the equation that will help immensely - Pray :).
 
myright said:
Great quote. My wife is stealing it for her scrapbook :)
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Glad to know it helped. :D

Beyond career changes over the past two years I've gone from being a single guy living out of rubbermaid bins and duffel bags staying nowhere very long to being 100% domesticated and newly married.

I told one of my friends that "I am trying to change the soundtrack of my life from being a CD by Tool to a CD by Dave Matthews Band."
 
I'm a 37 year old high school Latin teacher. I didn't do a major career switch, but about eight years ago I made a minor switch when I switched from college teaching to high school instead. I find it much more rewarding because the way to keep my particular subject alive is by teaching, not by focusing on research. The college where I worked actively discouraged faculty from putting too much work into teaching (I know they aren't all like that, but many are). I also enjoy having much more of a rapport and involvement with the students in a high school setting, and it is satisfying to "make a difference," as cliche as that sounds.

The pay isn't great (nor was it at the college level), but it is enough for modest comfort. The profession is fun and rewarding most of the time and rarely unpleasant. The trick is to carefully pick a school that's a good fit (aside from the obvious things like enjoying your subject and the kids).

Also, teaching is highly recession-resistant as far as professions go . . .
 
Ironically I worked 10 hours today, came home and am still logged into work....

I don't mind because it's not all the time, it's actually pretty rare.

Lots of good advice here and some great reccomendations on books. I'll be buying and reading them. Right now I'm in the middle of some Management books since I took a new position managing a bunch of people.
 
I'm also confused about this math...could you give an example of a 300% pay cut?


I am in the process of a career change now, also age 31.

I have a fair amount of schooling already done but it'll be five more years before I finish, very long road left to go! But you know, I am not interested in spending my life doing something I don't enjoy. I would much rather sacrifice 5 years of pay now and delay my earning power by five years and end up doing something that actually INTERESTS me.
 
Here are mine:
LEO from '91 to '99
factory from 2000 to 2006
knives from 2006 present...
and building on that by going to Blacksmith school....
 
I'm sitting here watching my kid sleep in his swing and my dog laying next to him. My wife is sitting down reading a book......

I really do have a great life - I don't want to give off the impression that I'm not happy with my life, because I am very happy, I'm just searching for what job/career would really make me want to jump out of bed in the moring and work.

My brother is a principal and talks all the time about how doesn't view his position as a job. He enjoys going to work and being around people, he's a great problem solver so it works well for him.
 
I graduated college and took a high paying, high stress sales job. I was engaged and had to move away from family and fiancee to take the job. We fought endlessly over the phone. One day it struck me that everyone I worked with, while financially successful, was divorced at least once and had had at least 1 heart attack. My fiancee moved down to be with me, and I was much happier, except that I was leaving for work at 5am and not getting home before 9pm. My clients called me at all hours of the day, 7 days a week, and I had to drop things to go deal with them.

Shortly after we got married it dawned on me that I had at least another 40 years of work ahead of me, and that seemed like an awfully long time to be unhappy and hate what I did on a daily basis. We decided to move back home. I wanted to be a firefighter (someone mentioned 9/11, and I must admit it changed my life as well, but that's another story), but in the interim I took a crappy retail management position to pay the bills. I was unhappy there too, but I used that to fuel me. When I didn't feel like running, I thought about being stuck there, and went out anyway. You get the picture.

In the long run, it all panned out. I got the FF/EMT job, and I love it. I'll never make as much as I could have had I stayed in sales (well, assuming this current economy didn't destroy my sales) but at the end of the day I know I have made a difference, even if it was just letting some little kid sit in the rig wearing my helmet.

You mentioned the paramedic training paid by the county, consider volunteering with a local FD, or paying for and taking the classes on your own at night. Show the drive and it will help in an interview, especially if openings are few and far between...

Sorry for the long winded response. Good luck and keep us posted man!
 
I'm 41 and seem to change careers/industries every 5-6 years. I don't know if I get bored or just like excitement of learning something new. I started in the military, then fashion, then consulting and now retail. The one thing I can say is do something you love and if you don't, find it. No point in wasting time doing something you don't believe in. BTW - my resume now rocks and I make 20 times what I did in the military so it works out for me.....
 
You gotta be happy with your choices, switching careers is a lot of work, but it can be very satisfying also.

I started by going into the Army after college. My Dad was career Army, and one of my sisters and her husband is also. It wasn't for me, so I got out after my time was up. Then I went back to school, was going to get a master's in Electrical Engineering (my degree is in Physics), and had to take a bunch of classes, one of them math, and liked it so much that I switched and got a master's in Applied Math. With that, you can basically teach or be a programmer, so I've been programming all these years in various industries.

It's hard to find a challenging industry, believe it or not, and you end up working for people who have no clue what you are doing. Every few years you have to shake things up a bit or find a different area to work in, but the need is there if you can find it. The most fun was programming the software for aircraft simulators. To test it, you had to fly the sim. Darn it....

Hang in there, let us know how it goes! This has been a great thread!
 
I havent really made a career change yet, but I did change my life in another way. I used to live near the largest city in Finland, Helsinki. I worked in the city, and spent my free time either trapped inside the four walls of my small apartment, or walking around the shitty little parks. I had to drive around the Helsinki area because of my job, and I spent hours in my car, in traffic jams etc.

Me and my GF realized, that the whole setup made no sense. Why live in a shamelessly overpriced little apartment, and suffer from the life in a city, when at the same time the "good" things in there, i.e. shops, movies and crap like that, meant less and less to us. So we moved to a small town of 10 000 inhabitants, roughly 100 miles from Helsinki. I got a job not so different from the one I used to have, except now I dont have to drive around. We've lived here for 1,5 years now, and couldn't be happier.

About changing careers, the thought has occured to me. I've worked with computers most of my life now, and Im slowly realizing, that maybe a human being is not supposed to sit 8 hours a day, staring at a 2D landscape from a very close distance.
 
I worked in the Telecommunications field from the time i left school at 16 until i was 35.Then i was told by my employer during their "restructuring" that i didn't have the skills that they were looking for.:confused: I had many "personality clashes" with my boss and apparently me not bending over for him somehow stripped me of my 14 years of skills.This happened three months after my 10 year relationship ended and one month after finding out i was to become a Father.I went from $25 dollars an hour with as much overtime as i wanted to $9.50 an hour doing any kind of crap i could find.Not easy paying a Mortgage and eating on that sort of money.Six months later i went for a job at a dairy factory that my Brother in law put me onto and now 4 years on i am a fulltime Cheesemaker.I work 12 hour days,4 days on,4 days off and make more money than i ever did and only have to work six months of the year.I get six weeks leave a year and never have to take it as the four days off is like a holiday anyway,and i get to spend four days out of every eight with my Daughter.I wish i had discovered Cheese years ago.
 
STEELWHORE said:
I worked in the Telecommunications field from the time i left school at 16 until i was 35.Then i was told by my employer during their "restructuring" that i didn't have the skills that they were looking for.:confused: I had many "personality clashes" with my boss and apparently me not bending over for him somehow stripped me of my 14 years of skills.This happened three months after my 10 year relationship ended and one month after finding out i was to become a Father.I went from $25 dollars an hour with as much overtime as i wanted to $9.50 an hour doing any kind of crap i could find.Not easy paying a Mortgage and eating on that sort of money.Six months later i went for a job at a dairy factory that my Brother in law put me onto and now 4 years on i am a fulltime Cheesemaker.I work 12 hour days,4 days on,4 days off and make more money than i ever did and only have to work six months of the year.I get six weeks leave a year and never have to take it as the four days off is like a holiday anyway,and i get to spend four days out of every eight with my Daughter.I wish i had discovered Cheese years ago.
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You are officially the first cheesemaker I know:)

There is something to be said for the ability to spend time with your family. I enjoy the comforts of 5 weeks vacation and virtually no travelling with work. I also have the ability to work from home in a pinch.
 
Well boys............... I'm pulling the trigger......

After about 10 years of cubicle hell I've decided to do it. I'm applying to a local PD. Wish me luck boys!

I've got a great wife that is going to support me through this. If it happens I'll be taking a 50% paycut :( but I'll be doing something that will give me some self gratification. We've been banking as much money as we can and will now go into operation anti-spend in preparation for the paycut. One step at a time...

Thanks for all the advice and thoughts earlier on in the thread.
 
Good luck Right. Now i know that if i would need a out of jail pass i shall call you lol.
used to run an auto shop for 22 years. We sold the property 10 months ago. Tryed to open another buss but it never got real busy. So on top of that i started to sell phone service for the phone company.. Would see how that goes... Many times a change is a very good thing...

Sasha
 
Thanks for the words of encouragement.

The money is going to be the hardest part... 50% paycut is A LOT of money to us.
 
I can see what you mean Right. But sometimes you need to take down the house to build a better one. Im sure you have a reason to for the change.
Had an old customer told me once.. If you do what you did...... You would get what you got. It stuck with me. So every time i dont like something i try to change something i do. My money is on you that you would do well.. When you finish building the new house you would be as happy as clam... Life is good.

Sasha
 
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