taking stock of my career decisions

I work in technology. Enterprisy, mercenarial, tech. It’s a fairly common path for apt, nerdy, hungry, boys. It wasn’t what I grew up wanting to be.

When I was a teenager, I liked the same things as everyone else. Bewbs, trucks, bikes, hammers. more accurately, I liked playing with bewbs, trucks, bikes, hammers. I wanted a career that would let me keep playing with these wonderful, compelling things.

So, in my early twenties, I dabbled in the trades. in England, “the trades” refers to manual craftsmanship, usually carried out by boys. Demolition is a trade. House-painting, snow-ploughing, grass-cutting, kitchen-fitting, bench-building, brick-laying, metal-working, tyre-changing, truck-driving, engine-rebuilding. I tried my hand at all of these. With the exception of brick-laying, the skills required to be considered capable in these disciplines, are quite often coded into the y chromosome. Stags don’t go to school, to learn rutting. It is an inherent, behavioural characteristic, baked into their genes. Snow-ploughing is the same. Humans without the y chromosome can also plough snow, but they are statistically, less inclined to do so. Brick-laying smarts are not an inherent, genetic predisposition. Giving birth to a brick-layer is the genetic equivalent of a mother rabbit giving birth to Wolverine. It’s unusual. I’m not wolverine. My brick piles lacked structural integrity and were not in the easy-on-the-eyes category.

this is wolverine

When my more successful “craftsmanships” afforded me the opportunity to go to university, I went. I was too undereducated for the Civil and Coastal, BEng course I had applied for, but the Information Technology disciplines would take any warm bum. And so, I became a Bachelor of Science.

When folks find that you can make computers do things that turn CPU cycles into money, they give you money to do more of the same. Enter, the mercenary. In tech, you don’t look for work. You concentrate on doing hard tech things and work comes looking for you. You just set the price. There are lots of market factors, but I did all-right. Just like any other industry, the good-money is in the bad places. Brokers, traders, bankers, pornographers, gamblers. That’s who to work for, if you want bigger piles of cash. I wanted, so I did. For more than ten years, I prostituted my mind to big corporations. I turned up early for work and left late. I worked far away from home and lived in hotel rooms. I learned that flying is just commuting. I gained some tech skills. I almost never had to look for work.

Here are some things I learned:

  • Making more money, doesn’t make you richer. Spending less does. I didn’t. I’m not.
  • Families don’t need more money as much as they need dad around. In hindsight, I wish I had spent more time with my kids growing up. In spite of this, they’re incredibly, smart, well adjusted adults now. Mostly, thanks to their mum.
  • Fulfilment at work comes from doing things that are compatible with your ethos. Not from earning extra, for doing things that are incompatible with your ethos.
  • Travelling for work is mega-fun and much more sensible than travelling on your own dime. Especially when you prioritise experiences over work, when you’re somewhere new and exciting.
  • Sometimes horrible organisations have awesome, wonderful people working for them.

There are lots of things, I haven’t figured out yet. These are just some thoughts I had over my morning coffee.