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Topic: Job thread (Read 1002036 times)
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Draegan
Terracotta Army
Posts: 10043
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My current employer is a french company and I get less vacation than what is mandated by law in France. But I actually get 4 weeks after a year and a half.
My last employer was a 3rd week after 4-5 years. Another reason why I left.
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Cyrrex
Terracotta Army
Posts: 10603
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I get 6 weeks mandated by law as of Day 1. Suck it.
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"...maybe if you cleaned the piss out of the sunny d bottles under your desks and returned em, you could upgrade you vid cards, fucken lusers.." - Grunk
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Rasix
Moderator
Posts: 15024
I am the harbinger of your doom!
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I usually get 24 days off a year. 4 weeks + some personal choice holidays. We also end up getting early outs before holidays and usually some management days off post large releases. I also got 6 extra days for spending 3 weeks of December in Manchester, UK.
I do wish there was more tech here and it was more competitive, but the cost of living is low. I'm not sure I could rent a backyard pop-up tent in San Francisco for what I pay for my house.
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-Rasix
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Paelos
Contributor
Posts: 27075
Error 404: Title not found.
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I get 6 weeks mandated by law as of Day 1. Suck it. My problem would be if they gave me 6 weeks, I'd have a problem taking that much vacation and still getting my job done. That's the very nature of accounting though, because it never ever stops.
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CPA, CFO, Sports Fan, Game when I have the time
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Paelos
Contributor
Posts: 27075
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I usually get 24 days off a year. 4 weeks + some personal choice holidays. We also end up getting early outs before holidays and usually some management days off post large releases. I also got 6 extra days for spending 3 weeks of December in Manchester, UK.
I do wish there was more tech here and it was more competitive, but the cost of living is low. I'm not sure I could rent a backyard pop-up tent in San Francisco for what I pay for my house.
Holidays are a good point. We're in the financial industry so we get stock market holidays, which is essentially 10 per year, plus a floating 11th holiday depending on where July 4th and Christmas fall. So it's actually 31 off days when factoring that aspect.
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CPA, CFO, Sports Fan, Game when I have the time
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Samwise
Moderator
Posts: 19221
sentient yeast infection
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I get 6 weeks mandated by law as of Day 1. Suck it. My problem would be if they gave me 6 weeks, I'd have a problem taking that much vacation and still getting my job done. That's the very nature of accounting though, because it never ever stops. An integral part of giving someone 6 weeks of vacation a year is giving them a workload that is reasonably doable in the other 46 (which probably means hiring more people so that they'll be able to cover work that other people aren't doing when they're on vacation). If your job requires you to work during your vacation time, it's not vacation time. By definition. It's the hardest part of an "unlimited" vacation setup -- without a defined "vacation balance" that says when you've worked enough to earn a break, you have to set year-level goals that allow for a reasonable amount of time off, and then remember to take that time at some point. Personally, I much prefer "welp, I'm at my vacation cap, time to fuck off for a couple of weeks!"
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"I have not actually recommended many games, and I'll go on the record here saying my track record is probably best in the industry." - schild
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Cyrrex
Terracotta Army
Posts: 10603
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It works in this part of Europe because there is a general expectation that July and August (especially July) are periods where very little gets planned and done. But yeah, the workload has to generally fit. As an American, I have always found it tough to actually fit in the entire six weeks. In my current place, one week of that can be paid out, and I will probably take that option every time.
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"...maybe if you cleaned the piss out of the sunny d bottles under your desks and returned em, you could upgrade you vid cards, fucken lusers.." - Grunk
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Paelos
Contributor
Posts: 27075
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Were I back in the old industry in CPA-land, you could give me the entire summer off from May to August and nobody would likely notice as long as I answered email from my phone and logged in occasionally at night to send out files.
And yet the assclowns who run that industry don't do that. They still demand you "work" which basically means sitting in an office for untold amounts of time doing nothing because you're on payroll. Were I to run a firm, I'd hire people year round with this understanding: We're going to work 70 hours a week for 4-5 months. We hit target and remain profitable? You get 3 months out of the office in the summer, and a bonus in addition to keeping benefits and your regular paycheck. The only caveat is you have to get back to our clients within 24 hours by email. Other than that? Enjoy your summer and "work" wherever you like, I don't want to see you in the office.
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CPA, CFO, Sports Fan, Game when I have the time
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01101010
Terracotta Army
Posts: 12003
You call it an accident. I call it justice.
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Were I back in the old industry in CPA-land, you could give me the entire summer off from May to August and nobody would likely notice as long as I answered email from my phone and logged in occasionally at night to send out files.
And yet the assclowns who run that industry don't do that. They still demand you "work" which basically means sitting in an office for untold amounts of time doing nothing because you're on payroll. Were I to run a firm, I'd hire people year round with this understanding: We're going to work 70 hours a week for 4-5 months. We hit target and remain profitable? You get 3 months out of the office in the summer, and a bonus in addition to keeping benefits and your regular paycheck. The only caveat is you have to get back to our clients within 24 hours by email. Other than that? Enjoy your summer and "work" wherever you like, I don't want to see you in the office.
That sounds logical and feasible so that's out. However, I'd go back to school for accounting for that job.
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Does any one know where the love of God goes...When the waves turn the minutes to hours? -G. Lightfoot
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Chimpy
Terracotta Army
Posts: 10619
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Accountants in general can't handle something that unstructured
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'Reality' is the only word in the language that should always be used in quotes.
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Paelos
Contributor
Posts: 27075
Error 404: Title not found.
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Accountants in general can't handle something that unstructured One of the reasons I left, haha. I'm not that typical of an accountant from what I've been told.
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CPA, CFO, Sports Fan, Game when I have the time
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RhyssaFireheart
Terracotta Army
Posts: 3525
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Speaking of vacations and time off, I have actually scheduled next week off which means it's the first planned vacation I've had in over 8 years. Since we're traveling, I've already decided that I will not take my work laptop with me and will instead make do with my tablet and phone while at the MiL's house. It's going to be... odd. I'm sure I'll log into a gazillion useless emails when I finally check.
When I got hired last year, I got 3 weeks vacation plus the usual big holidays off. Company also adds on an extra day here and there depending on where those big holidays fall (so e.g. we also get July 5 as an official work holiday) along with 3 floating personal holidays and whatever reasonable amount of sick time you need. It's been nice so far.
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Yegolev
Moderator
Posts: 24440
2/10 WOULD NOT INGEST
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How do you all handle vacation/time off negotiation when switching jobs?
In the tech industry the norm is "unlimited" PTO, which means no negotiation necessary for new employees and no payout necessary for departing employees. I think you must mean the Silicon Valley tech industry, however the official policy is usually not a stricture that needs to be worked around once you integrate yourself. New people, sure. Personally I'm committed to 6 days past my already-generous PTO allotment for 2019 and I don't foresee any issues due to the old "manager's discretion" process, even at Ye Olde IBM. As far as how it works when switching jobs, it generally seems to either not come up or they say "twenty days". Of course, I'm usually looking at infrastructure ops jobs instead of developer jobs. I think the reality is that you'll be working pretty hard in certain shops and not-so-hard in others and the time off isn't really relevant in the first 6 months or so. Which just means I'm going to stay where I am. I was in Tuscany yesterday.
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Why am I homeless? Why do all you motherfuckers need homes is the real question. They called it The Prayer, its answer was law Mommy come back 'cause the water's all gone
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Rasix
Moderator
Posts: 15024
I am the harbinger of your doom!
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New guy on team: Hey, remember that system of yours that I used once last week? Me: Yes. New guy: You rebooted it. Me: Yep. New guy: I was using it. Me: It was inaccessible and had to be manually power cycled. New guy: I was using it Saturday and Sunday. Me: Sorry? Use it then.
Other than it being literally impossible for him using a system that was powered off due to a chiller breakage.. umm, you want me to apologize or something else for disrupting something you didn't tell me you were doing and technically weren't allowed to? OK.
I really hate getting new people in mid to late release.
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-Rasix
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Yegolev
Moderator
Posts: 24440
2/10 WOULD NOT INGEST
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Anyone else have the experience that their Security Team is the pit into which Peter Principle champions fall?
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Why am I homeless? Why do all you motherfuckers need homes is the real question. They called it The Prayer, its answer was law Mommy come back 'cause the water's all gone
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Brolan
Terracotta Army
Posts: 1395
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I’ve always had the impression that was the career path for devs that can’t code. And those with nazi tendencies.
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Samwise
Moderator
Posts: 19221
sentient yeast infection
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I've typically had the opposite experience, where the security guys tend to be a little sharper than average (and also less tolerant of fools). People who go into security have a desire to prove that they're smarter than other people and most of them have at least a modicum of actual smarts to back that up. As it happens, a friend of mine just quit his job as head of security for a large company because he decided half a million dollars a year wasn't worth the stress. Should I tell him you're looking?
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« Last Edit: July 16, 2019, 08:15:48 AM by Samwise »
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"I have not actually recommended many games, and I'll go on the record here saying my track record is probably best in the industry." - schild
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Chimpy
Terracotta Army
Posts: 10619
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Just like anything, the security guys run the gamut from "rockstars who know their shit and are not assholes" to "clueless incel nazi shithead" and every point in between. Though the bell curve does seem to peak a lot closer to the right side of that spectrum than the left
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'Reality' is the only word in the language that should always be used in quotes.
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Salamok
Terracotta Army
Posts: 2803
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Anyone else have the experience that their Security Team is the pit into which Peter Principle champions fall?
Money is the pit into which Peter Principle champions fall, security is one of the current FotM career choices where the $$'s are. They can also hide there because there are not enough competent security folks out there to poke holes in the nonsensical buzzword bingo tirades the fake it till you make it guys are fond of. edit - I may be recalling this incorrectly but I seem to remember early on that acquiring a CISSP cert required a mentorship and sign off from your mentor saying you had the prerequisite experience, then at some point this changed to a self certification alah "I certify that I am awesome and have hands on experience in all the things!"
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« Last Edit: July 16, 2019, 11:17:13 AM by Salamok »
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Chimpy
Terracotta Army
Posts: 10619
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CISSP still requires a bunch of coursework/tests.
While those are not necessarily proof of competency, CISSP is still one of the harder to achieve certifications in IT in terms of time/money investment.
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'Reality' is the only word in the language that should always be used in quotes.
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Zetor
Terracotta Army
Posts: 3269
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I remember getting a CISA instead of a CISSP back in 2009 because you needed 5 years of experience to even attempt the CISSP exam -- CISA, otoh, you could do whenever and you'd get the cert once you had the 5 years of exp. IMO OSCP >> CISSP > CISA >>> CEH / Security+ / etc, though megacorps love themselves some CISA/CISM. ... anyway, my sample size of 1 says security folks are overworked and underappreciated.
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« Last Edit: July 16, 2019, 10:39:41 PM by Zetor »
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Yegolev
Moderator
Posts: 24440
2/10 WOULD NOT INGEST
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I realize I was casting a wide net, for the purposes of this informal survey. There are PLENTY of AWESOME security pros in IBM but some of the "local" ones are not very inspirational. One in particular, really, who I struggle to understand how is still employed.
One of my many hats is now security and it's like trying to convince children to eat their vegetables.
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Why am I homeless? Why do all you motherfuckers need homes is the real question. They called it The Prayer, its answer was law Mommy come back 'cause the water's all gone
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HaemishM
Staff Emeritus
Posts: 42629
the Confederate flag underneath the stone in my class ring
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Having worked on a few bank web sites in my time, thus having to deal with their security compliance teams, I can safely say that they are super paranoid tightasses who have every reason to be both paranoid and tightasses. Getting kids to eat their vegetables is a really good analogy. Just trying to get a goddamn C-Level suit to have a robust password or not click on every fucking link they see elicits a reaction as if you'd just shit on their plate at dinner. I've had conversations about projects where the project just gets shitcanned simply because no one wanted to have to ask security to bless something.
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Yegolev
Moderator
Posts: 24440
2/10 WOULD NOT INGEST
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Updated the LinkedIn and now Blizzard is reaching out to me. I'm not even listed as looking for work. I guess the interesting thing is they are trying to modernize their backend. Probably to support these mobile games.
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Why am I homeless? Why do all you motherfuckers need homes is the real question. They called it The Prayer, its answer was law Mommy come back 'cause the water's all gone
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Paelos
Contributor
Posts: 27075
Error 404: Title not found.
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Isn't your dream to work on a highly polished iteration of some mobile game genre that was created 5 years ago?
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CPA, CFO, Sports Fan, Game when I have the time
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Sky
Terracotta Army
Posts: 32117
I love my TV an' hug my TV an' call it 'George'.
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Soul Crush Saga
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Salamok
Terracotta Army
Posts: 2803
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Squeee!!! Diablo Crush? Puzzles and Terrans? Warcraft Kingdom Rush? STARCRAFT Kingdom Rush?
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Yegolev
Moderator
Posts: 24440
2/10 WOULD NOT INGEST
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Everyything is all Kubernetes Pods on the back end. Even things which don't belong in containers.
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Why am I homeless? Why do all you motherfuckers need homes is the real question. They called it The Prayer, its answer was law Mommy come back 'cause the water's all gone
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Chimpy
Terracotta Army
Posts: 10619
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Everyything is all Kubernetes Pods on the back end. Even things which don't belong in containers. I am sure there is some genius out there trying to use stateful containers for multi-terabyte mySQL databases.
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'Reality' is the only word in the language that should always be used in quotes.
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Yegolev
Moderator
Posts: 24440
2/10 WOULD NOT INGEST
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Multiple geniuses, in fact. Also, stranger cases than a simple relational DB.
The upside is that I'm learning some limitations on k8s pods that probably haven't been seen before.
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Why am I homeless? Why do all you motherfuckers need homes is the real question. They called it The Prayer, its answer was law Mommy come back 'cause the water's all gone
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Yegolev
Moderator
Posts: 24440
2/10 WOULD NOT INGEST
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Webinar spam. Are there any actually useful webinars? What I'd like are some webinars that are not sponsored by the companies selling the solution to the problems outlined in these webinars.
I do know my security posture is shit. Tell me a real way to mitigate this.
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Why am I homeless? Why do all you motherfuckers need homes is the real question. They called it The Prayer, its answer was law Mommy come back 'cause the water's all gone
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NowhereMan
Terracotta Army
Posts: 7353
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Welp I'm going through a minor life/career crisis. I went back to work at the family business a few years ago, rest of this kept vague to protect identities (I doubt it's necessary because none of you will have heard of any of it but...). It's large enough there are operations in a few different countries, some doing well and some really not. There's no real plan or funding available to improve the centres that are failing, my dad is very much remaining hands on and doesn't want knowledge of struggles in one area transmitted to other operations. He's very much old school and his talent lies in seeing opportunities and exploiting low effort, emerging markets but he has 0 idea of how to manage, structure or grow a company. I came in on the understanding there would be a chance to help with this process and develop myself working with people but 4 years in all I've really achieved is learning a lot first hand (and self-directed) on project management and people management and spending a lot of time getting frustrated and fighting as plans change on the fly or months worth of work get canned because he looked at his finances and realised something wasn't viable or someone brought him a new opportunity. Liquidity issues also meant I've spent 4 years either not getting paid or being underpaid and left to sort out my own tax, which I've tolerated because I thought there was a shared desire for me to actually take a role in developing the company. A shit load of red flags that I wouldn't have tolerated from an external company and has left me feeling financially trapped and nearly destroyed my relationship. Handling the general company network to explain that I'm leaving hopefully won't be too awkward. So, I'm not officially looking for a new job for the first time in the UK and want something that's not English teaching or managing a small team of teachers. I'm getting PRINCE2 certified so I have something external to back up my project management experience, I also got a fair bit of business development experience both in terms of writing and submitting tenders for client/funding bodies but also direct enquiries and attending exhibitions/trade missions. However I'm in my mid 30's, have 0 experience seriously doing job applications and am conscious I've got a severe lack of certified CPD (part of the deal with coming back was funding for an MBA or similarly useful Masters but there's not been enough funding at any point for that to be feasible). I've also been doing such a wide variety of different tasks that I'm still not really sure what kind of jobs to go for. I've spoken with a couple of recruiters and started the ball rolling in that regard but I'm kind of at sea and worried that looking for soft skill positions in the UK's current job market might mean I'm job hunting far longer than I can afford to. Taking a shitty entry level job right now though would probably make me happier than working where I have been but I'm, possibly unreasonably, worried that I've basically put a career path on hold for the last decade or so through my own laziness and getting pulled into this. Any advice on routes into job seeking, actually useful qualifications to back up my experience in any of these areas or just experience with working or seeking work in those areas would be appreciated. If anyone has an anecdote of successful career shifts or similar that would also be inspiring
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"Look at my car. Do you think that was bought with the earnest love of geeks?" - HaemishM
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Yegolev
Moderator
Posts: 24440
2/10 WOULD NOT INGEST
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Working in the family business. No es bueno. I won't go into details because they are all the same details everywhere, supported by your comments.
Lots of opportunity in Ireland right now. If you can tolerate a financial hit, your options are enormous for a career shift. If not, you still have a good shot.
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Why am I homeless? Why do all you motherfuckers need homes is the real question. They called it The Prayer, its answer was law Mommy come back 'cause the water's all gone
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Paelos
Contributor
Posts: 27075
Error 404: Title not found.
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Be willing to take a step back to take a leap forward. When I shifted my career back after the 2008 fallout, I took a job for the same pay I was making right out of college. Within 5 years my salary had nearly doubled, and I took an offer in another firm to be a Controller where I was making 2.5x what I made when I started.
Family business is always shitty, because nobody can make proper decisions without emotional baggage. Also most family business leaders are great entrepreneurs and shitty decision-makers. Once they realize the golden rule, "The problem in the company is that I'm in the way," then they can succeed by hiring competent managers and letting them do the job they were hired to do. This happens rarely, but when it does the business is hugely successful.
Nothing beats on the job training. Take a job where you can get the most training or the best experience over pay. That's the best option in a shift, because better experience pays off much faster than a higher paying job with less experience. Most of the time paying for educational credentials is a waste of time, unless it's the standard in your field. If the standard is to get a certain certification (ie - I'm a CPA because that's the standard in accounting) then go get that standard.
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CPA, CFO, Sports Fan, Game when I have the time
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NowhereMan
Terracotta Army
Posts: 7353
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I've definitely been seeing quite a few job ads marking it as desirable rather than essential and it's not a super expensive qualification (it also gives me something to do alongside job searching).
Thanks for the Ireland tip Yeg, if Brexit hits badly that is probably actually worth considering.
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"Look at my car. Do you think that was bought with the earnest love of geeks?" - HaemishM
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