Freed by 50

Sitting here at 41 with an awesome job that I love, it’s easy to say that work is good.  But it wasn’t always good.  In fact for a long time work was bad.  My jobs were bad, my bosses were bad and the work itself was bad.  Moreover, in my 18 years in the full time workforce I’m fairly certain I’ve never actually done the job I wanted to do, but most times I’ve done the job I needed to do.

I’ve been watching my sister in law and her boyfriend struggle in their post college lives.  I’m sure their struggle is familiar to many new grads just starting out in the workforce.  My sister in law looks at her older siblings and they all have what appear to be better lives.  They make more money, they have jobs they like and/or families to tend to, and they don’t appear to be struggling like she is.  She expects that there will be a turning point where that  perfect job lands in her or her boyfriend’s lap that changes everything, because according to what she believes, it happened to the rest of us and we didn’t have to do anything to make it happen.

This is a mistake.  In my experience, for most people the perfect job that they really wanted to do their whole lives will NEVER come around.  However, the perfect job for RIGHT NOW may come around often.  And seizing enough of those perfect jobs for right now gives you the opportunity to build experience.  Experience that you can continue to amass throughout your career until eventually you may have the opportunity to either go for the perfect job you always wanted, or make the job yourself.  It’s called a “career path” for a reason.

For anyone early in their careers that happens across this while you’re struggling, here is my glamorous career path laid out in all its glory.  This often painful collection of experiences lead me to a job I love, and a life I love.

• I graduated college in 2001 in New York with a BS in Computer Science, focused on C++ programming.  I had absolutely no prospects, the dot com bubble had just burst, and despite having dropped the only computer graphics class I took in college I knew I wanted to be a video game developer.
• After a lazy summer where I did nothing but party for four months, I had completely blown through my $4k in graduation money and needed to get serious about finding a job and getting out of my parents house.  I started blindly sending resumes to anything that sounded like a tech company in my immediate area.  At this point, most companies didn’t have their own online resume submission, so I spent about two hours a day on CareerBuilder and Monster.com trolling for jobs.  If memory serves, I applied to almost every opening that the video game company Accliam had in their NY office and never once got a call back.
• In late summer of 2001 someone decided to blow up a number of buildings, with a focus on New York City.  Virtually all local job prospects I had evaporated.  By winter of 2001 I had scored a job working in the warehouse of a retail store called CompUSA.  Although I’d applied to be one of their repair tech’s, they found my lack of an A+ certification to be a deal breaker and stuck me in their warehouse carrying computers.  I continued to look for a “real” job elsewhere, but this at least kept me in gas/beer money.
• I finally got my big break when a friend working at a credit report company submitted me for a job opening.  I was his second choice for the role, but the first guy failed the drug test.  I nailed the interview and got the job as a C programmer doing flat file processing.  The work was terrible, my coworkers were awful, the office was uncomfortable, and I had no idea what I was doing.  I moved back to my college town of Albany, NY, and despite all of the problems I was happy to be working.  I was fired after four months.
• I spent nearly a year on unemployment back at my parents house.  About all I did during this time period was amass debt and drink with my friends.  I eventually started working with headhunters to find a job, but discovered I was often one of dozens of candidates they were sending rapid fire at any opportunity they had.
• I attempted to start my own computer repair business.  For about four months I would make house calls to remove viruses, set up computers, or fix broken computers.  After one exceptionally trying event where I set up a computer for hoarders in their ruined house, I decided to close up shop.
• My mother’s coworker’s husband called to ask if I could develop a website for his company.  After a quick phone interview he hired me as a salaried employee.  This was a perfect job for me.  Building the website was easy work, and the in house IT guy was very lazy, so I became the go to person to fix just about anything in the office.  Being a small shop, virtually everything was a hack job that the IT guy had pieced together with whatever he had handy.  I learned so much about servers, networking, and the needs of the business that they fired the IT guy and gave me his job.  Then they expanded my role to cover all three of their offices in the Northeast.  For nearly four years my role continued to expand while my pay remained the same.  I became more and more bitter and slacked off more than I worked.  I found myself unemployed the day after I finally bought my first home and moved out of my parents house.
• Having gained some experience and learned how to be an employee, I contacted a headhunter and landed my first interview at a large local tech company.  I’d given up on my aspirations to program video games, or anything for that matter, and started working as a Windows Server and network administrator.  Although the job served its purpose and kept me in my house, I was unaware that I’d taken over a contract that was half used up and after four months my contract expired and I was once again jobless.
• Another headhunter placed me with a small shop in New York City working as their IT guy.  To this day I can’t remember the name of the company, but for the brief period of time I worked there the MTA decided to strike, making it nearly impossible to commute to the city.  When another headhunter called with a job at in the IT department of the biggest cable provider in our area, I jumped at the opportunity.
• For over a year I worked a 3 PM to 11 PM shift in the basement data center, spending six hours alone doing night help desk and server work.  Again, I found myself in a position to learn a lot, but it was solitary work and I didn’t particularly like my team when they were around.  This was not the perfect job, but it got me out of the hard times.
• I went on vacation for a week and came back to find out I’d been reorganized to a different department in a different building.  I had a great new job in the main data center at the corporate headquarters!  Was this my perfect job?
• My great new job turned out to be one of the worst jobs I ever had.  Although I was making what I then thought was great money, I was in a dead end job, working for the worst boss I’ve ever had, doing mindless work.  Compared to my peers it turned out I was making peanuts.  I got complacent and let life get me down.  I stayed in this dead end job hating my life for three more years before I started looking elsewhere.
• My whole life changed the day a huge software company with its headquarters on Long Island called me for an interview.  My jack of all trades background was a perfect fit for a Presales role, and the experience I’d gotten with their software at my hellhole job translated directly to what they needed.  My salary jumped 2x overnight, and 3x during my tenure with the company.  I learned more working at this job than anywhere I’ve worked before or since.  My team was amazing, my work was stimulating and exciting, my job had a direct impact on the company’s bottom line, and I got promoted twice.  I had the perfect job.  Unfortunately it was at the wrong company.  The writing was on the wall that the company was going under and I couldn’t handle the stress of waiting to be laid off.  Eventually leaving this job was the hardest thing I’ve done in my career.
• I called a friend at an emerging software powerhouse and asked if there were any openings, and there were.  After a week of interviews I wound up at my current company.  Due to reorgs and opportunities, I have held five different positions, been promoted twice, had seven different managers, and wouldn’t have it any other way.  Everything that I’ve experienced along the way has lead me to this job.  I now run an international team of fifteen.  We do work that has visibility at the highest levels.  The CEO talks about my work in company all hands!  My role is challenging and exciting.  My team is like family.  My pay has nearly tripled from my previous job and I’ve been able to do virtually everything I’ve ever wanted to do in my financial life because of this job.  Despite many challenges, I’m happier than I’ve ever been in my working life.

I’ve still never written a single line of code for a video game.  That original dream is long gone.  I’ve never pined for a job in the video game industry.  To be honest, I’m not sure I ever really wanted to work in the video game industry.  I just wanted to develop the world from Tron!

Throughout my career I’ve never held the perfect job that I wanted.  I’ve wanted plenty of jobs, yes, but none were that perfect match, and in my field I don’t think that will ever happen.  And I’m OK with that.  I’ve learned not to try to make the industry conform to my needs, but to follow the path that’s available to me at any given time.  That’s not to say that I have no bearing on my career.  As I often say, “It’s hard damn work making my life look so lucky.”  The idea is to make the best of what’s offered and seize opportunity when it comes along.