Changing Jobs for Job Satisfaction?

I-love-my-work, who is considering rejoining the IT world after a stint in business, asks: "A molecular biologist with a PhD at University of Birmingham, in the UK, quits his lab position to become a plumber, since a plumber apparently earns twice what he currently makes (~US$42K). How many of you would change careers if given a chance? What factors would influence the decision (money, hours, upper management, a chance to enjoy more of your life)?" What factors would make you seriously consider leaving your current career for another?

Re:Paid?

[2names]

Not if you work for Komatsu in Peoria, IL. They just announced another round of layoffs today that will take effect at the end of March.

"...it's the old 'cut our way to profitability' trick!!!"

Self-employment...

[Anonymous Coward]

...lets you change jobs without changing careers. You do become the final level of responsibility and you have to do some bookkeeping and bill collecting, but you have complete control of your work environment and hours. When you work long and hard, you directly benefit. With proper planning you can take large blocks of time off for whatever.

Median Plumbers Salary in the US -- $32,406

[endeitzslash]

Here. [salary.com]

Re:(almost) a true story

[Anonymous Coward]

uhhh.... the punchline is that all the other students in the 'eigth grade' class were also former professors who took plumbing jobs.

Re:(almost) a true story

[Michael.Forman]

If you mean the part about the integral, here it is really quickly.

An integral is a way of finding the area under a curve between two points. These two points are called limits. If you evaluate the integral with the limits accidentally reversed, your answer will be negative.

An integral is used in calculus and is basically the same thing as multiplication in algebra. Here's an example of the punch line using algebra. If you have a long piece of wood that is 10-cm tall and you need to cut a piece out of the middle, say from the 3-cm point to the 13-cm point, the area of that piece would be:
area = width * length = 10 * (13 - 3) = 100.

The cut points, 3 cm and 13 cm, are exactly the same as the limits in calculus. If you reverse them you get the negative answer:
10 * (3 - 13) = -100.

Michael. [michael-forman.com]

Re:Find a job you love....

[Watcher]

I was in very much the same boat as you in my first job. Four pretty miserable years working on financial software at a nasty company. I was bored, drained of energy, frustrated, and I had completely lost all love of programming. I actually dreaded coding-when I did get a chance to code, instead of dealing with all kinds of political crap. I changed jobs a short while ago, and its made a world of difference. Here I'm working almost 100% of my time on code, the work is challenging as hell, the coworkers are sharp, and I don't have to deal with all kinds of political crap. On top of that, I'm actually coding in my spare time again-something I stopped doing over two years ago.

What I'm saying is, there are jobs out there which are much better in this industry. Some suck, some are much better. The good jobs are always rare, in any industry, but they *are* out there. Don't lose hope.

Re:Find a job you love....

[Un-Thesis]

I'm the maintainer of xMule.

If you can code in C++, look me up :-)

Re:Median Plumbers Salary in the US -- $32,406

[BenjyD]

This is the UK we're talking about. Home of the toilet paper degree and housing obsession. So you have lots of people with no skills but a 2:1 in Media studies from Birmingham Poly^H^H^H^HUniversity, and lots of people trying to do their houses up to make money. High demand, low supply, prices go up.

According to this [bbc.co.uk], self-employed plumbers can make 50K GBP.

Re:What bills are necessary?

[ParticleGirl]

I am a graduate student; my student funding covers tuition and provides a stipend, and I can buy into the university health care. My stipend, from which health care fees are deducted. I live in Pittsburgh, which is a very affordable city, and I pay $400 a month for my apartment-- about half of my take-home, monthly. But in Pittsburgh, this affords me the top floor and finished attic of a house; I live alone, and it's a very spacious, with big rooms, lots of windows, a balcony, and I use the attic as an office instead of the second bedroom it was marketed as. Of course, I spent a couple of months looking for a deal-- not all apartments are so nice for the price, but I did find one. I have my car that I bought and paid off before I quit the cushy job. I don't buy new clothes often, and I can use busses free with my student ID. I love to cook so don't eat out much. I am lucky, but the luck partly is of my making-- I spent a long time researching my options before quitting my job, and spent a lot of time making sure I had an apartment that I could afford and would like to stay in; I can't afford to move right now, or in the near future, without a team of friends with trucks and some scrimping to deal with overlapping security deposits. I don't have cable, but I have a cell phone I use carefully to conserve daytime minutes, and have people over to my house instead of going out all the time. I can afford wine and cheese, roadtrips and concerts, and that amazing dress I saw in the window at Express, but I can't afford to do them every week. That's fine with me. I spend four months a year on beaches and in the jungle, and I'm happy with my 15 year old television and no landline. I have scraped together savings in case of things like car trouble, family emergencies, and those "necessary" spur-of-the-moment trips I take when I see that there's an airline having a sale with round-trip tickets for $75 to San Diego. I have some money in long-term savings that I add to slowly, and as I said, I don't plan to be living below the poverty line forever. I have no problem working "odd" teaching jobs and programming or analyzing data for extra money, I just don't like having a boss giving me deadlines to do them on a weekly basis. Many of my neighbors are also living on what I make, and while they aren't students and so don't have the university health care, they do have government health care to help them out; most of them, however, have things like cable and take fewer trips. It's all about the choices you make; it costs very little to live from day to day in most of the U.S.; the things that cost more are the luxuries-- living in big cities, amenities, the different shoes that match every outfit you own, detailing your car, getting the newest graphics card. (My vaio laptop, that I'm using with Pittsburgh's fantastic free wireless access [telerama.com] is six years old. My desktop is built from used parts.) Yeah, it takes more work. It takes better planning. But I'm loving it.

Re:I would change if I got paid the same

[cerebralpc]

Its important when working as a contractor to work out what you will be earning and not to get greedy. 52 weeks a year - 4 weeks for holidays - 2 weeks for public holidays - 1 week sick leave = 45 weeks. 45 weeks * 5 days * $400/day = $90,000 per year. Then you got to pay yourself super - 90,000 / 11 * 10 = $81,800 per year Thats what I earn per year!

Work is not fun

[Anonymous Coward]

As Red Foreman says, "Work is not fun. Work is work. Work is about seeing how much crap you can take from the boss man, and then taking some more."

I like to write code. I like to solve problems. Frequently, a software engineer's job requires doing a lot of other things. You may have to work with a language that you think isn't the best for the job. You may have to create UML design diagrams that feel like a waste of time and convey little actual meaning. You may have to write test plans. In general, your boss will ask you to do things that you think are stupid, but you have to do them anyway.

I have found that job satisfaction is greatly related to how well you like your boss, your co-workers, and the general environment of your company. Freedom to do what you think is best is needed for job satisfaction.

I also want to make pretty good money. On salary surveys the money rankings usually go something like:
1) doctor
2) lawyer
3) engineer, software development
4) everything else pays less.

3) Seems to fit my personality.
1) Too many years in school without getting paid.
2) Just not sure that I would like being a lawyer.

So that is it for me. If I can't continue to make money doing software development, then I am just not sure what I'll do. Lawyer maybe.

As for doing what you love and you'll never work a day in your life. I love sitting by the pool on an island drinking a Corona. I don't know how to get paid doing that. I love snow skiing, but I am not good enough to get endorsements. And the people that get paid to ski frequently don't like to practice, because they don't get to ski the way they want, where they want. It is practice, not fun.

Re:I would change if I got paid the same

[fingusernames]

Also, you need to learn to work the system... first, incorporate, and elect to be a subchapter S corporation at the federal and state level. Second, hire yourself. Get your employer/contract house to pay you corp-corp. Pay yourself a reasonable salary. Considering the downward pressure on salaries, and the worth of an Indian coder, consider yourself worth around $35k a year.

The rest that you earn... your business has legitimate expenses. Pay those, write them off. You can have an SEP retirement fund: save money, more than the $3000 an IRA lets you. Pay for your health care (though if you are more than a 2% shareholder, and you'll be 100% likely, you cannot deduct it from business income), deduct it from your taxes to the extent permitted.

Also, speaking of shares, if you are married, sell 51% of the company to your wife (if you trust her at least). Get certified as a woman-owned business by your city/county/state. It can help you get contracts if you decide to go independent.

With what is left of your business income, pay yourself dividends. Corporate dividends are not wages (so long as you paid yourself a reasonable salary, which YOU determine). You pay only income tax, no social security(i.e. ponzi)/medicare. If you pay yourself a low enough salary, and $35k is low enough, you can take your dividends at the Bush tax rate of 5% as well. I just hope Congress makes that permanent.

Also, unemployment insurance is a great deal. Lay yourself off between contracts, and then collect unemployment benefits. Where I am, I pay $270 a year, TOTAL, per employee for unemployment insurance premiums. For me, the WEEKLY "benefit" is $331.00. IOW, I get back my entire yearly premium in the first week. Even if my "contribution rate" went up due to lots of utilization of the account, it is still limited to taxing only the first $9000 of income. I don't advocate cheating the system, but DEFINITELY apply to collect the moment you lose a contract/job.

Just don't forget to pay quarterly estimated taxes for your personal income, and your business taxes monthly. Get an account with EFTPS, the online federal payment system, it's easy.

Larry

Re:Dead money

[jafiwam]

It hasn't been and IF in many years.

Choose a house location wisely and you'd be OK.

Also note, to make a house less worthwhile you would need to take into account the rent money for 5 years could be 20k - 40k and the fact that interest paid on a house gets tax breaks on state and federal level and so on. So one could take a loss of that much and still be ahead.

It is a personal decision though. Renting is an option that you might find better for a lot of reasons. It's just that the original poster mentioned there is no monitary benefit and that is simply not true.