Need a hint. What to do with my life?
August 18, 2008 4:28 PM Subscribe
JobFilter: At a loss to figure out where to go from here. Please help me make a career jump!
I'd like to make a lateral move from my niche-middle-managment position as a graphics guy (who has no formal design training) at a technical/legal-type consulting firm, to something with a broader pool of careers and advancement. Except I'm not sure how to weave the skills and experience I have into a better job.
I think the crux of the problem is that I'm a Jack-of-all-trades, master of none. I do graphic design work that is more assembly, less design. I work with architects, but I'm not one. I've got a smattering of skills that range from carpentry to IT.
So I ask the HiveMind where should a guy in his mid-30s with graphics experience, a logical/legal mindset, and a love of systems-level thinking apply his efforts?
(I think I'd be exceptional at working with companies to create/refine work-flows, as I've basically been doing that in various guises since I started working in high school).
I'd like to make a lateral move from my niche-middle-managment position as a graphics guy (who has no formal design training) at a technical/legal-type consulting firm, to something with a broader pool of careers and advancement. Except I'm not sure how to weave the skills and experience I have into a better job.
I think the crux of the problem is that I'm a Jack-of-all-trades, master of none. I do graphic design work that is more assembly, less design. I work with architects, but I'm not one. I've got a smattering of skills that range from carpentry to IT.
So I ask the HiveMind where should a guy in his mid-30s with graphics experience, a logical/legal mindset, and a love of systems-level thinking apply his efforts?
(I think I'd be exceptional at working with companies to create/refine work-flows, as I've basically been doing that in various guises since I started working in high school).
Being a jack-of-all-trades means you have tried a lot of things. Which ones interested you the most? Your description mentioned what you can do, but not what you would enjoy doing. It's hard to tell you which career path you should take without knowing that.
One possibility is to find which skills you enjoyed the most and work on enhancing those while scouring the job market. That way you can come close to becoming the master at and easily employable in something. At worst you'll find something you don't want a career in which makes your career choice a bit easier. 35 is still young!
posted by Hypharse at 5:47 PM on August 18, 2008
One possibility is to find which skills you enjoyed the most and work on enhancing those while scouring the job market. That way you can come close to becoming the master at and easily employable in something. At worst you'll find something you don't want a career in which makes your career choice a bit easier. 35 is still young!
posted by Hypharse at 5:47 PM on August 18, 2008
Yeah, sorry. Was at work and had to pay attention today since I'm the only one here, everyone else in the support crew is on vacation since school starts next week.
What I've found in the long run is that it's better for me to move from job to job every 2-5 years putting MY system in place in a field I enjoy (and handling lucrative consulting opportunities on the side) than it is to work in the actual career of process management ... which to me is boring, tedious, and fraught with undesirable little nuggets of crap makework that's absolutely necessary to the job but is not the least interesting. It's much more interesting to make things and then DO stuff with them than it is to make things that someone else uses to do stuff.
When I was 20, I felt that I was a jack of all trades. At 28, I ended up as a Systems Administrator for a department at a university. Hackers and Painters comes close to describing how I fell into computers.
The only way that I can think of to illustrate my point is by briefly exploring my history. Feel free to email and ask specific questions.
I started out with an interest in photography and journalism. I went to school to get a journalism degree and worked in camera shops to pay for beer. In school, I realized that I had a better head for the business side of journalism, but then got frustrated with the paperwork that it took to manage the business side. So I wrote some software using Access and Visual Basic, and then realized I really enjoyed the practice of learning how to encode business systems in database software. Working in a semi-pro camera store and seeing everyone else's photographs become reality robbed me completely of my urge to create images of my own.
I tried for a Computer Science major, flunked out when I hit the harder math, and then shrugged and got a business degree in logistics... which taught me that there actually was a field for what I naturally did in my head, but it was boring and full of ... engineers. When i got out of school I started my own company built upon my consulting work and employment through school (which was re-engineering existing processes at companies in software and streamlining / advance-filling data fields so that users only did data input once and then just manipulated objects), but failed due to inexperience and an inability to launch a non-customized product quickly enough. So I shut down the business and ran to a place where I had a roommate, girlfriend, and job waiting with my tail between my legs.
I work the job during the day, which is steady and somewhat boring but with occasional flashes of brilliance that basically allow me to be the maytag repairman. At night, I write software that enacts my business system philosophy. Unfortunately, that philosophy is that "the exceptions to the way everyone else does it is your competitive advantage, and you need to have software that is written to your advantages" ... which makes it really hard to write non-customized software. But I'm getting there.
Oh, and after 10 years of pulling out my camera once a year, I'm finally shooting again regularly.
posted by SpecialK at 7:41 PM on August 18, 2008
What I've found in the long run is that it's better for me to move from job to job every 2-5 years putting MY system in place in a field I enjoy (and handling lucrative consulting opportunities on the side) than it is to work in the actual career of process management ... which to me is boring, tedious, and fraught with undesirable little nuggets of crap makework that's absolutely necessary to the job but is not the least interesting. It's much more interesting to make things and then DO stuff with them than it is to make things that someone else uses to do stuff.
When I was 20, I felt that I was a jack of all trades. At 28, I ended up as a Systems Administrator for a department at a university. Hackers and Painters comes close to describing how I fell into computers.
The only way that I can think of to illustrate my point is by briefly exploring my history. Feel free to email and ask specific questions.
I started out with an interest in photography and journalism. I went to school to get a journalism degree and worked in camera shops to pay for beer. In school, I realized that I had a better head for the business side of journalism, but then got frustrated with the paperwork that it took to manage the business side. So I wrote some software using Access and Visual Basic, and then realized I really enjoyed the practice of learning how to encode business systems in database software. Working in a semi-pro camera store and seeing everyone else's photographs become reality robbed me completely of my urge to create images of my own.
I tried for a Computer Science major, flunked out when I hit the harder math, and then shrugged and got a business degree in logistics... which taught me that there actually was a field for what I naturally did in my head, but it was boring and full of ... engineers. When i got out of school I started my own company built upon my consulting work and employment through school (which was re-engineering existing processes at companies in software and streamlining / advance-filling data fields so that users only did data input once and then just manipulated objects), but failed due to inexperience and an inability to launch a non-customized product quickly enough. So I shut down the business and ran to a place where I had a roommate, girlfriend, and job waiting with my tail between my legs.
I work the job during the day, which is steady and somewhat boring but with occasional flashes of brilliance that basically allow me to be the maytag repairman. At night, I write software that enacts my business system philosophy. Unfortunately, that philosophy is that "the exceptions to the way everyone else does it is your competitive advantage, and you need to have software that is written to your advantages" ... which makes it really hard to write non-customized software. But I'm getting there.
Oh, and after 10 years of pulling out my camera once a year, I'm finally shooting again regularly.
posted by SpecialK at 7:41 PM on August 18, 2008
either design management or project management sounds like it could work for you. having been (somewhat) on the design side, you can certainly empathise with the designers you'd be managing and if you like the logical side of things, managing the designers/projects/clients would work into that.
posted by violetk at 9:46 PM on August 18, 2008
posted by violetk at 9:46 PM on August 18, 2008
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by SpecialK at 5:29 PM on August 18, 2008