Career coaching/counselling in order to work less?
May 20, 2021 4:33 PM Subscribe
Has anyone had experience with career coaching/counselling to not make more money, but instead make less money in order to allow for health problems and such? Particularly, help with trimming down a complex resume to be less broad?
Snowflake details inside...
In my previous life, I was a senior IT devops consultant and developer. A chronic pain issue (the type where I need to use a walker and a wheelchair, depending on the day, to get around) has put a damper on this, but my current employer has been great and let me work three days/week. Sadly, for other reasons this situation is becoming more and more untenable (the short version is that I'm the single point of failure for a LOT of our customers, and I am reacting badly to this).
When I'm switched on, I'm good at my job, and have a particular skill around troubleshooting obscure problems - I've been doing this around 25 years now - as well as a reputation for being the guy you call when no-one else knows/wants to deal with a thing (mostly because I'm really good at using google efficiently - for life reasons, I took a very non-traditional path, so had to learn things myself at the head end, and the lessons in research and fake-it-until-you-make-it stuck). As a result, I end up naturally being the "fingers in every single pie" person. So... I need to stop this last thing, because my health is no longer such that I can be relied upon for that, and the reliance upon it is making my health way worse.
So part of this is, I suspect I need to have a job which has one job - in my current role, I'm lead developer on our enterprise product, lead infrastructure engineer, principal consultant - which now mostly involves supporting our consulting team, but occasionally still involves client facing work, and support-of-last-resort for everyone in the company. This has always been my kind of roles, but I feel like that's untenable with said health issues. But... I do love being a jack-of-all-trades, which makes this complicated - and that's kind of where I really am looking to find a professional to help, work out what (a) I can do, (b) people would hire me to do, and (c) is realistic for me to actually achieve.
Recommendations in the Portland, OR area would be particularly helpful, but obviously I'm extremely online so anywhere on the internet is great.
In my previous life, I was a senior IT devops consultant and developer. A chronic pain issue (the type where I need to use a walker and a wheelchair, depending on the day, to get around) has put a damper on this, but my current employer has been great and let me work three days/week. Sadly, for other reasons this situation is becoming more and more untenable (the short version is that I'm the single point of failure for a LOT of our customers, and I am reacting badly to this).
When I'm switched on, I'm good at my job, and have a particular skill around troubleshooting obscure problems - I've been doing this around 25 years now - as well as a reputation for being the guy you call when no-one else knows/wants to deal with a thing (mostly because I'm really good at using google efficiently - for life reasons, I took a very non-traditional path, so had to learn things myself at the head end, and the lessons in research and fake-it-until-you-make-it stuck). As a result, I end up naturally being the "fingers in every single pie" person. So... I need to stop this last thing, because my health is no longer such that I can be relied upon for that, and the reliance upon it is making my health way worse.
So part of this is, I suspect I need to have a job which has one job - in my current role, I'm lead developer on our enterprise product, lead infrastructure engineer, principal consultant - which now mostly involves supporting our consulting team, but occasionally still involves client facing work, and support-of-last-resort for everyone in the company. This has always been my kind of roles, but I feel like that's untenable with said health issues. But... I do love being a jack-of-all-trades, which makes this complicated - and that's kind of where I really am looking to find a professional to help, work out what (a) I can do, (b) people would hire me to do, and (c) is realistic for me to actually achieve.
Recommendations in the Portland, OR area would be particularly helpful, but obviously I'm extremely online so anywhere on the internet is great.
Metafilter's own Kim Witten is a great coach who was really helpful to me. I'd recommend reaching out to her for a chat to see if she might be a match for what you want to do.
posted by mcbaya at 5:15 AM on May 21, 2021
posted by mcbaya at 5:15 AM on May 21, 2021
Not sure this comment will be helpful, but I suspect a lot of business coaches will be good at this. It seems like you need to define your niche and get paid appropriately for it, which is what consultants are always trying to do. You might even consider a switch to consulting. Executive-level folks (especially founders) are also always trying to figure out how to get out of the "fingers in every pie" situation. I don't mean to minimize the ways that your question is unique, but I think if you found someone good at executive consulting or business consulting for independent contractors, they may well have the skills you need, and those might be easier search terms.
posted by slidell at 8:33 AM on May 21, 2021
posted by slidell at 8:33 AM on May 21, 2021
If you like this organization, and they do seem accomodating to your situation, perhaps it's time to go to management and say "look, you know I've got health issues, and you've been wonderful at helping me be able to reduce my time and all, but now in my professional opinion it's time we discuss reducing your dependence on me. Who have we got that can step into some of these roles, and how can I help train them, and how can _you_ get the organization to try them first when searching for help?"
This would be the beginning of a set of discussions relating to working out what's best both for you and for the organization you work for, and they actually, from what little is posted, sound intelligent enough to work this out with you.
Also fix in your own mind, that you can be happy reducing the "I'm the go-to person" quotient in your life. I retired, and then consulted with my former employers, and am now dropping even that. One of my big issues that I really had to think about was exactly this - I _loved_ being the guy who figured things out for them, created solutions that lasted years, and was the person you called when it seemed no one else could figure it out. I don't have health issues, but had to figure out that there were some things I wanted to do that could outweigh that.
posted by TimHare at 10:35 AM on May 21, 2021
This would be the beginning of a set of discussions relating to working out what's best both for you and for the organization you work for, and they actually, from what little is posted, sound intelligent enough to work this out with you.
Also fix in your own mind, that you can be happy reducing the "I'm the go-to person" quotient in your life. I retired, and then consulted with my former employers, and am now dropping even that. One of my big issues that I really had to think about was exactly this - I _loved_ being the guy who figured things out for them, created solutions that lasted years, and was the person you called when it seemed no one else could figure it out. I don't have health issues, but had to figure out that there were some things I wanted to do that could outweigh that.
posted by TimHare at 10:35 AM on May 21, 2021
This thread is closed to new comments.
> the short version is that I'm the single point of failure for a LOT of our customers, and I am reacting badly to this
> I'm lead developer on our enterprise product, lead infrastructure engineer, principal consultant - which now mostly involves supporting our consulting team
reading between the lines, are you by any chance working in quite a small organization?
If so, it might be the case that you may find more suitable working conditions at some kind giant yet professional megacorp that walks the talk in terms of offering flexible working arrangements that suit the needs of their individual employees. they may perhaps be more likely to have management / risk control / budgets to help prevent any one individual ending up as a single point of failure for some critical function. you come across as quite a useful person and many teams or projects might be delighted to have you on board, even if only part time or fully remote or so on.
posted by are-coral-made at 8:17 PM on May 20, 2021