The Beginning Of The End

November 19, 2024 8:37 AM

It's time to move on from my current job, but I am 61, and after 30 years in IT support I need to find something else to do. Flat-out retirement has to wait a few more years. I don't really have good idea of what I might like to do, or what I might reasonably be qualified to do, or what employers will even consider from someone like me. My wife's job is the better-paid one with excellent benefits, and we aren't up to our ears in debt, so there's not too much pressure to find something to match my current salary. I just want to do something I might actually enjoy and won't invite a lot of stress and can make last for the next five years or so. Help me brainstorm this.
posted by briank to Work & Money (15 answers total)

What do you like to do? What did you like about your previous jobs?
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 8:38 AM on November 19 [2 favorites]

Do you want to move on from the company, or from IT support entirely?
posted by warriorqueen at 8:43 AM on November 19 [1 favorite]

What Color Is Your Parachute? is a book I and family members have used again and again to explore this exact question!
posted by Mouse Army at 8:44 AM on November 19 [5 favorites]

How much do you need to earn? How far are you willing to commute? What jobs are being advertised near you? Do any of them appeal?

You might find the Designing Your Life series interesting/useful.
posted by mskyle at 8:48 AM on November 19 [3 favorites]

Before I retired, I used this book to help clients in situations like yours. It guided many a successful career change even though, like most things, what you get out of it depends on what you put into it.
posted by DrGail at 9:17 AM on November 19

There's a lot we will need to know here in order to help. In addition to the questions already asked:

- Do you need your next thing to be full-time or can it be part-time?
- Somewhat related: Do you need your next thing to be one thing, or are you open to dabbling in a few things until you find one you want to settle into?
- Whatever the next thing is, do you want it to be out of the home, or remote work, or you agnostic about that?
- You mention your wife is the one with the good paying/good benefits job. Are you open to volunteer work, or do you need to bring in at least some income?
- Are you interested in remaining in the corporate world, or would something in the nonprofit or charitable giving sector be of interest?

There's a whooooooooole lot out there, and if you help us frame even the broad strokes of where you might want to start, we can help brainstorm a lot more constructively.
posted by pdb at 10:10 AM on November 19

When I was looking to move from tech to something else, the thing that finally connected with me was to think about the following:
- How would I get to work?
- What type of people would I be interacting with?
- Where would I eat lunch?
- How many hours would I ideally like to work a week?
- Am I problem-solving or improving systems or is my job task-oriented or physical?
- How am I dressed?

Think about everything AROUND the job, not the job itself. It can help you focus. Good luck!
posted by Arctostaphylos at 10:27 AM on November 19 [3 favorites]

Response by poster: Thanks for the responses so far. Your questions are already helping me focus a bit, and I will have some responses to fill in the blanks shortly.
posted by briank at 10:35 AM on November 19 [1 favorite]

The library will have books about career changing. But also, consider if there are alternatives within IT in your company. Project management, training, administration, that sort of thing.

Start looking at job postings on various sites and LinkedIn, and maybe do some Information interviews with friends.
posted by theora55 at 11:36 AM on November 19

Think of the last 5 moments when you found work enjoyable. Were you alone or with others? What specifically was enjoyable (e.g. solving an IT problem that stumped others, or hearing a rush of relief & gratitude from the user, or writing a script that made your whole team's life easier, or having a day when you checked off every item on the to-do list)?

Now think of the last 5 moments when you felt stressed and unhappy. Answer the same questions. What in particular made it stressful (e.g. dealing with an entitled demanding user, or multitasking on 3 IT tickets at the same time, or solving the same boring IT issue again and again, or suddenly getting flooded with 15 new IT tickets)?

Look for patterns. What you find stressful might be exciting to someone else, and vice versa. Think about what IT-support-adjacent job would focus on the parts you enjoy. For example, if you like writing scripts and hate talking to angry users on the phone, you could look for a job as a QA automation developer. If you enjoy solving IT emergencies for polite users but hate doing it for entitled tech bros, you could work at a Geek Squad for elderly customers.

Good luck!
posted by cheesecake at 12:09 PM on November 19 [7 favorites]

become a night tech in a data center - from experience it's easy and interesting and not particularly stressful. Pay is crap but ...
posted by ptm at 7:31 PM on November 19

Don't ignore small companies. I can imagine a job doing tech support for, say, 10 people but mostly doing something else.

How are your DIY skills?
posted by SemiSalt at 4:49 AM on November 20

Response by poster: I really appreciated the more prosaic questions yesterday about stuff like commute and lunch and what do/did you like about jobs, And will check out the workbook DrGail suggested. I have a close friend who is a career coach and am going to chat with her, too.

A few details:
I currently work for a credit union, which is about 350 people in about a dozen locations northwest of Boston. I'm one of two sysadmins and work with a 4-person HelpDesk, a security analyst and a manager who is essentially the network admin, There's no other IT-related roles to change into, or paths into other roles (unless I wanted to be a bank teller, which I do not).

I have mostly worked in smaller orgs of 30-100 people, and like that size, I did about 18 months for a small ISP supporting companies like insurance agents and small engineering companies, and that was terrible because the clients were terrible. For most of my career, I was usually a one-man-band, so I did a lot of things. Probably none of them very well, but well enough to keep everything working. I liked wearing multiple hats, but would not want to wear ALL the hats.

Income-wise, I could probably take a 50% pay cut before it would have serious repercussions for out finances. But it would still put me just over the median individual income in MA, so not likely to be something that a part-time job would provide.

I think what I want input on is some ideas of how to repurpose my soft skills - problem-solving, helping people, teaching, general administration - into other kinds of jobs and how to find out what kind of jobs are like that.

I will keep coming back to this thread for a few days and can add more info if it would help.
posted by briank at 9:02 AM on November 20 [1 favorite]

A third party administrator is a middleman between a company buying insurance for its employees or retirees and the actual insurance company. This involves moving a lot of data and a lot of money around. There is a lot of inter-company cooperation getting a new contract set up. I think there are a lot of niches you could fill.

I also know from experience that AETNA subcontracts that sort of computer-driven paperwork to small companies all over eastern Mass.
posted by SemiSalt at 11:49 AM on November 20

In my area it doesn't pay great but the benefits are solid and it doesn't require certification: being a family coordinator for a public school. At my school that position is actually combined with a sort of school tech support position and it could leverage both your soft and hard skills in a position that makes a meaningful impact on lives.
posted by Salamandrous at 5:40 PM on November 20