Career Decision?: Your wise counsel sought...

Hello all,

I am on the brink of a potentially life-changing decision, the immediate consequences of which, should I go ahead and take the plunge, have immediate consequences which petrify me.

I'll summarise the background to all this as concisely as I can. I'm a 35 year old computer programmer working for a US investment bank. The bank, under previous ownership, originally took me on as a temp in the back office back in November 1995. 18 months later I transferred to the IT department to become a programmer on the IBM mainframe system which at that time was the mainstay of all their business processes. Apart from a brief spell doing some minor development projects I have spent almost all my time there on support.

So all in all I have been doing this job nearly ten years (!). About four years ago when our new US owners took over they made a decision to ditch the mainframe in favour of their own US-based mainframe system and various PC-based distributed system 'offshoots'. So basically our mainframe has been 'dying' a long slow death since then. All the time I have continued to 'survive' using the mainframe-only skills I was originally trained with. Repeated failures to get into the new technology side of things has meant I am now stuck with these old-fashioned and (pretty much) non-transferrable skills.

I have spent quite some time as a consequence getting increasingly frustrated and bored, as evidenced by my spending far too much time looking at the internet, much to the obvious annoyance of my boss! (Incidentally, my boss is the guy I originally trained with when I joined the IT department 8 years ago!) Now it turns out that top management have had an urgent meeting as it seems our biggest client is starting to doubt the vfm of our services in view of the protracted time it seems to be taking to transfer the information from our mainframe on to their own systems. It seems the mainframe did more for them than ever was previously envisaged, leading to constantly extended deadlines for the transfer project. This, as you can imagine, is proving quite labour-intensive. As a result, rumour has it that umm... headcount is err.. under review so to speak.

In addition to this, the combined time it takes me to travel to and from work every day is, on a good day, over three hours. That's my working day plus half as much again! Usually this means that most days I do not get home from work till gone 8pm. I am gradually finding how severely this restricts what I can reasonably do in the evenings given my reduced energy levels and often heightened stress levels due to the often unpleasant conditions one finds on public transport nowadays. The only (slight) 'perk' of my job is that I can work flexi- hours which basically means a choice of either 8-4, 9-5 or 10-6. Being able to leave at 4pm is a boon cos the trains are less busy and as winter dies away there's a chance I can actually get home while it's still light! The downside of this, of course, is that in order to leave at 4, I must be in by 8, which means getting up at 5.15 in the morning - not funny.

I have got to the stage where I am no longer committed to a career in IT. I am single and live alone, so this affords me some 'freedom', at least for a limited time, to make the choice I believe I must make.

That choice being, of course, to resign - on Monday.

The advantages, as I seem them, of taking this action are, are that I'll have more TIME to sort out a career-change for myself, lower my stress-levels, take a breather, relax for a bit, look at my options. You should know that I have started re-training to become a driving instructor, but have now got to the stage where I need time in the car almost daily to practice, and with the hourse described above I find I cannot do this. In addition to this I could investigate other career options and take action without the restriction currently imposed by my full-time, dead-end job.

The diadvantages? Well, the biggest one of all, of course, is money. The mortgage won't stop needing to be paid, and the bills will keep coming in. I'll still need to live, and that of course costs money. I would also, of course, no longer know when my next pay packet might be. Life becomes unpredictable all of a sudden, and that, possibly, is the scariest thing of all.

Then again I reckon work would like to sack me anyway, so out of favour do I feel with management, and in any case I do not care all that much. Our appraisals are due soon and I don't want mine because I know it will be terrible. On top of this the bank refused me a payrise last year and our annual office bonus system has been scraped in favour of an apparent industry-wide performance-related bonus system, and I have little chance from benefitting from this given my current attitude and performance levels.

So my question, after all of the above (!), is have any of you been in a similar situation and if so, what did you do and, if you took the plunge, how did you cope? Don't worry, I would never hold the forum responsible for any decisions I subsequently take - I am just genuinely interested to know what those of you to whom this might resonate have done to get to where you are today.

Apologies for the extremely lengthy opening ramble and if you have made it this far you have my thanks!

Any reply, response, word of advice, no matter how trivial or relevant you think it might be all gratefully received.

Many thanks in advance.

Regards,

JR