Tag: work

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Happy anniversary to me

Today is a bit of an anniversary of sorts for me. It might be a bit of an odd one to celebrate, but this is the anniversary of the day I was fired.

To be sure, “celebrate” is not really the right word here. The truth is that I have an odd talent when it comes to dates. I just remember stuff. Friends refer to it as my superpower. I remember people’s birthdays, dates of historical events, and dates that have personal meaning to me. I used to be good with phone numbers too, until owning cell phones destroyed my ability (or maybe just my will) to remember seven digits. I can also probably still tell you the postal code of every place I’ve ever lived in, and I’ve lived in a lot of places. But I digress.

Regardless, I feel this was an important day for me. A little background is probably in order.

In a way, this was my first big boy job. After being a student for years and years and then working for the family business for a while, this was my first job “in my field”. It was a job at a Big Company. A company with a name most people recognize. It was meant to be the first step in my career. A career that I thought was supposed to move forward, in a straight line forever. But of course real life doesn’t always work that way.

Why was I fired? Many reasons. Truthfully it wasn’t really a job I loved. The main reason I even took the was because it seemed like a good job at what seemed like a great company. My thinking was that I would get in the door and work my way into a role that I was truly excited about. And that is what I tried to do. I discovered a different group within the company that I wanted to join, I made some inquiries through the proper channels and tried to transfer. But the group I wanted to join didn’t really have a need for more people. Oh, did I mention that this was 2008? Well it was. So when the Big Company decided that it needed to let some people go, to weather the storm through the ensuing global economic meltdown, it was easy enough for my boss to say “listen, I really like you, but I happen to know that you’re not really passionate about this work”. Because I had basically told him so by asking to move to a different group.

And it stung. Like I said, I thought a career was always supposed to move forward in a straight line. You were supposed to graduate, get a big boy (or girl) job, start earning some money, get raises and promotions at somewhat regular intervals and leave your job only on your own terms and only if and when something better came along. But that was not my reality. I had failed. I was moving backwards. How was I going to find another job? I had a black mark on my resume: I had been fired. Canned. Downsized. Let go. Laid off. Made redundant. Any way I tried to dress it up, it stung.

The next day, the sun came up. It came up the day after that too. I got to work trying to find my next gig. It wasn’t easy. I was one of thousands who had lost their jobs at around that time. Finding my next job literally took months. Finding any job at that time was difficult, and I didn’t just want any job. I wanted the right job. It didn’t need to be perfect, or prestigious, or high-paying, but it needed to make sense for me and my career. My career wasn’t going to be a straight line from that point but I felt it still needed to go somewhere. And it did.

It is now nine years and two jobs hence. I think I will always remember the date. I will also always remember the things I have learned from the experience.

First, it’s never a good idea to take a job that you don’t want just because it’s a job you think you should take. Your standing within a company will be determined by the quality of work you do. If you’re doing something you don’t enjoy, faking it can be tough. Even if I hadn’t asked for a transfer to a different group, I’m guessing my boss could tell that my heart wasn’t into the work. How can you succeed at a job you don’t really want? You can’t. No success means no raises or promotions which means the next time the axe has to fall there’s a good chance it will be your neck.

Secondly, when I started interviewing I was happy to discover that being fired wasn’t the black mark I thought it would be. Smart managers know that people will lose their jobs for all sorts of reasons (like for example, because it’s 2008). Sometimes a job just ends up being a poor fit. They tend to be more concerned about whether they think you can do the job for which they are hiring, which often has nothing to do with the job from which you got fired.

Third, a career is not a straight line. It can be, but it often isn’t, and that’s just fine. It’s more important to have the career you want rather than the one you think you’re supposed to have. I have spent far too many years working jobs that made me miserable for my liking. I don’t want to spend a third of my waking hours doing something that makes me miserable. I have come to believe that it’s more important to be mindful of your finances than to worry about earning as much as possible. It’s not so much the size of the pie as how much of it is left over at the end of the day. Do work you enjoy and be smart with your money and you’ll be okay.

Finally, sometimes crappy things happen, and when they do, remember that you can and will get through this.  There is no shortage of motivational quotes, posters, or other media to choose from, but my personal favourite comes from Douglas Adams: “Don’t panic.” I have been pretty fortunate in my life and I realize now that people have gone through far worse hardships that losing a job. We all have our own struggles and we all find our own way to get through them.

When I think back to that day, I still remember the sting, and the shock, and the sense of failure. But I also am able to look at what I have done since then and where I am now. And in light of all this, it doesn’t seem quite so bad anymore.

Happy anniversary to me.

 

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Wait, what is this blog about? Career or early retirement?

It’s about both.

Good talk. Thanks for coming by.

Alright, I’ll elaborate…

It’s a valid question. For anyone who is following along, you would be forgiven for asking. “This guy starts off talking about retiring early, then spends a bunch of time talking work and career… what gives?” Fair point.

Let me clarify: the ultimate goal for me of course is early retirement. In order to consider retiring, one needs enough savings on which to comfortably live. In order to accumulate savings, one needs to maximize income and/or minimize expenses. The only way to save is to spend less than you earn. Retiring early implies you need to save more, or put a different way, to accumulate savings faster. There are only two ways to save faster: make more, or spend less. Or both.

If you don’t have enough saved yet to retire, you still have to work a while longer. This is the boat in which I find myself. I have to continue working for a few years more at least, but of course the hope is to make “a few” as few as possible. So given that I have to work, now I have some choices to make. I could choose to focus on earning as much money as possible right now, so I can ramp up that savings rate. This is the approach employed by J.P. of The Money Habit and it’s how she managed to retire at 28 (she is much better at this early retirement thing than me… or most people even). The other option is to decide that since I have to keep working for now, why not spend all that time doing something I at least enjoy, or find engaging?

I have worked jobs (yes, plural) where I was miserable. I spent most of my working days bored. When I did have work to do, I often felt the work was menial, or tedious, and largely pointless. In short, I regularly felt like I was wasting my life. Not a nice feeling. Because I have spent a lot of my working years not liking my job (and once again, I know I’m not special; I realize how common this is), my tendency is to focus on the second option, finding enjoyable or interesting work.

Don’t get me wrong, option one is great. Make the most money possible? Who wouldn’t sign up for that? But of course if it were that simple everybody would be doing it. It’s not like they’re handing out super high paying jobs on the street corner to whoever wants one. There’s a reason why we don’t all have the same high paying jobs. We have different talents and different interests. Option two is about aligning our talents with our interests. Option two can be hard enough.

What is retirement anyway?

For anyone who is familiar with the growing number of FIRE (financial independence, retire early) blogs out there, you’ll understand that retiring early does not necessarily imply that we spend our days lounging on the beach, drink in hand, and never lifting a finger ever again. If this is how you plan to spend your retirement, then good for you! Sounds fantastic. I just hope you have enough saved to spend the rest of your days living like this, because it sounds like a good way to go through a lot of money fast. We should all be so lucky.

For those not familiar with the concept, who are new to the FIRE approach, let me break it down for you. There’s a great old Simpsons episode where Homer quits his job at the nuclear power plant so he can fulfill his dream of working at a bowling alley. You could make the argument that for all intents and purposes, Homer retired when he did this. (The analogy doesn’t quite fit because in this particular episode Homer was still dependent on the income he earned from the bowling alley, but it’s close enough for illustrative purposes and it lets me incorporate a Simpsons reference.) If you separate your life into your working years and your retirement years, then your working years are spent working because you have to. In our working years, our primary concern is paying the bills and supporting ourselves or our families. If you have enough money saved that you can live off your savings, but you’re doing some kind of work because you want to, then whether or not you’re earning a paycheque doing it, you are effectively retired. In this case, you’re working by choice, presumably because you enjoy the work.

Now, imagine that there is work you can do 1) that will pay well (or well enough), 2)  that you find interesting and engaging, 3) that aligns with your values, and 4) that will give you good experience to do that thing you love during retirement. Sounds like a good idea, right? Maybe you can work toward a career today that could help you pursue a passion during retirement? Now that sounds a lot better than being miserable for 40 hours a week if you ask me.

I would love to be able to retire tomorrow, but it’s going to take me longer than that. In the meantime, I’d rather not dread going into work. I’m not an authority on careers by any stretch of the imagination. But over the years I’ve come across some good advice. And I’m happy to pass it along when I can. I also have made many mistakes, and I’ll tell you about some of those too, so hopefully you don’t have to make the same ones. Ultimately this is meant to be a space to chronicle my efforts in minimizing my remaining working years. Part of that involves making those remaining years bearable, or better yet, enjoyable. I’ll keep you up to speed on how that is working out for me.

 

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My philosophy of work, and how I got here

I currently have a good old fashioned, nine to five desk job. I do not like it very much. Surprise! The guy who started a blog called “Can I Quit Yet?” doesn’t like his job. Big shock, right?

Obviously the ultimate goal is early retirement. With a tip of the top hat to Mr. Money Mustache, and others like him, I am aware this is possible. But this is one of those goals that is simple, but difficult. Simple because the formula is straightforward: maximize your savings by minimizing your expenses and/or increasing your income. But saying “minimizing your expenses” is one thing and actually doing it is another. There are lots of areas where the average family can trim the fat and live more cheaply; I’ll get to a lot of those in future posts (or go back and follow that Mr. Money Mustache link… seriously, he’s great) but in my case there was a pretty obvious elephant in the room, and that is our mortgage. We have one, and it’s kinda big. And I know we can do lots to chip away at that mortgage and pay it down faster but it’s going to take a little time. What it all boils down to is this: for now, I gotta keep working.  It’s the only way we’re going to reduce and ultimately eliminate that mortgage so we can live more cheaply and achieve financial independence.

So I have established that I have to work, but I don’t like my current job. So the simple solution is of course to try and find another job. Well that’s proving to be a little difficult. To explain why, allow me first to explain how I got here.

I have always felt there are three things that make a job good, or worth having. 1) Interesting or fulfilling work; 2) Good pay; and 3) Good people.

Interesting or fulfilling work – In the simplest of terms, do you enjoy what you do? Are you spending your working hours doing the type of work you enjoy, or that motivates you? This is the big one for most people, and according to a lot of the stuff I have been reading lately about millennials and “kids these days” it’s more commonly becoming the most important factor. This of course makes sense because if you’re spending approximately eight hours a day doing a thing, it’s best that you enjoy doing that thing. Of course in many ways it’s also a first world problem, as the opposing viewpoint is that work is work, a job is a job, we all need to make money, so suck it up buttercup quit your whining and be thankful for your paycheque. Fair enough. That’s why I personally see it as only one of three major factors to job fulfillment.

Good pay – This one is a bit obvious to me. The pay is the main reason why most of us are working in the first place. Is money everything? Of course not. But to think of things a different way, if you’re working a job and finding that the pay just isn’t enough, that you’re struggling to get by and barely making it to your next paycheque, don’t you at that point start to consider looking for a new job? I figure for a lot of people the answer to that question is yes. On the flip side, if you’re working a job that isn’t necessarily your dream job but the money is good, you’re likely to stick around a bit longer than you otherwise might. I know that for me at least this is true.

Good people – For anyone who has ever worked a job where they had serious issues with their coworkers or managers, they’re likely reading this and nodding their heads vigorously. At the same time, a boring job with great coworkers can easily become a pretty good job. I find that if I like the people I work with, I like the job a lot more. It really can make all the difference, especially when you consider the fact that a lot of people spend more time with their coworkers than their families. If you don’t believe me ask yourself a few questions: How many hours do you sleep on the average night? How about your family members? Are you at home the same time as the rest of your family? Do you and the rest of your family ever do things separately? Do the math and then let me know if you think you spend more time with your spouse or the person you sit next to at work.

So those are the three things. In my estimation, if you have all three of those things in your job, then you’re laughing. Good for you! You’re probably in no hurry to retire early and therefore most likely not reading this right now. If you have two out of those three things, then you’re probably still pretty content. But if you have only one out of three… well if you’re like me, then at that point you’re probably starting to at least browse job ads. If you’re oh-for-three, well then I’d wager you’re not very happy about things and maybe doing more than just browsing job ads. And if you’re not, maybe you’re thinking about it. Maybe you should?

So that’s our scorecard. Now let’s see how I am doing based on these criteria.

Interesting work? Not so much. When I was first hired, I was brought in to help on a project that I thought was very interesting. Unfortunately, that project met an untimely death about six months into my jew job. After that happened, I was brought onto a project that was way behind schedule and needed help. It was in serious trouble and needed people. I never really cared too much for the project, nor did I have much in the way of expertise going in. In addition, the people in charge didn’t need or want the kind of help I like providing. I’m more of a big picture guy, who thrives in strategy, planning, and problem solving. I like to be invested, to have skin in the game. The role I was tasked to play on this project is basically that of a grunt; do what you’re told and let the adults in the room make the tough decisions. I was okay with helping out when help was needed, but now it’s been over five years. This project is still a going concern and I’m still stuck in it, not making what I consider to be any meaningful contributions. It’s definitely not doing my career any favours, unless I want to keep doing what I’m doing forever, and I don’t.

Good pay? Well this one is tricky… When I first started this job I was able to negotiate a salary that was a significant jump for me, compared to my last job. Part of the reason was due to the new job being in the big city as opposed to a smaller one, and that usually means a jump in money for reasons outlined in my last post. Another part of the reason was probably due to the fact that I was moving along in my career, now a more experienced hire, and the fact remains that a jump in salary is often the reason why people decide to switch jobs in the first place. When I made the switch, I was pretty happy about the money. Well it’s now over six years later. How many raises have I earned in that time? Zero. As I already hinted at, I’m not exactly in a role where I’m able to thrive and have a real impact, so there have been no performance-based raises or promotions. There also haven’t been any inflation-based or cost-of-living-based adjustments either. It’s become pretty obvious to me that pay increases at my current job just don’t really seem to happen very often at all. Do I think I’m entitled to the occasional raise? Well, no, not necessarily. But the fact remains that even if inflation over the past 6+ years has only been in the 1-2% range, a dollar earned today is worth less than it was 6 years ago. It doesn’t go as far. Plus when I started this job I was a freewheeling bachelor. Now I have a family to provide for and that family is growing. So if my pay hasn’t changed, but a dollar is worth less today, then in real terms, I’m actually earning less today than I was when I started. Let me be clear: I know that I am fortunate, that I do earn a very decent salary, and that I realize there are a great many people out there who are worse off than I am. But my goal in life is to get ahead, so that one day I can retire and have more time with my family. Right now it’s fair to say I’m not moving ahead.

Good people? At one point, I definitely would have said yes. Emphatically. I do work with some great people who I consider friends and not just work friends. The people were, and still are the best thing about my job. But I’m afraid the situation there has deteriorated somewhat as well. When I first started in this job, our team would go out to lunch on a daily basis. We would have after-work drinks almost as frequently. So what happened? Well, my life and priorities changed. The daily lunches were getting expensive, so I started brown-bagging. The after work drinks all but stopped too. When I was a local bachelor, they were fun and easy. Now, I think twice about spending too much on beer. Plus, living in the ‘burbs means I’m a commuter, and even staying for a single drink often means putting me on a much later train which means potentially not seeing my daughter before she goes to bed. It seems a much bigger sacrifice, because I actually really like my family and spending time with them. Some work friends have left the company and moved on to other things. But unfortunately my unhappiness with my job has affected some of my work relationships. My frustrations with my role and career have caused some resentment toward some of my superiors who I used to think of as friends. It’s a huge bummer.

When I started in this job, I was excited about the work, ecstatic about my coworkers, and happy to be earning more than I was before. When the work became less interesting I told myself that at least it was an easy job and I was still working with great people and better off than I was. That’s probably why I stuck around as long as I did. But before I knew it, years had passed, I was bored, frustrated about my stagnant career, losing hope for future progress, and then working with good people just wasn’t enough. On my three-point scale, I was barely scoring a 1/3. Just barely. Time to move on.

So now what? How do I fix things? What’s my game plan?

I’ll save that for next time.