Career advice is hard. I left school and started work in a brewery taste testing beer and analysing it chemically too. I got a cold and lost my sense of smell so got a job at Coca-Cola as a Field Chemist. Went around the factories making sure everything was done up to standard and did microbiological and chemical testing too. Got made redundant from that and the had a summer job of baggage handling for TWA at Heathrow. Did that for two years as I could make enough money to last the year. A permanent job doing that would have been good but there was a queue for them and someone had to literally die for a vacancy to appear!
Then got a job at British Airways. Applied for a courier job but ended up working in the IT department as a junior operator (putting the round tapes on drives basically) and some printing work. Moved up to an operator which was operating a mainframe system. Keeping things running during production time and so on.
We then moved up to Scotland and I got a computer operator job for an insurance company that include a brilliant non-contribution pension scheme. After a while they introduced mainframe laser printers which I had experience of at BA.
Eventually I was an Electronic Printing Manager and basically looked after the mainframe related printed function. I was good at it and liked what I was doing. We then went through a downsizing exercise and I survived but the other person in my team didn't so I was doing the job on my own. A year later we went through the same thing again. Except this time I was offered to cross-train into an analyst/programmer role. It meant stopping the print function completely. I was about 50 at the time.
I know I am not stupid but it wasn't ever going to be my thing. However, it was a job and I would be learning something new. We had proper training - it was about a 10 week course. Everyone else on the course were just out of uni but all were OK and we helped each other a lot. After the training we were set loose and it was generally OK. The issue I had was because of my previous pay grade I was a Senior Analyst/programmer so there were certain extra responsibilities above just programming.
Management were great and were always helpful but I did find myself struggling with my own expectations and also having to do something I wasn't particularly keen doing, or to be honest, was above my capability. I did struggle with the pressure of working on projects with deadlines that were quite tight. Plus despite not doing and specifically being told not to do any print related work was constantly being asked for printing-related advice. There wasn't anyone else in the organisation that had the same printing knowledge as I did.
We then went through another staff cull and a year later was another one. So in 4 years we went from 500 people to 100 and the roles we were doing were not what we were trained to do either. It was a hard time. So with the last cull I bailed and left. I have never felt so relieved before (except when we finally got a bully manager sacked
).
I then had a year off when I did a lot of work around the house that needed doing and also started to look for some income to supplement my pension. The house and car were paid for so it was only 'running' costs. I eventually got a job photographing cars for local dealerships. Not a massive amount of money but it was two days a week and about £800 a month. Initially that was a joke as they had you taking photos during the winter when it was dark and snowing and wondered why the pics were not great. However, things changed and they had a more professional approach that was good and standards were introduced. There was cover for holidays and also we did insurance work. We would go to a site and take photos of equipment, machinery, trucks and cars to prove that they existed and were OK to be insured. That was fun and different. As always they wanted to save money so they got sales reps to take the car pics with their phones and the results were predictably bad. At that point my knees were really fecked and a real issue so stopping that was a relief.
So, the problem with careers is that you can never really know what direction you will take (for normal people anyway). There can be twists and turns on the way and hopefully you will end up doing something that you like and are good at. In my last company when I joined there the benefits were great but gradually the pension changed and we had to contribute. Salary increases were rare and didn't cover the cost of pension charges and so on. I became a union rep to get rid of the manager we had. Learnt a massive amount doing that through dealing with people and management. It was hard sometimes representing people who lost their jobs (often through their own stupidity) but it was also satisfying when you were successful too.
More to the point, a project managers skills can be transferred from one sector to another. We had project managers who were not from IT but were perfectly fine as it was a project that had the same structure as elsewhere. From that point of view it may be worth the experience and using it as a learning situation if it does turn out to be not what you would like. With regards to companies, most nowadays are looking to save money wherever they can. It can also depend on the people too. There is usually a probationary period when you start any job though that does depend on employment laws. If you did get it and tried it and found it or the company wasn't for you then you can start to look elsewhere. Doing something you hate isn't good for you or your health. I have seen people puking in the car park before going into the building because they hated it that much.
Hop that is of some use and if you need anything else there are plenty of people who will also have their views too.
