lifestyle changes

I used to work for A Well Known Soap Opera in That London, until just over 2 years ago..
Then I sold my flat, and with the proceeds bought a lovely house in the middle of nowhere, plus a very run down property in Swansea.. We did that up, and with the proceeds bought another 2...
My working week has dropped from 40 hours, to almost whenever I like. And there's no luvvies to wind me up (only the Inland Revenue :D)

So my tip is get out of there! There's a number of things to do all over the country - frinstance we stayed at a b&b in Wester Ross recently.. They have 100 days off a year and make over £60k from 3 bedrooms. And they've got one of the best views in the world..
Another m8 of mine gave up his job as a dentist and became a climbing instructor - big drop in wages but now he swans about climbing all day. Beats rummaging about in people's smelly mouths!
 
Philip King said:
My best mate has just moved over to NI, he is commuting to London for a 2 day working week on contract whilst trying to find an IT job over there. Good time to buy property over there now I hear.
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reall..? - what IT work does he do..? - I do MS support type stuff, but there doesn't seem tp be a great deal there, and I'm not sure how many people are applying for these jobs either!!

house prices are quite cheap, tho, my girlfriend's buying a bungalow at whitehead for 155k!
 
He works on contract for one of the major consultancies doing Domino related coding, the company has a very mature policy on home working. Its gotta be the way to go.

He now spends less on air fair a month then he did on his monthly travel card!
 
yeah, working from home is the way to go...as for domino..well..!!

there are a few vancacies for MS contracting jobs out there - ans they've been advertised for a while now...but I ain't so sure about that...think I'd prefer a permy job...
 
griffo104 said:
It's a sad state that quite a few of you feel the same way as me.

Our office is quite depressing to work in at the moment, several friends/colleagues have already been let go due to the India factor.

I finished contracting a little over 5 years ago due to IR35. I intended to sepnd the whole summer chiiling out. After 5 weeks the current job I have dropped in to my lap and I took it. Those 5 weeks were the longest I had been out of work since leaving school - I loved them.

I would like to take a break, chill out and look for something diferent - but want to hang on for redundancy pay.
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hehe, it depends on what kind of "lifestyle" change you had in mine! :)

Yep same here, my job started off ok, web site design, php, mysql programming, I really enjoyed it, its now moved to proparitory software which I'm just now taking support calls for and setting up users, and boring as shit and not what I had in mind at all, and now they're trying to move me onto their call centre system, just can't get it through to them that I'm not the least bit interested! I do very little programming at all now. I liked what I did before because I could use the skills I had gained at work for my home work so I felt we both benifited, but now I don't get anything out of it and I'm bored! (I'm back at work part time at the moment, and that's bad enough).

Can't quit job, got mortgage to pay (that was a mistake), but yep like you looking for a change, but don't know where to go from here, are there any jobs that don't suck?
 
must admit the hippy is thinking of a change ,not sure to what yet but the glitzy world of show biz is loosing its sparkle,even the ocasional game of truck tetris at 2AM dosnt excite me as it used to,maybe time to take another step down the ladder.
 
My major problem is being a techie and these are the skills being sent to India therefore the company I work for are trying to push us into either testing, business analysis ot project management. I have no interest in any of these.

My current job is using COBOL/DB2 on mainframes and just completed a matching small system in Java in Websphere. this was good but now it's finished I find myself bored with my current work - which involves supporting 3rd party software and chasing down datasets from suppliers.

the fact that I have to work away from home during the week doesn't help and I don't particularly like where I work either - Basilodon is not the most pleasant of places (apologies to any residents of that town who may be on here).

It would be nice to head back up home and do a job I get some sense of acheivement from, which is why charity work is currently appealing to me but I can't find anything here either.
 
lhatkins said:
Can't quit job, got mortgage to pay (that was a mistake), but yep like you looking for a change, but don't know where to go from here, are there any jobs that don't suck?
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Glassblower?
 
griffo104 said:
My major problem is being a techie and these are the skills being sent to India therefore the company I work for are trying to push us into either testing, business analysis ot project management. I have no interest in any of these.
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Ya they're trying to push me this way as well, looking after projects, no thanks, too much paperwork and messing about. Our place have a strange attitude, rather than use the in house skills they waste money by getting in contractors, so we're left diong the donkey work.

griffo104 said:
My current job is using COBOL/DB2 on mainframes and just completed a matching small system in Java in Websphere. this was good but now it's finished I find myself bored with my current work - which involves supporting 3rd party software and chasing down datasets from suppliers.
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COBOL, still, geez I thought that died a death a long time ago, thankfully our mainframe is biting the dust very soon, not have much to do with it thankfully.

Ya I'm finding that I'm contacting 3rd party suppliers for various software packages, support issues mainly. Its just dull.
 
Griffo104, I'm in the same boat mate. I've been contracting for a bit, and I'm finding each contract less and less interesting. I'm off on a long-planned holiday soon, but on my return I am planning a change.

It won't happen overnight, and it probably won't happen at all, but I am keen to at least indulge my original career plan. Long before guidance counsellors and parents and naysayers talked me out of it, I planned a career in music. Composition and recording.

Yes, it's a daft idea. No, it probably won't amount to much. BUT, it is something that I feel I should explore, as nobody ever made a career in music any other way.

Crazy idea, but then if one aims high, there's always that chance (however slim) of achieving your crazy idea. Which is what I plan to do.

John

PS. Most people hate their jobs - it's why it's called a job.
 
John,

I have the utmost respect for you wanting to have a go at music and hope you get the chance to do it - and be successful.

My problem is not knowing where to go next and taking the risk of jumping.

Also a job may be a job but something that you have to do 5 (or more) days a week should hopefully be enjoyable or at leat stimulating - in theory of course.

Lee

COBOL will NEVER die too many large corporations have huge systems using it and the cost to move is huge. The current place I'm working at tried doing this recently - going from COBOL to nice Oracle/java app, spent millions, the software didn't work, the hardware couldn't handle the task and in the end they binned it to stay COBOL.

Besides these are the languages I've used in my career, COBOL, PL1, FORTRAN, PASCAL, BASIC, CORVISION, PERL, JAVA and pretty much on every platform. There isn't a lot I haven't done, my main skill is being dumped in the deep end and swimming. The only language I ever got training in was COBOL all the others were on the job.

I am techie, I wanted to be a techie and now I have to push paper. It just isn't fun.
 
Good question.

A little bit of both - but also a realisation that as all the jobs get shipped out to cheap labour in another country you have to plan ahead.
 
mr cat said:
...as for domino..well..!!
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I don't know, its kept my colleagues and I in a living for the last 9 years. IMO it's better thought out technology than Microsoft's attempts, but it's always been a bit too esoteric for most. Plus IBM never really threw their weight behind it.

I'm yet to be convinced that WebSphere is going to be commercially successful anytime soon in the UK, so we are not moving our efforts in that direction yet.

Back to the subject - I guess I'm always on the lookout for an alternative to the IT "game". An old friend and former colleague of mine recently left our biz to start buying and selling used cars. Things were shakey for a while, but now he's moving around 10 cars per month, making around 5-7K profit with very low costs. He runs his business from a lovely farm house in the middle of Shropshire (rented), mostly buying from the block in Stockport and selling via eBay (mostly). He pays almost no tax too!

He has a bit of a history which I wont go into, but he made the jump from IT to used car trader as follows: he accrued about £100K of credit and converted it into cash, he registed a company in Delaware, managed to get a Bank of Scotland business account for his Delaware co. Moved funds into the company, bought a few vehicles - thus owned by the company, then defaulted on all his personal credit and declared himself bankrupt.

Delaware companies don't have to publish a list of directors or shareholders, they pay a fixed amount of tax, the and dont have to submit their accounts. His business account has a cash card so he can get hold of funds without them touching any UK personal account.

When he declared himself bankrupt - he had to attend a 30 minute interview regards the declaration, the interviewer asked the usual - "Do you have any property?" - he doesnt. "Do you have any assets in the bank?" - nope. He also asked "How much have you got in your pocket?" - my friend replied "£40". "Keep that safe he replied - you'll need it."!

At the end of it, the guy explained that bankruptcy is on the increase and soon they wont even have time to interview in person. That the unofficial line from their perspective is that the financial institutions are cavalier in their lending policies and by cancelling your credit, bankruptcy is intended to penalise them not you, though there are certain rules regards you having to give up property and assets - but what you own is difficult to for them to determine. In my friends case - he is the sole owner of a company which in turn owned £60K worth of cars on his drive, yet they couldnt touch them - as far as they were concerned he's an employee of the company and that's all.

Conversely the government consider heavy debt to cost them substantially - benefits claims, ill health due to stress, early death's, suicide and of course the impact of this on the person's family - further debt, illness and possible suicide. As such these days bankruptcy is not the stigma it used to be and the negative effects on your future credit and authority to direct a uk ltd company are less than they were.

I'm not advocating following the example of my friend, just using him as an example of what options are out there.
 

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