I’m currently in a job where I bust my ass and work hard and sometimes long hours.
The job entails a lot of fairly mundane spreadsheet making/formatting and other pretty minor things. It also requires a lot of abstract thought and innovative solutions to things.
I frequently get comments like “We didn’t think that was solvable, but you figured it out.” or “Wow! We didn’t know that you could do that.” or “Way to decompose the problem and solve the sub-problems.”.
I also get “Everyone likes working with you.” and “You have a terrific work ethic” and “You have tremendous integrity and own up to your mistakes very honestly.”.
But… I’m not up for being promoted (from the bottom rank, mind you) because I’m not detail oriented, and I frequently have trouble with very minor details such as making sure that everything’s formatted the same, or that the columns are formatted right, etc… or that I may have made a simple mistake in my query (like not rounding right).
It seems to me that they’d rather have a surly, completely un-innovative guy who is just very detail oriented and gets the double-checking right, instead of me, who’s solved several issues that nobody’d solved for several years until I came along.
So, with that in mind, what do you all think would be a good job for someone like me? I have a BS in Computer Science, a MS in IT Management, and an MBA. I also have about 6 years of work experience in IT, and 2.5 in computer forensics consulting/forensic data mining.
I am little like you except somewhat more senior in the same industry. I work for a mega-corp and over time my job has evolved so that I focus on the most difficult projects that others have failed at. I am a superstar in that way. What I really struggle with is keeping our myriad of project plans updated along with routine administrative tasks. I can develop an entire complex system yet I would be terrible to be one of the day to day users because I would just forget or neglect to do routine things.
The cause for me and I suspect it is for you is boredom. I will fail if a task is too easy and do great if it is very hard. It sounds like that is what you are experiencing.
I can’t recommend a specific job but I can recommend consulting/contracting if you are willing to take a little risk. The market is pretty good for contracting right now and there are positions at all levels. The advantages are that you can take short-term positions to try new things out and contracting generally pays (a good deal) more than permanent positions. The downside is that things may be more unstable and you have to pay for your own benefits. Contractors with a good track record usually don’t have problems finding new work and some positions can stretch out for years if you want them to. You can also save up some money and go to the Carribean for a month if you want to.
www.dice.com is the best resource for that type of thing.
I really, really don’t want to sound negative or confrontational here, because it does sound like you have some excellent qualities. But, just to play Devil’s Advocate for a minute, if I were in a position to promote someone and my choice was between someone who might not have the greatest personality but who I could rely on to actually get the job done right, and someone with a great personality and some creative solutions to long-standing problems but who not only couldn’t be counted on to do the most basic aspects of the job reliably (like rounding numbers properly) but also doesn’t seem to think that’s all that important, yeah, I’m gonna pick that first guy.
It sounds to me like you have the education and experience to go into business for yourself, and you definitely have the big-picture mindset that an entrepreneur needs, so why not promote yourself to owner of something?
Why do you think that you have an insurmountable problem here? Everyone has areas of weakness… why don’t you take steps to work on yours. Such as, before calling a project done, make and go over a checklist of you common ommissions:
[ul]
[li]verify query[/li][li]consistent font[/li][li]consistent number format[/li][li]check rounding[/li][li]headers[/li][li]totals[/li][li]etc…[/li][/ul]
It sounds like you’ve got a lot of strengths, so maybe it won’t be a big deal to look a little closer at the details.
I think you may be right; a big piece of it is that the actual query coding is moderately interesting, and is even be very interesting at times, but when 70% of the job is mundane, boring crap, it’s hard to get motivated or really care when you’ve done it a zillion times before and it doesn’t change or even really challenge me- it’s just going through the motions for me - like digital assembly-line work or something.
Give me something that has stumped other people or that’s new, and I’m in my element.
Hire interns or out-source contractors to do the piddly stuff for you. Pay them as little as possible and do more big-picture things with your newly free time. Profit.