I'm sick of job hunting

The BBQ Pit
41

Your original sentence said something along the lines of: “having the wife be the breadwinner is psychologically stressful” which I think this is the real knot of it; Self-image, ego and the fear of losing esteem from friends & family. Those are completely understandable and legitimate concerns. They’re concerns which are going to be increasing salient as gender relations change.

I remember OP mentioning on at least two occasions that the consulting bros and finance bros he hung out with had a tendency to date/marry waitresses and strippers. I don’t know if OP was at all like his friends in that regard but that suggests a strong psychological desire to “wear the pants” in the relationship. Feeling like you can’t be the breadwinner/pants wearer of the household must be difficult for someone who may have defined their life ambitions primarily in terms of money and status.

42

Move to the Midwest. Seriously.

The hotshot coders and mid-level Accenture / McKinsey alumns in their early 30’s are going to gravitate to the costs no matter what, and you’re going to be in direct competition with them.

My Glassdoor and Linkedin job searches are full of PM, PMO, Engagement, etc jobs for relatively stable enterprises in the $90k-$120k range. That money goes a hell of a lot farther in St. Louis than in Manhattan or Brooklyn… or even Queens. Mid-sized cities in flyover country can be pretty decent places to raise a couple of kids if you have that kind of coin.

43

No, because your question is stupid. I am a married family man and father of two small children. I don’t live some sort of Wolf of Wall Street American Psycho d-bag lifestyle. Sure, maybe a decade ago some of my friends and I tended to party a bit. But most of us have settle down a bit.

That’s a bullshit question because if everyone had their necessities of life secured, no one would clean shit for a living. The reality is that, unless you have a trust fund, no one is going to secure your financials for you. So given that I have to work, what I want is to find a job that’s interesting, pays well, and ideally doesn’t involve working with the general public or too many total jerkoffs.

I’m not really worried about losing esteem from family & friends. My true friends are my friends regardless. I’m also not really worried about my wife being the breadwinner.

But, like a lot of people, I generally derive some sense of purpose from having a job to do and doing it well.

It seems to happen in my field more frequently than most. A lot of it is bad luck. Get a bad client or not be staffed on a project during a downturn and you can find yourself “counselled out”. I see a lot of my friends who end up changing jobs every 1-5 years because of that. It still sucks though. Like any job, you develop friendships or at least a network of people and you learn how their business runs. Then you have to start over at some other firm.

And yet, there are some people who manage to last in these companies for years and years. Some of them are complete idiots. But they manage to find some rainmaker who brings in business for them, and manage to not get staffed on some shitty client.

That includes my bonus and other perks.

Sorry if I offended your delicate sensibilities. In spite of some setbacks in my career, I have generally enjoyed increased compensation over the past 20+ years and that is around what I was making. Someone with my experience in my field In NYC can make anywhere from $150k to $225k or more (base). FWIW, I’m really at a point where I would be transitioning more into a “business development” role, so my comp would depend more on how much sales I could generate. And to be honest, that isn’t my thing really. So I would certainly entertain a lower comp for certain lifestyle benefits like less travel, better hours, or just a generally good culture to work in.

44

You’re part of the bros who caused the 2008 crash, with all the political consequences we’re seeing today. Then you complain about capitalism. And what’s your complaint? That it won’t give you a $200K/year job. I gotta admit that causes an itch in me.

45

My husband started working for Gartner about eighteen months ago. They are growing like crazy. But a word of warning…

The interview process is onerous. And long. You will invest a ton of time in the interview process - and probably not get hired.

They have positions for analysts, but they also have a consulting arm.

46

To the OP.

You probably haven’t noticed me here. I don’t post all that much. I run into your user name a lot because we have similar work backgrounds, although I have spent most of my career in staff positions.

User names usually don’t stick with me unless the poster is unusually and consistently witty, wise, annoying, or wrong. Your name has stuck with me because your posts in business-related threads have consistently, based on my experiences and in my opinion, trended toward the annoying and wrong side of that list.

I’m not going to bother looking for examples. Many of your posts have left me wondering how someone with your personality and beliefs about how things work (and ought to work) in the business world had a job at all.

If the attitudes that you display here on SDMB about the business world and your fellow man make their way into your communications with prospective employers, you may never find a job.

47

Actually, up until 2008, my “bros” and I worked mostly on consulting engagements investigating fraud, anti-money laundering, financial crimes and other regulatory stuff. For the past several years, I’ve been working on an engagement with a group of banks and regulators to try and prevent what happened in 2008 from happening again. At least in the derivatives market.

Dick

I’m not opposed to such a job. I’ve been contacted months ago by Gartner. Also Capgemini, Cognizant, KPMG, a few others. As you say, they have long hiring cycles that often go nowhere.

48

Presented that way, that sounds much better than I remembered you describe your job where you presented consulting as mainly being about pushing software.

Well, you’re not wrong. Touché, sir.

49

Well, that’s not necessarily wrong either. But it was software and services related to what I described. There’s nothing wrong with that.

I don’t want to be too defensive. It’s not like the consulting industry hasn’t had it’s share of controversy. And truth be told, the firm I worked for in 2008 did have a bit of a “bro” culture that probably wouldn’t fly these days.

I don’t know how to respond to that because I don’t know what specific posts or opinions you are referring to. Are you referring to actual discussions on business or career, random political musings or me simply venting about personal or professional frustrations? And I should even consider your opinion at all, not knowing anything about your business experience?

So it’s pretty weird that you would come in here just to tell someone you don’t know how “wrong” and “annoying” their posts are.

But perhaps you are right. Maybe I don’t really know that much about business. At least not how it really works in practice.

50

I have had a union job for 13 years, will probably have it for another 13. It isn’t high status and I am sure many people think I am an idiot for working for a living( though it actually isn’t simple and easy), but I make 100k and, thanks to my math background, have been able to leverage that into a pretty good situation. I will likely retire a millionaire (with a pension!), and will very much enjoy being the millionaire idiot who didn’t know better than to work for a living.

Not sure if the OP would consider or even can change, but there is more to life than office jobs. Hate job seeking? Get a union job. It is extra stable.

My gf has a PhD, we take turns wearing the pants I guess. Mostly I focus on blissing out here in the Mountain West. It isn’t that bad. Really!

51

Agreed.
While starting a business isn’t a good fall back strategy, it’s something which someone with your education, experience, contacts, support (“ok financially”, wife, family) and environment (NY) is in a great position to try. IIRC, you talked about wanting to move in “business development” which I take to mean “sales” and you would definitely be doing a lot of that. You would get to choose how much work you do. Consulting could get you to meet people who are looking to hire and can “try before they buy”.

It’s not a fall back strategy but is that what you need at this point? You don’t seem satisfied with conventional avenues. Are you concerned you’ll run out of money before it gets established? It seems like the capital requirements and burn rate of consulting aren’t particularly high. It’s something you’d have to ponder and discuss with your wife but you may want to at least give it a summary look.

I have no idea how easy it is to start such a business so I’ll admit that I may be talking out of utter ignorance. It seems like you’re at a point where you don’t need to be focusing on having a fall back strategy and can focus on what you’d genuinely enjoy doing.

Do you finally have those gray hairs of wisdom that clients need to feel trust? Isn’t that how contracting and partnership decisions are made? : )

52

Looking for a job for any extended period of time is super-depressing. I remember a friend telling me how depressed he had been; he would see people on the highway and get mad at them, just because they had jobs to go to and he didn’t. At the time he told me this, though, he had a job: he was vice president and head of HR for a public company.

I think you have to consider the possibility that eight months is not all that long for someone in your position. When I last looked (which, admittedly, was in a different century), it took me four months. That was considered a solid result, essentially what was expected for somebody with marketable skills and good references in a strong economy.

I think you also have to consider the possibility that you need to make changes to your approach. Posting here is one step in that direction, but I doubt if there are many people on this board who are knowledgeable about your particular field. I would recommend John Lucht, Rites of Passage at $100,000 to $1,000,000+, Amazon.com. That gave me some ideas and perspectives, and I found it quite a bit more useful than What Color Is Your Parachute.

53

It’s an easy business to start. Just create a web site (if you want). Maybe have a lawyer create a corporation and obtain an EIN for a couple hundred bucks. Might need a new laptop.

It’s getting the clients that’s the trick. Even for very senior consultants, it seems to me that it can be challenging picking a viable service offering and generating a steady stream of clients.

54

That part depends on how good your network is. I still get people calling me out of the blue to see if I’ll take a job - and I haven’t consulted in three years. My husband had very few months without a client - and plenty of times he had to turn down business.

If you want to do it, the thing to do is to start calling everyone you’ve worked with and say “hey, I’m hanging out a shingle, if you have any work you’d consider me for, let me know.” Don’t be too picky starting out on things like rate or tasks. Someone out there (unless you are a truly champion bridge burner) will have something or know someone who has something. Be prepared for three months of work followed by three months of beating the bushes for your next job, and then six months of more people who want your time than time, and then three months of nothing.

55

You mean “business development”, the thing you want to get into?

Searching for a job and developing business don’t need to be mutually exclusive goals, do they? What’s the consult-y term for this… synergy!
You seem to have some cynicism for the consulting business. Cynicism is often a sign of frustration and frustration is often based on a wish that things could be done better. With the education and experience you have, what have you grokked about consulting that could be integrated to offer something better than conventional consulting services?

Just as one example (I’ve no idea how sound it is), I remember you mentioning that consultants are often brought in to rubberstamp a decision that’s already been made. That seems kinda shitty, pointless and discouraging but maybe there’s potential value in that.

Maybe what they want is a third party who knows how to smooth things over and will allow the losing sub-group to save face and not disrupt change that’s gonna happen one way or the other. Or there isn’t very much trust between some of the people and they want the corporate equivalent of shuttle diplomacy or a family mediator. You must know better than most that executives can be lead by their emotions, flaws and insecurities just like anybody else. It’s possible that workaholic middle-aged men who are used to being in charge may not be good at explicitly asking for certain kinds of help.

56

About five years ago I was in a situation where I was unemployed for an extended period of time.

I am an IT professional. I had been working at a place where everyone above me had been fired, I was present when the organization was attacked by a malicious hacker (who may or may not have been one of the IT people who were fired just prior). The FBI was involved and I was in the middle of a federal investigation for months (it’s fun on TV but sucks in real life). I had basically taken on all of the work that my bosses had done because nobody else was going to do it, and the organization decided that I was doing well enough that they didn’t need to hire anyone to replace them, or promote me. I had no authority, no compensation, just duties. And our infrastructure was a shambles, there was NO backup system in place, and I had no way to fix any of that because I had no budget or (again) authority to change anything, just a duty to maintain it.

I told them essentially that I wasn’t their slave and was sick of being an underpaid one person IT department. They ignored me. I quit. Things went to hell after that, from what I’ve heard, but I wasn’t around to be the blame of any of it.

I got out of a bad situation but I had no job. I applied at a bunch of places and I had verbal job offers that evaporated before I started; basically it wasn’t that they didn’t want to hire me but they decided to eliminate the positions.

I went for months without work. I wasn’t eligible for unemployment because I had quit and our state unemployment folks didn’t accept my insistence that I was pretty much forced to leave. My wife worked but losing half our household income sucked, and slowly over time I maxed out my credit card just paying bills (and I’m someone who hates any kind of debt ever).

I tried recruiters because I was desperate. They sucked. So bad. They didn’t seem to get what my background was, or cared. Not that it was complicated; I did IT desktop, network, and server support. I remember one recruiter seeing that I had supported SQL servers and clients and wanted me to redo my resume to make it look like I was some kind of SQL database architect. I refused, and asked them how good it would do myself, the recruiter, and the hiring organization when I showed up and demonstrated that I had no idea what I was doing? They still insisted until I hung up on them.

I did get one job through a recruiter. It was a temp-to-hire job for a short period (I think 5 months) working for a small city government. At least it was related to my career, so I’ll give them that, but the pay was so low. I only took the job because (1) it had a pension if I got hired on full time, and (2) they insisted that the “temporary” nature of the job was a formality and that if it worked out I’d get a permanent gig at higher pay.

The job stunk. I wasn’t trusted to have keys so I’d show up at City Hall on time every day then call 3 or 4 phone numbers begging someone to let me in (because they wanted me to arrive hours before it opened). I had no sick leave or vacation, no benefits at all really. I was making peanuts chasing the idea of an eventual stable job.

After 5 months they still hadn’t hired me full time but they really liked me so they extended my contract another couple of months. After that they told me they didn’t have a budget to hire me full time and let me go. So that was 7 months being underpaid, working in crap conditions and ending with nothing,

Then we had a daughter and I was still unemployed. Finally one company called me. They were a furniture manufacturer/seller who wanted to hire me full time. The pay was not better than my previous contract job (maybe even lower) and when they made me an offer I flat-out told them that it was low. They tried to sweeten the deal by telling me they’d provide me a smart phone and pay for it, and I could use it as my personal phone. I relented because I needed some kind of income with a new baby, but I warned them up-front that with what they were paying me I didn’t know how long I’d stay. They didn’t seem worried by my comments and insisted that I’d love the place and I’d want to stay.

I didn’t love the place. My coworkers were cool, the other people in the IT department especially. The work was fine. I actually had real benefits for the first time in a while. But it was a family-owned business and everyone had to walk on eggshells for the owners, all the time. Any request had to be done immediately and you had to be careful of everything you said and did all of the time. It was insanely stressful and some of the folks there had a kind of shell-shocked look from being in that environment.

After working there a month, I was contacted by a place I’d applied to months before and forgotten, a state government agency. It was really good pay (honestly more than I’d ever made before), a very secure union job, full benefits and pension. I almost didn’t even go in for an interview because at that point I didn’t think a position like that was attainable for me. But I went in anyway and they loved me, and I’ve been working there since. I felt no guilt leaving the company who’d hired me because I warned them day one that I probably wouldn’t stick around. Plus I agreed to stay two weeks after giving my notice to cover another person’s vacation time before parting.

Bottom line, recruiters suck. I never got anything good from them. Oh, and they still call and email me no matter how many times I tell them I have a steady job for years, that I got on my own, and that their calling me is harassment. Don’t waste your time.

Oh, as for not hiring anyone in their 50s, I was recently filling in as supervisor and had to hire a new IT person. I ended up hiring a guy in his upper 50s who is awesome because he has decades of experience (a few years more than me), a great attitude, and his age if anything is a major plus. It’s not impossible to get hired when you’re older if you are qualified for what you apply for and you interview well.

57

Someone said the OP should consider moving. I think that is excellent advice. With the OPs background and skill he could easily make over 100k in a midsize city, which is probably more than 200k in NYC.

58

The OP mentioned that they’re currently doing OK financially, and also mentioned that he’s not upset that his wife is the breadwinner. All of which leads me to conclude that his wife is making a substantial amount of money at her own job, a situation that could be seriously disrupted by a move to a different region.

While he hasn’t expressly mentioned a reluctance to considering this option, it strikes me as a plausible factor in declining to consider it.

(anyway, what with the fact that they’re currently doing okay financially, and that, per the OP, he really just wants to “start contributing again,” maybe seeking and accepting a job with a lower earning potential, at least for a while, WOULD be a viable solution.)

59

This is correct. Plus our family and friends are within an hour or so drive. I’m not opposed to the idea in theory. And I don’t think it would necessarily be any easier finding a job in a strange city halfway across the country that might not necessarily have the sheer number of employers that New York does and where I may have no network.
The thing is, I’ve been getting interviews. I had phone, video and on-site interviews with 5 companies between Friday and today, with potentially another in the pipeline and one more next week. A couple went well. One of them, I should know in 48 hours if I have a job or not. Apparently it’s down to me and one other person.

I mean I’m happy to have the activity, but it’s a bit like waiting to see if your prom date is going to show up.

I think what’s annoying is that when you do anything in IT, there is this presumption that you should get snatched up within days of starting your job search. The challenge that I think I’m facing is that I have a super-impressive resume in technology and management consulting…from 5 years ago.

Like I’ve done just enough work with stuff like “Hadoop”, “MongoDB”, “Big Data”, “Predictive Analytics”, “RPA”, “Machine Learning”, “Cloud”, “Python”, “DevOps” that I can legitimately put it on my resume. That shit’s hot now so I get a ton of hits on LinkedIn and responses by tech companies. And depending on the company, I’m not really expected to do much more than speak on it at a high level. But I think a lot of employers want me to have been working with this stuff for the past 5 years instead of the more “strategic” consulting I’ve been doing.

And I think more “strategic” jobs like senior corporate management or other strategy consulting firms then places me in a more competitive bracket where the companies are looking for 10+ years of consistent industry experience.

For example, one of my colleagues from my old firm left around the same time I did for a job with Cognizant in one of their industry groups. He’s been at the same client for something like ten years. I interviewed for a different industry group, but they felt my experience was more appropriate for Digital Operations, as that was more industry agnostic (only have about 4-5 years of the industry experience). But then the Digital guy wanted someone who had a solid 3+ years implementing RPA tech because it was “mature” technology (and also Six Sigma). Like sorry I became a management-level consultant years before the technology for your practice area was even invented (and years after I last heard Six Sigma in professional circles)!

60

Yeah, when I was going through the hiring process at my agency, I had to look over dozens of applications and resumes. I saw a lot of really impressive bodies of work but more important than that was relevance. I had a couple of people applying to a support position who had resumes showing that their career was in project management. Mostly I wanted to see if someone had been doing the same kind of work that they would do in this job, and if their experience was extensive enough and recent enough that they could step in and hit the ground running. I don’t care how great they were at Windows XP configuration or supporting Office 97.