What's your next career move? What's your exit strategy?

[courtg9000]

Just having another look at this thread.
I think the best advice I can give from experience on the subject, is this.
"If Baldrick managed to have a plan, then you should too! And probably more than one plan."

[agentzero]

Absolutely this. I retired three years ago and have become a qualified walking guide which pays nowt. I’ve no kids and don’t have a lavish lifestyle (frugal is the word), and all of my bucket lists involve walking in the UK (I might head off to the Camino de Santiago in 2026 - I’m walking across the Lake District this year and The Scottish Highlands next year).

I love life now, but you need to be very aware of that your lifestyle will need to change if you’ve had an easy relationship with money.

Basically,
1. every pound you spend today on fripperies is a pound you won’t have when you retire.
2. your pension is all you’ll have if you have no savings.

Think on that…

True. Some things for others to consider:
Pension - You won't live forever. You might not even live until the average age of death. Don't plan to spend your thousands tomorrow and forget to live today. Being older and inevitably on multiple medications means you're going to be less mobile than you think. Do things now while younger. The number of people that forget this and die millionaires but life poor is unfortunately very high.

Camino de Santiago isn't one route. Yes, there's the overloaded official route, but there are lots of other routes to consider starting and ending with. Some have better views, less or no tourist rubbish and you can meet more interesting people than on the main tourist section.

[cojak]

I agree, but you need money upfront to be able to buy that Atom Mo50, that DCF X-Mid and that EE quilt…

[gixxer2021]

Very few mentions in the responses so far of clever side-hustles that people have. I've always had a hope that I would develop one at some point which would allow me to wean myself away from the man. However, I haven't come up with one yet. I've seen some people come up with some clever ones, but I guess they tend either to not make enough money, fail to take off, or the developer gets bored/runs out of motivation, or occasionally they become big and it ain't no side hustle no more. I suspect it's a tough road to travel down with fairly poor odds.

Totally agree, would love to hear more about this too. I’ve done a few small side hustles when between contracts, but considering the amount of time, effort I’ve put into them they’ve probably cost me more than I’ve made On the plus side they’ve definitely played a significant role in showcasing my skills and winning new contract work, and I enjoyed working on them! Always chatting with old colleagues about what start up we could come up with to leave our daily grind, but yet to hit that perfect idea.

Am currently working outside ir35 and probably enjoying it more than I have in years, as small startup so full stack and autonomy. I do wonder how at my age (50s) though how long I’ll be able to keep up with all the various advances in all the areas (JS, Java, dbs, k8s, devops, etc) without burning out (JS especially). I’d love to go part time, but too many deadlines. Have a decent amount of savings and some pension, so not sure if I’ll go back to the grind of banking IT (morning stand ups , etc), try something new, or just retire when this gig is up.

[Peoplesoft bloke]

I posted asking about people's side hustles ages ago - then I realised - if it's a good one people probably aren't going to be telling......

[courtg9000]

I posted asking about people's side hustles ages ago - then I realised - if it's a good one people probably aren't going to be telling......

Slightly off beam here, having had some exposure to the side hustle sector from the outside looking in, I can say this. Its more likely that by posting in a forum like this that someone might be letting the wrong people know about it. When I had The Tradehouse, I would hear things like "my bosses can absolutely not find out that I do this".

[fiisch]

It seems people have a lot of free time this days - every agent on LinkedIn became a life-coach guru and posting self-help sh*te instead of placing people. And thread like this here too... A bit of a moment of reflection.

Personally, been in IT since 18 in three different countries, system admin / engineer, then project architect. Mostly Windows / Azure / M365 world. Lost the spark few years ago (in early 40s atm), but due to lucrative incomes in contracting kept going. I have been through couple of extremely satisfying projects but last couple of gigs were quite bad - hated both from day 1. Ended up turning down an extension for last one - could not think about being around it one more day.

What is most annoying to me is when work I do is actually not needed, like client request you to write 30 page doc and no one bother to read it. Ability to bill for it isn't enough anymore, some purpose is required too.

I was always running some side-hustle, some clients needing IT help here and there - simple work, but very satisfying. Last three years doing some content creation for wife's art studio - also enjoying it. It isn't ready to pay bills yet, but we will get there. I can call it plan B.

I have enough savings to get me through several years, no debts, no pension pot, no house and no plans or any desire for retirement. I know that I am totally incompatible with any permanent employment so will remain IT contractor for foreseeable future. Sooner or later demand for contractors will come back - may be it will not be that lucrative or easy to get, but it will be there.

This articulates very well how I'm feeling - I feel lucky to be in my career from the perspective that it is well renumerated, but IT projects often don't feel very fulfilling.

I think currently much of what I do feels pointless/low value. I feel as though I've got to a point where I've never been paid so much to do so little, and this then starts to spark the often talked-about Imposter Syndrome.

I've been thinking back a lot lately to when I landed a plum work-experience gig as a 16-year old at 4-4-2 football magazine (when I was young, naive and still had aspirations to be a journalist). I made the 2.5 hour journey to Teddington excited for my first day, only to be dismissed to a cupboard and asked to perform some pointless menial task (sorting magazines/notes into date order or something of that ilk) and was left all day. I asked my dad to send an email that evening thanking them for the opportunity, but I wouldn't be returning as I wasn't sure what I'd gain from sitting in a cupboard all day. We had an email back along the lines of: "What did you expect, Michael Owen and Jamie Redknapp waltzing around the office?" I looked at my dad glumly and said, "No of course not... Maybe a Veggard Heggem or someone like that though." Little did I know it, but maybe that was a dose of the reality of my working life to come.

Thanks for the replies - refreshing to see that a number of people have similar feelings. Maybe it's the current contract, maybe I've picked a number of uninspiring projects (although this is something I consider at interview/offer stage as "will I enjoy this?"), but I think I'm just missing something fulfilling that I can get my teeth into and feel like I have a purpose again...

[WTFH]

... but I think I'm just missing something fulfilling that I can get my teeth into and feel like I have a purpose again...

You're a contractor. Your purpose as a contractor is to keep billing.
If you want fulfilment, then you need to have a purpose outside of work, something that you can drift off to think of when you're in the weekly 6 hour project meeting, or doing the boring documentation.
Invest time in a hobby or helping others, something that gives you a purpose outside of work. Something that gives you a reason to shut your computer down and step outside. Something that isn't about how much money you get out of it, but about the enjoyment you get, or the enjoyment you give.

[edison]

This articulates very well how I'm feeling - I feel lucky to be in my career from the perspective that it is well renumerated, but IT projects often don't feel very fulfilling.

I think currently much of what I do feels pointless/low value. I feel as though I've got to a point where I've never been paid so much to do so little, and this then starts to spark the often talked-about Imposter Syndrome.

I've been thinking back a lot lately to when I landed a plum work-experience gig as a 16-year old at 4-4-2 football magazine (when I was young, naive and still had aspirations to be a journalist). I made the 2.5 hour journey to Teddington excited for my first day, only to be dismissed to a cupboard and asked to perform some pointless menial task (sorting magazines/notes into date order or something of that ilk) and was left all day. I asked my dad to send an email that evening thanking them for the opportunity, but I wouldn't be returning as I wasn't sure what I'd gain from sitting in a cupboard all day. We had an email back along the lines of: "What did you expect, Michael Owen and Jamie Redknapp waltzing around the office?" I looked at my dad glumly and said, "No of course not... Maybe a Veggard Heggem or someone like that though." Little did I know it, but maybe that was a dose of the reality of my working life to come.

Your work experience reminds me of the start of my year long university placement at IBM in the late 80s when it was still a prestigious and successful tech company. I spent half my first week in a room retrieving invoices from archive boxes and photocopying them.

Thankfully the job turned out to be a lot more fulfilling but the reality of much of the work many people do (not just in IT) is repetitive, tedious or boring and may serve little purpose in the grand scheme of things.

It's probably one of the reasons younger entrants to the workforce in the last few years place a lot more emphasis on the 'purpose' of an organisation and their role.

[ladymuck]

I must have gotten lucky with my teenage jobs. Work experience was with a photographer for a local paper which was great fun. Then while doing an NVQ worked with a local accountancy firm where I was helping the receptionists who were hilarious. Another little job was at a local manufacturing place where I spent all day labelling cables for fitting into some cabinets of stuff - having to look at the drawings to make sure the right cables had the right labels. Simple work but still quite fun. I've done envelope stuffing for a firm that printed out airline loyalty cards. I even enjoyed doing waitressing in a little cafe and later in a little restaurant.

I think the common theme through all of those was that the people were good, the work wasn't onerous and there was the expectation that I was competent enough to get on with the job.