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Struggling badly with work

LegacyUser

Going unreg for this one. I haven't posted on Boards for a long time but used to be a very frequent user. I apologise if I'm short on detail here but I don't really want to give any clues as to who I am.

I'm at my wit's end with a few things lately, mainly work related and a bit of lockdown fatigue (but I'm probably not alone there).

I haven't been happy in my job for the last few years but fear of the unknown and no idea what else to do have prevented me from looking elsewhere. I've been working in IT companies since I was 16 and in 5th year (part-time in those days of course). Going on 20 years now. I have severe social phobia so I always struggled with the public interaction side of the job but my enjoyment of working with the PC and laptop hardware kept me going. Initially I dealt with home users but went into the business/SME sector when that company closed down. I always felt out of my depth with SME and find myself doubting my abilities a lot. But with the introduction of cloud computing I've begun to hate it and am wondering if I made the wrong career choice. I'm expected to learn and support software and solutions that don't interest me and am very cynical of (personally I think a lot of it is just a revenue-boosting swizz for the big companies that is heavily promoted through marketing). But IT's "adapt or die" culture has hit me like a ton of bricks and now I'm lost.

Since the lockdown started, I obviously can't do the "hands on" stuff from home, so I've been spending a lot of time on helpdesk calls and it has just drained me mentally. I feel like I can't carry on much longer. My thoughts have gotten much worse over the last few weeks and I really don't know what to do anymore. Whenever a ticket gets reopened as "not fixed" it just adds to the feeling that I'm not good enough. Part of me just wants to quit the job and get out of there for my own sake, but then I have to ask myself the question "then what would you do?" because I don't want to be stuck at home doing nothing either. Especially with the economy in the toilet now. It's all I know, I've never worked in another field. I had a particular plan B in mind but it's a hard job to get. Positions were advertised early last year and I jumped on it, but didn't made the grade. I was completely gutted and that shot me down even more. I've occasionally had much darker thoughts but I've been able to suppress them and prevent myself from doing something stupid.

The one solid thing I do have is my relationship with my fiancée. She has been amazing and there's a big possibility that I wouldn't still be here without her, I honestly feel like she keeps me going through all of this. I also have a small number of good friends who I should probably spend more time in contact with, but life seems to have gotten in the way.

Part of me is just venting I suppose, because I don't expect anyone to have all the answers. But at the same time I don't know how much longer I can carry on like this. I'm in a situation where I know something is wrong, badly wrong, but I have no idea how to get myself out of the situation that I'm in.

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Hannibal_Smith

I would definitely used this time to get back in touch with your friends and have a catch up.

Did you like the home users part of the job? Could you get back into that?

HildaOgdenx

OP, would you consider counselling? You might find it helpful to clear your head, to talk things over with someone outside of your fiancée and friends.
It sounds as if you are running on empty at the moment and it's hard to make clear decisions in that situation.

I know you said Plan B didn't work out but try to figure out what would be the best case scenario for you, Plan C, would it be to retrain, for example? You don't have to answer that. I'm just throwing it out as a possibility.

When we feel stressed, we can go into very black and white thinking and that's partly why I think you might find it helpful to consider counselling.
The current situation isn't helping, of course, but if you can start to plan your way out, that might help.

As pp suggested, do get in touch with friends too, for a catch up.

Most counselling services are available via zoom, skype etc, at present.
https://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2057956018

All the best, please take care.

Upforthematch

Hi Op,

The post before is really good op, I just want to ask a question about your skills.

Why are you doubting your abilities? If tasks are reverting back to you unsolved, does it mean that you have a genuine training need?

That's not a criticism by the way and your employer should be working with you with training to fix this.

You say youre expected to keep up to date with new applications that dont interest you or the cloud? That's not unreasonable these days. You're in the IT game 20 years. You have a good base, can you create your own training plan to take this on?

Its much easier to fine tune than start again. Lots of people dont love their jobs, but they do what they gotta do for their loved ones.

Keep your eye on the real prize.

irishguy1983

All the above sounds reasonable and definitely Covid is taking its toll on people. I’d suggest first giving your doctor a call and just relay how you are feeling - see what he/she says and take it from there...

Flimsy_Boat

strugglinginwork wrote: »

Going unreg for this one. I haven't posted on Boards for a long time but used to be a very frequent user. I apologise if I'm short on detail here but I don't really want to give any clues as to who I am.

I'm at my wit's end with a few things lately, mainly work related and a bit of lockdown fatigue (but I'm probably not alone there).

I haven't been happy in my job for the last few years but fear of the unknown and no idea what else to do have prevented me from looking elsewhere. I've been working in IT companies since I was 16 and in 5th year (part-time in those days of course). Going on 20 years now. I have severe social phobia so I always struggled with the public interaction side of the job but my enjoyment of working with the PC and laptop hardware kept me going. Initially I dealt with home users but went into the business/SME sector when that company closed down. I always felt out of my depth with SME and find myself doubting my abilities a lot. But with the introduction of cloud computing I've begun to hate it and am wondering if I made the wrong career choice. I'm expected to learn and support software and solutions that don't interest me and am very cynical of (personally I think a lot of it is just a revenue-boosting swizz for the big companies that is heavily promoted through marketing). But IT's "adapt or die" culture has hit me like a ton of bricks and now I'm lost.

Since the lockdown started, I obviously can't do the "hands on" stuff from home, so I've been spending a lot of time on helpdesk calls and it has just drained me mentally. I feel like I can't carry on much longer. My thoughts have gotten much worse over the last few weeks and I really don't know what to do anymore. Whenever a ticket gets reopened as "not fixed" it just adds to the feeling that I'm not good enough. Part of me just wants to quit the job and get out of there for my own sake, but then I have to ask myself the question "then what would you do?" because I don't want to be stuck at home doing nothing either. Especially with the economy in the toilet now. It's all I know, I've never worked in another field. I had a particular plan B in mind but it's a hard job to get. Positions were advertised early last year and I jumped on it, but didn't made the grade. I was completely gutted and that shot me down even more. I've occasionally had much darker thoughts but I've been able to suppress them and prevent myself from doing something stupid.

The one solid thing I do have is my relationship with my fiancée. She has been amazing and there's a big possibility that I wouldn't still be here without her, I honestly feel like she keeps me going through all of this. I also have a small number of good friends who I should probably spend more time in contact with, but life seems to have gotten in the way.

Part of me is just venting I suppose, because I don't expect anyone to have all the answers. But at the same time I don't know how much longer I can carry on like this. I'm in a situation where I know something is wrong, badly wrong, but I have no idea how to get myself out of the situation that I'm in.

Can you get a stress leave cert from your GP? You will get illness benefit for however long you are certified. You sound very burnt out.

LegacyUser

Thanks for the replies.

I'll go through them one by one, apologies if I missed something.

Hannibal_Smith wrote: »

I would definitely used this time to get back in touch with your friends and have a catch up.

Did you like the home users part of the job? Could you get back into that?

There probably isn't much left in that business these days. Most users have tablets or phones which are pretty much disposable. What's left has mainly been consumed by the small phone shops you see all over the place.

HildaOgdenx wrote: »

OP, would you consider counselling? You might find it helpful to clear your head, to talk things over with someone outside of your fiancée and friends.
It sounds as if you are running on empty at the moment and it's hard to make clear decisions in that situation.

I know you said Plan B didn't work out but try to figure out what would be the best case scenario for you, Plan C, would it be to retrain, for example? You don't have to answer that. I'm just throwing it out as a possibility.

I think I do need to go back to some sort of counselling. I've been doing it on and off for years but for different issues. Thanks for the suggestion of remote, I must look into that.

At the moment I'm not too sure what a plan C would entail. I never went to third level education (didn't really need to as I got off to a good footing) but since I like hardware I may want to consider electronic engineering or something. Could be hard to juggle with adult life though.

The ideal job for me would be one where I'd have little or no interaction with the general public. I've tried to tackle my social phobia over the years but my skin is just too thin and every negative thing sticks to me like glue. My plan B job would have been perfect for that. I don't know if there's such a thing as career guidance for adults but if there is, that would be something I'd want to do.

Upforthematch wrote: »

Hi Op,

The post before is really good op, I just want to ask a question about your skills.

Why are you doubting your abilities? If tasks are reverting back to you unsolved, does it mean that you have a genuine training need?

That's not a criticism by the way and your employer should be working with you with training to fix this.

You say youre expected to keep up to date with new applications that dont interest you or the cloud? That's not unreasonable these days. You're in the IT game 20 years. You have a good base, can you create your own training plan to take this on?

Its much easier to fine tune than start again. Lots of people dont love their jobs, but they do what they gotta do for their loved ones.

Keep your eye on the real prize.

No offence taken.

I absolutely accept that training for cloud isn't unreasonable these days but the pace of progress has become too fast for me and I can't keep up. I think this is why I take it so personally when something comes back unresolved, I've historically been a perfectionist and find it really frustrating that I'm not at the level that I should be. The company I work for has always been lax with training, on one occasion they replaced a system that I used on a daily basis for a specific task without providing any training on it. When I requested training, they transferred the task to someone else.

I used to be able to learn anything but got into a depression around age 15 and since then I seem to only be able to easily learn things that I have a genuine interest in - I bombed my leaving cert for that reason, despite being top of the class for many years before that. I accept that there are a lot of people working in jobs that they don't particularly like but I don't think I could be one of them. Working in retail would be hell for me because of my social issues.

Flimsy_Boat wrote: »

Can you get a stress leave cert from your GP? You will get illness benefit for however long you are certified. You sound very burnt out.

I do feel burnt out, that has been the case for quite a while. Which is partly why I'm afraid that just carrying on as normal could be bad for me physically as well as mentally.

ManOfMystery

I've been working in IT for almost 23yrs now OP and I've definitely gone through some similar feelings to yourself at times.

It's very hard to keep up with the rate of change in the IT industry and to do so consistently and repeatedly requires not only dedication, but a passion for those areas of the industry which are evolving into new and unrecognisable forms.

I've gone from very hands on and techie (literally piecing together laptops and desktops like you have done) to working on servers, into IT Management and now in Senior service delivery role. And during that time I've gone from initial small client bases of 20/30 users to a couple of hundred, then 5000+ in a PLC. I'm still hands on to a degree but these days it's much more project-based. And just when you get one huge project out of the way (like moving 5000 staff to Office 365, or the like) the goalposts move and you're onto your next.

It's not just an IT thing. My father has ran a successful car business for 40 years, but with the advancement of electric cars he doesn't know how his landscape is going to look in 10 or 20 years (by which time he may have retired, but the business will hopefully still be going) - or what his offerings will need to look like in order to succeed in that market.

Are you tired of the technical side? Could you move into a more strategic or management role where there isn't so much of a race to keep your self up to date on technical knowledge, but instead manage the staff who do?

Cloud is coming, whether we like it or not. And with the advancement of AI and cloud computing, it's not just storage - with faster lines, 5G and more also on the way, in a few years time we may all have dumb terminals at home and all the computing power will be offsite and accessed on a subscription plan. Is this something you're willing to embrace and retrain it? It's time to think about it seriously.

Make It Real

I'm sorry to hear about your situation, strugglinginwork. Sounds tough, but fair play for venting, looking for help here and do keep talking to those around you.

Think about debugging stuff: the issue manifests *here*, but the root cause is *there*. Does that ring a bell with you at all?

From your words it sounds like "here" may be your current job and "there" may be your bigger life, how you live it and what direction you take in it, especially in your career.

Two things I'd pull from your words:

- You have skills, can learn and do well when its something that you're actually interested in.

I hear your dislike with aspects of IT, tech BS etc (I've been there too). So, what are you interested in? What are you good at? What do you need from a job? You've got the starting point of a list if you read back over your posts in this thread carefully.

Then, where could you get those things? Look as wide as you can, far beyond IT, into other sectors, roles you've never thought of. Research, phone a friend, get some outside views.

- Attitude isn't set in stone. You can change it.

So, your words about being thin skinned, negativity sticking to you etc is something you can work on.

Small steps in the real world - where would you start? Maybe take an everyday task and list out the good things you bring to it, things you could improve. Get into the habit of looking for the good first. There's loads more to it than that, of course, but it can be done. I think if you couple some improvement on that with being in the right work area and knowing your skills and powers there, you could race ahead towards a more positive attitude and job happiness.

Anyway, first things first, make sure to take care of yourself and get the support you need too. I'm sure there are many people around you who care for you and would want you to lean on them right now.

Hope this helps and let me know if I can do anything more for you!

hello2020

I am in IT for similar duration as yours and i can relate to your feelings sometimes..
when i see young kids coming out of college and talking about new technologies, it feels quite insecure but then i know i have seen this all repeating every few years..
its not a zero sum game and IT is growing field so there is enough space at every level..
if u don't like social interactions, my suggestion for you would be to get into software development side where developers are left to develop on their own for long period of times.. its more creative and fulfilling to develop a piece of software which helps business users and support and maintenance can go on for years...

Tokyo

Make It Real wrote: »

Hope this helps and let me know if I can do anything more for you!

Mod: While genuine advice is welcome in PI/RI, your posts are coming close to having the appearance of shilling for your business, which is against site rules. Please consider this before posting again on the site.

LegacyUser

ManOfMystery wrote: »

I've been working in IT for almost 23yrs now OP and I've definitely gone through some similar feelings to yourself at times.

It's very hard to keep up with the rate of change in the IT industry and to do so consistently and repeatedly requires not only dedication, but a passion for those areas of the industry which are evolving into new and unrecognisable forms.

I've gone from very hands on and techie (literally piecing together laptops and desktops like you have done) to working on servers, into IT Management and now in Senior service delivery role. And during that time I've gone from initial small client bases of 20/30 users to a couple of hundred, then 5000+ in a PLC. I'm still hands on to a degree but these days it's much more project-based. And just when you get one huge project out of the way (like moving 5000 staff to Office 365, or the like) the goalposts move and you're onto your next.

It's not just an IT thing. My father has ran a successful car business for 40 years, but with the advancement of electric cars he doesn't know how his landscape is going to look in 10 or 20 years (by which time he may have retired, but the business will hopefully still be going) - or what his offerings will need to look like in order to succeed in that market.

Are you tired of the technical side? Could you move into a more strategic or management role where there isn't so much of a race to keep your self up to date on technical knowledge, but instead manage the staff who do?

Cloud is coming, whether we like it or not. And with the advancement of AI and cloud computing, it's not just storage - with faster lines, 5G and more also on the way, in a few years time we may all have dumb terminals at home and all the computing power will be offsite and accessed on a subscription plan. Is this something you're willing to embrace and retrain it? It's time to think about it seriously.

I probably undersold myself a bit at the start, mainly because I didn't want to give too much away, but I have done server work and Office 365 (have certs in the latter). So I have dipped my toes in. But the likes of SharePoint Online, Azure and AWS don't interest me in the slightest and the last paragraph is what I always feared would happen, the idea of us all having dumb terminals with everything in the cloud sounds like a nightmare to me. I guess that's why I want out, I don't feel like I could embrace that. I could happily maintain and service physical equipment day in, day out. I don't have that option when I'm being pushed into Azure projects and removed from exposure to the bare metal.

hello2020 wrote: »

I am in IT for similar duration as yours and i can relate to your feelings sometimes..
when i see young kids coming out of college and talking about new technologies, it feels quite insecure but then i know i have seen this all repeating every few years..
its not a zero sum game and IT is growing field so there is enough space at every level..
if u don't like social interactions, my suggestion for you would be to get into software development side where developers are left to develop on their own for long period of times.. its more creative and fulfilling to develop a piece of software which helps business users and support and maintenance can go on for years...

I've only done very simple software stuff, mainly in Visual Basic. Again, it was a project I had real interest in so I just went for it and it worked out quite well in the end. It probably wasn't written to a great standard, but I was very happy to do as it was something I was interested in. I couldn't see myself doing it full time on a professional basis but I wouldn't say never.

ILoveYourVibes

You sound like a hero.

Its ok to not feel ok right now. I think you need to give yourself some grace. Maybe ask work to let up a little on you.

Ask if they have a counselor you can see? Or have a call with one yourself?

OP I would get in touch with friends as much as is possible during the circumstances.

Also maybe look at some courses that might be a way to change your line of work.

I hope you feel better. Its ok to feel **** right now. I mean its a flipping pandemic!

You are doing great. Take of yourself. Take a step back if you need to. Work will have to be understanding.

_Kaiser_

OP, like you I started off supporting home users (on the phones in a callcentre in my case) and over the years I worked through Desktop/Deskside support, Server admin and project work.

For me the challenge came as other parts of my life (family, relationships) developed and the time to constantly be learning new products and tools just wasn't there. Plus I hit a ceiling salary-wise that meant I'd have to specialise into technical or infosec area, which again was hard to balance with life outside work.
There was also the point that I was competing for roles with fresh graduates with shiny degrees who could/would work for a lot less money. The truth is that L1/L2 support roles are limited in a lot of ways.

For me the solution was team leading and later management. Still looking after technical teams and operations so my experience isn't wasted (and helps with the teams as they know you "get it") but more money, progression and portability between different companies and sectors (I've worked for tech multinationals, public sector education, and financial services). Nowadays I'm senior level, responsible for IT services to multiple sites in 4 countries, and dealing with everything from tech escalations, to new projects and developments, to risk and security. No two days are alike!

Might be worth looking into?

LegacyUser

I've come to the hardest decision I've ever had to make with my current role. I've decided to leave.

Things have just become unbearable for me. I've also been informed that the company is moving to a new location and commuting to that location from where I live isn't feasible. I'll try to find something else in the meantime but I'm past caring at this stage. But I guess that I'll have to stay in IT for the time being because it's all I know.

HildaOgdenx

Just want to wish you all the best, OP.
It's a big decision, and it's a brave step to take. Things couldn't go on as they were.

All the best.