Ive been were you are at. That is one nice thing about contracting and im hoping to do a few in the near term. At least you change what your doing. Unless its bs contract to hire. 3month and 6 month contracts are the bomb.

I hit that in year 6.

I was hired with the mandate “make Linux suck less here” and it was a mighty mandate. It was a stuffy shell organization that recently discovered it had a lot to protect and its IT was guided by Finance people without the first clue why even updating systems is valuable. And they built an IT exec who itself built an IT team. I was the only full-time Linux guy, like so many times before, but I got to choose which part of the goal pie I could eat next.

The team was understaffed, carefully-funded and had huge goals. And they did it very well: if your PoC was good, you could get funding to roll it out. Every new development needed to survive a figurative shark-tank pitch to the 3-person exec. And like a start-up group protected under an umbrella by- and from bureaucracy, it was magical. I took Linux from “patching? huh?” to “98% of matchines update automatically on the schedule we’ve set without interaction; new machines are ready in 7 minutes if we need something.”

Then, in a financial coup, the leadership of IT was deposed one by one and replaced by Financial twats with the same lack of clue. And they hired a shit team of micromanagers not used to dealing with Union IT staff who actually put the tools down at 4:49 if they didn’t have anything exciting on the go. It was comical, and then it was sad; for the financial group wanted the excellent new digs that IT got after IT lived in basements until the new building was ready, and the basements were also no good now so IT had to move to some (short-)cube wasteland like it’s The (US) Office with such noise and nowhere to stare and nowhere to debate and nowhere to talk about “needing to shut off Dave’s access tomorrow becau-- oh, Hi Dave.”

I stopped working on new stuff and just kept the lights on. I usually give it a year to unfuck itself when it’s happened in the past, and this one took 18 months because #covid changed how we interview and there was less job churn going on.

And on a Monday I came in with my company gear to leave behind (secured) and I peaced out. They had no dedicated linux staff to speak of after that moment. I trained one guy how to patch HANA - the 2% that was just too snowflakey to patch automatically - the day before, and that was the last thing on my list. Turned my badge into HR and all but walked onto a bus. And got covid; probably from that ride home. (Don’t worry, kids; I was vaxed to the gills, so all good)

So here’s my recommendation:

1. punch the clock and live by it. “It’s been recommended by a professional,” and never elaborate. You need your rest now anyway.
2. start looking for another job. TLDR, your dismissal will be constructed, you want to be ready with another job, and the only way that happens is if you get one first.
3. present your issues. Give them a few weeks to think they can make statements to keep you. They won’t change, they won’t keep you, but let them make statements for others to ask about later.
4. go. Try to make them sever you for the severance, but some constructions are not worth fighting, so call that severance a write-off if, for example, you’re in America. And go.
5. I hope your next post is a good one. I’m proud to tell my story of warning my boss for 18 months that the current situation was still untenable and unsustainable before I left, and I’m okay telling my new boss that I quit the old place with the same warning that they fired their staff so it’s only fair.

Hey, what’s up. I usually just lurk because I can’t keep myself from getting into stupid discussions and wasting all of my time getting angry, but I feel like you do when it comes to work and I thought I’d share. I’ll be deleting my credentials after responding, because of a lack of discipline on my end, FYI.

So I’m in a type of system administration. Not your run-of-the-mill IT shop, it’s sort of in the direction of devops and provisioning classic on prem environments. There’s also other stuff, some of it challenging because of technical complexity, some of it challenging due to brain dead QA procedures and corporate inflexibility.

I also feel like I ‘did my time in the trenches’ in the past when I worked IT help desk, but having seen the other side, advancing your career into more technical roles will not offer any salvation. It’s the same bland, corporate controlled, big tech dominated horse shit patch and pray dance. You learn a new thing only for it to be superseded or abandoned, or worse, rolled over from a permanently licensed product to a subscription. In this field there is no such thing as perennial knowledge. The only place experience has any hope of sticking are the soft skills. It’s building on quick sand.

That’s why life feels like a treadmill. Even a bigger pay check won’t offer much in the way of contentment. It’s fun for a while but you get used to it. If you can make due with what you’ve got now, more money won’t offer a way out.

If you ask me, which you kind of did by way of this post, modern life fades into meaninglessness easily. There is not much connection between the actions you take and the results unless you perform manual labor or better yet, a craft. That’s why a lot of people in the IT field have hobbies like woodworking. Personally I like motorcycle riding and maintenance. At least when I’m done reassembling a carburetor the result is a running engine.

I guess what I’m saying is, if you have a job that pays the bills, you should be fine not giving a flying fuck about your job, your employer or the efficiency of your coworkers. Do the bare minimum you need to do in order not to get fired. Your job is just a means to an end; you are employed in the service of yourself and your loved ones. If the CEO of your company could generate a quarter point on the NYSE by stabbing your grandma to death, then they will. If you’re anything like me, you define work as anything you do solely for the economic incentive. Treat it as such. Behave like the Homo Economicus every institution expects you to; take what you can, give nothing back. Let go of the idea that work should be fulfilling; our current economic system simply isn’t built for anything but ruthless extraction of value. Anything you do consider fulfilling is almost by definition a cost. That’s okay. Really.

Build the mental fortitude to accept your lot, which considering human history is not actually that bad. We have easy access to high quality food, shelter and leisure time. Slack as hard as you can get away with; read books on company time, work on personal projects, play games or just stare off into the clouds. When you clock out, slam that door behind you and pretend like your employer does not exist. Don’t lose your job or give it up until you have a solid plan to switch into something else, but always remember that a job is by definition something nobody would have done unless there were economic rewards.

I recommend starting with some (e-)books about Stoicism (e-books are easy to hide in a window on your work display); there’s ancient wisdom in there that makes it easier to stop giving a shit about the things that don’t matter, in this case the meaninglessness of what you do for a living. It will help you focus on the things you can control; how you view the world being one of them.

checked out a decade ago and still not fired?

Check out even harder

I’ve been trying to land an IT job for over 20 years now, to no success.

Count your blessings; you’re living my dream. I rather be as burnt out as you and have a half decent income in a stable position, than continue working the same shitty fast food and retail gigs I’ve been stuck with since 2003. I’m tired of job hopping; quit yours and give it to me.