[kevinc]

I've been popping in and out of here for quite a while. I was laid off from April '09-December '09. I got a job that is about 38 miles from home and the work load has really dried up over the last month. Our hours have been cut back to 24-30 hours a week and even at that I spend most of my time staring at the walls in my office with nothing to do. I currently work for a mid sized construction company as a cabinet drafter/engineer. The job was sold to me as a solid 1 1/2 years of work ahead of us. Later I found out the company had only 1 customer. It was some agreement between the owners of my company and the other. Last February the customer was bought out by Exxon Mobil. All the orders were ceased. Now my company is panic bidding on jobs. Since the work is all commercial, it takes at least 3-12 months to hear anything back to see if you won the job or not. I'll be damned before I have to go thru another layoff. I know my marriage or family will not survive another one. Last spring I started taking some classes to get into another career. I went thru college algebra, plane trigonometry and am currently in Calculus 1. At this rate I have another 8 years ahead of me with a family to take care of. I know my employment here is just a matter of time and I've been looking around for work, but either I'm overqualified or underqualified. I'm really sick and burned out with what I do. I've seen some ads for a firefighter or police trainee. I'm in good physical shape. I"m going to call on those ads. Are there any other ideas you may have?

Kevin

 

[FiredUp396]

Not sure where your from or what you qualify to do.But where I am in Mid west Canada we are in a boom and are the fastest growing city in Canada.Lots of work here.Just a thought but I am sure you'd rather stay where you are.I my mind as long as you are happy at work you are at the right place.I think that the USA is nearing the end of there ressesion it is just a matter of time now and things will be normal and back to stablity.God takes care of the birds of the air and know that you are much more important than any bird to God.Here's hoping that more work will come in where you are working or there will be another door that opens

 

[MikeJ]

Keep taking more of the science / math college courses like the ones you said

 

[rwagner59]

Where do you live, and are you willing to relocate? What do you REALLY want to do for work? What is the job market demanding in your area?
A job that you don't enjoy will not help your marriage OR stess levels. Choose a career that will satisfy your personal goals and make your family happy :beers:.
I can see that you are a smart person. You just have to do a little research and establish your priorities according to your family and personal needs :thumbsup:.

 

[kevinc]

That's been my dilema. I have a bit of a struggle with deciding what I would like to do. A little background. I have and AAS Degree in mechanical drafting and design. I graduated in 1999 and worked in that until 9/11/01. After 911 happened I was out of work for 5 months. My wife's sister's friend worked at a cabinet shop that was needing a drafter. It was the first job interview I had in 4 1/2 months so I took it. I wasn't expecting to stay there too long because I didn't have any interest in it. After a few jobs later, I'm still in the damn cabinet industry, extremely burned out. I wouldn't mind doing mechanical again, but after 8 years in cabinetry, the mechanical design industry won't even look twice at me. I'm grateful just to have a job, but I really f@#*ing hate what I do. I'm currently enrolled in college taking math classes since math was the only subject toward a degree that scared me. I'm realizing now that I'm pretty good at it. I was seriously considering going into radiology. Unfortunately for me to do so, I would have had to take a loan for approx. $25,000-$35,000 to cover living expenses while I attend my 2nd year doing clinicals and internships. The pay would have been nice and I believe I would have enjoyed the work, but the wife guaranteed she would have divorced me and take the kids to Minnesota where her family lives if I went thru with it because of the loan. After all the fighting that happened because of it, I really don't have an interest in that anymore. With work and family in the picture I'm not able to do more than 1 or 2 classes at a time so I'm looking at possibly 8-10 years ahead of me before I have any satisfying work. By then I'll be 43-45 years old competing with kids that are 22 for the same job. Currently I say I am working toward a B.S. Computer Science degree, but that idea has changed countless times. I know the math I'm taking will transfer to pretty much anything. I'm looking around at different possibilities that will pay an okay to decent income without 8-10 years of schooling first.

I live on the northwest corner of Waxahachie, TX so there seems to be a lot of jobs available, but my qualifications just don't seem to go over too well. There are thousands of people who are qualified with degrees so trying to transfer into something that does have degree requirements if difficult to impossible at best. I really don't want to relocate again. We did that 3 times in the last 6 years and its really taken a toll on the kids.

Kevin C

 

[Roadcaptain S3]

The police/fire jobs are great, IF....IF you are dedicated to the job. Long, weird hours and strange days. Gotta work holidays and weekends, which sucks if you have kids. It's tough on families and marriages, especially the first 5-10 years. Something to really consider if you already have family stress.
It's great fun, never have a day that was like the day before, even when it's dull.
But on the police side of it, a lot of people just don't like you because of what you do, including people who are/were your friends.

X-Ray and imaging is much the same if you work in a hospital. (My brother is a MRI tech)

You sound like one of the few people on Earth who are good with numbers. That should be and advantage for you, Since a lot of people, especially me, can't count to twelve without taking off a shoe.

 

[rich1978]

Kevin, I don't know if you've done much/any computer programming type work in your life, but if not, here are a couple of somewhat random thoughts about CS and the workplace:

I started doing computer programming work when I was about 10. I got my first programming job when I was 15, granted this was through a family hookup, but it was real work and EXCELLENT experience. When I got out of high school, I went to Texas Tech and got a CS degree. After college, I had a hard time finding a good job in the metroplex without moving to Richardson/Plano area, something I would NOT consider. I've been pretty lucky, I'm able to keep up a small business doing consulting programming for some small to medium sized insurance marketing companies. I've found kind of a niche in thier business, particularly comissions, which makes previous experience in life doing work on a payroll system handy.

I don't know where you'd go for your actual CS coursework, but at TTU, it's kind of like an engineering degree: They teach you theory of things, but they AREN'T really teaching you to go out and do software work, database admin, etc. Also, I only had to take one extra math class to get a minor, so you can plan on seeing a lot more math geeks before you're done Calc I and Calc II are kind of the bust-out classes, once you get past those it doesn't necessarily get easier, but the passing rates are a lot better.

I was fortunate that I already had a lot of REAL programming experience when I graduated from college, because when the opportuinity I had to get into what I do now came along, without that experience, I never would have been able to hack it. In my opinion, it takes someone 2-4 years to get really good at being a developer, and if you look at job postings, this is kind of what you see, everybody wants to hire people with 4 years of experience, and those jobs pay too. Similar, maybe not quite as long a curve, for database admin. So, what's the point? If you can, and I'm sure it would be tough, because you've got a lot on your plate, start working on what you want to do for a career NOW, while you're still in school. Personally, I mostly build SQL Server/.NET systems with ASP.NET web interfaces. They probably won't teach you anything at all about these technologies in a CS program. But, you can start reading books, get the stuff (you should be able to get student pricing on most of this stuff) and start working on it on your own. When you're comfortable, try to find some real work: The jump from playing with programming/database stuff on your own computer on projects you dreamed up to real world professional apps/databases is a HUGE jump. However, if you can make that jump while you're still in school, you've got a HUGE advantage in the job market when you graduate.

Couple this with the right attitude and communication skills, and you can be a real hot commodity. Granted, I'm working for smaller business, but the most important skill I think I have is the ability to sit down with somebody who has no idea what kind of computer system they need and understand what to do asking them questions.

The only other thought I'd share here, which you've probably heard before, is that this type of work tends to induce burnout in a lot of people, hell, probably anybody with a personality. I don't know how avoid it or anything like that, but it's a consideration.

I hope some of this helps, good luck with your decision!

 

[Trophyman]

I see it a little different than most. Computers can do your job and it takes a 18 year old to run it for $8 per hr.
I needed a job and went to work as a ditch digger with a hand shovel. Volunteer for every hour you can get. Sweep by the lazy ones. Go Go Go !!!
Don't sit around waiting for a $200K job to knock on your door while you starve or go insane at a job you hate. Get the lead out of your ass. Go get 'em !!!!

I hope to never be successful. That would mean I have stopped. I am always progressing. Success is for puss***

 

[kevinc]

I see it a little different than most. Computers can do your job and it takes a 18 year old to run it for $8 per hr.
I needed a job and went to work as a ditch digger with a hand shovel. Volunteer for every hour you can get. Sweep by the lazy ones. Go Go Go !!!
Don't sit around waiting for a $200K job to knock on your door while you starve or go insane at a job you hate. Get the lead out of your ass. Go get 'em !!!!

I hope to never be successful. That would mean I have stopped. I am always progressing. Success is for puss***

That's one thing I have going for me is my motivation. If it weren't for that, I would be homeless by now. I certainly wouldn't need a $200k/yr job. I wouldn't turn it away either. Something around $40k-$55k that is stable would be ideal. I've made that before and it carried us well. Its really the stability that I'm lacking and I'm not looking forward to waiting 10 years to get the stable job if I go all the way thru with school.

Kevin C