Husband wanting to quit job

[Dreamylemon]

My DH has a relatively well paid, stable job which he has done for the last 10 years. He has had periods where he hates it (busy periods) and other times over summer where it's quieter and he is fine. It allows him to work from home and be flexible, however he works very long hours. He has made no attempt to change the way he works with his long hours or address stress. He is a bit a martyr and people pleaser and I am often shocked at how much he does for other people ( which isn't part of his job) it took him 7 years for the qualifications to get this job during that time I supported him finiacially.

He is now saying he will quit his job and learn coding in September and get a new job. He is basing this in his friends ( who work in jobs around IT) saying he will find a job easily and praising a website he made about 15 years ago.

I said I need to hear more information about what jobs are out There, what qualifications need etc salary before he makes this decision and we need to look at finiances ( I work PT) He doesn't have this information. He is very academically clever but has no drive or direction and it feels like he quits jobs to chase another he doesn't gave enough info on.

I know AINBU in insisting he actually has a plan before quitting a stable job in the middle of a pandemic but how the hell do I get him to listen?! I want to scream!!

Have a read of
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/going_back_to_work/3825984-I-m-a-career-coach-for-women-changing-direction-AMA
Some great advice and I think the op has a book? Aimed at women but great advice.

My first thought at the start of the thread, which hasn't changed, is that he really needs to leverage his existing skills.

I too have an academic husband who's a people pleaser - some years ago I tried unsuccessfully to persuade him that answering student queries on a message board late on Christmas Eve was not a good idea and set a very bad example! We also don't get the support at home; the most useful explanation of that I've come up with, is that they give so much of themselves to work obligations, that when it comes to home they just need to switch off a bit. Incredibly frustrating though!

Career coaching to help him understand himself better in order to find a constructive way forward would be great. I also don't know where to look for this but wonder if asking his university careers service for ideas and suggestions might be a starting point?

One of my children's schools uses a profiling company that also offers a service for career changers www.morrisby.com/career-changers

Might be worth a look possibly.

I've recognised in myself a need to keep changing what I'm doing. I'm in the process of getting back into work I last did 15 years ago, in a limited part-time way, having realised I can probably combine it with my current self-employment. It won't help me deal with the housework but has the potential to make me a lot more productive overall (I hope!).

Oh. He's an academic. I read the opening post and thought he was Father Christmas.

[quote Dreamylemon]@littlepattilou I think stress plays a big part in people who quit and walk out- not thinking straight or worried they cannot carry on. Quitting your job is better than having a breakdown[/quote]
Many people would be more likely to 'have a breakdown' if they are left with no income, and they lose their home.

Why are you making excuses for him now? You were clearly worried/pissed off enough to post this thread, and yet you are now defending him, and the ridiculous irresponsible thing he is thinking of doing: quitting his job with no other job to go to!

@thesugarbumfairy

Honestly there's nothing wrong with dreaming but does he even understand what 'coding' means?. He can't just leave a job and 'learn coding'. If he really wants to learn, he needs to do it on the side. There are are many IT development jobs out there, that's true (although the salary depends very much on location and experience), and many of them will go to bright young things who have been coding since nappies (exaggeration - but you know what I mean)

I'm 46 and I never even used a computer till I started my degree - the first time I used the internet I was doing a masters in IT and I was 22 - it was netscape - I made a website - it was shit. Super shit. I was also shit at coding - just because you're intelligent doesn't mean you're cut out for certain jobs.
I battled by doing back end stuff (SQL) for years before I cut my losses and became a tester instead, because I understand how it all goes together, I just ain't good at doing it myself.
These days its very very complicated stuff going on and new languages becoming 'top dog' all the time. Even testing got more complicated - they want automated testers, which - shock horror - means you have to learn to code again. I did a course in it. I'm not very good at that either frankly. Therefore I'm very much stuck in old school jobs where they exist until I retire (thats fine by me - I just work to pay bills)

This ^ It's amazing, the amount of men who think they can be a computer programmer, because they know how to install Linux on their laptop, and can set it back to a few days ago via a restore point, or reset the computer back to factory settings, and re-install it. There's a LOT more to being a computer expert than that! And all of the above-mentioned is not 'coding' or programming anyway!!!

My friend's husband discovered this to his cost, when he paid £2,000 (15 years ago,) for the first HALF of an A+ computing course that he was to do from home. The independent company who did the course happily took his money, even though he had hardly ANY computer experience, and had only used a computer for the first time, six months earlier. They set up a direct debit for him, for the £2,000. £55 a month for THREE YEARS.

5-6 weeks into the course, he bailed, and stopped doing it. He admitted he plain and simple couldn't do it. He didn't understand 90% of what he was reading/being shown, and the 'tutors' who he had to RING for support, were about as much use as a chocolate fireguard.

Although he thought he was a whizzkid on the computer because he could send emails, and copy and paste, and do 'bold' and 'italics,' and change font, and insert photographs, and merge documents; he admitted that he got a couple of weeks into the course, and realised he didn't have a bloody clue what he was doing, and that he had made a huge mistake. (A costly one too, as the course still had to be paid for!)

After 2 months, he called the company and said he was quitting the course. Didn't stop the £2,000 having to be paid though. The company had set up a finance agreement with him, with a company that was nothing to do with the company. So they had £55 a month coming out of the bank account for three years, for a course that he couldn't do.

Hilariously, as soon as the £2,000 was paid, he saw the same course online which was residential. You do the course with tutors there all the time, and stay with the whole group for 4 weeks. A snip at £4,500!

He said to my friend that he was more likely to be able to do it with full, hands-on support. She said she would file for divorce if he even ATTEMPTED to book (and go into debt again) for this second course... She meant it. And he knew it.

He did not book the second course.

I wish I could advise. DH is also a lecturer and he wakes at 4:30 each morning and gets started shortly after. His colleagues regular send 2am and 3am emails. And life at present seems to be all admin, rather than the bits he actually likes

Whilst sympathetic, I've also known a lot of academic men who like getting up early, shutting themselves away and writing whilst their wives get on with getting the kids up and doing all the household running, whilst usually holding down some other job as well. Academic men seem to convince everyone else that it's such a demanding job they couldn't possibly do much more than the odd pick up from school or cook the odd meal. One of my colleagues who got up to write at 5am had never used a hoover. Lucky them!

It is possible to work as an academic who doesn't get up at 4.30am, I don't because I'm a single parent, have other commitments and need to live a normal hour normal life so I can look after my children and run the household as well.

I don't get the impression that's the issue here anyway, the issue here is that your DH hasn't got a good idea of where he's heading- I think data science or analyst posts would be better for him than necessarily coding/development, because he's already got quals in that which are valued within the system; stats/analyst jobs are hard to find people for in the sciences, social sciences research, public sector, government departments, think tanks. He should look at this before retraining from scratch- as someone said, if he knows R and STATA, he could work for any number of public sector orgs like the police, civil service who all need numbers crunching for them.

He sounds like a nice guy and academia probably isn't a place for terribly nice people, it's full of very egoistical types by its nature (as everyone has to make a name for themselves).

@medschoolrat what does BI stand for? I have not come across that term before?

Thank you to everyone for your advice and links which I can hopefully look at later when the kids are in bed

It's a depressing view of academia being painted by many 😕 although I have been harsh on him about setting boundaries he was the one who has taken the biggest hit with lockdown as I cannot wfh meaning homeschooling and childcare fell to him on the days I work which has massively increased his stress for the weeks we didn't get a school place/ child sickness etc

@littlepattilou I'm not making excuses specifically for him, I'm saying people often don't just quit on a whim and it us a balance of what us the biggest risk. I am annoyed he is not thinking things through but equally worried about the long term effects of stress. Many jobs seem to be impossible to do in the hours you are paid for.

BUT everyone I know on the industry lives and breathes code. They do it in their spare time, have their own projects running, blood about it, read about it etc. The ones who don't are in low pay, boring jobs.

Lol, I never code in my spare time. I did at the beginning, but now I shut my laptop for the day, close the door and that's it for me. It's good to switch off! My DH is also a software engineer, but he spends at least an hour everyday working on a personal project... but oh boy, that is just not for me 🤣

[quote Dreamylemon]@medschoolrat what does BI stand for? I have not come across that term before?[/quote]
It's Business Intelligence. Kinda like a data scientist, but does a lot more analytics (as far as I know). They work closely with DS. In my company DS & BI got merged together as a tech team.

Is anyone advising data science actually working in that field? It’s no easier to walk into than programming. While the stats will help him transition he needs to learn programming and get experience, possibly starting in a grad role. Plus data science means different things in different companies, for some it’s more maths based with programming, other it’s more heavily on the programming. It used to need a PhD to enter the field but is more open now. This is from watching a loved one transfer from data analysis to data science with several years experience. There’s also a huge slow down in recruitment right now as well as working remotely and not meeting colleagues. Hopefully this will reverse later this year. There’s lot of online resources to help understand the role and skill up in the meantime.

Perfectionism is not helpful and he will have his work thrown in the bin and changes in scope last minute. That’s just how the corporate world works. They prefer to ignore results that don’t tell them what they want to know...and they don’t always want to know what they should want to know. I would have thought academia would be better for a perfectionist. The data scientist above was sacked from one role for having too much integrity!

I don't think it's helpful to describe him as a people pleaser when what is actually meant is that he is passive, has poor self esteem and lacks assertiveness skills.

The former makes it sound like a nice personality trait to be tolerated rather than something damaging to be addressed and changed. It is clearly having a very negative effect on him and needs addressing.

Until he does that he will always have problems with boundaries and stress because you have to value and assert your own needs in order to manage those things.

Poor assertive skills tend to go hand in hand with poor self esteem (because why would you speak up for it protect your needs if you don't value them?).

Again that won't help his stress levels or manage his quest for perfection to prop up his self esteem. (That is basically what he's doing, trying to compensate for the things he's not happy about - e.g. Lack of career success compared to others/expectations - by proving how perfect he is elsewhere...)

At the very least he'd be better off using the security of a stable job while he addresses those issues and learns and implements new patterns of behaviour, then reassess whether he moves jobs or feels differently after changing his own role in the equation. (And if he moves it should be based on accurate information not a fantasy).

Stopping work completely is just going to cement his issues and poor self esteem. Whereas staying is an opportunity to make changes to his own self that makes his life better in the long term outside of work as well as at work.

The private sector would manage out anyone taking perfectionism to extreme. It would not be a stress reduction if he moved but continued all the behaviours and thinking patterns that have been causing him problems to date.

If you or he want to work on assertiveness or self esteem, Google "cci resources" or "cci assertiveness" etc. They have free online modules based on CBT that can be worked through independently.

Is anyone advising data science actually working in that field? It’s no easier to walk into than programming

I don't think that anybody thinks he can just 'walk in'. Just that he does at least have some relevant skills in that space that he could build it. It is still going to take work and study and probably a step down, because any career change does.

this is useful (who knew)

"In a nutshell, BI analysts focus on interpreting past data, while data scientists extrapolate on past data to make predictions for the future. "

So one is about whether we trust any the old data to tell us what happened, the other one is about whether we can use old data to predict future with fancy probabilistic methods.

What I also think I know is that both spend a huge amount of time fixing bad numbers in the data.