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Out of context: Reply #74860
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- Horp7
Following on from Maaku's post below, apropos career changes...
I've meandered far and wide from my starting point as a designer. I burned out as a designer really early on. I was trained in traditional print and reprographics and worked for five years before going to college from 1991-1993.
By the time I left college, the entire industry had revolutionised, thanks to Apple Mac. Absolutely nothing I had learned carried over to my post-graduate career.
I stuck with it for about 20 years, more or less (<guesswork) but moved into strategy, then shifted into illustration (total blag that kind of worked for a short while) and then went into culture analysis.
But I'm so fucking bored and faded out now. I only work fixed term contracts. I neither want a permanent role nor to be flitting about doing 14 shitty three day freelance gigs on top of each other. I tend to be in large advertising agencies with FTCs, and it is pure fucking chaos in those places now.
Everything must be done in 12 hours, and everyone is obsessed with TikTok and Instagram.
I am 53, and male. My peers in this field are around 20 and usually female. They live and breathe social media. They look at TikTok for 15 minutes and produce an "insight" eg "Gen-Z females are SO hot for the #SassGirlHermitGothcore vibe right now... it rejects the blah blah blah and opens up the doors for XY and Z and YOU GO GURLFRENNND TWENNY-FOUR-SEVEN-THREE-SICKY-FI...
I look at TikTok for three days straight and all I can see is fucking teenagers being dorky fucking tweakers, desperate for attention.
I AM FUCKING TIRED OF IT ALL NOW.
So I'm having a career break (inflicted on me due to serious family issues) and I am currently applying for local driving jobs. Driving vans.
I have always planned to do my heavy goods vehicle license, but the pay is shit, the lifestyle is shit, nobody likes HGV drivers, and it costs about £6k to qualify, so fuck that. I am not paying £6k to discover whether or not I would actually want to do that all day every day.
Van driving also pays pretty badly but it doesn't cost £6k to do it.
It's a big step though. I will cut my annual income down to 15% of my earning potential as a strategy/insights/culture consultant. But I figure if I can find the right hours, I'll use van work as my basic and then pitch myself out a few times a year for a bit of freelance consultancy to make up the shortfall.
I have a job interview for a family business in the fruit trade. Hours are 2am to 9pm weekdays. Job interview is at 2am :)
I reckon I could do that, then do a bit of consultancy, then go to sleep.
- The tweek shall inherit the urf.Nairn
- You said 2am to 9am, no?OBBTKN
- I did yes :)Horp
- Streets will be empty. I love driving.Horp
- Why not? Good luck!!OBBTKN
- FanksHorp
- There are good design jobs out there if you look for in-house. Either medium to big corp institutes in finance/consulting/i...shapesalad
- insurance... or if you are into crypto has plenty of good jobs:shapesalad
- lots of small dev teams of 30ish people, then you as their only designer doing site, exhibitions, social, brand etc.shapesalad
- https://cryptojobsli…shapesalad
- https://web3jobs.soshapesalad
- My tip - look at the big VC investment fund websites - they'll list the 20 or so startups they have invested in and will have a job board that coversshapesalad
- all the open jobs across all those 20 or so startups. You'll often find a good quality design job where if the company growsshapesalad
- you can build out the team and get yourself into a good position.shapesalad
- But agreed - a lot of design is now social media this and that, and it's all shit.shapesalad
- And about to get shittier with the mid journey “ninjas” running the show_niko
- Oh hey Ss, To be clear I haven't actually been a designer since about 2003. I have absolutely no idea how to be a designer anymore.Horp