Would you accept unrelenting boredom for £50k p/a?

McCloud1

I'm 27 and I have no degree, I make £50k p/a plus a 20% bonus, I work from home. Sounds amazing right? Here's what I do for 9 hours each day, and have done for 4 years:

I look at a number in a spreadsheet of over 100,000 data-filled cells and read an accompanying description (corporate jargon), I then assign it to one of 10 categories based on my 'experience', I do this for all 100,000 cells. I total the categories. That is it. For 9 whole hours, every day.

I've had lots of jealous family members/friends sniff at my complaints as they eye up my fancy home-office. I've sat many of these people down and offered them £30 per hour for each hour they could do in one sitting. Want to know the record? 2 hours 5 minutes, by my 14 year old nephew. He said he wouldn't have even done it for 2 hours if he hadn't been desperate for money followed by:

"do you have money problems or something Uncle McCloud1?".

Well actually you cheeky little !!!!, thanks to selling every ounce of willpower and mental energy I can squeeze out to Satan, I am the highest paid member of our immediate family. This is what success looks like Robbie, glassy-eyed and constantly hinting that it's going to jump off of the nearby bridge.

I was a smart guy before I was lobotomized by spreadsheets, my brain wants to problem-solve and create, and it screams out in protest every minute I force it do keep sorting the numbers. I can feel parts of me dying as they give the middle-finger to reality and bury themselves deep within my sub-conscious where dreams still exist.

So, to the question, would you take my job knowing what I just told you, assuming you have to do it for at least 5 years?

+ stay at home and work in your pants
+ never deal with colleagues
+ £50k salary plus £10k annual bonus (which scales with salary)
+ Easy and never worry about luck or skill

- Spend 9 hours a day locked in a room with no one to talk to sorting 1000's of 6-figure numbers into categories based on descriptions written by people who hate their jobs almost as must as I do.

Thoughts?

xapprenticex

Awesome post, i enjoyed that.

For £50k id give it a go for sure. upper tax bracket must burn though, im sure you can get a radio playing, some jeremy kyle in the background going?

what breaks do you get? 9 hours straight on a SS is a bit much.

Only a fool would say no though, only possible negative would be when you come to find another job if this ends one day, prob wont be near what you're on now, especially if you are saying there is no specialist kill required.

gettingtheresometime

McCloud1 wrote: »

I'm 27 and I have no degree, I make £50k p/a plus a 20% bonus, I work from home. Sounds amazing right? Here's what I do for 9 hours each day, and have done for 4 years:

I look at a number in a spreadsheet of over 100,000 data-filled cells and read an accompanying description (corporate jargon), I then assign it to one of 10 categories based on my 'experience', I do this for all 100,000 cells. I total the categories. That is it. For 9 whole hours, every day.

I've had lots of jealous family members/friends sniff at my complaints as they eye up my fancy home-office. I've sat many of these people down and offered them £30 per hour for each hour they could do in one sitting. Want to know the record? 2 hours 5 minutes, by my 14 year old nephew. He said he wouldn't have even done it for 2 hours if he hadn't been desperate for money followed by:

"do you have money problems or something Uncle McCloud1?".

Well actually you cheeky little !!!!, thanks to selling every ounce of willpower and mental energy I can squeeze out to Satan, I am the highest paid member of our immediate family. This is what success looks like Robbie, glassy-eyed and constantly hinting that it's going to jump off of the nearby bridge.

I was a smart guy before I was lobotomized by spreadsheets, my brain wants to problem-solve and create, and it screams out in protest every minute I force it do keep sorting the numbers. I can feel parts of me dying as they give the middle-finger to reality and bury themselves deep within my sub-conscious where dreams still exist.

So, to the question, would you take my job knowing what I just told you, assuming you have to do it for at least 5 years?

+ stay at home and work in your pants
+ never deal with colleagues
+ £50k salary plus £10k annual bonus (which scales with salary)
+ Easy and never worry about luck or skill

- Spend 9 hours a day locked in a room with no one to talk to sorting 1000's of 6-figure numbers into categories based on descriptions written by people who hate their jobs almost as must as I do.

Thoughts?

I actually left a job last year as I was totally bored (in fact when I resigned I told my boss there wasn't a need for me) though not paying anywhere near that salary!

I guess the question I'd be asking myself if I was you what would you do as an alternative ? I had a plan & although that plan needs modifying, I'm glad I made the move.

It's easy for us to say yes or no to your question but we don't have to suffer the consequences if it goes pear shaped.

What do you see yourself doing, in an ideal world, in say 5 years time?

McCloud1

xapprenticex wrote: »

Awesome post, i enjoyed that.

For £50k id give it a go for sure. upper tax bracket must burn though, im sure you can get a radio playing, some jeremy kyle in the background going?

what breaks do you get? 9 hours straight on a SS is a bit much.

Only a fool would say no though, only possible negative would be when you come to find another job if this ends one day, prob wont be near what you're on now, especially if you are saying there is no specialist kill required.

And yet I feel like the fool.

You can have music/tv but anything that takes your focus adds around 30% on to your time which will need to be made up somewhere. I can break when I want providing deadlines permit, but I went down that path 2 years ago and it's a dangerous one to walk. You think:

"oh I'll just watch a little tv for half hour"

*10 episodes of How I met your mother later*

"!!!!, better get back to work....although I am kind of hungry, and that spreadsheet is really long"

"oh wow that food made me sleepy. I'm already on my own couch and no one is here to check I'm doing that boring task I really don't want to do...zzzzzz"

Before you know it you're spreading your 9 hours across 24 hours and it just bleeds into your whole life, which becomes one big procrastithon (I know that's not a word...), and turns the 9 hours into about 12 hours due to losing your flow. No, it's better to just hammer it out in 1 or 2 sittings.

The worst is when you start borrowing hours and end up with a backlog, and then have to do a 20 hour session with only a few 10 min breaks. There be monsters.

gettingtheresometime

McCloud1 wrote: »

And yet I feel like the fool.

You can have music/tv but anything that takes your focus adds around 30% on to your time which will need to be made up somewhere. I can break when I want providing deadlines permit, but I went down that path 2 years ago and it's a dangerous one to walk. You think:

"oh I'll just watch a little tv for half hour"

*10 episodes of How I met your mother later*

"!!!!, better get back to work....although I am kind of hungry, and that spreadsheet is really long"

"oh wow that food made me sleepy. I'm already on my own couch and no one is here to check I'm doing that boring task I really don't want to do...zzzzzz"

Before you know it you're spreading your 9 hours across 24 hours and it just bleeds into your whole life, which becomes one big procrastithon (I know that's not a word...), and turns the 9 hours into about 12 hours due to losing your flow. No, it's better to just hammer it out in 1 or 2 sittings.

The worst is when you start borrowing hours and end up with a backlog, and then have to do a 20 hour session with only a few 10 min breaks. There be monsters.

If you don't mind the work /boredom whatever then do your work at the library.

Rent an office space and use that as your office.

theoretica

xapprenticex wrote: »

Only a fool would say no though, only possible negative would be when you come to find another job if this ends one day, prob wont be near what you're on now, especially if you are saying there is no specialist kill required.

Maybe I am a fool, but I would definitely say no. But I have the alternative of often enjoyable work with interesting colleagues which pays considerably less, but enough i have no problems keeping my spending within my means. More money wouldn't make my non-working time more enjoyable by enough to compensate for tedious work.

McCloud1

gettingtheresometime wrote: »

I actually left a job last year as I was totally bored (in fact when I resigned I told my boss there wasn't a need for me) though not paying anywhere near that salary!

I guess the question I'd be asking myself if I was you what would you do as an alternative ? I had a plan & although that plan needs modifying, I'm glad I made the move.

It's easy for us to say yes or no to your question but we don't have to suffer the consequences if it goes pear shaped.

What do you see yourself doing, in an ideal world, in say 5 years time?

Well, I wouldn't be making this much money for sure! Like I say no degree, and 0 inclination to ever work in anything sales-based.

I'd probably try to go into software developing as all proper millennials must try out at some point, my coding skills are rusty but I wouldn't be learning from scratch. My dream would be to author a successful novel or screen-play, but that's like saying you want to be David Beckham so...

Okay, so what if your old job offered you your position back for a minimum of 5 years, at my salary? Would you leave the position you're currently happy in?

McCloud1

theoretica wrote: »

Maybe I am a fool, but I would definitely say no. But I have the alternative of often enjoyable work with interesting colleagues which pays considerably less, but enough i have no problems keeping my spending within my means. More money wouldn't make my non-working time more enjoyable by enough to compensate for tedious work.

I think that's the wise answer, as my original post may have hinted...

You'd be surprised how many people in my personal life, who actually like their jobs, still think they would like to trade!

silverwhistle

Well, I left my IT job, gosh, 17 years ago when I was earning under the higher tax rate but similarly bored. I'd had a bit of a personal crisis (resolved!) and my dad had just died and we'd outsourced all the interesting systems analysis work, so there was a lot of data clean up stuff etc. You can probably imagine the situation.

I was older than you, and accepted voluntary redundancy, left within a week of it being suggested (by me!). Ever since I've been on a third (ish) of the income but do OK, and any work I do, language and not IT related (in addition to my small pension) is far more interesting. Fortunately I saw the writing on the wall some time before and had got my mortgage down.

I'd keep at it for a bit more, but make sure you start saving a bit for what someone on here once called a FO Fund, and the F doesn't stand for flexibility, although it could!

I'd also make sure I did some sport, as there is nothing quite as good for getting it all out of your system as giving the opposition midfielder a crunching tackle (or whatever). In my case I play football with lasses who are younger than me by more than your age(!), and although I don't socialise with them apart from in a sport context it gives me interesting perspectives on other people, and gets me out of the house. Or play or sing in some social context; anything for the contrast with your normal work.

But don't fritter your money away. Start that FO Fund now!

PS: No..

gettingtheresometime

McCloud1 wrote: »

Well, I wouldn't be making this much money for sure! Like I say no degree, and 0 inclination to ever work in anything sales-based.

I'd probably try to go into software developing as all proper millennials must try out at some point, my coding skills are rusty but I wouldn't be learning from scratch. My dream would be to author a successful novel or screen-play, but that's like saying you want to be David Beckham so...

Okay, so what if your old job offered you your position back for a minimum of 5 years, at my salary? Would you leave the position you're currently happy in?

No not really.

It was a weird situation - it was a company that I'd previously worked for but they knew I wasn't happy at my new job & the role was a different one but in the same team if that makes sense.

All of a sudden I was the newbie but not the newbie. Dynamics of the team had changed & I struggled to find my place.

If I'm totally honest it was a mistake going back.

As I've said previously an ex is an ex for a reason.

On your salary I'd make sure I had a cast iron back up plan before I gave it up.

Novels can be written in your spare time - there's lots of people who write smash hit debut novels but I guess there's many more who fail

steampowered

In my mind 50k is not a particularly great salary. OK but not brilliant. It sounds like you have a decent gig for a 27 year old but there is no way I would be staying in your job long term.

Though I do live in London. I suppose 50k would go further in other parts of the country.

It is important for your mental health to do something which you find engaging.

You also need to think about whether this job is equipping you with the skills and opportunities needed to climb the career ladder in future. You are only 27. If you are ambitious, skilled and hard working you may well be able to develop your skills to a point where you are able to earn more than £50k while doing a much more interesting job.

I would start searching for a new job. You could always look into an internal move or promotion that gives you a more interesting role, if that is available.