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

WobblyDog

If I was 47 that would be fine, as I would be cruising towards retirement.

At 27, it's more risky because it's likely that sooner or later your employer is going to look for ways to reduce costs and start scrutinising your workload. They could automate it or off-shore it. In your position I think I'd keep the job, but force myself to spend a couple of hours each day training for job I plan to get when the current one ends.

getmore4less

it does not need to be complete automation just a tool to make the job much easier/quicker.

With a data set this big there will be patterns.

9 hrs with 10min beak an hour is 27,000 seconds, how long does each 100k sheet take?

....................................
What sort of deadline is there and how hard to learn the process involved.
It is the sort of job that would suite me on a part time/add hoc basis.

It is probably costing the boss < £350pd to employ you(you get about £215 of that) and he is raking in £1500pd nice work for the boss

McCloud1

steampowered wrote: »

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.

I agree it's only good in the sense that I'm 27 with no degree or commission-structure. £50k provides a comfortable existence for a single dude, but it's not the sort of money that seems worth throwing away your best working years for.

I would like to say I'm ambitious, but I've had to essentially disconnect from reality to tolerate the job, and the truth is I have lost much of the spark I have before this. As above, no chance from advancement/movement within I'm afraid.

Masomnia wrote: »

This was my first thought. At 27 I think 50k is doing very well, albeit I live and work in London too so in the round it's not unusual to be earning that; great for now, but in a few years time it's going to look less and less attractive. If the job even continues to exist for much longer.

A mate of mine is an accountant and doesn't enjoy it, and isn't particularly good at it (works for his dad), but he does it because he earns enough to have a nice flat, nice car, expensive nights out and likes the prestige of telling people he's an accountant. So he does it...

Long term will doing this job get you where you want to be? If the answer is no then start looking for something else.

No, definitely not. I knew 3 years ago that I needed to leave, and I know without a doubt that I will be really !!!!ed at myself if I'm still here at 40. That is if the job exists by then, as you say.

[Deleted User]

McCloud1 wrote: »

You're right, it does make you feel isolated and disconnected from reality. It's been four years now and my social life has gone from highly active to non-existent in that time.

No, no advancement or lateral movement, it is a niche and the choice is do this or quit. My position only exists due to my boss' relationship with our primary client. All employees save the boss do what I do.

I always intend on doing the same with the remaining 15 hours, however by the end of the day I'm so mentally spent from doing something so boring over and over that I don't even have energy to do things I enjoy, like painting or video gaming. I just stare at videos on my phone and pointlessly browse online.






Unfortunately you cannot automate it, I've tried. I learned Python specifically because I figured it's useful for working with data even if it's a bit of a faff figuring out the best module to use it with Excel. My job exists but it requires a human to read very poorly written descriptions, understand the processes it refers to, and then assign it. I tried using keywords but there is too much overlap.

Whilst my job does not require skill, you do need to be familiar with certain processes and therefore do require prior experience.

My boss charges my time at £190 per hour, I'm paid PAYE £50,000 plus the bonus as a salary, it's not contingent on the number of hours I do.

The quality of my work is only measured if the !!!! hits the fan and they need to use what I've done and it becomes obvious to the team if it doesn't make sense. This happens maybe 0.1% of the time, it's very hard to care when you know this.

Hello! I'm mid-30s, and I also have a well paid but boring 'work from home' job. 6 1/2 years into it now

To automate this, you'd need to up your 'automation' game a lot. You're going to need to deep dive into machine learning, maybe look into Natural Language Processing.

Thankfully, I can geek out a bit since i'm a 'solutions architect' and I get to work on lots of different projects. For your situation, I'd be looking into using Microsoft Azure services with Excel - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/machine-learning/studio/excel-add-in-for-web-services

Imagine... you train Excel to recognise these categories, then you just review its work. Your job becomes even more boring! But takes a lot less time. You then find some other stuff to do and keep yourself entertained.

(I didn't know you could use Python with Excel.. I've found VBA rather capable though)

So.. yes, I'd do it (well, no, I get paid about the same and my job sounds a bit more interesting). But by now, I'd have automated the crap out of it

PasturesNew

I'd do it. But, for most, it's a question of where they are in their "life/work cycle". If you "want to get on" then it probably wouldn't impress many future employers and, isolated, you might find you're then behind the game with other roles/software/etc.

As an older worker who couldn't give a flying stuff how it looks on the CV I'd sit and do it.....

It sounds similar to some jobs I've done in the past, where I've had spreadsheets of close to 1,000,000 lines that I had to inspect/sort/drill down into in order to check every cell was in the correct place and contained the correct information when data was brought together from a few sources to be pumped into a brand new database containing three separate data sets.

I loved the satisfaction of "the perfect data". I love data being perfect, no question, guaranteed to be 100% perfect the second the new dB takes in that new data.

[Deleted User]

Also.. working from home tip: Get a dog. You've got a 'buddy' to spend time with, and he'll get you out the house on walks a few times a day. Great for the mental health.

McCloud1

WobblyDog wrote: »

If I was 47 that would be fine, as I would be cruising towards retirement.

At 27, it's more risky because it's likely that sooner or later your employer is going to look for ways to reduce costs and start scrutinising your workload. They could automate it or off-shore it. In your position I think I'd keep the job, but force myself to spend a couple of hours each day training for job I plan to get when the current one ends.

Agreed, I predict 5 -10 years. I probably am downplaying the knowledge required of the processes to make the decisions, if it weren't for that I'd give it much less time before computers can do it.

That's the approach I've been trying to take for a while now, it's harder that it sounds. At the end of a hard day's work you can fight tiredness to complete something else, I did hard manual jobs in my teens and found it a very different type of fatigue At the end of an utterly tedious day's work you aren't really tired, just so disconnected and vacant that you have no desire to do anything.

getmore4less wrote: »

it does not need to be complete automation just a tool to make the job much easier/quicker.

With a data set this big there will be patterns.

9 hrs with 10min beak an hour is 27,000 seconds, how long does each 100k sheet take?

It's not all identically sized sheets, they vary massively in size. It doesn't matter though, because as soon as you finish one you start another, it may as well be one sheet. We always have a backlog and another one waiting.

I would say each entry (so reading description and assigning 1 number) takes 5-30 seconds depending on the quality of the description, sometimes I have to access the team's folder and read emails to see what they are referring to.

McCloud1

ringo_24601 wrote: »

Hello! I'm mid-30s, and I also have a well paid but boring 'work from home' job. 6 1/2 years into it now

To automate this, you'd need to up your 'automation' game a lot. You're going to need to deep dive into machine learning, maybe look into Natural Language Processing.

Thankfully, I can geek out a bit since i'm a 'solutions architect' and I get to work on lots of different projects. For your situation, I'd be looking into using Microsoft Azure services with Excel - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/machine-learning/studio/excel-add-in-for-web-services

Imagine... you train Excel to recognise these categories, then you just review its work. Your job becomes even more boring! But takes a lot less time. You then find some other stuff to do and keep yourself entertained.

(I didn't know you could use Python with Excel.. I've found VBA rather capable though)

So.. yes, I'd do it (well, no, I get paid about the same and my job sounds a bit more interesting). But by now, I'd have automated the crap out of it

Thanks for the advice!

How tricky are those subjects to grasp? My coding is, as I say, rusty at best. That does sound pretty amazing though, once I knew I could trust it I would be able to zone-out whilst I check at least, instead of having to maintain a faint whiff of consciousness.

Yeah there are a few modules, I used openpyxl and xlswriter, both have limitations though which make it difficult for a newbie to achieve the desired effect.

McCloud1

ringo_24601 wrote: »

Also.. working from home tip: Get a dog. You've got a 'buddy' to spend time with, and he'll get you out the house on walks a few times a day. Great for the mental health.

My roommate's girlfriend dumped her cat on him so he's my company...he mostly gives me judgmental looks as though even he thinks I am wasting my time.

Manxman_in_exile

How can you manually assign 100,000 data entries to 10 different categories in nine hours based on "poorly written descriptions"?


If you took ten hours without breaks that's almost three entries per second isn't it? That's phenomenal and I'd want more pay!!! (Sounds a bit like diagnosis coders in the NHS who can be very well paid, but I don't think they achieve rates like that).


From a business point of view, I'd want the people writing the descriptions to be better trained - but that might put you out of a job - but maybe that's what you want...