Back in the 90's, I moonlighted doing "contract work" for my local ISP, mainly doing house calls to troubleshoot connection or other issues people often had. I also repaired and maintained many of the local bar and restaurant arcade machines as a bit of a side hustle in addition to my full-time job. Working on the arcade machines was always fun becasue I love working with my hands, but the IT work quickly started to sour my own enjoyment of the activity in my personal time. So, I didn't do it very long. I did stay on to help them out from time to time, but I stopped doing house calls and only worked on systems that were brought in.

So yeah, I agree with your sentiment. 😀

I've worked in I.T. departments for about 20 years now. Got our first PC when I was 15 and decided I wanted to work with computers, and roughly went though the following phases.

2002-06, Loved it, Was getting paid to play with all this cool hardware.
06-08, Enjoyed the work but no longer spent any personal time near a computer.
08-12, No longer enjoyed work, actually spent 2 years doing other jobs, Interest in retro computing starts
12-Now, Working back in I.T Still don't love it but don't hate it either (Better pay v starting from scratch again) could happily spend all day on my retro rigs though.

It's no coincidence though my retro rigs are around the 02/06 ere when I was having most fun.
Or that my hobby started at my lowest point, trying to relive those happier days I suppose?

I remember reading an article on why simulators are popular, and a Bus driver said how he liked bus Simulator because it was like the perfect day at work.
I can relate to that. My retro network is set up just the way I want without having to compromise on outside factors or demands.

That's the FLOSS way though. Do a fun hobby project on a certain license, and then it's a blood oath that you must maintain it perpetually for the smug wildebeest for the rest of your life

IMO this doesn't only apply to computers it's anything. I think the old adage "find a job you love and you never work a day in your life" is the biggest load of shit. No matter what it is, you do it every day and you will get sick of it.

Best thing is to find a job you don't hate and can do well.

I went abd studied engineering when I was 20. Started working with something related to ny education at first was fun and very stimulating. Then like 10 years ago I went into the business of programming measuring machines and worked as some kind of QA engineer since. I program etc but only high level languages etc. I sometimes get sick of my job, but its not really what I actually do I get sick of, its the stress of projects, bad management, and office politics I get sick of.

Joakim wrote:

I sometimes get sick of my job, but its not really what I actually do I get sick of, its the stress of projects, bad management, and office politics I get sick of.

Yes same for me, actually sitting down and problem solving is quite satisfying. All that other stuff is just people being people.

I think I'm just sick of people 😅

badmojo wrote on 2025-06-19, 22:43:

Joakim wrote:

I sometimes get sick of my job, but its not really what I actually do I get sick of, its the stress of projects, bad management, and office politics I get sick of.

Yes same for me, actually sitting down and problem solving is quite satisfying. All that other stuff is just people being people.

I think I'm just sick of people 😅

I think that's what the bus driver who played Bus Simulator was saying as well. "I like driving a bus, it's the passengers that take the enjoyment away"

For me I don't really like the direction I.T. has gone, Virtual cloud based services, Not saying it's bad (if done correctly)
Just I preferred the days of dedicated physical servers. I can imagine it's the same as other industries, eg mechanics.

I always tell the young ones, no matter what job you do there's going to be times when you don't feel like doing it. So try to at least pick a job where you enjoy the tools you work with.

I think it's generally a good idea to have more than one hobby. Or a different work to do, as well.
Because sometimes someone needs a pause, before it gets repetitive.
Like having a holiday from your holiday, if you will. 😉

Edit: About computer work and helping others. Please be careful with relatives and acquaintances.
Eventually, they may see you as a computer repair man that works for free.
They then may nolonger value you, but start to demand things as if you're being paid.
The transitioning from buddy to service personell sometimes is creeping.

It happened to me, but with electronics instead of IT. I've mentioned before that there are days when I don't want to look at PC hardware because it reminds me of work.

Bad management is a big problem, but I don't know how much I should say here. Every project I've worked on in the past eight years got canceled.

Having a passion for IT/computer since ever I worked my early professional years in the IT sector and indeed it was not what expected to be. But after having switched to administrative sectors for so long, now I only want to get back to IT/any technical sector and as soon as possible even if I lost too many years to easily going back to it.

386SX wrote on 2025-06-21, 15:34:

Having a passion for IT/computer since most of my life I worked my early professional years in the IT sector and indeed it was not what expected to be. But after having switched to administrative sectors for so long, now I only want to get back to IT/any technical sector and as soon as possible even if I lost too many years to easily going back to it. Even if I might have to clean keyboards who cares.

You're not going to do worse than a newbie, don't worry. 😉
The "trick", I think, simply is to ignore everything you've learnt in the years before and start fresh.

You don't have to forget everything you've learnt, principles remain the same.
But you've maybe have to "flip a switch", mentally, as if you're speaking another language or using a different OS (Windows vs Linux vs macOS).

I think it's all about being open-minded and accepting a modern day workflow.
I know, it's easier said than done, but that's part of staying mentally young and flexible I guess.

When you're home, you can still switch back, use your old knowledge and expand it, even.
Because base knowledge is no waste, it can help when being assumed the least.

Also, many modern things are ported to stuff like Windows 98 or XP, so old knowledge isn't useless. It's merely a niche knowledge.

But that makes you as a person interesting, too, if you're more than a mainstream person.
A bit of weirdness, non-conformity is part of identity. 🙂

Jo22 wrote on 2025-06-21, 15:52:

You're not going to do worse than a newbie, don't worry. ;) The "trick", I think, simply is to ignore everything you've learnt i […]
Show full quote

386SX wrote on 2025-06-21, 15:34:

Having a passion for IT/computer since most of my life I worked my early professional years in the IT sector and indeed it was not what expected to be. But after having switched to administrative sectors for so long, now I only want to get back to IT/any technical sector and as soon as possible even if I lost too many years to easily going back to it. Even if I might have to clean keyboards who cares.

You're not going to do worse than a newbie, don't worry. 😉
The "trick", I think, simply is to ignore everything you've learnt in the years before and start fresh.

You don't have to forget everything you've learnt, principles remain the same.
But you've maybe have to "flip a switch", mentally, as if you're speaking another language or using a different OS (Windows vs Linux vs macOS).

I think it's all about being open-minded and accepting a modern day workflow.
I know, it's easier said than done, but that's part of staying mentally young and flexible I guess.

When you're home, you can still switch back, use your old knowledge and expand it, even.
Because base knowledge is no waste, it can help when being assumed the least.

Also, many modern things are ported to stuff like Windows 98 or XP, so old knowledge isn't useless. It's merely a niche knowledge.

But that makes you as a person interesting, too, if you're more than a mainstream person.
A bit of weirdness, non-conformity is part of identity. 🙂

Thanks for your words. Indeed job interviews are difficult nowdays, they really look for experienced people with specific hard skill on the resume. Interviews are not going well lately without a modern list of IT skills and even when they care about soft skills at the end they really are all empty words, they want hard skills more than anything. What they seems to not understand is the value of someone like many of us here that has lived and seen so many computer experiences in different decades that will end up useful more than people seems to get during interviews. I thought about getting courses certifications in some modern IT sectors but costs are really high.

maxtherabbit wrote on 2025-06-19, 17:18:

IMO this doesn't only apply to computers it's anything. I think the old adage "find a job you love and you never work a day in your life" is the biggest load of shit. No matter what it is, you do it every day and you will get sick of it.

Best thing is to find a job you don't hate and can do well.

I can't imagine seeing any job as more than wage slavery.

chinny22 wrote on 2025-06-19, 01:26:

I've worked in I.T. departments for about 20 years now. Got our first PC when I was 15 and decided I wanted to work with compute […]
Show full quote

I've worked in I.T. departments for about 20 years now. Got our first PC when I was 15 and decided I wanted to work with computers, and roughly went though the following phases.

2002-06, Loved it, Was getting paid to play with all this cool hardware.
06-08, Enjoyed the work but no longer spent any personal time near a computer.
08-12, No longer enjoyed work, actually spent 2 years doing other jobs, Interest in retro computing starts
12-Now, Working back in I.T Still don't love it but don't hate it either (Better pay v starting from scratch again) could happily spend all day on my retro rigs though.

It's no coincidence though my retro rigs are around the 02/06 ere when I was having most fun.
Or that my hobby started at my lowest point, trying to relive those happier days I suppose?

I remember reading an article on why simulators are popular, and a Bus driver said how he liked bus Simulator because it was like the perfect day at work.
I can relate to that. My retro network is set up just the way I want without having to compromise on outside factors or demands.

This is pretty similar to my background as well. Most days I don't HATE it, but I wouldn't say I love it either.
If I could do the work with zero interaction with the general public....that would be ideal. It's not that I hate people but I've definitely soured on dealing with general/management users on a daily basis.

maxtherabbit wrote on 2025-06-19, 17:18:

Best thing is to find a job you don't hate and can do well.

This is the way. I started in my job 20 years ago working in the lab and had a blast, but over the years I rolled into different roles and now do strategy in a big corp. Its fine - I can do it well to the point I don't have to sweat it off. There's no 'passion', but it pays a lot better then my original lab job of course. I can get my tech fix in my garage.

I think the old adage "find a job you love and you never work a day in your life" is the biggest load of shit.
No matter what it is, you do it every day and you will get sick of it.

I assume this saying was from another time, when life was slower paced.
When you had jobs such as clock maker, shoe maker, baker, wood cutter, being a Café owner etc.
Or if you were working in the wild, far away from society.
If you were a researcher working on the sea, in the forests etc. Such things.

I've always wanted to be a programmer. That said, I can never seem to complete a project; doing so as a job strikes me as a good way to solve this issue.

UCyborg wrote on 2025-06-27, 13:27:

I can't imagine seeing any job as more than wage slavery.

It's not slavery if there's a wage.

It's not slavery if you can walk away.