re: Aging OT: how to identify and manage the mid life crisis

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How is that? I'm a structural engineer and still don't know what I want to do

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It helps if you find a niche you fit into that is being ignored within your organization, and find a way to develop new business strategies from it. I initially started school with a structural engineering degree in mind. Ended up with a business degree, but applied myself into electronics, and became self taught. Now I work with physicists and electronics and optical engineers, software, hardware and firmware engineers to develop new products for scientific research and defense systems, working in measurements of pico seconds, nanometers and atomic scales. Technically, I'm not an engineer, but in practical terms, I am, and within my organization, nobody else in the US has my particular skillset, so they are happy that I'm willing to stick around when they know I could retire. They need to hire an EO/IR engineer in the next few months to start shadowing me for the next year or they're going to suffer when I retire and try to replace me with someone that has no relationships in place nor who fully understands the complexities of the systems I work with.

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For me it’s been like choosing a path. One path is working late and weekends, missing priceless moments with your family, but getting in that work time, in whatever fashion, that elevates you. The other path is working hard but drawing a line, putting in extra time when needed but not working just to work, and in turn spending more time with family, I guess the old work-life balance. I’ve always chosen the second and while I am comfortable with the financial situation and stress level, will likely not be at a high level in the food chain. 

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For my husband and I in our second marriage it was great to find another person who had already also made that second choice. We regret nothing. Our kids are grown but we still make a point to see them often and create memories instead of working to buy more stuff. We drive older cars and have a small home so we have disposable income for emergencies, trips, and random events. Much less stress that way.

GARYTiger I'm gonna be honest here. I made a big change a couple years back after much deep reflection and the wife and I started making love in the garage. Game changer.

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How is that? I'm a structural engineer and still don't know what I want to do.

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I'm a sales engineer for a tech company. Working with sales can be incredibly frustrating. Most of them don't know jack shite about what they're selling so info you get from them is awful (if you get any at all), and they're very needy and everything is high priority to them, and 50% or more of the work you do goes nowhere, and even if it does lead to a sale, you generally don't know unless something goes wrong at install, which you then get shite on from all directions. I'm also very introverted so the frequent meetings and interactions with people wears me tf out. Very low satisfaction/gratification.

But when I got bumped from operations to sales engineering it was a 20% base pay increase, plus quarterly bonuses that add another 10-15%. Over the last 4 years my base pay went up another 20% so I make way, way more money than I could hope for in a more traditional engineering role.

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Over the last 4 years my base pay went up another 20% so I make way, way more money than I could hope for in a more traditional engineering role.

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In keeping with the spirit of this thread. I'm just sick of this sitting at my desk for the entire day grinding equations. I have plenty of time but just don't know where to look for other types of roles. That's why I asked about the role. I have a brother that is in outside sales for an industry and it just intrigued me how different his role is compared to mine. I really want to get out and interact with people more.

This getting older stuff sucks because I feel like I'm running out of time

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If you waited til mid-life to ask yourself these questions, then you've waited too long.

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Not sure how you define ‘mid-life’- but for a lot of people , we are busy hustling and trying to get ahead in our 20s and 30s.. then once we hit our 40s, we start questioning things - not that there wasnt questioning of things before, but it becomes next level and more urgent questioning… So oftentimes people in their 40s realize they can make a career change, and spend their 50s and 60s doing something different.. or , like myself, they realize that a lot of things they’ve been force fed about the ‘American dream’ and ‘bootstraps’ is complete and total BS.. they opt for a way out.. for me, that means early retirement and moving to a low cost of living country where my dollars stretch 5-10 times as far.. but we each have to decide for our selves what the right move is.. the one thing i cant stand is ‘passive complaining’, like so many people i know who bitch and moan about everything for years and years and they do absolutely NOTHING about it .

Don’t do like my ex did and start using your workplace as your personal dating site while you are still married. fricking dumbass