Should I get a job or work for my dad?

[pjoa09]

It's the age old question for me.

A decade ago I graduated from High School.

I accepted my "fate" and went straight to my dad's office.

I was certain I would fail university like I had with High School. (get a low GPA)

Then after four and half years of grueling labor, I wanted to know what was university like and I wanted to do Computer Science.

I argued with my dad and he reluctantly headed. He allowed me to go to university. I did poorly as expected but I did graduate.

I got the first job I could find. It paid very poorly but I was afraid of going into some depression limbo state so I didnt try to look any further. By very poorly I mean $650 a month. Which was barely enough to live off of but the average wage where I live. I felt like I had put in much more than what I got.

At the time I had a girlfriend and she made about a grand a month. More than me but not much either.

I realized that if things got serious in this trajectory I'd be poor with a child or something horrible.

So I let her go, I figured she'd connect with someone else better than me. I also quit my job in 4 months. I then went to work for my dad again.

Now I hate working for my dad as well. Its just not "intellectually engaging" and its very laborious like I've mentioned earlier. It's a very ESTJ/ENTJ maybe ESTP sort of job. A lot of calling people, setting up delivery dates, reading bills, creating documents, etc. A tonne of anxiety for me because it's all in a language I never made myself familiar with (maybe an INTP thing). I sometimes kinda enjoy it because it involves lift boxes and sacks as well, but that's about it. I feel like a fish out of water.

I just feel like I am stuck on the worst crossroads possible. I feel like hiding in some remote house by myself now. I am also 28 now so that stresses me out. I've done so much random shit but never properly.

edit: Also I have ADHD and I don't seem to need ritalin to work for my dad because it's somewhat stimulating physically at times and otherwise not very intellectually engaging. I do need ritalin to code and a lot of caffeine.

 

[Cognisant]

Is there much opportunity to automate things? Have you done much with CRM Dynamics?

 

[pjoa09]

Is there much opportunity to automate things? Have you done much with CRM Dynamics?

Well the issue is that I am dealing with lots of individual business owners on both ends. I cant even rely on them to reply to a text message.

 

[Cognisant]

Are you sure you're using the right form of communication?
In government communications are primarily in the form of emails because they're recorded by mail servers and that record creates accountability. I think this is how businesses should operate too but in my experience many Australian businesses prefer dealing with customers and potential clients over the phone. Using text messages seems like a good mid-way solution but it must be a pain in the ass to keep organized.

Automation need not be completely automatic, merely sorting mail/texts by the person/company and the issue/opportunity they relate to can make dealing with those issues/opportunities much easier.

For you personally finding ways to automate business processes (what kind of business are we talking about?) could make you a lot more valuable to the company than merely doing your job ever could.

 

[pjoa09]

Are you sure you're using the right form of communication?
In government communications are primarily in the form of emails because they're recorded by mail servers and that record creates accountability. I think this is how businesses should operate too but in my experience many Australian businesses prefer dealing with customers and potential clients over the phone. Using text messages seems like a good mid-way solution but it must be a pain in the ass to keep organized.

Automation need not be completely automatic, merely sorting mail/texts by the person/company and the issue/opportunity they relate to can make dealing with those issues/opportunities much easier.

For you personally finding ways to automate business processes (what kind of business are we talking about?) could make you a lot more valuable to the company than merely doing your job ever could.

The issue is reaching to them. A great majority of them don't use email anymore. Some just have mobile phone numbers.

Though it is tempting given that I could at least ring them one time and tell them to respond to my emails.

But there also lies the problem of converting hand written bills and sacks into appropriately formatted excel documents. Its unreadable by an OCR. Short of asking the company to send a digital version I dont see a way around.

 

[Ex-User (14663)]

Completely off topic but algorithmic reading of handwritten text is usually done by OCR combined with machine-learning algos like neural nets. Preferably they are trained with the specific data you have at hand, depending on whether your text contains a specific word/character set and formatting

 

[pjoa09]

Completely off topic but algorithmic reading of handwritten text is usually done by OCR combined with machine-learning algos like neural nets. Preferably they are trained with the specific data you have at hand, depending on whether your text contains a specific word/character set and formatting

I asked my homie from Carnegie (masters in CS, focused on ML), I sent him a picture, and he said that's really tough for an OCR to read. He's the smartest dude I know srs.

 

[Ex-User (14663)]

Well “tough” is relative. It’s a matter of what the expected error rate is. ML for ocr is a classical problem though, I would be very surprised if it’s not possible to get a decent precision.

 

[pjoa09]

Well “tough” is relative. It’s a matter of what the expected error rate is. ML for ocr is a classical problem though, I would be very surprised if it’s not possible to get a decent precision.

It really looks like trash though. It's also written in multiple languages in no order.

 

[Ex-User (14663)]

anyways... to get back to the topic, we obviously only have bits and piece of information here, and without knowing anything more I would take a stab in the dark and guess that you quit your computer job and went to you father's company because it was the easy way out? In that case it's a classical problem of having an easy way out. You had a privilege that most newly grads don't have, because it's rough as hell to get a job as one without contacts. But that's a process people nevertheless go through, and that's how people eventually end up getting careers that are meaningful to them. So unless there was some particular reason you didn't want to pursue CS stuff, I would recommend going back to that. I know people who took degrees in physics and then ended up in some irrelevant job and then 10 years passed by before they realized they were wasting their lives. It's a case of the boiling frog. If you're 28 then time is already ticking.

Tick tock.

 

[ZenRaiden]

Practically speaking at this given moment you could sit down and do litrally about million things. All it takes is bit of proactivity and googling or imagination.
This is capitalism. If you are after money, which by the way is the name of the game, you can probably be a rich guy in about few years doing something- who knows what....

I mean if you want some common type career and follow some common type career trajectory well then you have to expect common type problems and common type results. If you want to have some career and get payed well Id work on some skills that are usefull to some rich dude who is willing to pay 2000 dollars out of pocket so you can pay for rent and eat your cereals, but you better know something thats worth the money.

 

[rlnb]

My 2 cents:

A lot depends on what you want to optimise for. It could be:

1. Success/money
2. Low-stress, stable
3. Intellectual stimulation + independence

Personally, I can only handle jobs that have at least one of 2 or 3. I am willing to push myself if the work is interesting or I am happy doing some mind numbing simple stuff for a while.
Also, in most jobs where you are working for someone else, you are lucky if you get two out of the three things above. I generally, change jobs every 2 yrs or so, when things start to get boring or climbing up the ladder requires doing things that are neither 2 nor 3.

I guess the only way to have all 3 is to be an entrepreneur.

My advice would be to figure out what you want and if/how you can get it in your current situation. You could maybe work something out with your employer where you get to focus more on the aspects of the job that you can tolerate.
Anyway, It might be good to stick around for a while, learn what you need for the next job and wait till something better comes along.

 

[Happy]

I got the first job I could find. It paid very poorly but I was afraid of going into some depression limbo state so I didnt try to look any further. By very poorly I mean $650 a month. Which was barely enough to live off of but the average wage where I live. I felt like I had put in much more than what I got.

It seems you might not have looked at the bigger picture here. Most first time graduate jobs pay terribly, and are awful. I suggest you look at the bigger picture and see what you could be paid after gaining some more experience, and look at the career as a whole.

You should also ask yourself what your values are. Do you assign more value to getting paid more, or doing work that is more meaningful to you?

 

[pjoa09]

Wow, lots to unpack here. I will be consulting my psychiatrist. I am worried I am not of sound mind. My last thread, someone brought that up and I do go through bouts of depression/anxiety and not even realize it until someone brings it up.

@Serac, its not fair to label the paths as "easy" or "hard". They both have upsides and downsides. But imma do it anyway.

The easy path ensures that my parents are not out in the streets when my dad retires and if I do have a kid he's not being home schooled in a one bedroom apartment. To make money that would be able to afford a house you need to own a business of some sort. I could hope to make $1,500 a month as an entry level job, some of my friends did, I could make maybe $4,000 a month maximum when I am 50. Living here is cheap, at a grand a month you're okay, living decently well, by yourself. The issue is that if I'd want a car or not pay rent in the future its basically impossible. A house here is half a million dollars or more and it's basically impossible to save that much. We could argue that I do have a house and car already but its just not enough. Most of the jobs are from startups and they don't offer shares as some upside to working for a rocky company.

The shit part is the anxiety and a feeling of a wasted mind. I had two anxiety attacks when I was around 21 just from worrying that I had missed some detail at work and everything would come crumbling down. It's a lot of paying attention to everything and very long days. 10 hours or above and coming in on Sundays was the norm. Not a lot of thought oriented stuff though.

The hard path was fine in terms of stress. There was little pressure and what pressure there was I was up for the challenge. But I'd basically be asking my parents money so I could afford the coffee and food there. Street food was cheap but all it did was give me heartburn so I'd have to eat fancy salads. I needed to pay for my own ritalin and I needed the ritalin because I couldn't stay focused for 8 hours straight on my own. They didn't teach me anything either, I learned as I went using udemy tutorials. At the end of it all, I was paid $25 a day for it. I also did a tonne of CSS work that I hated, I was the only web developer there.

I was proud of my work but when it was all said and done it was theirs. If I came up with anything while I was working it was arguable that it was theirs too. When the probation was over they added $50 to my monthly salary. I quit when I heard that number. I said I was joining the family business but I didn't tell them it was because the salary was just awful for someone who figured out everything on their own.

The only reason I am enticed by getting a job is that I'd be able to code again and if I earned enough I could live somewhere else by myself. I don't like living with my parents all that much. They don't sleep much and don't approve of me being out late at night drinking or doing anything else. When I had a girlfriend I couldn't even stay at hers comfortably without having to answer to some conservative parents. I also don't like staying in the city, I love it when streets are empty and they are never empty in the city. But I probably couldn't move out of the city even if I did get a job.

TLDR: shit pay, they own everything, fulfilled(but bored?), and I could be alone vs I take how much I want, I own everything, not fulfilled but entertained (in a stressful way?), and I can't be alone

Also if I take either one and not somehow both, goodbye 4-5 years of my prime years no matter what.

I kind wish I could split my life in two somehow. Half coding projects, half work but I cant make it work. Or I could? Fuckin don't know.

@ZenRaiden, I do have skills that if were well honed I could convince someone in the Silicon Valley to cough up some dough but I am not in the US and pay here is shit.

@rlnb, I just don't want to wind up years in the future with no money because I just kept working and neither do I want to end up realizing I never did I what I wanted to because I just kept working.

Also business was just anxiety for me. Always worried something might not work or something was a miss. I don't think you could run a business without stress or anxiety. There's always something happening and something that could break. Maybe hire a manager for that as well? I don't know.

@Happy Yes. I don't know what is the upper limit salary is. I need to figure out. I've heard about $2,500 a month for 3 years of experience. I'd be 31 by then. But freedom-sh. But I heard in the valley its $150,000 a year for some starters. It's expensive out there but I can imagine some could be left over for savings. Its quite annoying.

 

[sushi]

dont work for your relatives, go out and experience the world. I've been there and it sucks.

assume you inherit your relatives' company assets eventually,. but the experiences you gain from working outside can never be experienced when working for your relative.

also your relatives will always treat you better than someone alien to them, so you are like in a comfort zone enviroment.

 

[ZenRaiden]

Bottom line is you got to do what you got to do. Maybe even do both. Work bit there and work bit there. If you apply yourself life will be a struggle and challenge where ever you are.

 

[gilliatt]

Well, that is a tough one. Question, what can you do? My suggestion, study the technical side of the market, then, once you know it well, began making your millions/billions. Richard DeMille Wyckoff could help with that career...good luck, my 2 cent...Do not even think of learning much in the government schools..

 

[baccheion]

Are you sure you're an INTP? Why did you do poorly in high school? College?

 

[pjoa09]

Are you sure you're an INTP? Why did you do poorly in high school? College?

If you have anything that might suggest I am not then please let me know. I've taken tests, understood all the functions, read all website descriptions, visited other MBTI forums (ISTPs were sure I didnt fit there), and even tried a super long Socionics personality test which spat out INTP (which is more INTJ but not exactly). I might have changed over time as well. I am slightly more sociable as of late.

I only had disagreements at the stereotypical 'oh u so smart, u einstein' bits. I feel dumb as rock. I also have ADHD, self-diagnosed then officially diagnosed when I was 22. I come off and on the drug, my family and friends hate it when I take medication, they say its bad for me and I should find alternative medication. That bit explains the whole doing poorly in school bit. Only in my last two semesters of college did my GPA go above 3.0 and it was all thanks to cutting off a weird crush and taking my medication. Other than that I had never seen anything above 2.7 .

 

[pjoa09]

dont work for your relatives, go out and experience the world. I've been there and it sucks.

assume you inherit your relatives' company assets eventually,. but the experiences you gain from working outside can never be experienced when working for your relative.

also your relatives will always treat you better than someone alien to them, so you are like in a comfort zone enviroment.

The situation is a bit different. I own most of it on paper but I am not engaging it because theres family for that.

I have worked for both so far and thats why its confusing. When I first started working I was really deep in it, no holidays, no salary, but it felt fine because it was for the family. When I begged to go to college, my tuition and living expenses were covered. I graduate, find a job, they pay, give holidays, job is fun, but it feels wrong because its not family. It doesn't come back to me and I cant make any decisions.

The one thing that makes me feel like to get a job again is the opportunity to live alone again. I am living with my parents again, its normal to do so here, but I want some autonomy sometimes.