I would be very grateful for any career ideas for someone in my situation, which involves a partial disability (chronic/complex PTSD), multi-year gaps, and, after 2000, a typical job tenure of months. If there is a way to recover from this without lying, I’d love to know.
Over 20 years ago, as an embedded software engineer -- mostly finding & fixing bugs in a network of embedded boards made by 600 engineers -- my employee stock options vested near the stock's all-time high. But by then, I was barely hanging on. It had been almost two years since I’d felt good about my work product, and I’d been trying to get a leave of absence, but I hadn’t been diagnosed with anything yet. After a cashless exercise, I resigned. Living on the windfall allowed me to mask my burnout for long enough to lose credibility as a professional.
I need a career that is compatible with ongoing treatment, which will take years. By the time I got a diagnosis of chronic PTSD, my funds were low enough to interfere with treatment: Treatment for complex PTSD (from continual situations rather than specific major events) requires unboxing painful emotions, which increases the stress level, and the mind won’t really permit this process unless it feels safe-enough to do so. So, to progress in treatment, realistically I first need to identify and establish myself in a career whose stress level, for me, could leave a safety margin. It has to pay enough not to bring additional poverty-induced stress, be challenging enough not to induce stress from boredom, and be easy enough for me, who is, for now, not a quick thinker as a programmer or engineer.
References: [1] https://www.dropbox.com/s/1d96l1ood9re55h/Ask%20HN%20Re-establishing%20a%20professional%20career%20after%20hiatus%20%28w_%20complex%20PTSD%29%20%281%29.pdf?dl=0 [2] https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/11x8um0lpccji7wmvnlk6/Post-uni-employment-history-to-2021.xlsx?dl=0&rlkey=h0w9xcnifnh6exkefrongembn
What I've learned in short gigs is that I've been a slow starter, except when I was very well-rested (e.g. after 5.5 years of rest) and doing a task whose plausibility was unknown. The way I graduated from my temp status in 2008 was by being as proactive as if I owned the company: Bringing my own computer (the company's IT department was slow), finding a disassembler on my own (management / purchasing were slow), and reverse engineering code whose source the boss was waiting for another division to provide (other division was slow). I was rewarded for being a new set of eyes living up to my own strong work ethic, rather than besting or even keeping up with peers in an organization. But when I did all this, it was new to me, so I'd not have been competitive against anyone who specializes in such work.
Conversely, in a permanent role in a software engineering organization, most of my value came, not through raw technical prowess, but through ownership of and immersion in my work product and what it touches, and building a network of respect and trust among peers, over years.
I'm a generalist (perhaps a "scanner"[0]) and probably never have been the best at any one task. Going in fresh, at my age (48) and suboptimal health, it's much harder to contribute value in a hurry. I'd fit well long-term into an organization that can use a generalist like me after qualifying me on a challenge that's well-defined and yet for which there may not be any well-defined type of specialist.
[0] https://www.getmotivation.com/motivationblog/2017/04/barbara...
[1] Longer version of this post: https://www.dropbox.com/s/1d96l1ood9re55h/Ask%20HN%20Re-esta...
[2] Full post-uni work history: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/11x8um0lpccji7wmvnlk6/Post-un...
See some interestimg bits here, but I'd prefer a more direct exchange if that isn't too much of a nuisance to set up.