About a month ago I gave my boss at Intel two weeks notice and thereby irreversibly put myself on the path of quitting a career where I had done well for almost two decades, and which towards the end earned me something approaching a low six figure salary (depending on how well options did in a given year). All of this nominally so I could start a new career in teaching where I have no experience whatsoever and where I would probably make less than half the money.
So what the hell would cause me to do that?
Well, it's not something I've talked about to a lot of people, but I think in a lot of ways the decision followed on from my dad passing away about a year ago. That's when he finally succombed to complications from injuries he had sustained roughly a year before in a car accident caused by driver who had run a red light. The year between his accident and his death was a tough year for me and my sister - my sister especially since she made the bulk of the decisions and saw him on a much more regular basis than I could, since for me seeing him required a 5 hour drive each way. We watched our father fight his way back to some level of mobility after months in the hospital and more months of physical therapy, only to see his health start to fail again in the last few months of his life.
The accident had caused a condition called "flailed chest", where his ribcage was caved in to the point where his chest didn't expand right and so his lungs didn't work as well anymore. This was on top of the fact that my father had been a lifelong asthmatic and his lungs really didn't work very well in the first place. Add months in bed in the hospital recovering combined with previous long term effects of cortical steroids for his asthma, this had made his frail body even more unsteady than ever. Ultimately his body started failing from poor oxygenation and circulation, and when the balance of his health finally tipped to the worse he declined very quickly.
Anyway, if you've ever seen one of those VH1 biographies (about rock stars, movie stars, porn stars... you know the ones), there always seems to be a point where the subject faces the death of a parent, and they talk about what a big impact that had on the direction of their lives. Well, it may seem like a big cliche but it's really true. It may take a while, because initially you are involved in the day to day business of just getting by, but eventually you start to think about your own mortality, the connections in your life, and ultimately whether or not you are truly doing the things you want to do.
So how much did my dad's death
really have to do with my wanting to quit my job? I'm not
really sure, but I do know that my father opened up a door for me,
because after the accident he had received a settlement from the driver
who had hit him. My sister and I had hoped that that
settlement would give Dad a chance to live a comfortable life with
quality care after he had lost so much of his mobility, but instead it
passed down to his children, where it gave us options.
It wasn't "fuck you, I'm going to the Bahamas" kind of money, but put
together with what I had saved from 20 years of engineering it was
enough to to help support an adequate retirement when I hit
the normal age for it - and it was enough to pay off our mortgage so we
wouldn't have to face the same level of day to day expenses now (and
our expenses were
low in the first place largely because we had never had
children and because we're not really spenders). In other words,
if we didn't change our lifestyle the inheritance
was enough to help free me from money being the number one priority in
my
career.
Sometimes when you see a door it makes you think about going through it, and sometimes when there is a difficult trial at your back it makes you think about going through the open door even more.
...
I enjoy engineering. More specifically, I enjoy programming computers and using them to solve problems specific to engineering - like writing programs to generate tests to find out if a processor is working as designed or not, which is the field of which I explored various aspects at Intel for a little over 8 years. However, there are a lot of things I've wanted to do with my life. I want to write (maybe you're getting that idea by now?), explore ideas, connect with people, and I'd like to teach.
That, and I was starting to see a cap to what I was going to accomplish at Intel. Ultimately I was faced with either moving up into management or trying to become a technical guru in a specialized field of exploration. Well, the position of guru is a tough one to fill at a high tech company. There are an awful lot of bright people working some pretty outrageous hours, and while I believe I'm smart enough to fill the position, I've never been able to dedicate myself enough to just one aspect of my life to work 60 or 70 hour weeks. Truth is, if the work is boring I have trouble focusing on it for a regular 8 hour workday - and an awful lot of programming work, like going through other people's code for hours at a time, is really very boring. As for moving up in management, especially at a company like Intel, that's a subject for a whole other article.
So a few months ago I decided to find a way to take a break and move in another direction. One thing I did was look into getting a graduate degree in computer science since all I have now is B.S. degree in aeronautical engineering. This is a pretty odd background for a former Intel employee, but at the time I was hired it was the go-go mid-90s, engineers with any kind of computer experience were in high demand, and I sneaked my way in by virtue of my prior work on integrated avionics computers. Anyway, I figured a graduated degree in computer science now would make me more broadly marketable in the field of computers, and I could maybe eventually work my way into teaching at the college level. However, that would have been a long road to travel since I would have needed to get a lot of undergraduate coursework done first. So, I decided to look into getting a regular teaching credential first.
I figured teaching would give me the flexibility to do some other things (like take some courses to prep for an M.S. degree, write a little, and travel during the summer or even travel to teach in other countries). I also thought teaching would engage me a bit more than engineering has of late. It's hard to slack off as a teacher - the kids are in front of you and they are going to have your full attention one way or another. There's also the fact that my wife and I have never had kids and I wanted to experience something of that part of life. Finally, I think I have something to contribute as a teacher. I'm smart, I know what I'm talking about when it comes to math and computers and such, and I can be pretty patient (maybe not as patient as I was 10 years ago - age brings grouchiness - but I will do my best).
Anyway, quitting work and starting a teaching credential has been a scary transition in a lot of ways, and I'm not really sure how well I'm going to do at it. My next blog entry will talk a little bit more about those fears and how the reality is panning out, so be sure to give it a look.
Regards,
The Author