The Contractor Who Came In From The Cold

Its been ten years since I had permanent, full time employment...

There were a bunch of factors that led up to my "change in employment status", and in my change in employment outlook. The main factors were that Id been having a more and more stressful time at my job working as a team manager for a  higher management that was becoming more insecure, and less technically relevant... and that was coupled with a sudden downturn in the Tech industry and the foreshadow of the big economic crisis of 2008.
And so in early 2007 I was unemployed and frankly, relieved to be!

And after wandering around the Americas for about a year, and having "the time of my life" just spending time introspecting and without commitment, I "landed" back in Vancouver, but still with out much of a "plan". And at that point, I was approached by someone from my old employer (but in a different functional group) about doing some contract work for them... I was happy enough to take them up on the offer because I needed some income but wasn't at all sure what kind of "career" or full-time role I wanted... And it worked out well...
And that more or less led me to my "lifestyle" of the last 10 years with periods of contract work (with minimal responsibilities other than the quality of my own work) interspersed with long solo trips to remote and interesting places.

... And its been a great lifestyle but one suitable only for someone like me, with solid financial status, no dependents, and a well developed ability to spend most of my time alone and without social support/interaction.
But, as I'm sure anyone reading my blog babble has thought and noted, I do feel significant stress on a pretty regular basis (though it is on a long time cycle of every few years rather than every few months or weeks).  Its the price of the lifestyle... Contract work is not always available conveniently when I want to be working... and the situation gets harder to manage as I get older and am "less employable" as viewed by employers who don't already know me.

And so I find myself considering my options.
And over the past six months Ive been working (on contract again) in the same group and with the same people who I was working with 10 years ago when I was last employed full-time.
And it turns out the group is needing to grow again,
And it seems they have a bit of a "gap" in their succession planning with no current employees being senior enough to step up to a full project management role...
And there is currently a dearth of available senior electrical engineers here in the Vancouver area.
And my work friends from the past, who are all managers now them-selves, look at me and say , "Hey why don't you come back and manage this new project with us?"...

Hmmmm.
And so I consider what the job would be like...
And I think back and I remember what it was like working as an Engineering group manager last time...
With project schedules that constantly slip-out at the start and intermediate dates but don't slip at the end dates, and with upper management who constantly ask for reworked schedules that are "accurate and detailed" down to a day or two of granularity over a period of six months with a team of 8-10 people ... Completely ridiculous for a an Engineering Validation team whos job it is to find unknown bugs in hyper complex systems, with limited documentation; and when we find the bugs we have to investigate and find resolutions for them too... But it has to fit in that "fixed" schedule of course!
This is all nothing new though... Its always been the same irrational story... Its called "being a manager" in pretty much any Engineering company.
And I see my friends who as I said are now experienced managers, and I look at them and think "wow, those guys are so competent at whet they do, they are way better at it than I ever was!"  And I see how stressed they get by the conflicting demands on them. And I remember how that stress level made me "an angry person" all the time!... And I'm wondering why would I want to do that to myself again??
But I'm also thinking that well, yeah, nothing has changed in 10 years... The system is the same with the same faults and strength and I did it once and I can do it again. Its a forgone conclusion that "I'm gonna get burned" by the company's irrational schedule management systems...
But I'm older and wiser now; and I know I'm gonna end up as "the bad guy" in the schedule meetings! I know they are irrational!... I know I cant change them to plan better!
And if I know all this, then when the "finger of blame" starts getting waved around by people, and they direct it at me, I know I don't have to take it personally... But I also know that its oh-so-easy to sit back and say "I wont be affected by other peoples opinions" while I'm imagining the future and am not actively embedded in the situation... I know that that "outlook" will not last more than a few minutes when I'm actually experiencing it!  :)

... And so I'm weighing my options... The insecurity of contracting, The increasing difficulty of getting work as a low-level Engineer as I get older. The guaranteed high stress levels of going back into a management role, but the secure and higher income of the job...

And Ive come to my conclusion...
I'm gonna take the shitty stressful Engineering Manager job!
The overview of the plan is that Ill take the job and help my friends out for a few years... But I intend to do it only for 3-4 years. Im gonna take the bigger pay cheque and the constant employment and squirrel the money away for the next few years so that I can "secure my retirement". After that I hope to be in a position to never "have to have employment" again!... I can work if I want, but only if I want :)
In the mean time though I know I'm gonna have a less than relaxing few years... I'm gonna try really hard not to take things personally when things get rough at work (as they of course will). And I'm gonna work at bringing a couple of their current mid-level engineers up to full speed to be able to take-over my role as soon as possible. I'm hopefully gonna be contributing to a project that I feel is worthwhile and "adding something positive to our world" (though there is never any guarantee of that). I'm gonna definitely be aiming to do a good job for my team and help them each grow in the way they want to at work (and that is always "contributing something positive to the world").

And well, that's the hope. And that's what I'm gonna be doing for a while...
Signing employment papers next week (or so they tell me).

Lets see what happens ... Life is always a wild ride :))