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One of the best things I ever did in my career was to quit. I had gone a route I thought was “the” route for a career in tech. First developer, then architect/developer then project manager/developer then into actual management leaving development more and more behind without being fully able to because no one could do what I did at the organisation. It all went very well, I got involved with national task forces and was part of defining the national enterprise architecture for public software in Denmark. A long the road I also started doing conference/network/whatever talks and felt hugely important. Then I had a daughter, went down with stress that turned into depression and eventually found myself with an ADHD diagnosis at almost 40. Turned out my parents hadn’t wanted me to get one when I was a kid and had to see doctors because, well, I had ADHD. Not because my parents sucked or anything, but at the time it wasn’t called ADHD but DAMP (Danish word for steam, as in a thundering steam engine), and they believed such a diagnosis would be a bad stigma. I don’t blame them, but they probably “saved” me into changing my university major 9 times and eventually having to get a lower academy degree while working two jobs (not common in Denmark where we are paid to study for 6 years and have free (as in beer) access to most education). Anyway, there I was with not enough energy to do the two full time jobs I now had, parenting and work. My former places of work was amazing in all of this, not only did they send and pay for a lot of the help they also let me work part time while being part time sick (in Denmark this gives you full pay, but the sick part of it is paid for by the government). Despite this, and despite being lucky enough to get appointed to one my countries leading psychiatrists for adults with a late ADHD diagnosis, I found myself wondering if I would ever work full time again. Then I quit, and I don’t be back to developing software at a company that lets you actually build cool things. I started at 30 hours a week, but here half a year later, I’m going back to full time. If you have the ability to pick and chose, as many of us in tech are fortunate enough to have, then I can only encourage that you use it if your current job makes you unhappy. Of course you’ll probably need it o do some work to figure out what makes you happy, or even if you are currently unhappy or happy. |