Those of you who work - what is your job?

I was a specialist in IT support, with the first 10 years mostly deskside support then management of various levels with times of being a project manager.

At the beginning it was great where I could work on the technical issues and not have to interact with the users but there was always an element where you had to deal with people, often those who were upset that their computer was stopping them working or had lost their work.

This resulted in me learning to script a lot and mask when I was interacting, then later learning to use meditation to come down from the perpetual state of stress I found myself in. I also picked up assertiveness training and mindfulness training that were hugely helpful.

Moving into management was really tough. You find yourself having to take direction from senior management who want a specific result then you have to get your team to deliver this, often when they don't think it is a good idea or that it won't work.

Where I was able to excel was in training my teams to cope with the stresses of the job, read the customers behaviours and develop ways of organising their workload to stop it overloading them. All this came from ways I had developed to survive without knowing I was autistic.

By making the job a special interest I was able to turn myself into a specialist who could turn around underperforming support teams and had some eye opening experiences there.

In the end it was the constant unreasonable expectations from senior management that made me retire early after 32 years in the field.

The anxiety never went away and it was always uncomfortable dealing with the interpersonal interactions but I always took this as just part of the nature of being in work.

Now I'm retired in my late 50s I'm my own boss as a property developer and can get my hands dirty when I want or can just get my staff to do the work if it is more practical. It is a much better work life balance and my health has improved markedly as a result

I was a specialist in IT support, with the first 10 years mostly deskside support then management of various levels with times of being a project manager.

At the beginning it was great where I could work on the technical issues and not have to interact with the users but there was always an element where you had to deal with people, often those who were upset that their computer was stopping them working or had lost their work.

This resulted in me learning to script a lot and mask when I was interacting, then later learning to use meditation to come down from the perpetual state of stress I found myself in. I also picked up assertiveness training and mindfulness training that were hugely helpful.

Moving into management was really tough. You find yourself having to take direction from senior management who want a specific result then you have to get your team to deliver this, often when they don't think it is a good idea or that it won't work.

Where I was able to excel was in training my teams to cope with the stresses of the job, read the customers behaviours and develop ways of organising their workload to stop it overloading them. All this came from ways I had developed to survive without knowing I was autistic.

By making the job a special interest I was able to turn myself into a specialist who could turn around underperforming support teams and had some eye opening experiences there.

In the end it was the constant unreasonable expectations from senior management that made me retire early after 32 years in the field.

The anxiety never went away and it was always uncomfortable dealing with the interpersonal interactions but I always took this as just part of the nature of being in work.

Now I'm retired in my late 50s I'm my own boss as a property developer and can get my hands dirty when I want or can just get my staff to do the work if it is more practical. It is a much better work life balance and my health has improved markedly as a result

It's a fair point, Iain. I have also moved into management over the years but find myself with such a significant amount of developer work still remaining that it;s hard to do both jobs.   Like you the IT side is a special interest that I am lucky to be able to do professionally and successfully.

Because I am incredibly lucky to have the specific role I have right now, I have somehow managed to work around my serious people-skill limitations, despite having risen up the career ladder because of technical skills.  That said, I have an excellent colleague who covers my back a lot.

One serious downside for me is that I often over-work or else get more stressed when I can't manage to put the extra hours in to make things happen.

Right now, I am paralysed a little because both my home life and work life demands have collided and I have a massive work-load at work and not enough people.  The people I do have already learned how to balance work and life and don't have the same problems as me.  As I am the one in charge though, it falls on me if things don't get done.