site banner

Wellness Wednesday for January 31, 2024

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

  • Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.

  • Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.

  • Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).

3
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Why do to want to switch careers? What's the issue with your current one?

Honestly the problem with my current tech sales career is that I developed massive carpal tunnel/TMJ chronic pain issues from the stress. And now whenever I use a computer for work stuff or stressful things in general, I tend to get the pain again. So unfortunately I'm having to move out of the tech sector it seems, even though that's where all my experience/skill lies.

But even for non tech sector jobs, you will be doing you work on a computer. If you have a conditioned aversion to using a computer, it could be possible to train yourself out of it. Or if it's the stress, are there any less stressful teams/companies/adjacent jobs you could move to? Is tech sales inherently stressful? For programming, it depends on the team and company.

Tech sales is stressful as hell generally, yes. And as long as I'm not on a computer all day I'm fine. I'm on the Motte a lot after all.

Not all jobs require a computer, although increasingly more of them do. And yeah it does seem to be a conditioned situation... but not sure how to go about training myself out of it. Chronic pain is a difficult and nasty beast.

Tech Sales;

  • You can explain complex systems and their benefits to people who don't understand complex systems
  • You can manage a project well (tech sales are not often straightforward and require multiple calls / demos / proofs of concept etc.)
  • Networking, "people skills", etc.
  • Some ability to use soliciting questions to get information.

Honestly, anything that hits all of that should be interesting and well compensating. Off the top of my head:

  • Lobbying (would require some sort of government experience probably)
  • General PR / Strategic Comms / Crisis response (though I don't know if this is a non-start with your stress reactions)
  • Certain recruiting / executing scouting jobs. The good ones are niche, though, and you kind of have to know folks who can put you into them. Maybe one in the tech realm?
  • Reinsurance sales ... mostly because you'll be dealing with more sophisticated customers who can appreciate a little bit of complexity