I didn't have a career until I was in my early 30s. Until then, I worked at jobs I could find at the State-run Job Service. My longest employment by the time I was 33 had been about 1-1/2 years.
By that time, I had been working in an integrated circuit manufacturing company for about 2 years and had held three positions in the company, one of which had been a promotion to a lead position on the line and partly because of watching the in-house job board for jobs of interest.
After another year or so, I found my career in technical communication, but didn't know, yet, that would carry me for most of the rest of my working life. I lasted at that company for a total of 9 years before they started severely cutting staff at that plant (roughly 50 percent of the plant, over all). For the last 2 years, I had been a supervisor in the documentation department, which cut 2/3 of that staff based on seniority, from 32 persons to 10. My 9 years didn't stack up very well against others who had 2 decades or more at the plant.
After using a few months to finish my bachelor degree (almost 41 years old, now), I finally landed a job in customer support at a well known software company.
I thought the job might get my foot in the door toward moving into their documentation department, but they had slammed that door shut for me, which I found out after several months of responding to the job board and getting an e-mail that pretty much said, "...don't call us, we'll call you."
Another company bought that one and cleaned house. They got rid of anybody who made more money in job grades (translation: had been passed over for chances to move up for whatever reason, and that's another long story) and I was one of those.
I did one or two more stints in customer support in my 40s before I decided I had to get back on track and accept only assignments that used my skills as a technical communicator. I started relying more on temporary employment agencies to find contracts for me. After a few contracts, one of which hired me and later let me go because of mistreatment and misunderstandings from an abusive supervisor, details of which I won't go into here, I finally landed a contract that led to my final, full-time employee position that lasted just over 8 years, counting the 11 months on contract before they hired me. I was 54 and that was a good company.
When they had no choice but to lay me off at 62, because the head count in the programming department was getting too low to manage projects without losing yet another programmer, I decided it would be a good time for me to quit jumping through corporate hoops.
Technical communication was not the perfect career for me, but it was still a good one. It used my talents, kept me engaged, and ultimately provided the basis for a good retirement so far. Not great, not perfect, but good.
Enjoy!
