retirees happy to retire due to changes in profession or career (weather, move)

[matisse12]

I'm wondering about retirees who have been happy to stop working in their profession because of the large amount of change which had and has taken place in their profession. Where your profession changed enough over the decades of your career that you no longer felt comfortable, satisfied, or at ease whether due to social change, digitalizing of tasks, automation, cultural changes, requirements of what was expected, etc.

[StealthRabbit]

Lots of school teachers in this boat (added requirements, social change)

• My engineering profession has changed dramatically, but I keep up and enjoy the new challenges to stay current.
  productive.
• My skilled trades career is quite different but is experiencing a USA resurgence. Nice to no longer have to carry around a trig table , using current technology allows us to be highly more productive.
• My CDL job is now very restrictive with gps tracking and very frequent drug tests.
• Building homes in my free time is not nearly as fun, fast, or profitable, largely due to increased permitting costs and hassle. Materials are now very high priced

.

The complexities of working with and for the millenial generation cannot be understated. (Generally) ... They hate boomers and are very keen on making our lives and careers as miserable as possible. Gotta overcome that, and move on.

Some stuff is easier, but all stuff is more complex / time consuming.

Retire early, retire often

[cdelena]

I was prepared for retirement but still happy to continue working and saving... and then one of the periodic restructurings that happens in large corporations gave me a new senior manager. After six months it was clear to me that this guy is a fool and probably won't last in the position much more than three years but it would make it very uncomfortable for me.

I was close enough to retirement that I was able to make a judgement call regarding the satisfaction with my life versus continued employment. I decided immediate retirement was better for me than putting up with incompetent management and a poor work environment for three or more years.

Happy to be retired although financially it would have been to my advantage to suffer through his tenure.

[Dustyroad70]

Happened to me. More and more harping on being politically correct to the point of ridiculousness. Increasing amounts of mandatory meetings for all employees regarding this and many other brilliant ideas that corporate headquarters could think of. Less and less time to actually do ones job and more and more time required to document that you had done your job. I have been retired about four years now and I don't miss my old job at all. I would like to find something to do in which I could have some relaxed interaction with other people, but, that might be just a daydream I have.

[in_newengland]

Teaching. It has become one of the worst jobs.

When I started in 1968, the kids were good, most of them behaved, the priniPAL really was your pal, the school atmosphere was mostly one of harmony with everyone helping out and working together.

By the time I got out, it had changed drastically. Teachers unions had pitted teachers against administration and the administration had become our enemy. Behavior of the kids had declined and they could swear at you in class or threaten to kill you and you weren't allowed to do anything. Verbal abuse of teachers was rampant but we got zero support. If you tried to do anything, you could get sued or fired.

We had long stupid meetings after school until 6PM and then we still had to go home and do our after school prep work. There was no time to do this work during the school day, of course.

There had always been nonsensical trendy "new" teaching methods that were supposed to teach the teachers how to teach...those continued but got even worse because administrators, eager to pad their resumes, would force those methods upon us. (Most teachers secretly continued to teach the kids the usual way, whatever worked best for each individual kid. and would sort of work some of the trendy stuff in just to make it look good.)

I got out about the time that we started having lock downs and the principal was spending the day searching lockers for guns and other weapons. These days, teaching is more like being a police officer or a prison warden. That's how I felt. Most of us were so busy trying to get the kids to settle down that we didn't really get to teach. (And it wasn't even politically correct to try to get the kids to behave!)

[Pat Answers]

I'd rather not say which industry...but over the years all kinds of requirements make our profession a nightmare. State and local requirements, licensing requirements, insurance requirements, tax requirements, epa requirements have piled on one by one. We get used to one and the next one comes... and then there is the customer service which is pretty much non-existent these days. Oh, here's the website, look it up, print it out yourself, figure it out. People seem less trusting, more demanding, harder to deal with also.

We were just talking about all this yesterday. DH is sure if he were to begin in this field right now, he'd never be able to do it. The technology alone is overwhelming. Working 70 to 80 hours a week, when are we supposed to learn all this computer stuff? Of course, none of this makes things less expensive, it's exactly the opposite. What we once used to do with pencil and paper we must hire a professional company to do...and none of it is cheap.

Sorry, question hit a nerve!

[Nor'Eastah]

I owned my own trucking company. Was always a very hands-on guy, very close to my employees, and very involved in the day-to-day operations. It was nothing for me to jump into a truck myself and go out on a job to work. I've always been the type to be outdoors in any kind of weather, and disliked office work.

The last few years of my ownership (I sold the company 3 years ago) I was required to submit proposals, bids, and invoices online. I'd hire someone to do it, only to find that they had to be trained in the whole business, which I didn't have time for. And the older employees left, replaced by younger kids who did not have the same work ethic, and who could not communicate well.

So even when you are the boss, you still can't make all the rules!

[Dustyroad70]

And on top of that, I kept getting new bosses, each on had a little less common sense than the previous one and that is just the way their bosses liked it. My last boss had dreams of climbing the corporate ladder, but, the problem was that we were just props and rungs on his ladder. I would come home and tell my family what he had said or done or asked me or us today and they would be incredulous. It was all too true. My lord I am glad those days are over, but, thanks for allowing me to say so. It has been a long time since I have thought about how much I came to hate a job that in the beginning was almost the start of a new and wonderful life for me. It is sad I guess, but, I am glad to be out of my misery.

[Mr5150]

Ha! I retired a year and a half early per my plan due to my work environment going to fecal matter. Looking at above posts it had nothing to do with younger folks resenting me. They too suffered. They said they envied me. I responded I envied them being 30 years younger. Semi lie, but wanted them to feel better. I have no desire to be 35 again.

I really don't understand why bosses want to make employee's lives difficult

[StealthRabbit]

Originally Posted by Mr5150

I really don't understand why bosses want to make employee's lives difficult

of my worse bosses... There were a group of them who were proud to call themselves "the career busters", they were several engineers that we had mentored from 1st job till they went off on MBA fellowships and came back as our managers. They liked to say "You are one performance evaluation away from termination, I hold your whole future under my thumb". When they would continuously repeat the phrase "You can be replaced!", I just responded, "You better be looking".... And eventually I was ... My manager told me he would have to hire three people to replace me, and he did. His dept went downhill, and soon he was replaced, but what had been a finely tuned machine leading to many patents and invention / extreme company revenue, (70% of a fortune 50) eventually got outsourced to Foxconn The yr before I took my adios, I was shadowed by 2 subcontractors from India and one from Singapore. They went all over the world following and learning from me. It was good for them, as they collected their 15 month bonus, and left 3 months after I did, going to our leading competitor.

Diversity training ... My first was in 1981, as the company focused on social engineering our core ENGINEERING business fled before our eyes, (similar to AT&T, Xerox, and GE). Poof, gone, these companies were no longer leaders in international invention. wonder why

Trucking... My folks always ran lots of trucks, they claimed they neve slept an entire night, until finally the last truck was sold! As a kid... I remember taking the calls in the middle of the night cuz mom and dad were out rescuing other trucks / drivers. Ironically, driving is still one of my best and also favorite retirement jobs... Park it and GO HOME! Leave ALL your cares at the terminal (not the computer terminal ). Take the money and run, (and you don't have to file the monthly fuel reports! Of which every state is different!)