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But I'm an engineer in my 40s and at this point in my career I no longer have any motivation to grow or learn new things. I just want to keep doing what I'm currently doing, and that's it.
This is scary! Do you ever think how much that attitude might hinder your organization? There are people who actually want to grow and make their product/services awesome so it doesn't have to be a gloomy job 40 - 50 hours a week.
OP, your post opened the floodgates for the "Holier Than Thous" who LOVE for these types of threads to pop up so they can belittle you and tell you what pond scum you are for not being as great/motivated/smart as they claim to be.
I understand what you are saying, you meant that you're not interested in moving up the corporate chain to possible managerial type roles with greater responsibilities and greater stress. I get it. But I don't think there is a good way to say that without sounding lazy. My advice would be to smile and say you want to continue to improve at what you do, learn as much as you can about the systems you currently use so that you can grow in your current role. Maybe that you'd like to sort of max out your current role before exploring anything else because you still feel like you have room to grow.
Hope that helps and please ignore the HTTs!
The first paragraph I don't necessarily agree with, but I do agree with the second in how the OP can approach the situation. While I don't know how someone wouldn't want to grow or doesn't have motivation to continue to succeed, I don't know the OP's situation therefore I cannot judge them for it.
OP, I can say this from seeing it first hand. You can possibly get away with wanting to max your potential in your role for a while, but that will only get you to a certain point. You will only get a finite number of opportunities with the company. If you turn them all down eventually you may find yourself in a position of low value to the company in terms of their needs. They may decide to invest their time and money into someone else and leave you to your own devices. It "could" possibly be a slippery slope.
If you're in a role where technology constantly evolves, failing to evolve with it is going to give you a very limited shelf life. This isn't a job where the work stays the same. New products must be developed and Engineering methods behind those also advance. That doesn't mean you have to advance into management per say. You could move up into an advisory role, or an analyst role, or something along those lines that could offer consultation to the other Engineers who may not have your level of experience.
Only you can make the decision as to what is right for you, but I'd really think about the pros and cons before making the decision.
Do you want to be looked at as an expert in your group? Maybe you could learn something about how best to knowledge share.
Are there new technologies you see coming in the next 20 years? Maybe you could be the guy that investigates these new technologies and how they will affect the company.
Are there big issues you see with how your company or group is functions? Does your company have any key product weakness? Ask if you can investigate these things...in a positive way.
I won't jump in with the "holier then thou" comments, and I'm sure the OP already knows this, but if your in your 40's, your nowhere near crossing the finish line. Maybe if you were 3 - 4 years from retiring, you could go into drift mode; but the next 10 years or so can be a vulnerable time in your career.
If you have absolutely no other ideas, then spend a few hours looking around online for what skills are in the most demand, and go ask to learn about those. You have nothing to loose, especially if you don't have to do any of this training on your own time!
This is very common in the technical field. I have many coworkers who are happy doing what they are doing until retirement. It is perfectly ok not to want to climb corporate ladder. I at age 30 often feel that way too. I don't want to manage people or move to business side of things, I want to be a good scientist & work in lab. What I am currently doing. That doesn't mean I don't want to learn about new technology or develop new products, its just part of keeping current role. I hope that's what the OP means & not that he/she is not willing to get training to keep up with current role.
If what I mentioned above is the case, then kindly tell your manager that "my immediate goal is to perform my current role very best. Do you recommend any type of training I take?". It could be something like time management or something technical. Take it, its free day off. You can even identify Fred Pryor has bunch of soft skill one day training course. I took speed reading once. Those don't take much effort. When your manager ask for long term goals, tell him/her "my long term goal is to be industry expert in my current role".
Ask people who are on their deathbeds what they regret the most out of their lives. I'd guess it was giving their all to a company that gave them a nice little pension and a gold watch before they were hustled off to the horticultural club and then the nursing home. There is life outside of the 9-5 madness. And it's pretty nice.
I didn't know, either. But luckily I was ousted for someone I had groomed to take my place. Someone younger and more ambitious, and energetic, after 17 years of mostly 12 hour days I had given my employer. For the first 30 minutes I was devasted. I wasn't yet 40, but it was the best thing that happened. Only then did I realize I had been living for one thing - my bosses' bottom line. Today I do not have as much disposable income as I did back then, but I am much much happier. I have a smaller house, a cheaper car, and I take great enjoyment out of things that have nothing to do with making money.
I am sorry I don't have much of answer for you, OP. But I do completely understand where you're coming from. I hope it works out for you!
I have my annual performance review coming later this week. My company already told me I'm getting a 4% raise and they think I'm doing a good job (I've been with this company several years now and have gotten a nice raise and review every year).
This will be the second review I've had with my current manager, and last year the review meeting went pretty quickly (maybe 5-10 minutes) as he said he was very pleased with my performance and I said I was happy and had no questions or issues to discuss. He did try to ask if there were any growth opportunities or other areas I'd like to pursue and I didn't commit to anything. He did say that since I have a high salary the company would expect more out of me.
This year he's scheduled a one hour meeting. I'm guessing he'll be more aggressive in asking me how I want to grow and if there's any other areas I want to expand into, and how they can help me to do that. He'll probably ask if I want to take some training courses or even if I want to go for a Master's. But I'm an engineer in my 40s and at this point in my career I no longer have any motivation to grow or learn new things. I just want to keep doing what I'm currently doing, and that's it.
I don't think it will come across well for me to actually say that I have no desire for growth or learning new things, though. How should I answer these questions?
You should lie.
Seriously, let me be blunt here.
You might FEEL that way but don't be an idiot and FLAG yourself to management that way.
It might not even matter with regards to your job but it could haunt you for years when raises or job cuts come up and you were "the guy that doesn't want to keep learning".
Heck, maybe take a few training courses if for no other reason than to keep from going on a crap list somewhere.
We had layoffs earlier this year and if I'd done what you'd done I might be job hunting right now.
I have my annual performance review coming later this week. My company already told me I'm getting a 4% raise and they think I'm doing a good job (I've been with this company several years now and have gotten a nice raise and review every year).
This will be the second review I've had with my current manager, and last year the review meeting went pretty quickly (maybe 5-10 minutes) as he said he was very pleased with my performance and I said I was happy and had no questions or issues to discuss. He did try to ask if there were any growth opportunities or other areas I'd like to pursue and I didn't commit to anything. He did say that since I have a high salary the company would expect more out of me.
This year he's scheduled a one hour meeting. I'm guessing he'll be more aggressive in asking me how I want to grow and if there's any other areas I want to expand into, and how they can help me to do that. He'll probably ask if I want to take some training courses or even if I want to go for a Master's. But I'm an engineer in my 40s and at this point in my career I no longer have any motivation to grow or learn new things. I just want to keep doing what I'm currently doing, and that's it.
I don't think it will come across well for me to actually say that I have no desire for growth or learning new things, though. How should I answer these questions?
Item number 1 above is bolded because you don't seem to recognize that your boss gave you a heads up (warning) about your job and the future. He's telling you that you cost the company a lot of money with your high salary and they don't feel like you are currently providing them with enough benefit for that high salary - that's why the upcoming review is scheduled to be an hour. Your boss wants to have a longer session with you to help him decide if you're going to continue to be worth this high salary. You obviously haven't shown the growth they were expecting out of you during your second year.
This leads me to bolded item 2. You are certainly allowed to feel this way, but you should know that if your boss even gets the slightest hint of how you really feel, you will get yourself put at the top of the list every company keeps of the employees that will be first to get laid off the next time costs need to be cut. If you were in your early 60's you could probably get away with this mindset, but you still have 20+ years of your career left and the odds of you being able to keep a good paying job as an engineer for 20 more years without being willing to learn anything new is small. Of course you're going to do what you want to do, but don't be surprised if you end up with a paycut or part of a layoff sooner rather than later.
Last edited by patches403; 05-18-2016 at 10:30 PM..
I was an engineering manager for 23 years. I don't know of any field in engineering that does not continue to evolve ...
Just doing general office tasks continues to evolve. I worked for one Fortune 100 company for almost 20 years. During that time period, the way the office was set up, the ways we communicated internally AND with customers, and even office equipment had changed drastically. When I went to work there they had a huge drafting department and a video studio. Within five years, those functions had been completely outsourced, a word that was unknown to me when I started.
I went from writing on an IBM Selectric typewriter to a Wang with a floppy disk, to a long series of PCs on which I used four different word processing programs over that time.
Anyone who's not within a year of secure retirement should be taking any skills improvement courses his or her company will pay for.
You say I have been practicing diligently for my new career:
"Would you like fries with that?"
If I had an employee who said they didn't want to grow (against the grain of any decent organization) I would kick them to the curb. Maybe not fire them, but end the raises and make it known that "no growth" is not part of the corporate mantra.
BTW, old expression: If you don't grow, you die. There is something to it...
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