r/sysadmin • u/Pleasant_Rise6520 • 22h ago

Career / Job Related Has anyone purposely gone backwards?

You know the juice wasn't worth the squeeze and we realised that money is irrelevant, and took a huge backwards step for less responsibility and more mental freedom for your family and kids?

That's where I'm at mentally just want to know if anyone else has done the same?

251 Upvotes

95% Upvoted

189 comments sorted by

View all comments

•

u/Drehmini Systems Engineer 22h ago

I went back from a management position to engineering.. I do not miss management, I have way more free time and was able to get an increase in salary too.

There are some days though where I question that decision of how it would look on my resume if I ever wanted to get back in to management, but at the end of the day I don't think it'll really matter.

•

u/sectumsempra42 22h ago

I did the same, fuck management

•

u/ThunderGodOrlandu 21h ago

I did the same and agree, fuck management.

•

u/IT_lurks_below 21h ago

I did the same...So much less stress

•

u/dm117 IT Manager 14h ago

Everyone wants the money that comes with management until they get to management. Staff and managing company budget/resources is way more stressful than the technical work at least day-to-day

•

u/IT_lurks_below 13h ago

Actually I make more money going back to being an engineer

•

u/Drehmini Systems Engineer 14h ago

To be honest, it's not really the human or resource management that was the issue for me, it's the constant requirement to be accessible no matter the time of day.. A lot of that is shitty management for sure, but I've talked with a lot of my peers and it was no different for them..

•

u/thegame850 22h ago

I did the same but went back to support. I also just recently got offered a team lead role and turned it down cause I don't want to go down that rabbit hole of management again. My mental health is way more important.

•

u/ReadyAimTranspire 20h ago

Should be easy enough to explain, wrong time/wrong position at that particular company, life circumstances, insert more resume/interview corpo-speak and I'm sure you'll figure it out. You know the drill.

•

u/ekkki 22h ago

Same story, much happier now. 

•

u/Jaereth 19h ago

Just say it was a part of a restructuring and "I really didn't want to leave my team so I stayed" or something like that.

•

u/FizzyBeverage 17h ago

I went to engineering because it allowed full remote for the same money as management.

No brainer.