My career came to an end on Friday, May 31, 2024. That’s when my retirement became ‘official’.

I am feeling pretty good about no longer being a contributing member of society here in the first week of June. It feels very good to have no thoughts in my head about what needs to be done for work next week.

But I am also feeling a bit thoughtful about the past 40 years or so when I spent 40 to 80 hours a week (130 hours a couple of times) working. I’m turning that reflection into this summary post on my blog.

Working life timeline

I started working part-time as a teenager. My first ‘real’ job was when I was about fourteen years old. And I became a full time computer professional when I was twenty.

The following table lists my recollection of my work experiences, each with a brief comment. I’ve included a rather optimistic column for links to possible future posts to dive into more detail about each employment situation. No such details exist yet, but I’m retired now: maybe I’ll be motivated to write some!

What was my career about

Pretty much all of the work I did when I was young and still working part time was to earn money for computers. I bought my first machine, an Apple ][ +, when I was 15. Then there was an IBM clone (Tandy 1200 HD), a multi-user Unix system (Altos 586), an Amiga… you get the idea.

I briefly attended university, enrolling in Honours Computing Science at the University of Alberta. I dropped out when I found the Honours level math was challenging to the point that I was either going to commit suicide (sorry, but the truth) or murder my professor.

I then started consulting/selling/developing on computers full time, and have never stopped since. I loved and still love working on a technical challenge and turning an idea or need into something functional. I enjoyed working with a small team on building new solutions out of basically nothing.

My career at IBM reached a peak about 24 years ago when I realized I didn’t want to travel weekly for work and didn’t want to create ‘paper’ solutions for bids and proposals. That relegated me to purely technical solutioning and delivery roles which, as I noted, I love. Such work, however, is generally a career dead end in IBM.

I knew the consequences of my choices on my career progress within IBM when I made them. IBM was and still is a great place to work, but it is a sales and revenue driven company: you need to be doing that kind of work to be getting promotions. I was okay with that, although IBM was not always happy with my lack of desire to ‘progress’ into work I don’t like.

I found a good account / program in IBM consulting that worked with my preferences during the last decade or so. I was allowed to create and refine technical solutions without being pushed into work that didn’t satisfy my personal needs. I was ready to continue working for a few more years beyond 2024.

Then my wife developed health concerns. Work became an obstacle to spending time with Irene. That led me to decide that retiring now was the wise thing to do.

What will I do in retirement

I am still thinking about what I want retirement to be about. I wrote some thoughts about possible retirement activities a few years back, but that feels like a century ago. Some of those things will still make sense, but others… maybe not.

Irene and I are going to take the rest of 2024 to explore what we want to do and what we can actually manage. The practical financial aspects will become a bit easier to understand after we’ve had a few months, and we’ll see how we both feel.

I’ll almost certainly post some of my thoughts here on this blog as things become clearer.