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Old 07-22-2013, 10:26 AM   #41
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What could Megacorp offer to stop you from ER?

Not a damn thing!
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Old 07-22-2013, 11:18 AM   #42
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When I decide the time has come I do not expect or care for any offers of continued employment. Until that day I hope to do my job under my terms.
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Old 11-25-2013, 06:11 PM   #43
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Anyone saw "The devil wears Prada" movie? I work for someone like the movie's "boss" character. The guy is narcissistic egomaniac without any social skill set. Other than that, he's ok and my job is a dream job. So, I will demand that my boss replace himself and I will consider staying on .
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Old 11-25-2013, 06:35 PM   #44
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Well, in my case what "worked" so to speak was an offer to let me work part-time with a very limited type of work I wanted to do. I would come into the office once or twice a week.

After about 3 years, even that began to be too much, so I tried to quit again.

This time what kept from entirely quitting was an offer for me to work entirely from home. Since that started almost 6 months ago I have not set foot in the office once and I've attended a couple of out of office meetings.

I'm sure there will come a time when even that is more than I want to do, but for now it is still fine.
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Old 11-25-2013, 06:49 PM   #45
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Phased retirement. 1/2 my pension and half time employment at my current pay rate. But the federal government tends to be very slow at implementing new programs.
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Old 11-25-2013, 07:02 PM   #46
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We're planning on retiring at the end of next year, assuming a major market pullback that changes the math too much doesn't happen.

Much as I'd like to be in the gang saying nothing could change it, I'm quite sure there is a number less than my annual salary they could put on a retention bonus to keep me around another year. I'm 45 years old, might be different if I was 55 or 60.
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Old 11-25-2013, 08:05 PM   #47
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I had a couple of offers to go back to my old job. One was a for a higher salary but I have had to have been the scapegoat / manager in charge of an overseas project from hell, so that didn't work out.

The other offer was to work part time for a prorated salary, but with no benefits or bonus, so really that was like being offered to come back half time but quarter pay. So I didn't do that either.

One of the consulting companies I used to be the client for called out of the blue one day and offered me a commission sales job I could do working out of the house. That one I really thought about, but still turned it down. I just wanted something low stress I could do part time or on a contract basis, and sales presentations to Fortune 500 type places seemed like it would just be going back to high stress kind of work.
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Old 11-25-2013, 09:32 PM   #48
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We all want what we don't have. I'm in "pre-retirement" at a MegaCorp (working 3 days a week for about 80% of my full time compensation, 5 weeks vacation/year). But those 3 days involve a deadly commute.

After a 3 month layoff scare earlier this year it looks like I'm in for another 1.5 years until 55. So more money (within reason) wouldn't get me to stay past that, but the option to telecommute might.... but probably not.
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Old 11-26-2013, 04:34 AM   #49
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I'm not expecting megacorp will offer me anything at all. So I am not dreaming of some other-world.

The harsh reality is that a 10-week furlough in early 2013 was only phase 1. By April 2014 we will know how much work will be covered by a contract, and safe money would bet on another serious reduction in resources (read workers).

So, in some weird working of gov't and megacorp, I might be at the beginning of ER or partial ER, whether it fits my timetable or not. So I plan for that option.
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Old 11-26-2013, 05:12 AM   #50
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Minicorp offered me a deal where they would buy my company stock if I would work 2 days a week for a year getting a transition in place. I took the deal and have 4 months left.
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Old 11-26-2013, 05:34 AM   #51
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So do you 2-3 days per week guys find it tolerable? I already telecommute full time and had wondered about proposing a 2-3 day per week gig. Seems like it would still leave you with a week of mostly free time, heck every weekend you have enough time for a nice road trip if you want it especially if there was some flexibility where one could stack the days early one week and end of the following one.
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Old 11-26-2013, 05:45 AM   #52
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I worked 80% part time and then 50% part time for the last 5 or so years before I ERd. Also, telecommuted so the only time I had to commute was when traveling for business. IF you have (or want) to work it was a great gig.

The only issue that I had was that our work was highly demanding and time sensitive and I was "on-call" 24/7 and my work would often be small pockets of time (a couple of hours here and there) so I didn't have contiguous time unscheduled to be able to do things like golf (which usually takes 5-6 contiguous hours with travel and all). We couldn't really figure out a sensible way around that so I decided to hang it up.

If the nature of the work was such that I could have had Friday to Mondays "off" and work Tuesday to Thursday I would probably still be working. But if a corporate client had an issue arise on a Thursday evening, an answer that we can't get pb4uski to consult on it until the following Tuesday was not going to be an acceptable response and both my bosses and I knew it.
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Old 11-26-2013, 06:44 AM   #53
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So do you 2-3 days per week guys find it tolerable? I already telecommute full time and had wondered about proposing a 2-3 day per week gig. Seems like it would still leave you with a week of mostly free time, heck every weekend you have enough time for a nice road trip if you want it especially if there was some flexibility where one could stack the days early one week and end of the following one.
The sort answer to your quesiton is NO!

After 2 years of mostly telecommuting (going to the office one day a week), they eliminated it so I was commuting 3 days a week for 3.5 years then reduced it to 2 days a week for 2.5 years. The commute was so bad that even 2 days a week was 2 days too many, so I had to eliminate it. In my exit interview, I told the HR rep that even if they offered my old, mosty telecommute gig I would have turned it down. MAYBE I'd have gone for a once-a-month commute AND eligibility for group health benefits (which went away when I reduced my weekly hours worked to 12 with the 2-days-a-week deal). But both were non-starters so I ERed.
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Old 11-26-2013, 07:43 AM   #54
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So do you 2-3 days per week guys find it tolerable?
I'd say it depends on what you are doing and how much it reduces the filling of your BS bucket. Right now I'm working an average of 2 days a week, 4 hours a day, doing something entirely different from the j*b I lost in April. For the most part I'm enjoying it (which is good because I'm certainly not doing it for the pay), and it helps to know that if anyone starts to fill my BS bucket, with even one shovelful, I can walk away without giving it a second thought. Also, to a reasonable extent I can choose which days I'm willing to come in and which days I don't want to. I think that mindset makes it a lot easier to stay engaged, at least a little bit, and maybe give a little bit of spending money on the side.
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Old 11-26-2013, 07:54 AM   #55
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What could Megacorp offer to stop you from ER?

Not a damn thing!
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Old 11-26-2013, 08:07 AM   #56
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So do you 2-3 days per week guys find it tolerable?
I tried that, and it did not work for me. There were still things on my mind in between the working days. I was even telecommuting as well. Better, yes, but did not stop me from ER. I may go back to something in some capacity, but maybe it would be better to do a 2 or 3 month gig, and just grind through it.

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I'd say it depends on what you are doing and how much it reduces the filling of your BS bucket.
I think it depends on WHO you are as well. When you come back from vacation, are you anxious at all to get back into the challenges? Do you stay engaged during vacation with emails, cell phones, etc.? To me, the part time gig is like eating half the broccoli I don't like. After that first taste, it is just grinding through the rest.
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Old 11-26-2013, 08:37 AM   #57
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I think it depends on WHO you are as well. When you come back from vacation, are you anxious at all to get back into the challenges? Do you stay engaged during vacation with emails, cell phones, etc.? To me, the part time gig is like eating half the broccoli I don't like. After that first taste, it is just grinding through the rest.
It helps to have the type of work where you don't have long-term deadlines and where days off don't translate to stuff piling up in your "inbox" -- or bosses and coworkers needing to keep you on electronic leashes with e-mail and cell phones. That makes it a lot easier to really feel "off" when you aren't on the job.

That was one of the things that really sucked about my Megacorp gig. Sure, you could take a week off... but when I first started working in the Megacorp world, your work was parceled out to other team members to do, so when you came back you weren't overwhelmed. These days, with the skeleton crews in place and everyone already having 50-60 hours worth of work themselves, a week's worth of backlogged work waits for you when you return.... so you have to work twice as long/hard in your first week back in order to catch up. It's a lot harder to really feel "off" and not have job angst while you are on vacation in such an environment.
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"Hey, for every ten dollars, that's another hour that I have to be in the work place. That's an hour of my life. And my life is a very finite thing. I have only 'x' number of hours left before I'm dead. So how do I want to use these hours of my life? Do I want to use them just spending it on more crap and more stuff, or do I want to start getting a handle on it and using my life more intelligently?" -- Joe Dominguez (1938 - 1997)
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Old 11-26-2013, 09:07 AM   #58
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It helps to have the type of work where you don't have long-term deadlines and where days off don't translate to stuff piling up in your "inbox" -- or bosses and coworkers needing to keep you on electronic leashes with e-mail and cell phones. That makes it a lot easier to really feel "off" when you aren't on the job.

That was one of the things that really sucked about my Megacorp gig. Sure, you could take a week off... but when I first started working in the Megacorp world, your work was parceled out to other team members to do, so when you came back you weren't overwhelmed. These days, with the skeleton crews in place and everyone already having 50-60 hours worth of work themselves, a week's worth of backlogged work waits for you when you return.... so you have to work twice as long/hard in your first week back in order to catch up. It's a lot harder to really feel "off" and not have job angst while you are on vacation in such an environment.
Well said!! That was my problem exactly! And there was also some added resentment, either real or perceived, that was directed at the part-timer/telecommuter.
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Old 11-26-2013, 11:38 AM   #59
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So do you 2-3 days per week guys find it tolerable? I already telecommute full time and had wondered about proposing a 2-3 day per week gig. Seems like it would still leave you with a week of mostly free time, heck every weekend you have enough time for a nice road trip if you want it especially if there was some flexibility where one could stack the days early one week and end of the following one.

It's tolerable the 5 off days and sometimes tolerable the 2 work days. I have an assistant that handles everything on my off days with maybe 10 emails a week, and then we get enough work done with the guy I'm transitioning to in my 2 work days to keep things progressing.
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