Have a well paid job but be bored, a less well paid job but be busy, have a better paid job & be busy?
Reason I’m wondering is this, my stepson is well on his way to his final assessment as a train driver (freight) but he’s already finding it really boring. He’s always been money oriented & he’ll be on 45K ish in a year or so, plus overtime.
He’s got a degree in business & economics & now he’s on about giving up the driving to do accountancy. He knows he’s not going to walk into a corporate accountants office, be offered a job & be on 100K without starting at the bottom & be on peanuts to start with. He had an office job with a company dealing in stocks & shares before he started driving but said that was boring as well!
He’s not a big mixer & doesn’t have any hobbies either which doesn’t help.
Any accountants in to give some insight?

To be bored and paid well must be pretty much at the top of the tree of jobs if you’ve little/no ambition.

‘Accountant’ is a term covering lots of roles and tbh most Accountants I’ve known haven’t actually worked as Accountants…

Stick with the driving, and get a life?

Just about all businesses need someone to do their accounts – so that gives you an infinite range of possibilities.

You can also earn almost anything.

If you drive a train your qualified to drive a train.

For me the one that pays me tonnes of cash but boring.

Your stepson looks like he is already out before he is in as train driver. He is there because something or someone put him there but his heart is never there.

Well, I lasted four months on a graduate management accountancy scheme before I ran for the hills.

It was with a FTSE100 travel firm with big holiday perks and I still couldn’t hack it, which might help emphasise how dull it really was.

Sounds like maybe he just isn’t ready for work yet though? I got on a different graduate scheme when I first finished my undergrad degree, hated it (and was very bad at my job as a result), went to do further study for a few years instead and now I’m basically in the same sort of role but enjoying it much more.

There are a lot worse things than being bored at work.

I guess as a train driver he can’t sit on STW when he is bored though?

I guess I am not in a position to comment or suggest as I am always looking for the next potential move – haven’t found it yet though. Teaching is a mixture of poor salary and being busy and the holidays don’t cut it as it is very frustrating not being able to book when you actually need time off (unless exceptional circumstances).

Anyway I would rather be bored and well paid personally.

^ +1 I’ve just applied to be a train driver. Doubt I’ll get past the first round, but I can dream. Current job is boring, stressful, insecure and poorly paid so I’ve nothing to lose. Plus I’d get to be hated by millions of people for no good reason. And not care.

Train drivers jobs are quite sought after….. 13000 applicants in a week for 100 scotrail jobs. (Possibly all the ex-offshore workers)

brassneck – Member
There are a lot worse things than being bored at work.

This ^

My last job was “Very Exciting” indeed so much so I ended up reporting my boss for harassment and took a settlement to leave quietly.

My current job is mostly dull and quite predictable and I will moan about it, but I sleep well every night and don’t have to keep looking over my shoulder.

I quite like my boring, but well paid job! Mind you, if they cut off internet access, I’d probably only last a couple of weeks…..

Depends if you live to work or work to live. If the latter then you need that work/life balance. You want to earn enough cash to live, but don’t want to be workig every hour god sends to earn that cash. If work is a means to an end and you accept that then it is easier to tolerate a boring job, because you’re doing it for a higher purpose.

My last job was “Very Exciting” indeed so much so I ended up reporting my boss for harassment and took a settlement to leave quietly.

Likewise (ish, not as bad as your example) – a very pressured high intensity highly technical environment where one moment you’d be being hauled up for not following process or getting change board approval, in the next being told to JFDI. Everyone there was divorced, on their way to divorce or single and working most weekends & evenings.
Luckily my previous employer realised their terrible mistake (:-))and came back for me 9 months later with an improved offer, and back to a European consensus driven culture that suits me way better.

Your stepson looks like he is already out before he is in as train driver. He is there because something or someone put him there but his heart is never there.

Partially true. His mate drives for a passenger company & quite enjoys it but he’s kept busier cos there’s more stops!

Sounds like maybe he just isn’t ready for work yet though?

Bloody should do, he’s 27.

Anyway, how does he go about making engine shed loads of money in accountancy??

As a trainee accountant he will earn a less than a train driver, probably be expected to do unpaid overtime and probably spend a lot of his time bored out his skull – but busy staring at a screen. EVENTUALLY his earnings could overtake the train driver if he is any good, sticks at it and plays the game right. Train driving pays well because (a) the job is not that great – odd hours, not very interesting or social etc (b) the unions have done a very good job in a relatively monopolistic (is that a word?) market. Accountancy is not unionised and highly competitive – so it pays quite well because the employers will squeeze every last drop of life out of you.

my stepson is well on his way to his final assessment as a train driver (freight) but he’s already finding it really boring.

I would advise that he finish the training and assessments, and then get at least a year possibly 2 under his belt before leaving. He can then see what the job is really like, as training can sometimes give a false impression of what the real job is like, He can build up a fund so If he does decide to become an accountant the first few years on what will be shite pay will be a bit easier and if he does not like being an accountant, he has a couple of years experience as a driver under his belt.

esselgruntfuttock……Sorry about not getting in touch for that ride I was on about, I am just a bit useless ( and away a lot )

I think you have to leave him to find his own path.

I know my parents tried to steer me towards a job or two and really it failed to motivate me. I always went my own way. Now in my 40’s with a well paid and boring job… only boring because I’ve done it for so long its like breathing, just natural. I now take more pleasure from stuff outside work and am considering setting up a couple of more interesting projects of my own, things that motivate and excite me.

My brother is a freight driver. He neither hates or enjoys his job. He only works an average of 35 hours a week though and the money is good so he is no rush to find something else.

I know a guy who left a relatively interesting job (relatively – for a lawyer) in corporate law for an unbelievably well-paid job as an in-house lawyer for an american investment bank.

He finds it utterly dull and completely soul-destroying and it has affected his outlook on life and his marriage but he’s now accustomed to that salary and feels he can’t leave.

Yes, he’s loaded, but he’s also utterly miserable.

All about the person’s outlook on life innit.

How to get a job you’ll love

Buy him a copy of this and get him to work through it…

Better to think about what you love and you’re good at, and go out and find a job which ticks those boxes, than trying out random jobs he’s not bothered about in the hope it turns out to be his vocation…

Some jobs are dull or exciting, some well paid or under paid. If you don’t like the one you have you will love the ability to change jobs.

Being a train driver will limit your ability to change jobs.

Doing accounts will not limit your ability to change jobs.

Life is about being in the right place at the right time as well as making choices – don’t limit your chance to make choices – ensure you have that option.

If you make a bad choice, choose again. Don’t go down a dead end.

I’ve done accounts for motor racing teams, charities, software companies, start ups, failures, global companies, tiny company’s, manufacturing companies – loads of choice.

Choose choice.

Job satisfaction is a very desirable thing but given a choice between £45k and a boring job vs £25-30k and an unknown job I’d take the former. Also you can be busy and bored (assembly line jobs etc.). I’m not really sure why anyone choose accountancy as a job though, that just seems to ask for a boredom (but likely combined with stress), I know our finance dept are stretched in general and near breaking point at month & year ends.

I’d hate to be unhappy or bored at work. Then again my job even my new role isn’t a boring job so I’ve not been use to it. I have been unhappy but I did something about that.

45k is great money for a job he finds easy, has no office politics, ongoing projects etc

It’s more than an airline pilot will earn for the first few years of his/her career.

I agree with righog. Tell him to suck it up for a few years and decide what he wants to do in his free time. Buy him a bike!

Prison officer – they make loads of money smuggling in ‘snout’ and thousand year old copies of ‘readers wives’

EVENTUALLY his earnings could overtake the train driver if he is any good, sticks at it and plays the game right.

poly +1

He may wish to consider earnings and job potential.

I don’t know any train drivers earning more than £100k and I don’t work with any accountants earning less than that…and the the ones I work with definitely aren’t bored. Not the norm, but it most definitely can be done.

There are a great deal of paths that he could go down in the finance sector, with varying degrees of interest, remuneration and stress.

All that said, I can’t understand why anyone would choose to be an accountant 😉

Just out of interest, how did he get the trainee driver job in the first place ?

Poly +2

The £100K accountants have sacrificed a lot to get to that and will have put in many more hours than any train driver to get there. It will have also have been stressful too. Accountancy still has one have the highest levels of heart attacks. Unless he really applies himself and socialises to get the clients he will most likely be an employee with the life being squeezed from him as Poly put it.

I’ve done accountancy for the last 20 years or so in large organisation, which is very different to small business accounts so can only comment on large organisations.

He will have to go in at a basic level ie doing Accounts Payable/Credit Control etc, and earn £15k ish. He will need to get in a company that develops staff, or he will get no where. He will work with staff who are not interested in their work, its just money and managers who are performance driven.

Once part qualified he may be able to move in to Financial Accounts/Management Accounts and earn £20-£30k. This will be more enjoyable work, but still no strategic (interesting input)

Once qualified he will be able to get late £30’s early £40’s. At this stage he will have no life, the company will expect him to work 20hrs a day etc, and put a lot of responsibility/blame on his shoulders.

Eventually if he can still hack it and make it through that period, if he’s any good earning potential is very high. One of my Finance Directors used to earn approx. £1.4m a year in a FTSE 100 Co. 😯

However a lot of qualified accountants get stuck in a pigeon hole and then never come out of it.

Me – Work life balance is more important, and I haven’t sold my soul to the devil.

If he wants a rewarding/interesting career, why doesn’t he become a doctors? ….but then he would because they pay less well that being a train driver 🙄

i quite like the idea of being a train driver…

travelling through the countryside. no-one to have to listen to. Radio 4.

a well paid, safe secure job with set hours is better than unpaid overtime, stress and office bollocks….. but then again, i value my time more than the money i earn….

I’d have a bash at being a train driver if they’d have me. I hate working with other people (an advantage of my current job) and being stuck on my own in a train cab for hours on end sounds great to me.

Accountancy? WTF?! I assume accountants get paid decent money and accountants are probably money/material things orientated as I honestly couldn’t think of a less appealing job.

I’m an accountant but I’ve never driven trains, so half of this will be much better informed than the other…

Accountancy is likely boring at first but can, depending on where you take it, get more interesting the more experienced you get, and handily enough also better paid.

I suspect that driving a train doesn’t get any more or less boring the longer you’ve been doing it.

Accountancy? WTF?! I assume accountants get paid decent money and accountants are probably money/material things orientated as I honestly couldn’t think of a less appealing job.

Big assumption. Me? I work for a charity and earn just about the same as I did ten years ago in the private sector. I’m now in a senior position where I don’t spend much time “book keeping” but spend a lot of time on strategy type stuff (including, but not limited to, financial strategy). A few years ago I did accountancy in the film / tv business and had all the ‘glamour’ of 90 hour working weeks, handing over brown envelopes of cash to farmers in remote locations, and, you know, hanging around famous showbiz types, going to wrap parties with free booze and ‘celebs’ there, appearing on the credits of movies and telly shows and all the other trappipngs. That wasn’t particularly dull (to me). I also spent six months as a mid-ranking management accountant at a power station reconciling fuel stock accounts. That was (to me) very dull indeed. Others are happy to make a career of it. Or you can go down the self-employed practice route, for those that fancy it. I suspect there aren’t that many self-employed freelance train drivers, but again, not everyone wants to be self-employed.

I guess what I’m saying is accountancy covers a lot of different things, some really dull, some really interesting and what one person thinks is dull will be someone else’s exciting opportunity. Train driving, I suspect, is more binary – it is one thing and you either find that interesting enough, or you don’t. My brother in law grew up wanting to be a train driver, became a train driver and is still a train driver. He never wants to do anything different. I struggle to imagine anything I’d find more dull. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if he felt the same way about what I do.

My advice is simply: if he doesn’t want to be a train driver, don’t be a train driver. What other people think of the relative attractions of driving trains and accountancy really aren;t remotely relevant to that decision.

Will he be replaced by a Robot…

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-34066941

Likelihood of automation?
It’s fairly likely (68%)

…take the job, earn a shed load for 5 or 10 years. Then move on to an interesting job when he’s financially sorted?

So your son has the choice of sitting behind a desk messing around with figures or driving a freight train.

Driving. A. Freight. Train.

Is there even a decision to make? Especially on 45k a year – sod the potential to be earning 100k and be sat behind a desk in a suit when he’s older. Driving a train…

[says I from behind a desk in front of a PC whilst earning more than 45k but less than 100k. But I am colour blind and apparently you’re not allowed to drive trains packed with loads of people if you can’t tell the difference between green and red]

Train driver all day long.

There’s tonnes of jobs which involve sitting behind a desk with random folk but probably not many with the opportunity for new scenery every day.

Maybe he could combine the two and do a bit of train driving, study accountancy in the evenings then become chief accounting officer for DB Schenker and live it up over in Berlin or something similar.

I’d rather be doing a fun job for 15k a year than a dull one for 100k.

Although if I were the only breadwinner I don’t think the wife would give me that choice.

Depends on the hours.

40 hours a week in a “fun” job for £15k (who actually has as much fun in any job as they would outside of work? I think what you mean is “relatively enjoyable”)

40 hours a week in a dull job for £100k

I’ll take the £100k and add a bit more excitement to my life outside those 40 hours thanks, plus a more comfortable retirement 🙂

I’d just spend the hours I’m not in work dreading going back into work. No amount of wages would offset that.

It would just make me miserable. The money wouldn’t cheer me up much. But each to their own.

My wife is a project manager. To me it seems like utter utter hell. But for some reason she loves it. Going into an office or other formal environment just feels like prison.

Might also be worth considering the long-term future of train drivers.

At 27, he’s got 38 years ahead of him before retirement….

Google driverless cars have already driven 1 million miles on public roads and they expect to release them as a product you can buy within the next 5 years.

Nothing’s definite when it comes to predicting the future, but I wouldn’t bet against the majority of trains being automated within the next 20 years and probably much sooner than that, given that automating a train seems like a much simpler proposition than a car (the DLR is already automated).

If he’s already having doubts, it’s probably not the best career to get into.

Railway infrastructure in this country is so far away from being able to support widespread driverless trains its off the scale.