A new saga begins (began)!

Retirement Life

Ok, it began a few years ago, but I've forgotten about blogging, what with all of the other social media methods out there. But since it has cooled off a bit, I ended up down in the scotch lounge again tonight, and decided to put in a bit of an update.

So back in 2015, for a number of reasons that I won't spend too much time expanding upon, I decided to retire from my 30-year career in IT. It had actually been part of my plan to retire at 50, but I was having fun in my last business development position, and I told the boss (wife) that if I'm still going to enjoy work, I might as well have a few extra bucks in my pocket. But in 2014, the BD group was about to fold up, and rather than end up in limbo, I decided to take a sales management position back in the "field" (I've always found that term kinda funny - like I'm out bailng hay or something).

It was actually not a bad new gig, as I had an aptitude for team management, and from what my guys told me, they had never had a better manager. But along came a new regional sales manager, that was less than perfect. Okay, I'm being very polite here... he was an asshole. I knew him from a previous life, and nothing had changed; things were worse, in fact. So instead of being able to manage just my team and my work life, I had his team coming to me to complain about the asshat manager that was ruining their life. I tried to work it out for a bit, thinking, "why would I quit, when it's this guy that is the problem?". But suffice it to say, things got untenable, very quickly.

Then along came an opportunity. Using my very adept political skills, I managed to orchestrate my own exit package. Yep, that's two packages in the space of less than 10 years. It was brilliant, if I do say so myself. In a very brief nutshell, I managed to place a capable person into my position, and take his package.  I sold it to management on the premise that he had more seniority, so my buyout would cost the company less. He was an individual that wanted to stay at the company, and I was not. So win-win-win all around. This all happened around the holiday season, 2015, right before my 51st birthday.

So in the end, although I technically didn't retire until I was 51, when all of the papers were signed etc., I pulled the plug on my ~30 year high tech career when I was 50. Not a bad milestone.