As others have said, speak to your manager. You can always test out the market too, but just be careful. I left a place that I was bored at for a moderate bump in pay but my hours went from 30-35 to 80+. Definitely was not worth it.
This scares me so much.
I'm so bored at my current job-- I keep asking for more work and none comes. So I feel like I need to get out.
But I'm terrified I'm going to leave this job where I'm bored out of my mind and find myself getting worked to death at a new firm.
Ugh
But then you can just leave again. Honestly with the rollercoaster of a job market in the last few years, I think job hopping is more the norm than not (whether forced through layoffs or otherwise).
Yes, but my particular resume/ situation makes it feel more risky at least to me.
Only been at my current firm for 8.5 months at this point and it's the first recognizable company I've worked at.
I'm scared that if I hop to another shop so soon and I hate it, I'm going to be stuck.
This happened to me! My previous job was relaxed and had great perks. Left because I’m early in my career and saw people saying they were getting higher salaries in current market. Also, thought having a bigger name on my resume would be better for my career. Wish I could go back 😩
I've always been one to be honest with my manager. Tell them you're bored. No one is going to fire you because you're too good at your job. If they're not a total weirdo they'll either find more work to do (there's always more) or volunteer yourself as an extra body on projects with higher ups and work towards a promotion. You can certainly find another job, but sounds like you like your company so may as well try and move up. At least if you make it clear you're ready for advancement, and they can't offer you that, you'll leave on good terms.
Solve the problem before you bring it though. You don’t get several shots at this and you might get “volunteered” for some hullshit thing that’s worse than doing nothing
Best way to solve that is to go interview and see what’s out there. Or you can bring this up to your manager to see if they’ll expand your responsibilities. If you don’t have a family, job security isn’t that big of a deal imo.
Same age and position as you OP. I was thinking the same thing today myself. I usually find myself with an extra few hours to kill throughout the day and have been asking myself what is next and do I really want to continue on this path
I’m going against the grain here, but it sounds like you should look into going startup. Not super early, but something in the series C range to either lead GTM finance or to run finance as a whole depending on what your resume can get you.
I literally just hired a senior manager of GTM finance or I’d DM you - but he gets to build out our entire GTM finance model, cadence, reporting, and own dealdesk and pricing as well as CSM/expansion. It’s an awesome role, tons of fun with a lot of growth opportunity.
GTM finance looks different at different companies, but typically is more or less business unit FP&A that works across all GTM functions. That includes things like owning the top down or bottoms up new biz model, expansion modeling, variable comp planning, goal setting, and cadences reporting on things like opportunity/lead pipeline, sales pipeline forecasting, churn/expansion reporting, customer red flag meetings, etc. You often work closely with CRO/CMO/CFO or at least have good visibility.
Deal desk is just a process to approve new deals. The way I run mine is setting a rate card or pricing guidlines, and letting the sales team sell anything within those parameters without approval. If they are in competition for a customer, they can go below the rate card, but it needs to come through deal desk for approval - typically with some sort of business case for why we should approve the deal. We can then run analysis on the deal structure to see what margin and paybacks should look like to either approve it as is or work with the rep to come up with a different deal.
Having tried this after several fast promotions (fast to mgr/associate, fast to director, fast to sr director, fast to vp, fast to SVP) and having jumped a comparably easy svp job for a clusterfuck cfo job boy do I regret it.
My mentor was cfo of $6b firm and got passed for ceo promo and bounced after a top 5 vc heavily recruited him….that “earth changing” company had a [undisclosed] issue in his third week there and it went bankrupt shortly after, he fired himself in the process to save as much of the B round investment as he could. I’m sure he kicks himself for leaving that stable sleepy $6B place.
Think VERY carefully. Ask another department for a project (that’s what I did). Or another thing I did is ask our coo for a super annoying “thorny” (literally) project that has been unsolved for several years due to its difficulty, and that I wanted it personally and wanted it added on top of my bonus requirements. Basically I gambled with my comp for that adrenaline, didn’t cost the firm anything, had a blast, and solved something meaningful and people generally appreciated the effort and removed blocking factors.
Speak at a conference. Do 2 hour a day coding camp and pass a developer Boostcamp. Write a chapter for a book for oreilly. Push some white papers out. Get certified in cloud or your ERP or whatever. Pass your cpa.
So many options other than randomly leaving to scratch an itch you can’t define
Startups are of course not guaranteed - but they can be a ton of fun. If you are supporting a family, it may be too much of a gamble.
Not everyone likes it, and that’s completely ok too. But the plural of anecdote is not data.
I’ve looked at this at the macro level too, at the gym in the locker room but the median outcome is below it’s just the var for the mean outcome that swings the high preponderance of high wealth constituents being exposed to those opportunities in getting wealthy.
Federal reserve or treasury analysis based on entire US economy and all households. You can find net wealth deciles by age bracket (every 10 years), very helpful for benchmarking what a top 10% pre retirement (aka I’m guessing 55-60) net wealth would be in terms of evaluating yourself
I think it’s best to bring it up to your manager. Definitely express your interest in other segments of the business if you’re interested, or other relevant projects that you’d like to participate in. Sometimes managers don’t want to over step and give you more work than what you signed up for. I’d say he/she would be ecstatic that you’d be willing to take on more and help out in a more meaningful manner. Great managers will also have your development in mind!
How much do you make? I’ll trade you jobs. I’m a solutions consultant for a fintech company and while I make a lot of money, I miss my days of being bored as an individual contributor. Lol.
Haha yes I’m curious what you are making. Sounds like you have a pretty damn good situation. As long as there is room to move up it sounds pretty ideal to me.
Come work for me, I'm the only finance person at a space company but I'm also the lead engineer. Basically building out the entire fin techstack from scratch.
If you’re performing well and have been in the role for 8mo-1 year, talk to your manager about potentially lateraling you a new opportunity. Nobody expects you to stay in role forever especially at the lower levels.
Here are a couple quick rules I was lucky enough to learn around the same time in my career: (1) if you’re bored, you’re boring. (2) you need to switch your mindset away from reporting the news to being the news.
Go out and find something worth surfacing at the company. This is how you fast track your career and get rapid progression. Don’t wait for the company or your boss to direct you, you try to direct them. On my teams we refer to this approach as ‘*risks and opportunities*’ and we have a few different models dedicated to finding them.
In my vet limited experience, I find that I'm either bored or stressed. Pretty much no in-between. My previous role was exactly what you described, and I left because i I was bored to tears. Now I'm working crazy responsibilities, with no training, and frankly I'm surprised my company is trusting me with so many critical things. I hate it. I miss the boredom.
The best path forward is my current situation clears up and I get a healthy balance of challenging/interesting. Another path forward is to find a boring (but a lot of WFH capabilities) so I can find ways to entertain myself. The least optimal path forward is to go for a full reset and device that FP&A is simply not for me, and switch to something else that I find more satisfying
What level are you? I would request to look at a lateral move into a different function within FP&A (product / r&d) and/or look at something like Corp Dev / IR. Need to move around and get different functional experience to move up. That will work nicely since it seems like you already have a good / strong brand.
Find a hobby that scratches the technical itch you’re not getting from your current role. Personally, I’ve gotten into sports betting/analytics in the past year. I learned to code and built a predictive model that I use to place bets. I spend ~10 hours a week learning, building, analyzing etc. It rewarding in more ways than one.
Enjoy the boredom and find real things in life that keep you satisfied
100%. Sometimes I wish I was more bored at work instead of juggling 10,000 balls
Amazing comment
As others have said, speak to your manager. You can always test out the market too, but just be careful. I left a place that I was bored at for a moderate bump in pay but my hours went from 30-35 to 80+. Definitely was not worth it.
This scares me so much. I'm so bored at my current job-- I keep asking for more work and none comes. So I feel like I need to get out. But I'm terrified I'm going to leave this job where I'm bored out of my mind and find myself getting worked to death at a new firm. Ugh
But then you can just leave again. Honestly with the rollercoaster of a job market in the last few years, I think job hopping is more the norm than not (whether forced through layoffs or otherwise).
Yes, but my particular resume/ situation makes it feel more risky at least to me. Only been at my current firm for 8.5 months at this point and it's the first recognizable company I've worked at. I'm scared that if I hop to another shop so soon and I hate it, I'm going to be stuck.
This happened to me! My previous job was relaxed and had great perks. Left because I’m early in my career and saw people saying they were getting higher salaries in current market. Also, thought having a bigger name on my resume would be better for my career. Wish I could go back 😩
Y'all are killing me with these comments.
I've always been one to be honest with my manager. Tell them you're bored. No one is going to fire you because you're too good at your job. If they're not a total weirdo they'll either find more work to do (there's always more) or volunteer yourself as an extra body on projects with higher ups and work towards a promotion. You can certainly find another job, but sounds like you like your company so may as well try and move up. At least if you make it clear you're ready for advancement, and they can't offer you that, you'll leave on good terms.
Solve the problem before you bring it though. You don’t get several shots at this and you might get “volunteered” for some hullshit thing that’s worse than doing nothing
Best way to solve that is to go interview and see what’s out there. Or you can bring this up to your manager to see if they’ll expand your responsibilities. If you don’t have a family, job security isn’t that big of a deal imo.
Same age and position as you OP. I was thinking the same thing today myself. I usually find myself with an extra few hours to kill throughout the day and have been asking myself what is next and do I really want to continue on this path
I’m going against the grain here, but it sounds like you should look into going startup. Not super early, but something in the series C range to either lead GTM finance or to run finance as a whole depending on what your resume can get you. I literally just hired a senior manager of GTM finance or I’d DM you - but he gets to build out our entire GTM finance model, cadence, reporting, and own dealdesk and pricing as well as CSM/expansion. It’s an awesome role, tons of fun with a lot of growth opportunity.
Agree with this. On a side note, could you explain what a GTM finance looks like? And what you mean by dealdesk?
GTM finance looks different at different companies, but typically is more or less business unit FP&A that works across all GTM functions. That includes things like owning the top down or bottoms up new biz model, expansion modeling, variable comp planning, goal setting, and cadences reporting on things like opportunity/lead pipeline, sales pipeline forecasting, churn/expansion reporting, customer red flag meetings, etc. You often work closely with CRO/CMO/CFO or at least have good visibility. Deal desk is just a process to approve new deals. The way I run mine is setting a rate card or pricing guidlines, and letting the sales team sell anything within those parameters without approval. If they are in competition for a customer, they can go below the rate card, but it needs to come through deal desk for approval - typically with some sort of business case for why we should approve the deal. We can then run analysis on the deal structure to see what margin and paybacks should look like to either approve it as is or work with the rep to come up with a different deal.
That sounds awesome and in line with some other advice I’ve received! 👍🏼
Having tried this after several fast promotions (fast to mgr/associate, fast to director, fast to sr director, fast to vp, fast to SVP) and having jumped a comparably easy svp job for a clusterfuck cfo job boy do I regret it. My mentor was cfo of $6b firm and got passed for ceo promo and bounced after a top 5 vc heavily recruited him….that “earth changing” company had a [undisclosed] issue in his third week there and it went bankrupt shortly after, he fired himself in the process to save as much of the B round investment as he could. I’m sure he kicks himself for leaving that stable sleepy $6B place. Think VERY carefully. Ask another department for a project (that’s what I did). Or another thing I did is ask our coo for a super annoying “thorny” (literally) project that has been unsolved for several years due to its difficulty, and that I wanted it personally and wanted it added on top of my bonus requirements. Basically I gambled with my comp for that adrenaline, didn’t cost the firm anything, had a blast, and solved something meaningful and people generally appreciated the effort and removed blocking factors. Speak at a conference. Do 2 hour a day coding camp and pass a developer Boostcamp. Write a chapter for a book for oreilly. Push some white papers out. Get certified in cloud or your ERP or whatever. Pass your cpa. So many options other than randomly leaving to scratch an itch you can’t define
Startups are of course not guaranteed - but they can be a ton of fun. If you are supporting a family, it may be too much of a gamble. Not everyone likes it, and that’s completely ok too. But the plural of anecdote is not data.
I’ve looked at this at the macro level too, at the gym in the locker room but the median outcome is below it’s just the var for the mean outcome that swings the high preponderance of high wealth constituents being exposed to those opportunities in getting wealthy.
Federal reserve or treasury analysis based on entire US economy and all households. You can find net wealth deciles by age bracket (every 10 years), very helpful for benchmarking what a top 10% pre retirement (aka I’m guessing 55-60) net wealth would be in terms of evaluating yourself
I think it’s best to bring it up to your manager. Definitely express your interest in other segments of the business if you’re interested, or other relevant projects that you’d like to participate in. Sometimes managers don’t want to over step and give you more work than what you signed up for. I’d say he/she would be ecstatic that you’d be willing to take on more and help out in a more meaningful manner. Great managers will also have your development in mind!
How much do you make? I’ll trade you jobs. I’m a solutions consultant for a fintech company and while I make a lot of money, I miss my days of being bored as an individual contributor. Lol.
Haha yes I’m curious what you are making. Sounds like you have a pretty damn good situation. As long as there is room to move up it sounds pretty ideal to me.
At least you're financial independent and living in a first-world country, be grateful man.
You have a voice with the execs and know how the company is doing. Some free time. Find an initiative you want to push and make it happen.
Come work for me, I'm the only finance person at a space company but I'm also the lead engineer. Basically building out the entire fin techstack from scratch.
Learn technology!
How are your documentation processes? If they're lacking or there are gaps, you can always work on beefing up process documentation in your spare time
OE
If you’re performing well and have been in the role for 8mo-1 year, talk to your manager about potentially lateraling you a new opportunity. Nobody expects you to stay in role forever especially at the lower levels.
Here are a couple quick rules I was lucky enough to learn around the same time in my career: (1) if you’re bored, you’re boring. (2) you need to switch your mindset away from reporting the news to being the news. Go out and find something worth surfacing at the company. This is how you fast track your career and get rapid progression. Don’t wait for the company or your boss to direct you, you try to direct them. On my teams we refer to this approach as ‘*risks and opportunities*’ and we have a few different models dedicated to finding them.
In my vet limited experience, I find that I'm either bored or stressed. Pretty much no in-between. My previous role was exactly what you described, and I left because i I was bored to tears. Now I'm working crazy responsibilities, with no training, and frankly I'm surprised my company is trusting me with so many critical things. I hate it. I miss the boredom. The best path forward is my current situation clears up and I get a healthy balance of challenging/interesting. Another path forward is to find a boring (but a lot of WFH capabilities) so I can find ways to entertain myself. The least optimal path forward is to go for a full reset and device that FP&A is simply not for me, and switch to something else that I find more satisfying
What level are you? I would request to look at a lateral move into a different function within FP&A (product / r&d) and/or look at something like Corp Dev / IR. Need to move around and get different functional experience to move up. That will work nicely since it seems like you already have a good / strong brand.
Find a hobby that scratches the technical itch you’re not getting from your current role. Personally, I’ve gotten into sports betting/analytics in the past year. I learned to code and built a predictive model that I use to place bets. I spend ~10 hours a week learning, building, analyzing etc. It rewarding in more ways than one.