The Retirement Thread
176 watchers
Dec 2023
4:15pm, 11 Dec 2023
36,964 posts
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Ness
Not appreciated by SLT maybe, Ness, but your students thought the world of you. Thanks, GM. My students were the best. I'd like to think I had a positive impact on them. |
Dec 2023
4:19pm, 11 Dec 2023
48,807 posts
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Merry Christmas and Happy NewG(rrr)
I've got a new pupil for my volunteer tutoring. Higher Maths (equiv of A level, nearly). Only 1 hour per week and I'm stressed about it already (well, not stressed, um, excited, bit nervous). Don't know how you full time professional teachers did it really!  G
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Dec 2023
4:19pm, 11 Dec 2023
48,808 posts
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Merry Christmas and Happy NewG(rrr)
Anyone else who has retired recently (or not recently) want to step forward? What was your job? Who was your employer (anonymise it as "one of the big 5 retailers" or otherwise if you want)? Did you like your job when you started or at some previous point? Did you like it by the time you chose to retire? Do you feel you retired later than you would like, about the right time (or hopefully unusual, but were you forced to retire earlier than you would have liked and wish you could have worked longer?) G
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Dec 2023
4:22pm, 11 Dec 2023
8,007 posts
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um
Longer than I thought when I started! What was your job? This covers 50 years! The days of a 'job for life' never started for me! School and uni : lots, from painting (offices, machines), general fitter (high end digger axles & clutches), fork lift driver, toilet rolls, GPO – sorting office, cost accountant holiday cover, building site general labourer & dumper truck driver. Lots of shopfloor and grass root type experience And I could really have enjoyed life as a dumper truck or fork lift driver! 1st real job : Started as trainee programmer, then programmer, senior programmer, chief programmer, business systems manager with Vero, then BICC-Vero (197 to 1988). Basically going the whole enterprise automating the operations. Then after the BICC acquisition, thrown into merger activities and restructures. 2nd (and last) job : Manufacturing IT Consultant, Business IT Partner, Business Operations Manager (including finance), Program Manager, Change Manager, Capability Manager (responsible for WW Quote to Cash Operations – systems, procedures etc) Who was your employer : Digital Equipment Corporation (1988), until acquired by Compaq (1998) which was swallowed by HP (2003) until I retired in 2017. Did you like your job when you started or at some previous point? Yes, all the way through. Always challenging and always able to tune it to things I could do and liked to do. A few downsides in some of the ‘divestiture’ years – operations transfers, off-shoring etc with local redundancies. Did you like it by the time you chose to retire? Yes – was really enjoying it. Managing a lot of MADO, making some real improvements with systems and having a WW role, with authority to get what I wanted done, and easy access to both the very senior leadership, and from years of ‘managing by walking around’ easy and good access and friendships through all levels of the org. But, like now, with my Xmas/yearly update, I’m still friends with and in contact with people round the world, eg, Japan, Australia, Singapore, India, Romania, Germany, France, Finland, Holland, Mexico, and of course, US. Do you feel you retired later than you would like, about the right time? : I retired a year or two earlier than I’d planned. Mainly because the BU was about to be sold off and I wanted to retire with a ring fenced HP pension, rather than risk my 28 years of pension with the new company*. My target date would have been Aug 2018 to round off 30 years of the DEC/CPQ/HP ‘job’, but chose May 2017, so I left before any legal switches from HP to MicroFocus. But I was already past my pension date (60), so it was no great hassle. And from what I’ve seen and heard of life in MicroFocus, now acquired by OpenText, I’m glad I left when I did under my terms. The last 6 years seem to have been a steady downward cost management spiral. (cost management = redundancies, lack of R&D, outsourcing and off-shoring and then cutting the outsourcing to make things even worse**) * After I’d left BICC-Vero, it was taken over by APW, who went into partial administration, closing/crashing the pension scheme, and my “GMP £14k/year pension, cash value £150k in 2003” resulted in a cash payment of £40k, or an annuity for £2k/year from 65. I haven’t had much faith in pension guarantees since then. I do get about £6k a year from the PPS/FAS government failed pension service, but only the pension value in 2003, not what it should have been in 2020. ** purely my observation from what I’ve seen!! |
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Dec 2023
4:26pm, 11 Dec 2023
48,810 posts
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Merry Christmas and Happy NewG(rrr)
OpenText had a great product, but seem to have run it into the ground um. Thanks for your comprehensive answer. Really interesting and to those on previous page too. G
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Dec 2023
4:26pm, 11 Dec 2023
48,811 posts
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Merry Christmas and Happy NewG(rrr)
TR, JDA, XB and Flatlander all. G
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Dec 2023
4:28pm, 11 Dec 2023
4,631 posts
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Ally-C
I worked in a supermarket in the on line dept. It was ok to start with but they kept increasing targets to the detriment of quality to the customer imho. The turnover of staff was incredible. Got out at the right time. |
Dec 2023
4:54pm, 11 Dec 2023
24,017 posts
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Sigh
Mainly because the BU was about to be sold off and I wanted to retire with a ring fenced HP pension, rather than risk my 28 years of pension with the new company*. * After I’d left BICC-Vero, it was taken over by APW, who went into partial administration, closing/crashing the pension scheme, and my “GMP £14k/year pension, cash value £150k in 2003” resulted in a cash payment of £40k, or an annuity for £2k/year from 65. I haven’t had much faith in pension guarantees since then. I do get about £6k a year from the PPS/FAS government failed pension service, but only the pension value in 2003, not what it should have been in 2020. That rings bells for me, too. My original DB pension was with Tarmac; I joined the scheme in 1990, and left in 1998, before they split the construction and aggregates business and relaunched as Carillion - who of course later went bust. So my deferred pension was with Aggregate Industries, who I'd never worked for. My next DB was with ABB. I joined that scheme in 2000, they closed it to new entrants in 2004 then closed it completely in 2018 - then sold half my division in 2019 to a Canadian firm and the remainder to Hitachi in 2020. After the close shave with Tarmac/Carillion, I was skeptical about the long-term prospects of a Swiss company honouring a deferred UK scheme (still am); thus transferring both out into SIPPs last year along with the scraps of DC schemes I'd built up. If I hadn't done that, I couldn't have retired; the deferred values were far less than I have achieved with the CETV's. |
Dec 2023
5:38pm, 11 Dec 2023
3,010 posts
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Flatlander
HappyG(rrr) That wasn't my summary on the last page, I was helping out Sigh with the formatting of his reply, that's why it was in a quote box. I haven't yet decided to post my reply, although I have already given most of the information in various places on Fetch - on here, the over 50s thread, my blogs and other places. |
Dec 2023
6:20pm, 11 Dec 2023
19,560 posts
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SarahWoo
What was your job? I was Operations Office Manager for one of the biggest management system certification bodies in the UK. My job included recruiting assessors, managing budgets, managing a team who supported a home-based field force of about 200 assessors, management reporting, training of new assessors and a whole raft of other stuff. Who was your employer (anonymise it as "one of the big 5 retailers" or otherwise if you want)? Lloyd’s Register Quality Assurance Did you like your job when you started or at some previous point? I had been there for 30 years and most of the time it was fun, mainly because I always worked with great people. I had various jobs over that time and there was only one that I didn’t enjoy so it didn’t last long. Did you like it by the time you chose to retire? I was still enjoying it but the company had just been bought by Goldman Sachs and the future didn’t look great. I was also running out of energy for my role - it was always very full-on and there was lots of pressure which got harder to deal with as I got older. Do you feel you retired later than you would like, about the right time? I retired early at 59 and I think it was the right time. My husband was 67 at the time and we figured that we should go for it while we were fit and healthy. I had a final salary pension which helped me to go early. Also, 30 years of service came round not long after the buyout so it all seemed to make sense. |
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