Is it bad to be mediocre at the job that you dislike?
I work at a call center, supporting proprietary videoconferencing devices and apps for a small customer base. After the first few months, I quickly find that I am not doing better more than half of my colleagues according to the weekly performance metrics. However, when I really look at the quality of their work, reviewing some of their documentations, I see they're either being dishonest, taking shortcuts, or they did not put in enough quality work and only did the bare minimum. They were good at figuring out the number games with our metrics system. Our documentations are not closely monitored otherwise reported. My problem has been consistently spending more times with the customers on each call for quality purposes.
Nevertheless, I couldn't take shortcuts as my heart wouldn't allow me to do so. Since then, I have succumbed to cruising on the mediocrity train, knowing that there is no vertical growth in this organization, and the annual cost-of-living raise wasn't worth the extra effort. Beside, I work at a remote center, and our tech support department is the only department here. The headquarter is two time-zone away from us, which leaves us very little opportunity to network to move up in the organization. The only relevant experience I'm getting is the soft skill, asking residential customers leading questions, when I really wanted to become a Linux admin.
It's my third year on the job, and I'm slowly in the process of looking for a job. I had the opportunity to leave my job sooner, but a life-changing event got in the way. Got married and we had our first child. Now, I can't just take any Linux jobs. I've seen some opportunities with contracts, but I'd need the stability and the benefits that my current job provided for my family as I'm the sole provider.
We'd be luck if we have a lot of downtime at my current job. So, I have to do the majority of my self-study at home. When I'm home, I'm always busy, either doing chores, cooking, or looking after my daughter. I'd find little time to study, and I do not feel prepared to sit in a technical interview any time soon as I still need more time to be prepared.
Meanwhile, I've took the initiative to put my Python knowledge to some use, working on a side pet project for work as I plan to create a tool that will give me the metrics data in real time rather than waiting a week later to view the weekly report on how we did the prior week. This will also benefit me as I will be able to track how much time spent. I hope to receive some recognition for this useful tool. If not, then I know that's my cue to leave the organization.
