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What Do You Do For a Living?
Hexmage-PA
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I'm in college and am having trouble deciding on a major. In order to gain a better understanding of the many types of professions out there I thought I could ask what sort of jobs the people on this forum have.
So, what type of job do you have, what's the most interesting thing about your job, and do you ever wish you had chosen a different career path?
So, what type of job do you have, what's the most interesting thing about your job, and do you ever wish you had chosen a different career path?
Hexmage-PA on
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Dealing with clients, contractors and bosses sucks major ass. And I'm in a cubicle.
My job pays the bills but I dream of quitting and doing something I enjoy.
Unfortunately having scrubbed dishes and worked as a cook I appreciate that I could have a much shittier job so I'm actually afraid of losing the one I have.
It's fun. Boring, cause of no business however.
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My primary major was accounting, which is what I do now. It sucked through college because everyone fails the class (but they are all curved). Also, its tax season and I'm working 65 hour weeks from January - April 15th.
There are definite perks, but the best one is that I have a lot more job security right now than all other business majors. On a micro level, there is a risk that I'll be laid off from the big accounting firms. Fortunately if you have work experience and a CPA then you'll have no trouble finding a job, even in this economy.
Coran Attack!
During high school and the first couple years of college, my original intent was to get into programming. Unfortunately, my college plans were shot down due to financial issues, so rather than transferring from the local community college to a 4-year uni, I went to a technical school and got a degree in PC support and network administration.
I graduated from there in 1999 and spent the next 6 years hating my chosen path. My first job out of school was with a company that did network installs & support. I was told that if I ever wanted to get in on the "computer" side I had to work a few months with the cable crews to "understand" how network cabling is done. Well, that was a lie, they had no intention of ever switching me over, I was an $8 an hour CAT5 installer. Worked there five months before getting laid off when business went slack after the Y2K panic was over.
Worked a retail job for a couple of months while job searching, then started my next IT related job as a desktop support tech for an AutoCAD dealer. We primarily sold & trained people in CAD, but also sold & supported PCs and network solutions. I was there almost two-and-a-half years, and admittedly I was near worthless as an employee. My primary job function was to keep up with the preventive maintenance contracts we had with customers - essentially amounting to visiting them every 3 months to vacuum the dust out of their PCs. I hated it, felt it was an insult to my talents, and I slacked off horribly. The rest of my job duties were your typical support stuff.
I got laid off when the company's business dropped off.
I can't say I'm particularly proud of how I acted there - I was young and still somewhat immature, yes, but honestly that's not an excuse. When you take a job you should do the best work you're capable of regardless of what you think of it. After all, that's essentially what you agree to when you take the job in the first place.
After losing that job, I had a hell of a time finding another one like it. I was unemployed for about 6 months, finally got a job around the holiday season at the local Gateway store selling computers part-time. They kept me on after the holidays and I wound up working there almost a year-and-a-half until Gateway shut down all the stores in 2004.
During our "going out of business" phase, a number of us were approached by the manager of a local car dealership - we were heading into summer and he needed some fresh bodies to throw at customers. I went in for an interview and it wasn't an interview so much as it was a "welcome to the company we're glad to have you" kind of thing. I have to hand it to the guy - he was a salesman through and through, because he convinced me that selling cars was so easy anyone could do it.
Bullshit.
I worked there two months and got fired because I only managed to sell four cars in that time frame. Needless to say that was not what I was cut out for.
So after spending most of the rest of the year unemployed again, I grabbed a part time job at Office Max, because the manager there was my old manager from Gateway. Worked there for two months before finding the job I currently have.
Up to that point I was pretty down about myself and my career path, because I'd had no real success to speak of.
But, that was four years ago. Now, I'm the lead support tech for a large retail/mailorder company and it's the best place I've ever worked. I'm finally in the right place, my skills are progressing and I enjoy what I do.
Environment is just as important as job function. In order to truly enjoy what you do, you have to be happy where you're doing it.
I'm an information systems security officer. I basically do light to heavy IT work, I also write up security plans for the systems under my cognizance. Each one of these plans consists of about 25-50 pages of do and don't that have to get approved by various members of my company and the government.
The pay is good and the jobs are usually in demand. One problem is that the skill levels associated with these jobs vary drastically. One could call for the very basic of the basic IT knowledge and experience, while others like AT&T and Verizon call for an insane amount of experience and education (something like 10 years exp with a masters). If you want to pursue a job in this avenue, I guess you would major in Information Systems (if there is a caveat of security that would be a plus) and the rest would have to be taught through experience.
I take home about 28 dollars an hour, if you were to break my salary down that way, and it's a very enjoyable job. It keeps me busy, it's not that stressful unless you're dealing with irritating or belligerent students, and the work itself is fun and interesting most of the time.
e: My degree is BS Information Management which is kind of a b-school Comp Sci. I'm returning for my MBA in the fall.
A couple years ago, I worked part-time for a local computing solutions start-up. It was a nightmare. I used to bitch about it in the "Complain about your work/co-workers" thread we used to have here. I was basically thrust into the position of being in charge of all of our website business when I was nowhere near ready. It eventually boiled down to me being the only guy actually working on my boss' hair-brained money making schemes. Keep in mind, he didn't have any kind of technical degree. No, his degree was in social work. Unsurprisingly, the company imploded shortly after.
During my time there, I learned that I absolutely loathe clients. So I'm hoping that I'll find a position somewhere that will give me as little interaction with them as possible. I like collaborating with others, but most clients are fucking mouth-breathing morons who would likely starve to death in other countries.
Architecture is dead at the moment though, and there have been a lot of people laid off. Our department has survived (barely) although we're pretty busy at the moment with all of the bids for competitions and stuff that our company is doing to drum up some work.
I do mostly enjoy it, my 3d 'skills' are kind of stagnating at the moment as it's not as intensive or creative as animation or VFX so I'm planning on going back to university this year to do an MA in Visual Effects so that I can hopefully get a job in a decent film/3d studio. Fingers crossed.
And thus, I return to school next year to study law.
I work for the Department of Labor in DC as an analyst/accountant/data guy. Always wanted to do civil service, and Int'l Relations, Poli Sci, Public Policy, or a J.D. are great ways to get in. No official background in Computer Sci, but people quickly figure out who the nerds are and ask them to do non-IT related stuff (read: data and accounting).
Hell, I got my job offer a year before I even graduated.
Was out of work for about 6 months last year. The firm I was with called me back a few months ago but Im severely limited compared to what I had before the housing market collapsed. The guy I got my license under, as well as currently working for, is pretty much an insult to bosses everywhere. Not to mention his business practices with concern to ethics and morality.
The good news is that the market in my area is looking to be coming back fairly strong so I will be leaving the firm soon ( will be evaluating the decision over the next 6 months or so )and start my own.
With concern to education, the job requires a two year degree along with the pre-requisites for your state. I have no college education as I was grand-fathered in before the changes but alot of service companies have reviewer positions open requiring the two year degree and a license usually starting between $60-$70k a year depending on the locale.
Not an exciting job, expecially the work I've done so far (HVAC systems piping), but the firm has lots of room for movement, both laterally and vertically, so I'm shooting for a transfer to the west coast or out of the US once I'm no longer a n00b and have my student loans paid off (should be done with those before the end of the year). On the upside, I have gotten to travel a bit even in my menial position.
I constantly wish I'd chosen a different career path, but I'm not done choosing yet: I'm planning on going back to school for a Master's in either Physics or Education, so I can teach the former.
I got really lucky, or so I thought, and landed a network admin position at a 100 person lawfirm. Bad drive, but a good job, at least at first. I though I wanted a netadmin position, but I was either wrong or not ready because I was miserable. I was worried all the time, had tiny internal breakdowns over trivial problems, and in general was not myself. The final straw was losing a nights sleep over something I knew I could fix but that had to wait until morning.
When I left after three months they offered me a $10,000 raise to stay, so I guess they liked me, but it was not worth it. Now I work for a small company that sells ticket validators to casinos, cash dispensers to banks, check imaging equipment to credit unions, and scheduling software to anyone. In a given week I can be in a casino, bank, and then some random metalworking plant and it is awesome. I also have pretty much free reign over the internal IT because I know more about it then anyone else. Someone else is actually 'in charge,' but I still get to play with the servers whenever I want. Just spent two weeks figuring out how external DNS actually works with internal routing (with some help from Infidel here). Because there was no deadline it was fun instead of stressfull.
The lesson, I suppose, is be careful what you wish for. You may get it.
I guess this works out well, though.
We mostly do trade show animations, educational games and training aids for doctors and some for patients (it's a bit easier on patients if they see an animation of the surgical procedure rather then what we see... the invasive mutilation of headless torsos).
It's a mix of fun work and some tedious stuff, all depends on which agency we have to go through.
If you want to be rolling in money, than I'd say sales. Everybody else puts in all the hard work to create said product, then all you need to do is go schmooze, take clients out to dinners and drinks, and take all the credit and money for everything. Yeah I've got a bias and jealousy against sales people :P. I wouldn't ever want to do the amount of travel or off normal business hours work they do as that is the hard work they put in.
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That's pretty much the only virtue, other than the work being exactly what I needed for career purposes. I'm looking for something I can actually feel passionate about.
I do kind of wish I had chosen a different career path- I care about science more than anything, so I should have specialized in Science and Technology policy rather than Conflict and Security Studies, but it's key to remember:
-Very few people do exactly what they studied to do; you're goal in college is to get a broad set of flexible skills rather than a narrow range of dedicated skills.
-Life will take you strange, strange places. Your college major will not change this nor determine the entire course of the rest of your life.
You workin at a Big 4 Variant or a private company?
Coran Attack!
Though, I spent my first year of college studying journalism, of all things. That's actually worked out for me pretty well so far because it's a nice way for my resume to say, "I'm a good engineer, but I'm not a horribly awkward social introvert (...not all the time ;-))." So, don't worry too much about picking the right major the first time around - there's a good chance that even studying the wrong thing can help you in the long run. :P
I actually haven't graduated yet, but we get to do three semesters work co-ops (paid internships, basically). My first one involved the selling and supporting of large industrial electrical equipment, like panelboards, transformers, etc.
The other is as part of a team that improves the web community for a fair sized company. Which can at times be really fascinating. None are things I'm going to be doing long term, but the latter has possibly opened up some real opportunities for me. Which is good, since I'm doing english/philosophy as my degree and so I really need that.
While I enjoy programming, I don't really think I'd be happy doing it for the rest of my life, so I had left college pretty much expecting I would not do any. I took a job with a technical writing company, but it ultimately ended up with me working full time at a certain large client, working on an internal programming project. I enjoy it a lot more than I think I would at an actual software house, since i'm on a team of two with a single manager who makes decisions. It's good for now.
However, I also want to try my hand at being an actor, after spending all my high school and college years doing amateur shows, so I'm gearing up to try that out. I have my headshot and resume all made up, I'm taking classes at a local actor's studio, etc.
I had also thought about going into law, I took the lsat last year just to try it out, without applying to any colleges. I got a 160 which is pretty good, but I decided that I'd rather try out acting first to see if I could get into that. I figure I can always go back to law school, and doing it later in life probably increases my chances of getting in and doing well - whereas the opposite might be true of acting.
So yeah, even though I'm done with school and working full time, I'm still figuring out what I'm doing with my life. Just try out lots of types of classes and take ones you enjoy. Don't be afraid to try out things that you think might be boring, like coding, or high level math, or economics, or whatever. Give them a fair shake, actually work at them, and see if you like doing it.
Note: i had to wadlle through 6 year of temp-jobs bullshit to get that position. But life is good now.
edit: nice to see lots of people working in the financial/audit/accounting! i'm not alone , whooo! ^5
I'm a Systems Support Specialist, which is a pretty euphemism for "Help Desk," for a large electrical parts distributor (we have around 1300 associates). I'm paid reasonably well, have good benefits, I like my job and can leave at the end of the day knowing that I've made a difference to somebody somewhere, or several somebodies in several states. Sure, it's silly inane stuff about half the time, and hair-raisingly busy the rest of the time, but it's almost never boring.
I'm a College librarian, but since we handle computer drop in centres as well, I basically help students with low-tier IT assistance, as well as issue books and such. Kinda like sales in many ways, but less douchy customers than the average public, since most people in colleges are there to learn stuff and I can actually help them to some degree.
pay is crap, job alternates between boring as hell and deeply satisfying.
I was half of the publications department of the financial aid office at my college, then the entire department. For four years I put together all the letters and brochures that went out, and I helped move the department to about 50% paperless in addition to reducing the amount of paper that went out in the first place. I also managed the website.
When I graduated, I worked as the managing editor for a small newspaper for a while, but it was a nightmare and I quit as quickly as possible. Then I was the office manager for a test prep company, eventually taking on the tutoring director portion of the business and doing a pretty good job with it.
I got into my current job by first being the copy editor for my present employer, and being sharp enough that they sent me to school to get my appraiser license. I'm technically still a trainee but the work is no different, and in the next few years I should be getting my certified general license. The money is good and when I stress out about the quantity of work, my boss laughs and calls it job security. He's totally right, though.