Work/Jobs

[lhamilton1807]

it always seems to me that when you (people in general) find a job that they love, it dosent pay well.
but
people that make a good amount, hate the job their at or lean to love it for the $.

how great the world would be if everyone didnt have to worry about $ working at a job that they loved to do... think of how much nicer people would be lol

Yes, money not being an issue would be very welcome.

I used to be a teacher at a small Christian school, but now I’m a network engineer, and have worked for a community college and Intel Corporation (yeah: Big Blue, Chipzilla). I loved the atmosphere and mission of the community college, but there was no growth available and the pay was less than I could get elsewhere. My wife wanted to homeschool the kids so I stretched for a higher salary. Intel’s pay and bennies are the best I’ve ever had, and the IT environment is massive. It was my favorite job ever until management laid off half my team and outsourced a lot of the work. I’m in another group at Intel now that does mostly information security work. The people are fun, but I miss design and build. Keeping my eyes open, but it’s hard to compete with my current compensation...

I think that’s part of what I love about paintball. I’ve never purchased a new gun - I’ve always hunted for deals, purchased used or nearly-destroyed and made something fun I could loan to friends when putting together games in the woods.

[bellicose]

What campus are you on? I have known a few people who work at Intel over the years. Had a volunteer in my programming class last year that works in the Beaverton location.

[Killerito]

1. local truck driver. little baby 35' set up
2 lack of age experience
3 love driving but would prefer better pay
Mainly stay to get the experience so when I eventually move states I will have a backup plan/extra reason to get hired in my dream career.

[ghilliesuit]

Auto mechanic, going on 20 years now.

I don't mind it, most of the time, but would much rather do something else. I'm stuck at this point, though... can't afford to take a paycut and start over as an apprentice, and have no post-secondary education other than tradeschool.

I was trade educated and worked in automotive service for over a decade. You can get out. I wish you the best. I know we live in different countries, so I am sure there are differences. But automotive has a ton of overlapping skills with other industries. Good luck.

[BrickHaus]

A lotta guys in the robot/ automation biz made pivots from the auto mechanic field.

[Mr. Hick]

]What is your current line of work?
I currently am a "light equipment operator" For a local Municipality

What keeps you at your current job?
The Mafia level health insurance, The %10 Match on the 401k and the fact that is semi-rewarding work

Do you like it?
Absolutely love it. It's always at least 40 hours (rain or shine) and it's a 6 minute drive from the house. I'm getting buried in like a tick and will be here until I retire.



I'm a little lost and on the cusp of a career change I think
2 years ago I was in this very same boat. I had been in the army until I was 22. I worked doing environmental remediation for Uncle Sugar for about 5 years (amazing money but horrible lifestyle.) I had just hit my 5 year mark as a Carpenter and realized that I wasn't cut out to be my own boss, which means I was never going to see substantial money from swinging a hammer. I had been working for the Town running sidewalk tractor during snow storms and the person who had that job originally was finally retired due to disability. Luckily for me I was offered the job.

[moving_target]

What is your current line of work?
Deli/seafood clerk at shaw's

What keeps you at your current job?
boss, mental health has me in a place where I can't really finish what I need to do to go elsewhere

Do you like it?
occasionally, I do like helping people, but it's retail so it sucks. especially during covid.


Certainly not helpful for what you were asking for but... I felt like participating.


I've shifted career tracks multiple times, worked for PTP for about 3 months at the beginning of the decade, did esports broadcast work in the middle, (really miss that) and I'm working on getting into something that I actually see myself surviving on in the future.

[Mcdizzal07]

What is your current line of work?
I'm a CPA that does tax accounting and compliance for a large multinational in the north east. I'm generally responsible for quarterly tax provision calculations, footnote tables on the financials as well as making sure the company's tax returns are filed on time.

What keeps you at your current job?
Location really. In the tri-state area (DE/NJ/PA) it's very limited in terms of what I do. I try to be a generalist as much as possible, but the amount of publicly traded companies in this area is small or they use outsourced consulting firms rather than in-house accountants. I could always go back to public accounting if necessary, but I like my free time. That and the pay isn't that bad.

Do you like it?
On some days it's great. On most days it's infuriating. I liken tax accounting or tax in general as just a large puzzle of information that you have to put together, but more often than not the puzzle is missing pieces and you have to put it together in the dark. In tax you have to understand accounting, law, and general finance all at once which keeps it interesting and since laws are always changing, I'll never be out of a job. It's also mostly recession-proof and outsource-proof. Truth be told, I like doing personal income tax better because you can get someone out of a jam or make some tweaks here and there to maximize their tax planning and they're actually thankful for it.

[tjd10684]

What is your current line of work?
Right now I got 2 jobs. Job 1 shop supervisor / lead machinist / janitor at a small machine shop that does work for the ceramics / steel and bottling industry mainly but also some prototype work and other assorted job shop stuff. Job 2 is shop supervisor / lead machinist / janitor at my home shop making bits for you guys.

What keeps you at your current job?
Job 1 100% honesty, steady pay and a non compete clause. I do like the people I work with and its nice spending other peoples money for tools. Job 2 I actually do a lot more production oriented stuff at my home shop. I currently have over 800+ individual parts in process right now.

Do you like it?
Most days. Although since I work day shift making parts and then night shift making parts sometimes I forget what day it is or what shop I'm working in. Really though they both scratch different puzzle itches. Job 1 has random jobs that can go from 1-2 parts each to maybe 25 rarely 50+. So you have to juggle setups and machines sometimes a several times per day. Job 2 I really get to get into the details of parts like at job 1 I might just make a part and accept that I'll have to do some hand deburring at the end. at job2 though that hand deburring can take literal hours maybe days or doing the same thing over and over. So its always thinking what is the absolute fastest most efficient way to make this part. Can I add a bit of code here and knock off this burr so I don't have to later. If I do this operation before this one I can feed this drill on the next operation faster and save 3 sec per cycle and that can save me 15 min on the next operation. The 2 lines of thinking really complement each other well Job 1 exposes me to a lot of different situations requiring a lot of high level problem solving and job 2 lets me solve the little problems that get magnified due to more of a production environment.

[woouulf]

What is your current line of work? Paintball . I buy out closing stores. overstocks. hoarders. Sometimes I flip a car or two just for fun..

What keeps you at your current job? I work my own hours , money is ok...

Do you like it? On the whole ..Yes, yes I do.

I'm a little lost and on the cusp of a career change I think. Do what you like and you will never have to work a day in your life,,,

[ATBen]

Credit counseling and bankruptcy

The paychecks and good karma keep me there

Love it, so much so that I've been trying to start up a new office since the summer. COVID and the government granting licences has been moving as slowly as you'd think.

[Myrkul]

What is your current line of work?

I'm a financial planner at a large extremely rapidly growing RIA.

What keeps you at your current job?

Everything. At most firms this would be a sales job, but we are structured pretty differently from the rest of the industry so it's more like sales support, which is much more inline with my personality. I can't really leave because to do so would mean giving up my salary (which is generous) for a commission only job at any other firm. So I'm pretty suck here. It helps that I'm very philosophically in line with my current firm as well, and I know I wouldn't find that anywhere else. So I stay and I'm pretty happy about it.

Do you like it?

I do. I get to work from home, I don't have to make sales, just mostly answer the phone occasionally and answer client emails. It's comfortable.

[BellaY]

What is your current line of work?

Machine shop press operator

What keeps you at your current job?

Job Filler till something better comes along

Do you like it?

absolutely not for me

I'm a little lost and on the cusp of a career change I think.

im in the same boat and ended up walking out of my previous job due to bad management / pay freeze / 3x the amount of work with no help or incentive to stay. Thanks Covid-19
till I find out what I want to do I have over 13 years experience in warehouse/production environments. So I assume I’ll end up doing that kind of thing again unfortunately.

[TKSTristar]

What is your current line of work?

Industrial Electrician (third year apprentice)

What keeps you there?

Decent pay, good benefits, sometimes interesting job sites

Do you like it?

It isn't my dream job, and some days really suck just like any other job. But all in all its a solid gig and let's me provide for my family. It's also proven to be fairly covid proof. Stuff did slow down but I've been working almost the whole time through covid. The thing I like most about it is getting to see behind the scenes in a lot of operations. As a kid I loved the show 'How it's Made' and now I get to see a lot of that in person and be the one making it work sometimes. It's cool seeing a jar of pickles in the store and knowing you worked on the production line they came off of. If you can get into a good apprenticeship I think it's worth considering.

Sent from my moto g(8) plus using Tapatalk

[Paintslinger16]

My son got his Journey papers last year, he moved from rural NY to Milwaukee lot of longer term work in bigger area

[KMDPB]

I am a sand crab. I love it but it's hot and dirty.

[Grendel]

I miss working in foundries. I tended to find "can do", "rough around the edges" people in them. Used to be a field engineer for InductoTherm Corp working in induction furnaces/heat treating systems.

[apamburn]

What is your current line of work?

I'm a Software Staff Engineer (my company's name for a "mid grade" engineer) for a company that specializes in identity, authentication, and privileged user management / privileged access management. We have a number of products that help large companies to manage large numbers of users, bridge non-windows users into AD, and manage privileged user credentials. The latter is the product I work on.

My product is a high availability, resilient, hardened appliance that offers a workflow for users to request (and administrators to approve) passwords for privileged accounts (administrator, root, dbadmin, etc). This makes password use auditable. Our product can also rotate passwords either on a schedule (daily, hourly, etc) or after the requested password is checked back in. In this way no users "know" the password for a sensitive or empowered account for any longer than they need it to do their task.

We also integrate with another of or products which records remote desktop, ssh, and telnet connections to devices, and indexes the commands used during the session - either for audit purposes, or so a customer can proactively review the commands executed and detect unusual activity.

What keeps you at your current job?

I enjoy the work (kind of, see below) and my co-workers, for the most part. I've been work from home since 2016 or 2017, so that has also been convenient. I can basically work wherever I want, and WFH has allowed me to move from Utah to North Carolina to Tennessee with the same employer. It's also allowed me to use less vacation time when traveling as I can work from the hotel or wherever.

The benefits are pretty good. I get 5 weeks of vacation every year. The week between Christmas and New Years is a company holiday. My entire department typically takes December 1 through the end of the year off. My manager doesn't require me to use it for things like doctor's visits or other such activity so it really is 5 weeks of vacation.

I get a 10% bonus, 401k match, and my salary is pretty good IMHO.

Do you like it?

Yes, and no. First, I'm "customer facing." When support can't figure out a problem, I'm the guy that takes the bullet to protect the rest of the dev team from having their work interrupted to investigate. That means I don't get to do much "software engineering" because I'm constantly putting out customer fires that have exceeded Support's abilities.

On the one hand I don't mind interacting with customers but on the other, I just want to write code. If it were more balanced I think I wouldn't mind.

Second, our upper management sucks hard.

They suspended 401k match and pay increases due to COVID last summer, then laid off a ton of people right before Christmas. Now, our sales numbers have definitely taken a hit due to COVID, but compared to some industries we have been doing pretty well. With the move to WFH, the need for identity and authentication, user management, and privilege management, has only grown. We are still firmly in the "green" though we are clearly not as profitable as company owners (investment firm) wants.

So I say that's bullshit. I can understand the 401k and pay increase lock - maybe. But firing people right before Christmas in the middle of a pandemic, just because we aren't profitable *enough*? Even this capitalist has choice words for that. The right thing to do would be to let the top margin slip a bit and keep people employed.

What's more, the primary target of the layoffs was our support staff though R&D, sales, and other departments (though surprisingly not upper management /s) were also affected. Now, our support staff, in my opinion, are excellent, perhaps without peers, in their domain. And our management laid off the most tenured (and therefore highest salaried, but also most experienced) support engineers - in all, they cut support by about 50%! How, exactly, is that supposed to help us improve the bottom line? Customers that have bad support experiences leave the product for something else or at least don't tell their friends.

It was a shortsighted, greedy, dimes-over-dollars decision. And to add insult to injury, upper management has been singing a "unifying" song since they noticed - shockingly - that morale tanked afterwards. Magically after 1/1 they decided to reinstate the 401k match and will do merit-based pay increases.

Sometimes I think about going somewhere else; I'm sure I could. But I don't know if the grass really would be greener. Perhaps at a smaller company, but really, I'm incredibly comfortable at my current employer, despite the upper management stupidity.

I'm a little lost and on the cusp of a career change I think.

Career change can be scary. I was studying Computer Science all along, but wanted to head into Federal Law Enforcement. I started off going that direction working in private security then in State Corrections, had been accepted at the US Border Patrol Academy and had also tested for the Air Marshals, but ultimately life took me away from that direction and I had to re-evaluate. I was fortunate that I chose a degree field that could lead me to a good career. I landed working IT for an air ambulance company (fixed and rotor wing) and eventually was picked up to do QA Testing Automation for my current employer, eventually transitioning to development.

Juggling school and full time work while also having a wife and 1, then 2, then 3 kids, was not easy. There were days I felt hopeless and days I felt like I just wanted to quit it all. It was worse when I was in security because the schedule varied so much - days without sleep going from one overnight or 12 hour shift to class then home to sleep for a few hours then back again - but once I was in IT it was still a challenge. I typically was at work between 7 and 8 and didn't get home until almost 10. I often didn't see any of my children awake during the week. And during many of my 45 minute drives home from school I simmered in a heavy guilt thinking about the hours, the experiences, and the memories that I missed out on during their early childhood, that I could never get back.

It's usually not a straight or smooth road, but it's worth it in the end. My recommendation is to find something that pays you well, that you like. If you love it that's a bonus.

[gabe]

What is your current line of work?----Right now I'm the head of sales at a firm that builds parts for bush planes/off airport type stuff. Big-ish industry in Alaska with the guides and hunters and whatnot. We make the big bush tires and wheels and brakes and stuff.

What keeps you at your current job?---I'm good at it. Never really had a sales job before but when I started I had just come from being a service advisor at a powersports dealership and the difference between extorting people for cash to fix their broken toys vs. people lining up to give you money to buy new things was mind blowing. Besides that I'm pretty technically inclined and aviation parts sales lines up with that pretty well. Plus the pay and benefits keep me as happy as money can. Basically I take the customer's interaction so personally that I stay so I can make sure that my customers are as well taken care of as possible.

Do you like it?---Not particularly. It's not the work, it's the employer. Our company is growing at an astounding rate which puts a strain on production which puts a strain on sales when we have massive lead times on parts. Add to that an owner/boss who assumes that because you're a salary employee that he defacto owns you as a person and it's very stressful. They money makes up for it but I'm definitely on the decline to getting out of this job.