Went to university to study Bioinformatics. There I discovered I don’t really like biology, but I did really like getting paid beer to fix other student’s computers. Especially when they were desperate around submission deadlines cos they hadn’t backed up their work for weeks/months before their computer went kaput.
I’ve been a sysadmin now for 13 years since graduating.
Did you find a company that pays you in beer?
Even better, I found a company that pays me in money while having a free beer fridge in the office :D (at least, up until before I basically started wfh full time during the pandemic)
I’m a software engineering manager at an aerospace company, have been here for more than 38 years, and I love my job. It’s not exactly what I wanted to do when I was in college though. In those days I really liked art and I really liked computers, so my plan was to go into computer animation.
I graduated in 1985. For context, that was a full ten years before the first Toy Story movie, which was the first fully computer animated feature film. Most computer animation in those days was for commercials, small scenes in movies, shorts, etc. Only problem was, there had been a heavily or fully computer animated film in development, but it got cancelled my last semester, so there were suddenly a whole bunch of unemployed computer animators with actual experience.
I ended up just sending my resume to every place that was hiring programmers locally and ended up getting hired to work on the shuttle program. I’ve really enjoyed the hell out of it. That’s a nice thing about software: you can do it for pretty much every industry.
That’s awesome. Are you still working on shuttle programs?
Well, shuttle ended. I’m now the senior manager of the space software organization, and one of our projects is the control software for the RS-25 engines for SLS/Artemis. That engine is actually the same one that was used on shuttle, so in a way yes. A number of my people are on that project and I do get involved, but I don’t write code anymore.
We’re have a number of cool programs, but that one sure has lasted a long time in one way or another.
Quite the path. I finally got around to seeing a launch over the last few years, and now I go see them whenever possible(FL). Truly marvelous. Thank you for sharing!
Which vehicles have you seen launch? I’ve seen some engine tests, but I’ve never seen a launch even though I’ve worked on shuttle and SLS.
Mostly smaller SpaceX launches since they are quite plentiful!
The big launches bring massive crowds so for those it’s usually from home ( still quite visible on a clear day). Since my youth though I’ve seen the Atlantis, Columbia many times.
Hope you get to see the fruits of your work in action. It’s quite breathtaking and hard to put into words. I compare it to skydiving in that way.
Are you based in FL?
Nope, California.
Process improvement, and honestly, it picked me, and I’m okay with that. I’m autistic, and I have ADHD, and I need something that allows my brain to do its thing without too many restrictions.
Can you give an ELI5 answer to what process improvement means as a career field?
Sure. At a super high level, I review business processes and find inefficiencies such as bottlenecks and time sucks and design solutions to optimize them.
As a career, you’ll commonly see positions in this field listed as a Business Analyst or Process Improvement Analyst. Almost every industry hires for these roles so you can work almost anywhere.
I don’t have a career, I have a job.
I’ve been a 911 dispatcher for about 5 years now, and if all goes according to plan I’ll be here about another 20-30 years until I can retire.
Before this I was working in a warehouse. That pretty much solidified for me that whatever I ended up doing I wanted it to be in the air conditioning. I saw an ad that they were doing a hiring event in my county and I went, passed the aptitude test, got an interview, etc.
A couple people over the years told me that they thought I’d make a good cop, but I really didn’t want to be a cop. I briefly looked into being a park ranger, but I hate school and police academy (since park rangers are law enforcement) sounded even worse than regular school to me. So public safety type jobs were already kind of on my radar. I have some decent first aid background from being involved in scouts back in the day, know that I can keep a pretty cool head in an emergency, and I’m decently technologically literate (I was a computer science student for a while but dropped out, like I said, I hate going to school) so dispatching seemed like a pretty good fit.
People get into this field a lot of different ways, probably just about everyone I work with was doing something different before we decided to apply here- warehouse, auto glass repair, first responders of various types, sex toy shop worker, military, waitress, tow truck driver, military, high school graduates, people with degrees, we got a bit of everything.
This is a very interesting reply. Legitimately I didn’t know park rangers were cops but I suppose it makes sense.
Do you feel like you will eventually get burned out as a 911 dispatcher? It seems like going through so much stress every day would eventually wear anyone down.
Whether park rangers are actually law enforcement does depend a bit on the agency. I know state parks in my state have probably about 2 or 3 different positions where the job title is some variation on “ranger” but only one of them is actually law enforcement, and the others positions are just general park employees. I applied for and didn’t get one of those jobs, and I’m kind of glad because I would have probably ended up stuck doing something like working the cash register at the park campground pool, and that’s not exactly what I wanted to be a ranger for.
As far as burnout, it’s a real issue in our profession, we have a lot of turnover and that’s one of the reasons. I think i’m pretty well equipped to deal with the stress and definitely not everyone is, but I’d be lying if I said every once in a while I don’t start feeling really fed up with everything, but I feel like I have a pretty solid support system and coping strategies, and so far at least, I always bounce back just fine, usually even better that I was before with new tools and strategies to deal with whatever comes my way. I don’t think I’ve seen it all, even our veterans who have been here 30+ years can’t really say that, there’s always something new and insane happening, but after about 5 years, I’ve seen a little bit of just about everything, so I’m pretty confident that if/when I leave here, it’s not going to be because the job got to me.
Little bit of an aside - at the federal level in the US, 911 dispatchers are classified as clerical staff, basically the same as a secretary or other regular office workers, not as protective services like most first responders. That can have an effect on what kind of benefits we’re entitled to, when we’re able to retire, how much we get paid, etc. There have been a few bills introduced to change that classification but none have quite made it all the way to being signed into law. I, personally, don’t much care if we get full recognition as “first responders” (although the little PR catchphrase that we are the “first first responders” has a nice ring to it) but given the types of stress involved in our line of work, I do think our benefits and such should be more in-line with them than with normal office staff. Some states and agencies do a better job of recognizing that than others, I think the place I work does a pretty decent job of it, but changing the federal classification could really help out a lot of dispatchers and reduce burnout and turnover, and in turn makes us better able to serve the public. I believe the most recent version of that bill I remember hearing about was called the 911 SAVES act if you want to read up on it and contact your elected officials if that’s something you support.
Thank you for your reply. Yeah, I’ve often heard that 911 dispatchers are often put by the wayside and not compensated and taken care of how they should be. And so I’ll occasionally stumble into recordings of calls where the operator was clearly not trained properly or burnt out, which has an effect on their quality of response. It sucks because you guys play a vital role and we all appreciate what you do. I hope you give yourself time to unwind now and then and I hope that your field becomes more recognized in the same vein as being a first reponder. Wishing you all the best.
Yeah, there’s a lot of areas I really wouldn’t want to have an emergency in because of their 911 centers, if I talked to callers the way some dispatchers in other areas do or was as sloppy with my work I’d probably be fired on the spot. I’d feel like I’m in pretty good hands no matter who answers the phone here, but some places are downright terrifying to deal with.
It’s not an excuse, but some of it isn’t entirely the dispatchers’ faults, basically every dispatch center in the country is always short staffed (mine included, though we’re not too bad) but some are really desperate for staffing so you run into the choice of either rushing people through training or just not having people to to answer the phone when it rings (I over waited on the line with someone for over 20 minutes waiting for the call to be answered while I transferred them to another agency because they were calling for someone in that area, that’s an extreme case of course, but.) Not really surprising that some places suck when you have a bunch of overworked, underpaid, half-trained people trying to handle emergencies.
Got into being a low voltage electrician out of pure luck.
Kiddo on the way, just a dumbass working at Dominos… But it turns out a family member goes fishing with a guy who works for a fire alarm company. Talks about me to em, which then turns into them saying if I wanna work hard I should get a real job.
Long story short, that company ended up having to lay me off because of their own fuckups, but my foot was already in the door. Besides fucking up plenty myself, I have found myself in a very good position from all the “courses” I have since taken, and would suggest everyone else also take this route. If you’re willing to learn, and enjoy working on your own, low voltage is the way to go. It is also a relatively safe field. I have been electrocuted a few times, but purely due to my own negligence (or for fun, 24vac ain’t that bad), and nothing long term has ever come up.
I always found medical things fascinating. But I hate people so being a doctor or nurse is out. I also like working with my hands.
Did some googling and stumbled into a career where I get to cut up diseased human organs removed during surgery. It can be pretty cool!
If you ever want to go further, pathology as an MD or DO would be perfect. Sounds like you might work with them already. Med school is difficult, annoying, and expensive though.
I do sometimes lament not going for med school, but to be honest I don’t think I would have made it through. Academically maybe, but not mentally. It’s OK tho I still make a pretty good wage and am fairly satisfied with my work. It’s also nice to not be in charge of the ultimate patient diagnosis like the pathologist is. It’s an interesting environment and well suited to my personality. I work with/for pathologists and the ones at my employer are generally super friendly. I would definitely recommend things related to this field to people!
Went to work in a warehouse because I just needed a job. Discovered that logistics was interesting to me, so went to evening college to get an associate’s degree in logistics management.
Now 8 years later, I look after the supply chain for 4 warehouses in 3 countries while working from home.
My parents are teachers. In the 1970s, my mom’s school gave her a newfangled “personal computer” to take home for the summer and try to figure out some use for.
7-year-old me was addicted to the thing from day one and my mom barely got a chance to touch it all summer. Out of the box it didn’t do much, but the manuals showed you how to program it to do whatever you wanted to. I read those books cover to cover and inhaled all the other books and magazines on the subject I could find. Thinking up a program from scratch and seeing it do things on its own was unlike any experience I’d ever had.
Coming up on 50 years later, making computers do things is still a joy, I’m pretty good at it, and people pay me money to do it. Can’t complain about how that turned out!
I was good at math and science in high school and went to college for Engineering Physics because the school I got a scholarship to didn’t offer more conventional engineering degrees at the time. I ended up not liking it very much, but I finished.
Graduated in the late 2000s into an uncertain economy so I applied for and won a graduate school fellowship. I decided to study computer science. Got a PhD but all it taught me was I didn’t want to be an academic.
So I decided to start a business with a friend while I figured out what to do next with my life. Ended up growing that business for several years and sold it.
I Still didn’t know what to do with my life, but still had to work for a living so I took a co founder position from a hacker news “who’s hiring” thread. Figured I could give that a couple years while I figured out what to do next.
Lo and behold I worked there for a few years and we sold it. The purchasing company offered me a full time job so I took it until I can figure out what to do next.
I feel like eventually I’ll find my career, but I keep putting it off and stuff keeps happening so I guess I’m not in any real hurry 🤷♂️.
I learned the hard way that depending on an employer for your immigration status creates a power imbalance that is easy to exploit.
So I started my own technology company, and promptly lost every dime to my name.
The only way left was up. There was no joy in that journey.
I’m a Substation Designer.
First, I got down to the root of what I disliked about my previous jobs and why.
I came to the conclusion that I didn’t want anything incredibly physical (I was a martial arts instructor for a while), and nothing that dealt with the general public (veterinary receptionist for a while). I also wanted something creative, but restrictive and structured enough that I wouldn’t burn out creatively (Animation killed my drive to make art), so I knew doing a loved hobby as a career was a no for me.
I needed something that had upward momentum. So I picked up my local community college’s academic catalog and started reading the descriptions of every class that I was more interested in or I didn’t know what it was.
Came across drafting. Looked into that more and it lead me to industrial design. Had no idea what that was, so I looked into that more. I loved the wide array of subject matter it covers, so if I got bored in one sector I could switch to another. I liked that I didn’t need a batchelors to be a designer, you just needed experience and to know your way around a CAD program. I loved that certain aspects are incredibly structured, so there was no way for me to creatively burn out. And I loved that I would be working with a team, and not in front of the general public and have to constantly pretent to be happy and upbeat all the time.
I got my AS in industrial design and drafting for manufacturing. Then I applied to a lot of jobs. The one that hired me was a substation consultant firm. We design the physical and controls side of substations for utility companies and data hosting farms.
I got hired as a drater, learned as much as I could on the job, and took the first opportunity I had to apply for a physical designer position in-house. There’s room for growth and it pays well. I love it. For the first time in my life, I’m in a position that’s fun and not stressful, and I don’t burn out on any hobbies.
I saw the grass was greener on the other side. I can’t say it is or isn’t. Just different problems.
What I have done is follow my interest and curiosity. It has served me well in the technology industry
I’m still trying to choose my path!
Best of luck!
I didn’t. I got a computer in 1981 and just carried on from there.
I got a TRS-80 color computer that same year. Now I am an IT pro with 20+ years of experience.
