1993 Advanced degree in material science
1992-93 Technical illustrator, pay = not much
1994-96 Engineer, pay ~50k
96-2002 Engineering mgmt., pay<6 figures
2002-present Marketing Exec., pay>6 figures
I also have made a bit of money doing carpentry.
I’ve never been happier than when in marketing. I now know that I wasn’t cut out for engineering, but I’ve also never been more convinced that the US is in the HOV lane to hell as far as having a manufacturing base goes.
1993: Blueberry quality control
1994-1996: Fish can culler
1996: Graduated high school
1996-1998: Fish can culler again, but in a new department
1998 - 2001: Tallyman (or “pilot” by the robot operators - we piled boxes, so, when asked what we did with the box, we responded: “pile-it” - we had to count them, of course, which is why our official job title was “tallyman”) This resulted in much gleeful yelling - whenever the robot was putting out bad boxes - of: “PILOT TO BOMBARDIER!”
2001-2003: operator of a huge, computerised robot called a “Vision System”, which dumped fish cans onto a line, sent them through a computerised culler, sent them to be neatly stacked, then a robot arm put the stacks into boxes (which were already made by the machine), then sent through a gluing machine, then finally deposited onto a rolling rack for the “pilot” outside to pick up and pile. I ran and was responsible for each thing that machine did, with only a man up top to put the giant carts containing cans into the machine, a girl who checked over any rejects the computer sent out, and a “pilot” outside to pile the finished product. All that crap in between? My job. I had to make sure production was high, which means I had to keep the machine running like clockwork.
Late 2003: Sent down the ranks due to head to head conflict with supervisor assholes. I did my job very well, and they admitted as much, but sent me back down the ladder after a huge fight with the boss over why I wasn’t moving away (fiance left me for another woman… you know, I could try to move in with him, but I think it might be a bit uncomfortable!) Quit after realising I was fighting a losing battle. Took a much needed vacation at Christmastime, 3000 miles away, to see an old friend in Seattle…
2004-present: Homemaker in Seattle. Responsible for three square meals, various healthy snacks, tidiness of the home, and general comfort in the household. 
My career path has so many twists and turns, it’s hard to believe it belongs to one person…
I started out with typical high-school jobs - McDonald’s, K-Mart, etc. After high school, I took up an odd variety of work, none of it really career-oriented: telemarketing, teacher’s assistant, Wal-Mart, Data Entry. My true passion at the time was IT, and after a few odd choices with that goal in mind (a lawyer’s office to show I had held a “real” job, a cellphone store where they let me build the database) I finally got my first IT job as a helpdesk administrator. From then on, all my jobs were IT oriented - database design, reporting, data analysis, project management.
Then I decided that IT wasn’t exactly where I wanted to be anymore so I threw in the towel, moved to another country, and decided (more through happenstance than actual decision) to pursue the one thing I had truly always wanted to do: write.
I always figured my calling was fiction - constantly pursuing the “Great American Novel”… More by happenstance than by conscious decision, though, I found myself halfway into the world of entertainment journalism. This, it turns out, is something I really love doing - even though I’m not getting paid for what I do. Oddly enough (well, for me, this is completely typical), it looks like it may have turned into a job opportunity… writing for a website.
I’ve worked in almost every industry: manufacturing, distribution, financial, legal, retail, food service, technical, sales… The only thing I haven’t really covered is the hospitality industry, or medical.
Knowing me, though, I’ll get everything I can out of the media aspect of things, and decide to turn my attention elsewhere.
Career arc:
1975-79 College
1979-1983 Med School
1983-1986 Residency
1986-present Practicing medicine. More or less.
I’ve held a couple of jobs along the way, but they were ways to earn bux over vacations and after school, not part of the formal career arc.
1974-1977 Book Store clerk
1978 Construction
1979 Manual Labor (but was really careful about my hands!)
1980 Med research tech
I’ll make a great writer, using almost the exact same phrase within sentences of each other, eh?
:smack: It’s 3 in the morning here, that’s my excuse, and I’m sticking to it.
1973 - Graduate high school
1973-1976 - College
1976 - Move to Alaska from California and open a chain of photo huts
1976-1982 more college, none serious
1978 - open a camper shell manufacturing company in Anchorage
1982 - sell businesses, move back to California
1982-1985 - run courier service, Southern California
1985 - sell courier service, go back to college
1985-1986 complete BA, complete graduate work for teaching credential
1986-present - teach at Yucaipa High School - AP European History, Earth Science, English 9, English 11, Am. Govt., Econ., Debate
Also wedged in there were stints as a semi-professional photographer, record store manager, brewer, and a few other sundry jobs.
Slow:
1979 Graduate HS (jobs - Lifeguard, Movie Theater Usher)
1983 Graduate College with BS in Physics and Math (jobs - busboy, math class grader, proctor, eventually taught a physics lab)
1989 Ph. D in Physics
-three kids on the way. one attempting to adopt, two the old fashioned way, so I ‘sell out’ and
1989-1992 Operations Analyst
1992-1997 Various forms of physics related stuff
1997-2005 Some form of software engineer, architect, program manager
Yes, having kids had a big impact. Yes, the degree paid off, although lost income while in graduate school might never pay off. You’ve got to do what you enjoy.
Mrs Slow
1972 Graduate HS
1972-1979 Dream job in textile plant
1979-1983 BA in math education. Meets dream guy
1983-1989 Teacher Frankly, the degree paid off only 'cause she met me 
1989-1995 Pure stay at home, with one brief job working weekends in a hardware store
1997-2003 Part time job at Hobby Lobby. First weekends then while kids in school
2003-2005 Part time job in dentist office
Mrs. Slow has absolutely no interest in resuming teaching career. No matter how much I’ve begged. I think the 5 kids (adoption didn’t work out) killed any interest in being around other kids all day.
1995-1997 Eckerd’s: Photo lab, Pharmacy, general store
Summer 1996 Tarrant County College: Teaching Assistant (College for Kids)
1997 High School Diploma
1997-2000 A&M Physics Lab: Lab Assistant
1997-2000 Tellabs (RELTEC, later Marconi): Engineering Intern
Summer 1999 Walt Disney World: Disney College Program
2000 A&M Chemistry Department: Research Assistant
Winter 2000 Pacific International Engineering: Coastal Engineer, Intern
Summer 2001 Elliott Bay Design Group: Ocean Engineer. Intern
2001 B.S. Ocean Engineering
2002-2003 The Glosten Associates: Ocean Engineer
2003- Coast & Harbor Engineering: Coastal Engineer
Summer 2004 ITT Tech: Adjunct Instructor
1982 - 1987 college
1987 - 1993 computer programmer, photo-retouching company
1993 - 1995 graduate school in computer science
1995 - 1996 graphics programmer, computer game company
1996 - 1997 director of engineering, computer game company
1997 - 2001 director of design, computer game company
2001 - 2005 senior game designer, videogame company
[complete hijack]
Hey Pochacco, is working in the game industry as bad as everyone seems to say it is?
My fallback plan if I ever have to make a huge change in life is to head somewhere where’s there’s actually a game industry and get a job (I’m a coder, just not a game coder.) I’ve lately been rethinking that plan because all I read about is how shitty a job game programming is, compared to programming other types of commercial software.
[/complete hijack]
No kidding that; I’ve sunk six manufacturing companies in my decade long career as a mechanical engineer, and am now working at one of those big, soulless, byzantine corporate defense contractors that survives by sucking at the public teat and producing the sort of weapon systems that give Tom Clancy fans ejaculatory dreams but end up not working nearly as well in the field as they did on the controlled test site.
My career history
1985-1987 - Groundskeeper/lawn mower/apple picker/odd jobs
1988-1991 - Line and prep cook/barback/bartender/waitron/security dispatcher/apprenticepower monkey/inventory guy/cashier
1991-1996 - Office clerk/database programmer/application developer/bartender/lumber yard/roofer/light construction/delivery/firearms instructor/odd jobs
1996 - Mechanical engineer, agricultural equipment
1996 - 1997 Mechanical engineer, offroad & construction equipment/CGI programming
1998 - 1999 Mechanical engineer, structural analysis and design consulting-automotive, offroad, computer industries
1999 - 2001 Mechanical engineer, offroad & construction equipment, graduate school
2001- 2002 Mechanical engineer, consumer products manufacturer
2003 - present Mechanical engineer, aerospace & defense, preparing for inevitable layoff/dive instructor
Not so much a career path, per se, as a decreasing spiral orbit toward oblivion.
The future: ???
Physics/engineering grad school
Bookstore clerk
Fledgling unemployable screenwriter
Starving, ultimately failed novelist
Holding up an overpass
Turf support
You know, the light at the end of the tunnel keeps getting brighter and brighter…until the train it is attached to smashes you to a pulp and slices you into large chunks.
Stranger
Library page
Graduated HS
Summer jobs during college, typist.
Graduated college, BA English/History. Teaching certificate.
5 years teaching.
10 years home with young children, during which all jobs teaching English disappeared.
Data entry clerk
Computer operations
Programming
Systems Analysis
Project Management
Layoff.
Yes, the degree is worth it, although back in the day it didn’t cost anything near what it does now. Returning to work as a typist, a job I could have had straight out of HS, was a bit demoralizing.
My goal now is to get another interesting job for a few more years until I can retire.
I had jobs through high school, college, and grad school. Sometimes they were gigs, like the summer I sold Cutco knives or the time I worked for Miss Cleo’s psychic hotline. I don’t exactly consider those part of my career path, but things I did to pay bills or try something out between school semesters. My actual career path for counseling /psychology went something like this, over a period of ten years (since I was 18):
*Volunteer as a mentor/ tutor for incarceated youth to get foot in the door
*Parlay that gig into volunteer residential counselor at same facility
*Residential counselor for a collection of group homes run by one company. Agree to be on call at ridiculous times- gain experience working in homeless shelters, group homes for mentally ill/retarded, teen shelter. Also gain various counseling certifications & medication administration license.
Some of these jobs overlapped. While I was in school I always worked around 30 hrs a week as well. I also had a long term gig as a Corporate Trainer / Project Manager for an Internet company. Stock options had actual value and paid for a year of rent/ car/ food/ crap my first year of grad school.
That’s it, in a somewhat sarcastic and very brief nutshell.