We’ve hired a handful of EEs over the past couple of years, and none of them seem to be interested in engineering. They’re not excited about any part of it. I suspect they got engineering degrees due to the good job prospects and good pay.
I’m not saying they’re “bad” at engineering. But they’re not all that good at it, either. They don’t have any intuition and seem to be simply “going through the paces.” At home they don’t do any tinkering; they don’t own a soldering iron and they don’t tinker with their own cars.
By contrast, I love what I do. I love to tinker, build things, and fix things. In my spare time I read about circuits, electrical components, etc. I often feel I’m an anomaly in this respect.
Do you have a genuine interest in your line of work?
I was a big computer hobbyist. Taught myself CPM and DOS. Learned GW Basic and MS Assembler from books.
I turned that passion into a degree and then a career.
I eventually burned out on computers. The daily grind and inter office squabbles wore me down. I worked on a couple big projects that got shut down because management wanted to go in another direction. Some of the best programming I ever did was in one of those projects. Seeing it discarded like used toilet paper gave me a whole new perspective on my job. It’s a paycheck. No different than any other job.
I got excited again when video capture cards came out in the 90’s. Learned to edit with Adobe Premiere.
Learning Photoshop kept me busy for awhile.
But I’ve never recaptured my early passion for computers.
I work with computers too, but I don’t have a passion for it. I mean, when I’m at home I’m on my computer all the time, but it’s playing games and reading the dope and so on. But I’m not tinkering with my hardware or whatever. I use computers all the time, but I just want them to work, I don’t get any enjoyment out of tinkering with them.
I got a degree in Chemical Engineering because I wanted to work in factories but on the floor side of them rather than admin (so, Engineering) and because my parents were actually accepting of that particular flavor of Engineering.
Now I work as a consultant in Business IT, and often people will ask “oh, wouldn’t you rather work in your own line of work?” meaning Chemistry.
But I do work “in my line”. The Process Engineering parts, which were already my biggest strength when I worked as a Research Chemist or as a Control Lab Tech. Analizing processes and improving them is the kind of stuff I do for free if I can’t get paid to do it.
I stumbled into library work after 20 years of being a respiratory therapist. I wish I had stumbled in 20 years earlier, but RT was a good profession for a long time. Now I work in the children’s department of a busy city library and I absolutely love it. Love my colleagues, love the nuts and bolts of the job, and love dealing with kids and watching them grow. My specific passion is children’s nonfiction literature. So yes, I love what I do and I’m good at it.
The same with me. I have a really cool job like I always wanted. I am head of IT in a medical devices factory that serves the whole world. We literally save lives every day and I have the closest thing you can be to an ER doctor in the IT world (people say that I am a factory surgeon). I have been programming and tinkering with computers since I was 8 and I used to love them.
Not so much anymore. Being responsible for hundreds of important ones makes me look at them as nothing more than potential failure points. It is challenging and kind of fun when you fix 5 of them. It isn’t fun when you done it for the 1000th time and you have to jump through the insane bureaucracy endemic in the pharmaceutical industry to even be able to do your job at all.
Don’t get me wrong, I have a great job that lots of other people want but it is just a job, not a hobby and it killed my passion for it years ago.
I love the practice of medicine, actually face to face with a patient, solving genuine problems, teaching.
Sadly, little of modern medicine involves that sort of work any more.
That’s why I’m happy in my little niche practice where I still get to do more of that sort of thing than most of my colleagues out in private practice.
Many years ago I quit my day job, to devote myself to a career as a full-time artist. I wish I had done this kind of work from the beginning. Whenever I find myself getting a little “stale”, I just change directions, and it’s like starting an entirely new kind of work. And I get to work at home. I’m not making the kind of money I had made previously, but I have no regrets.
I’m a day to day substitute teacher and I love it. I get to be in different classrooms with different kids, some I may only meet once, others I’ve seen grow up. The district I work in uses the same reading and math program throughout the elementary level, so wherever I am, I’m familiar with how the programs work. I really have no desire to be a regular classroom teacher. At one time I did, but every year it seems like there’s more testing, more reporting and monitoring. It’s turned into a paperwork circus. I like that I just get to teach.
I work in academic administration - transcripts, exam scores, training records, certificate evaluation, etc. It’s a good, decent job, but I have very little actual interest in it.
High school teacher, and I very much enjoy what I do. I’m lucky enough to be in a really fantastic environment that suits me well–a small STEM school. I also have a boss who is very supportive, in the sense that I have the opportunity to develop programs and innovations. I’ve managed to avoid a lot of the things that people hate about teaching through careful career moves and lots of luck.
I really like what I do, but I do wish I could find a way to do just a little less of it. I have too many irons in the fire and right now it’s pretty overwhelming. I need to specialize a little more, which forces uncomfortable choices between what I think would be best for my career, what would be best for the kids I am responsible for, what is best for my institution, and what I enjoy the most. It’s a mess that I keep resolving by working myself sick.
I quit my long-standing job to go back to school and now work in health policy. It’s exactly what I want to be doing (though, granted, things are pretty wacky right now).
Depends what you mean by “work”. As a management consultant, I like the aspects of my job that closely resemble the “pod” (not a consulting term I’ve heard IRL) in House of Lies or Ryan Bingham in Up In The Air. That is to say, working with a team of people I like or by myself, traveling to different companies and enjoying the various perks that come with the travel.
But the actual “work” of project managing or building PowerPoint decks for executives to put on a shelf somewhere, I could give a rat’s ass about.
I stumbled into project management in the 1990s and saw it as a path toward developing transferable skills so I could work in a variety of industries. Ironically, the industry where I originally started in project management is the one I should have stayed in - digital road maps and navigation products. I have never recaptured the interest and vitality for the job I had back then.
Now I consider myself a cubicle-dwelling office drone working as a program manager at a health insurance company - no real interest in my line of work now, but it pays OK, has provided stability for my family and my responsibilities, and affords me just enough time and resources to pursue other passions. I am interested in doing a good job and supporting the people around me. No real passion or interest in what I do - when I go home its very easy for me to totally dial-out.
I do wonder what sort of career I would have sustained if I had stayed the course in something I was really into, rather than selling-out for convenience.
Not at all. I do cell phone tech support from a call center. It sucks the life out of me every day. Dealing with rude people who treat me as less than human, no respect, no appreciation for what I do. I have never been a ‘techie’ type person and only get thru this job daily because of the training I’ve gotten. I much prefer working with living creatures than technology…
Well, I’ve stuck with foodservice for nearly 34 years (almost literally 2/3 of my life now). I have no “formal” training; I started in fast food at age 17 and then spent decades “working my way up”, learning new things in every kitchen. I’ve been at my city’s convention center since 2006 (minus a “vacation” into cooking in a retirement home from 2013 to 2015), and I still love what I do.
One thing I love about it is that, unlike other “production” type jobs, the “product” is used almost immediately after it’s produced, and I get the customer feedback very quickly. Some of that feedback is really gratifying. I was recently carving the prime rib on a buffet line, and the convention group had brought in some entertainers, who also came through the buffet. One of the entertainers came back for seconds, and told me, “You know we do a lot of events like this, mostly over in Seattle-Tacoma, and this is the best food we’ve ever had at one of these.”
Over the years, I’ve tried my hand at other things, usually in the hope of making more money, but I always come back to cooking.
Got a job at a big airplane company building boats back in 1980 and except for layoffs, have been there since. There were times when the job was exciting, helping a new airplane model come to life and actually fly. The last 20 or so years it’s just been a job. Everything now is scheduled based. Come to work, do your job, go home. No incentive for creativity, follow the “procedures” or you face the music. Don’t get your jobs done, work overtime till you are done.
The job does pay well. Eroding benefits over the years have cut into that pay. The latest salvo is we can now be held civilly liable for errors we make. More production increases are coming and we are given less to work with. Still using tools and equipment that is decades old, our multi-billion dollar company won’t by new tools. I’m now old enough to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Retirement will be coming soon.
Growing up auto racing was a passion. I drove locally for 10 years. Had actually hoped to make a living in racing. A cousin moved back to North Carolina and had done that. I was offered a chance to go. Don’t regret not going but I wonder what would have happened if I did. Currently investing in my retirement. Love woodworking, acquiring the necessary tools before I do retire. Wish I had a bigger shop though.