Genuine interest in my line of work? No, not really.
I’m a programmer, and apparently do OK at it. In a world of layoffs and RIFs I seem to stay on my feet and keep getting raises. I’ve coded a variety of simulation models, guidance stuff, image processing, and am currently writing flight control sw on a DARPA project. My resume includes General Dynamics, Sperry, Boeing, Lockheed, Honeywell and other less known companies (contract engineer). If you fly a lot, there’s a small chance my software has controlled some part of your flight. If you’re a military pilot, that chance is even higher.
But I have little interest in it outside of work – it’s just a job. My home computer is whatever Windows machine was on sale at Best Buy. I’ve never coded or done any projects at home (except when working on a graduate degree).
That’s exactly where I was two years ago. I didn’t hate my job, but it hadn’t been interesting in ages.
But it paid well enough and only required 40 hours a week, so I would never have quit. I’d have stuck it out until retirement. As it turned out, I didn’t have that option! There was a massive reorganization and I was laid off.
The market for fifty-something mainframers isn’t what it was, and I was unemployed for six months. When unemployment benefits expired, I worked a few months for Instacart. (I found myself thinking, “One of my classmates is the President and I’m delivering groceries… what the hell happened?”). At long last, I started applying for teaching jobs. I lucked out, got a great spot, and actually have a job I look forward to.
For the previous seven years, when my wife asked, “What happened at work today,” I invariably said “Nothing.” I never say that any more.
I’m also a librarian, although a different kind (university reference and instruction librarian), and I also love my work. Well, I don’t enjoy the more bureaucratic stuff, but I like answering research questions, finding information, and teaching students how to search for and evaluate sources.
I had a previous library job that was miserable, but that was because I had a terrible boss – I was fine with my actual duties.
Yes! It’s awesome when you start the work week thinking about the cool stuff you are going to do.
Of all of the jobs from my checkered past, two stand out:
I spent some years as a machinist, and I currently work as a software engineer.
Of these two, given the choice, I would be making things out of chunks of metal on a Bridgeport mill any day of the week…but that wouldn’t pay the bills these days. Even in 1990 the writing was on the wall—at the time any job openings in the field were answered by an endless stream of 50-year-old men with decades of experience who were willing to work at lower wages, clearly evidence of a shrinking industry.
As a software engineer, I love what I do. I have never lost the fascination for computers that began in the 70s using dialup terminals as a tween to write simple BASIC programs at my dad’s place of work. At that time, I remember turning in homework printed on greenbar, much to the surprise of the teachers who had never seen a computer.
Even though I am not making things out of metal, I am still crafting things in the software I write.
Runner up for “things that would be great if I could get paid for them” would be photography, specifically portraiture. I do off-camera flash studio work on a regular basis for friends and their families, and I regularly provide graduation portraits at my kids’ small school. It would be great to do this for work, but that might just suck the fun out of it.
I fell in love with math when I took a course in modern algebra in my third year in college. I am still in love with it as proved by the fact that seventeen years after retiring, I am doing it and publishing. I also enjoyed teaching, although I hated marking.
I’m an academic. I love teaching: working with students, developing new courses, implementing new methods and approaches. I also really enjoy research and writing. I could do without the academic politics; as somebody (Kissinger, I think) once said, academic politics are so vicious because the stakes are so small. But on balance, I feel very fortunate to be doing what I love to do. I couldn’t imagine doing this work if I didn’t love it, though. I’m not in it for the big bucks, that’s for sure.
I have a real enjoyment of coding FileMaker Pro, although less so ever since FileMaker version 11. They really haven’t added anything since then that I like enough to make up for the things they screwed up starting with version 11.
It’s still fun though, the way a good hobby is fun (plus they pay me to do it). I’m not passionate about it as if it were a cause or anything but it’s the kind of thing I’d do in some capacity somewhere on an unpaid basis if it weren’t also my vocation.
I’m a distillery engineer. I love it I get to work with lots of happy people who are excited to be doing their retirement job I get to design something on paper and then go out and build it and eventually I get to celebrate my success with a drank that came from it. For me getting away from theoretical engineering where I’d calculate numbers that either couldn’t be verified or were ignored for historical data to practice engineering where I can measure and field verify what I’ve calculated has been emesly satisfying. I now read and think about by job when I’m not at work much to my wife’s annoyance.
Semi-retired former teacher and small business owner currently working for that major internet-based vendor that starts with “A” ---- or Da Jungle as I prefer to call it.
As a peasant basic associate I do have an interest but more from contact with my fellow peasants and seeing how that particular business model works in practice. The part that is moving boxes from one place to another, not so much.
Once upon a time, I toured a factory where I saw people running die presses, punching out parts. I thought that there was no way I could ever stay sane in such a profession, so I decided to do whatever was required to avoid that fate.
I advised my children to always try to be the big fish in a small pond. Be the only dentist in town. Be the company’s only accountant or only purchasing manager. Be the only veterinarian in the city who does house calls for elephants. Be the only instrument technician in your company who is qualified to work on the mass spectrometer. Whatever. It’ll give you a little autonomy. It’ll bring you interesting work.
That is not bad advise and the strategy it I take. I am literally the only person in the world that knows how to do my job and it is an extremely important one. The reason for that is that I got thrown into it because an emergency and hardly anything worked in a $3 billion dollar a year medical devices factory. I fixed that over time and it works very well now but it is so complicated that it would take me at least a year to teach a very qualified person how to do it. Even my bosses don’t know my job very well. They just want to see things working and they do. That is a really good position to be in because they can’t just get rid of you. I am an army of 1 and they can’t risk going to zero because everything will start falling apart right away.
I hear that. People often think that because I’m a teacher I want to go see a movie about teachers with them, and for me it’s like Sweet Jesus No, that itch gets thoroughly scratched by my workday. The job will expand to contain your passion.
That said, this weekend I spent time with my niece and nephew, and I stopped by the grocery store to buy supplies to show them how to make the soda-straw rockets I’d made with my students in a science club earlier in the week, so maybe I have a bit left over :).
I’ve always had an interest in what I actually do for a living. I even went to school for it.
I’ve noticed, however, that my enthusiasm for it is quite dependent on whoever my employer is. Some of them have been a joy to work for. Others, not so much.
When I was a programmer, I had a passion for the work. But a couple of decades of corporate politics and dubious quality standards forced on me (as in “ship it now, work out the bugs later” and there’s never time for that later until the bugs are 4-alarm fires) ruined it. Now I’m cynical and just do what it takes to get a paycheck.
On the other hand, I have a huge passion for the business I launched last year. It sprung from my work on the board of a couple of dog rescues where I was able to stretch myself to my limits, learn from mistakes and actually figure out just how much that I’m capable of. Turns out I’m capable of an enormous variety of skills and tasks. None of my corporate jobs ever stretched me like that. Now I run my shop essentially 24x7x365, whenever I feel like it, but I prioritize my customers orders and questions. People who have told me in the past that running your own business means never having a day off are right, but you know what? It’s fun to be the decisionmaker, it’s rewarding to see your investment pay off and the business grow, and I can set my quality standards as high as I want to. It is a ton of work, there’s always something that needs to be done. I saw a quote a few days ago that summarized it:
“Working really hard for something you don’t care about is stressful. Working really hard for something you do care about is passion.”
I’m in public safety and I love my job. For many years, you had to love the job, because it didn’t pay well at all. While the pay was low, the job security is great, which was a draw for me after growing up with autoworker parents who were laid off a couple of times.
While I didn’t grow up wanting to do this, I stumbled into it and found out I can do it well. There are days that I dream of being a geologist, because working with rocks has got to be easier than working with people, but most of the time, I love my job.
The pay has come up in recent years and we have several people that get hired that have no interest in the job and just want to go through the paces and collect a check. I don’t understand them either.
I keep the boredom at bay by doing a whole bunch of different things, all of which I still find interesting.
Audio-video service and support. Interesting problems, and I love finding the solutions. Computer support, both Windows and Mac. Most of the problems have become simple for me, but I get a lot of praise for finding the solutions and making my clients happy.
But the one that really makes me happy is my concert video business. I live for music, and I (with my wife’s occasional help) go and shoot a concert with 8 cameras and I edit it together. 95% of the shows I shoot are kids between the ages of 8 and 18 and their enthusiasm is infectious.
The work is exhausting, but rewarding. I don’t know anyone else who does what I do in the way I do it. Most of the tools I use I have either modified or built from scratch. I often say that if you want to become the best in the world at something, invent that thing to be.
I can happily say that nothing I have ever done for a living was *ever *offered as an option by a high school guidance councilor.
Back to the OP, I have to say I’m appalled at the idea that there are engineers who don’t tinker. That’s just all kinds of wrong. I build or modify the stuff I use because nothing on the market does exactly what I need it to do, but also because building and modifying stuff is fun. I always have a few projects in various stages of completion, and a half dozen more that I have thought through and want to build if I ever find the time.
We tend to hire folks right out of college. We have a lab with a very wide variety of tools, everything from screwdrivers to a scanning electron microscope. I have to show them how to use a ratchet with sockets. I have to show them how to solder. I have to show them how to put a drill bit in a drill. I want to so-badly ask them, “Why did you major in engineering??” They seem to have zero interest in it.