Can I talk about my old job? Because it’s what I plan on going back to doing when I finish grad school.
I worked for a company that did a lot of explosives and munitions testing for the government and their contractors. I would meet with a customer, and they’d describe what they’d want. I’d draw it on a CAD program, usually AutoDesk Inventor. Then I’d work with the purchasing gals to get the material we needed, and with the machine shop guys to get the part(s) built. I’d get it from them, and take it out to the field to weld, bolt, screw, or otherwise attach it into our test setup, which we had previously built of wood, concrete, or steel. Finally, we’d blow it all up, and then head back to the office again awaiting another project. Pure awesomness.
I like my job and I enjoy what I do, but I don’t think I’d say that I love it.
I’m likely going back to school in September - I’ve been accepted into a four-year Nursing program but I still have to work out all the logistical/financial details before I decided for sure that I’m going to do it. I’m feeling a little nervous going back to school as a mature student (I’m 29 - will be 33 when I graduate). Probably the main reason I’m thinking about nursing is that it’s something I’m confident that I’ll be good at, and that hopefully I’ll find that it’s a career I’ll really love.
I love my job. My employer is a USAID funded project trying to improve the Indonesian business climate. I am the editor and all around person-in-charge for a bilingual business newsletter that we produce. It is up to me to choose themes and topics, find and counsel writers, edit (and write some of the articles myself), kick butt with the layout guy (who otherwise would slack off), and coordinate with the communications department at the office to see that distribution gets done. I also write a bunch of very short reports on a regular basis about what the project is doing.
Although I have to produce highly visible output according to strict deadlines, as long as I perform I can set my own hours and mostly work at home. I also work very independently, with little supervision (and I like my boss, who seems to respect me). My job is 85 to 90 percent thinking and only 10-15 percent stupid admin/managerial stuff, which suits me. I’m also happy with my compensation.
So, what’s not to like? Well, not everyone would enjoy the job – as I said, there are strict deadlines and the result is highly visible (2000 people get the newsletter every month). I have major headaches when writers submit gobbledygook at the last second and it is up to me to turn it into decent prose that says something, immediately. Also, while it doesn’t bother me because I am not the world’s most social person, I don’t have a lot of teamwork in my job – that is a satisfying element that some people would miss a lot.
I love my job(s). Technically my title is Clinical Laboratory Scientist, but basically I’m a lab rat. I perform tests on patient specimens and get doctors lab results. I also work in a blood bank so I’m responsible for blood compatibility testing. Doing my job well means you never see or hear about me. I feel great about what I do, some nights are boring and I surf the net, other nights are filled with trauma cases and other such bleeders. I see a lot of interesting stuff, and work in a couple of different labs.
I also facny myself a bit of a natural when it comes to troubleshooting errors in clinical instrumentation. I’m not too bad with a microscope either.
I don’t love my job, but I really like it. I’m a programmer/software engineer/coder, whatever you want to call it. Currently, I’m doing mostly web sites.
I can’t say that I’m thrilled about the exact work I’m doing. Web site design is OK, programming is OK. I find I’m well-suited to it because even if I’m not working, I find myself in front of the computer most days because I like being there, so in that sense, it’s a good fit.
What really works for me is the whole lifestyle. I’m an introvert; I don’t like interacting with people a whole lot, and remote work is great for that. I respond to emails/IMs/phone calls just fine, but I never have to deal with that yakky coworker who wanders into my office and wants to tell me about his weekend/new car/what he did last night/whatever. See, when I’m working, I like to work. I like to have long expanses of time where I can get a LOT done, and I hate interruptions. Office are horrible for that. There’s always a meeting, or socializing, or noise you can’t filter out. I have none of that, and it really works for me.
Second, as a contractor, I pick when I work. If I want to take a day off, I don’t have to ask permission for it. True, I don’t get paid when I’m not working, but that’s OK with me. As long as the project gets done on time, everything’s good.
I can’t imagine going back to office work every day. I think I’d take a big cut in pay before I did that. I feel trapped in an office - I don’t know why that is, since I don’t feel like that in my home office.
I really enjoy my job. I am a psychologist, and I run my own private practice. I love working with clients, I get to hear fascinating stories, and I get to help people make the changes they want to make. The downside is that sometimes they don’t really want to make changes, and the paperwork is a minor bitch. On the other hand, sometimes I get to surf the Dope and avoid doing my paperwork and there is no boss to catch me.
Most of the time I love my job – 10 years teaching junior high/high school in a small school. Some days I could willingly murder certain children, but all in all, it’s pretty much a hoot.
I’m unemployed, and I most assuredly do NOT love it.
I wish I knew more about electricity, construction, that sort of stuff. We had a guy come by yesterday to fix some bad wiring on a two-way switch in our living room, and man that was cool. I think it’s so amazing when people can take nothing and build a home, or take a home apart and put it together again so that it works better. I know a guy who built an extra four rooms onto his home and did all the work himself – plumbing, wiring, construction, everything. Amazing!
Well, I like it a lot, but love’s a loaded word so let’s leave it at like.
I’m a director for a large K-12 school district in the burbs. Technically the name says transportation, but it includes the standard “other duties as assigned”. It’s an administrative level job. About 12 of us essentially run the district including the superintendent, the assistant sups, and us directors.
I am never bored, I work with a lot of great people, and I can stay here forever as long as I don’t get caught in the hit tub with cheerleaders or the boss’s wife.
I love the creative side of my job, but I definitely don’t love the paperwork associated with it.
I’m a mechanical designer. My department creates equipment to produce oil and gas from subsea wells. Oil companies buy our equipment, and our expertise to install it. I get to make 3D models and drawings to manufacture the equipment. Modelling is great! Bills of materials, testing and assembly procedures get old real quick.
I’m slightly on the positive side of ambivalent about my job. I’m a geologist with a mid-sized independent energy company.
The pay is astronomical compared to anything I’ve ever done. My immediate superiors and most peers are smart and hard working. Unlike my last several jobs, there are no shovels, toxic waste, or bad weather, and no danger of being crushed by heavy equipment. The cost of living is relatively low here and the commute is short. I can afford to go out of town for vacation. There is a certain amount of exploring the unknown. I can afford to save for retirement and pay off my mortgage. It’s a job, and lots of people don’t have one.
It’s the most intrusive job I’ve ever had, I never have time without the possibility of interruption by work. I don’t have a social life and we never have time to do anything on weeknights. There is a large amount of paper-pushing/meetings/generally futile stuff. The higher ups are indistinguishable from any other clueless Dilbertesque executives. In addition to monopolizing most of my waking hours, my employer is big on social engineering crap. It’s a boom and bust business, one day the price of natural gas will collapse and I will be one of tens of thousands of geologists competing for a handful of shovel jobs. Oklahoma City sucks so mightily it deserves its own Pit thread, but I’m stuck here because nobody pays close to what my employer pays.
If the company was located in a real city (or even a nice town), I’d stay until I made enough money to quit. As it is, I’m gone as soon as I find a better deal, which is highly unlikely.
Generally I love my job. I provide functional support for an electronic medical record system. I love that I’m a part, however small, of keeping people alive. I love that I can make someone’s day just by stopping by and showing them a few well placed mouse/keystrokes. I love hearing the doctors, nurses, and med techs go from hating the system just after training to the backhanded complement when they complain when it goes down after they’ve gotten dependent upon it. I love the challenge of working with medical personnel without retching or keeling over in a dead faint (low squeamishness threshhold here). Oh, right, the money’s great and I’ve been able to transfer between locations on 3 continents (Alaska, Japan, England and Germany).
It has downsides, too, but the positives outweight the negatives, by far. Just don’t tell the boss!
I’m an archaeologist with a small, private consulting firm. Good pay, great colleagues, great company culture, lots of travel possibilities, etc. Probably the best thing are my co-workers. The cool thing about archaeology is that nobody falls into the profession - you really have to pursue this as a career and, for most people, it takes a few years of “dig-bumming” before career opportunities start to present themselves. This process tends to week out anyone who isn’t totally into the job. Everybody I work with is passionate and dedicated which makes things pretty interesting.
I run a large greenhouse facility for a large university. 26,0000 square feet of teaching and research plants. I interact with students, professors, random gardeners and tour groups. I can spend my time attetpting to diagnose odd puckering on tomatoes in a growth chamber to rewiring lights and running remote irrigation or developing germinationprotocols for new plants or attempting to grow corn from 30 year old seed. I work with plants and people from across the world. I participate in research without collecting data or writing grants. I teach without having classes or curriculum. I garden without normal budgetary or time concerns.
It’s a pretty good deal, even including the long hours and hot greenhouses.
I love my new position in the company I work for. It was created for me to deal with a handicap making it a requirement that I telecommute.
I work in the accounting department, dealing with a single seriously major vendor, Waste Management. Any issue with their invoices I am responsible for dealing with - it is a lot of work, and I put in serious hours, but I deal with some very competent people at WMI in their accounting department at the national level. I actually like the researching and problem solving aspects of it. Luckily, my bosses think I am doing a fantastic job, which makes me very happy as I sometimes still have self image issues because of 2 very abusive relationships in a row that has taken a lot of work overcoming.
I love it and I hope to be doing it for the rest of my life (although not likely in these particular circumstances). I am a communications/environmental public policy bureaucrat. Party on!
Overall I love my job. I work at a financial institution, we do loans,check cashing, moneygram stuff, et cetera. When there’s no customers to help I can putz around online, chat on AIM, watch a movie on my computer, play some RuneScape…it’s overall pretty laid-back and easy work. When we get a rush it can be pretty hectic, but it’s mostly calm cruising through the hours.
