I work in real estate and I’ve been given an amazing opportunity by my boss, an 18 month plan where she will train me, educate me, then open an agency in a location of my choice which I will run. I’ll be part owner even though I am not putting down any of my own money. Basically it’s being served to me on a silver platter and I feel it would be foolish not to take her up on her offer, the money would be great and the idea of being the ‘boss’ of my own business is appealing. The problem you ask? I am over real estate, I’ve been in this industry over five years and I am distinctly lacking the excitement that most people who work in this field have. I’m young and I’m thinking of heading back to university to find something that I would enjoy doing everyday, but to be honest I’m not 100% sure what that would be.
So my questions is do you love your job? How did you discover what you wished to do? At what stage in life were you when you found it? Did you make a big change and regret it later? Was money more of a deciding factor than everyday enjoyment?
I’ve always been good at art- but, growing up, I’d always been told, “art is a good hobby, but it’ll never pay the bills”. My family can be kind of mercenary.
As a young adult, I did a stream of crappy jobs- I didn’t have any education, but had no idea what I was even interested in doing. I liked computers, and was self-taught, but nothing really impressive. At age 27, I got lucky- a friend convinced his bosses to give me a shot at the video game industry, as an artist. I immediately knew that THAT was exactly what I’d always wanted to do.
Then, about six years ago, I stumbled into a very specific sub-set of the game industry- special effect. When I first got started, nobody just did special effects. I’ll never look back, now- I’m of the opinion that I’ve got the best job in the world. I get to blow shit up all day long, and nobody gets hurt! I’ve also got incredible job security- there’s only a handful of people who do this.
So, no, I didn’t know what I wanted to do- the video games industry as it is today didn’t even really exist until relatively recently (there were certainly no colleges for games!), and my particular position didn’t really exist until just a few years ago. I knew what I wanted to do, but I had to wait until what I wanted to do became an option.
I like my job, I think love is probably taking things a bit too far but I wake up without the dread of going to work that seems to plague a lot of people. I always knew that I wanted to work in computers but wasn’t sure which area exactly, I fell into doing on-site tech support after university and have been doing it ever since. I know that there are things that I can do that will earn me more money but I would rather earn a bit less and not mind my job than earn more and spend my free time dreading going back to work.
I get to work as my own boss essentially as I travel around fixing residential and small business PCs which suits me fine. I can’t give you any advice as I don’t know all your personal situation and commitments but for me enjoying my job has always been pretty important. Some people spend their whole lives grinding out at a job that they can’t stand and that idea terrifies me far more than not being able to afford 2 holidays a year or whatever, think about what percentage of your adult life you spend at work and how important it is to you to enjoy that time.
I’m a freelance translator, really starting this out for the second time and realizing I should have stuck with it the first time around. It pays the basic bills, which is all I ask of it right now; once I’m able to pull down a halfway decent rate I’ll be doing fairly well for myself.
I detest my actual job, but he benefits outweigh my personal heebie-jeebies.
I work for my husband. He (or we, technically) own a small health clinic, we provide Student Health services to a small college. My job is to do the coding and billing, and manage the minute office staff, filling in myself when necessary. My job is not hard, but I kinda got dropped into it and am learning as I go. It is not at all something I would have chosen - I don’t do sick people well (shudder) and I’m not really a people person anyway. Sick animals, oozing abscesses and all I can deal with without a twitch, but people are another story.
However, I know that it’s saving our miniscule company a boatload to not farm this stuff out, and I don’t know of many other jobs that I can 1) work from home 2) set my own schedule 3) take a week’s vacation at the drop of a hat with no loss of pay. I don’t really get a paycheck, we joke that I get paid in animal feed & vet bills (9 cats, 7 horses, 2 lg dogs).
So yeah, I hate my job, but my life is better because of it so I suck it up
Incref, if you’ve been in this business for 5 years, what does she really have to teach you?
I dunno. If you are skilled in this, the time you invest now might lead to a lucrative business and solid business skills that you could rely on, and fund your education with. And you’d get experience in running your own business, something you don’t have now, right? Can you hire folks to do the grunt RE work that you’re tired of? And you get some solid management skills/experience?
OTOH, if she’s wanting to hire you based on your past performance, and is expecting you to continue this performance, then it sounds like you might be locking yourself into a role you’d rather not be in. Would it be so bad that you’d either have to shut your soul down and do the work, or disappoint/piss her off later when you decide you really just want out?
I found out what I wanted to do around age 30. And I love what I do. I came close to accepting offers that I knew weren’t in the direction I wanted to go, but always ended up not taking them.
Can you talk to your boss about your concerns? She might have been through what you’re going through, and might be offering this position for that very reason. Maybe there’s more to the position than meets the eye. She might be able to help you see what the position would entail, and whether you’re a good fit.
I more or less love my job, but it’s mostly because of the non-actual-work aspects of it. I’m a work-from-home software engineer. The work itself is OK, but I mostly love my job because:
I can work from home, in my pajamas, with my dog on my lap if I want
I make my own hours
I’m in control of my own work area. If I want a big spacious office with a TV in one corner and a window to look out, I can have it. No cubes.
I don’t work with any assholes. I genuinely like just about everyone I interact with on a daily basis (and yes, you do interact, even while telecommuting.) To those of you who’ve worked in high tech, you know how great the “no assholes” thing is.
Not only are the people I work with not assholes, they genuinely appreciate the work I do and tell me
The pay is pretty good
I can live anywhere I want, including small towns in the middle of nowhere
I mostly enjoy the actual work. Rather than long monolithic projects that may or may not be released to the public, most of what I work on are 1 week to 3 month projects that involves a living breathing web site that’s used by thousands of people every day. After working most of my career on software that never got released, or was released to a tiny audience, it’s nice to know that the bug I fix or feature I add directly benefits someone.
Can I think of better jobs? Sure, I’d love to be a successful author, or a writer for National Geographic, or have Tony Bourdain’s job. Lacking one of those gigs falling in my lap, I think I have it about as good as I could hope.
Hate it to the point of feeling physically ill when I think about going to work. Never before have I worked a job where the customers feel it’s OK to call you a goddamned stupid cunt because they placed an order with ANOTHER company, which messed it up and I am unable to fix.
The money is good but the stress is going to kill me.
I am doing something closer to what I actually am interested in now than I used to do so I like my job more than I used to, but I still wouldn’t say I “love” it. It’s tolerable most of the time with occasional times where it is actually interesting and fun.
In your situation, I’d take the opportunity while it was available and see if having more autonomy makes you enjoy the work more since it sounds like you aren’t going into a financial risk to try the situation out. I feel that far too many people end up wasting a lot of money on college trying to “find themselves” when the reality is that if a job is truly all that great, they don’t have to pay people to do it.
Only if you let it. Seriously. I’ve worked in customer service a lot and yes, of course there are bad days (just as in every job) but you’re not inviting the people who call to sleep over, right? It’s your choice whether or not you take that kind of stuff home with you to brood over. Find something better to do than feel sorry for yourself.
As for my job, they pay me a lot to do something ridiculously easy. The hours can be long (12-13hr days) so I wish I had more time for the freelance work I also do but as I said, it’s easy and my coworkers and boss are terrific people, so no complaints. It’s just a good thing I don’t need much sleep.
I work in a hospital blood bank and lab. I’m primarily in the blood bank, getting blood ready for patients who are bleeding, or going for surgery, or undergoing chemo. Sometimes it’s a challenge, because it’s sometimes a lot more complicated than finding an Apositive unit for the Apositive patient, but I enjoy it.
I only stumbled on this work after getting my college degree in Physiology and realizing that my options were fairly limited in the job market - I looked around and could only find work in animal research labs, which wasn’t something I was comfortable with. I’m not sure what I thought I could be doing, but implanting stuff in mice just wasn’t going to work for me. After looking into other medical-ish careers, I found a medical laboratory science program, and figured it was at least worth a try while I figured out where I wanted to be. Nursing wasn’t an option, because I don’t like working with people very much. The lab means I get to play a huge role in patient care, but I’m behind the scenes and only get to know patients by their hemoglobin levels or blood type.
Money wasn’t a factor in my choice other than I knew I needed a reliable job and a regular paycheck. At first I went into the program because it could leave me with a fallback job option at any time. I initially thought I’d be going on to grad school later, or trying harder to get into a research lab doing something I’d enjoy, and having the med tech certification would be a backup plan, something I could do if I couldn’t find other work. Turns out I loved it more than I expected, and I decided to stick with it.
I love what I do but I don’t love my current workplace, which is why I clicked “something else” for the poll. It’s a stressful job to begin with, and my coworkers and management are only adding to the stress. I work with a bunch of people who are set in their ways and afraid of change, and who are threatened by someone younger coming in. And some of them take absolute glee in waiting for me to mess something up, even a little, so they can try and get me into trouble for it. Management either doesn’t know or doesn’t care that the morale in the lab is terrible, and they try to run the place with as few people as possible, often leaving us overstretched and exhausted. I’d like this job a whole lot more in a less negative atmosphere, but I’m sure it’s just as bad in other hospitals, so I’m trying to keep focused on the job and ignore the crap.
Technically, I’m not currently working, but I would say, yes, so far I have hated working in corporate America, in any job, at any level. Not on an “I feel ill” level, but more like “I don’t give a fuck”.
So when people ask me “what do you want to do”, my answer is that I really don’t know because I don’t really want to do any of it. To me it all sort of blends into a mishmash of what I call “technofinanciaccountilawoperations”. Basically all I see are the various interchangable carbon blobs sitting in cubicles with laptops. They don’t design anything or create anything or even run anything really. All they do is send spreadsheets and reports and Powerpoint decks to each other.
Currently, my job is just something I don’t hate, that pays the bills. I believe that it might turn into something I love, but that will be much farther down the road. I just started at it, so I am still pretty entry level.
I love the people I work with, so far. I have found this to be the most important factor in whether or not I love a job. I had a job where I loved the work, but the people I worked with were horrible and unappreciative. I ended up quitting. I couldn’t handle it.
I’m closer to “I would love my job…if I could get rid of just ***one *** of my cow-orkers.”
The work group dynamic that’s developed around one particular employee is almost unbearably toxic to me. But, considering my age and the current job market, I could never find anything with the same pay and benefits. I’ve become accustomed to my standard of living, so I just show up, put in my hours, and savor every weekend and vacation day.
Resounding meh. I’m too well aware of how good I have it to hate it and I don’t dread going to work at all. But I find it uninteresting most of the time and take no particular satisfaction from it other than my pay and benefits.
But as I’ve mentioned before, I was raised with a rather blue-collar, non-careerist approach to employment.
It’s a menial, shit job. I’m a cook in a restaurant. I like the cooking, but I hate most of the rest of it (cleaning, washing dishes, late nights, no breaks, the list goes on). The part I actually like best is my co-workers.
So it kind of works out that work is sometimes a nightmare and I get anxious even thinking about going and want to cry by the time it’s over. And sometimes it ends up being the best part of my day because when things are slow enough to allow time to think and breathe, a lot of my co-workers are good company. And even shit work is not so bad when you’re laughing and joking the whole time.
eta: this is by no means my career, nor is it what I want to do. It’s just a job to pay the bills.
I’m iffy. There’s times I wish I could find something that pays better and is a little more prestigious, but I’ve put more effort into this job than anything else I’ve done in the past. Six years isn’t a lot of experience, but after coming out of school where every year is different and every four years is a different school entirely, that still means something. So while it may not be the best job there is, it’s my job, dammit.
