I was talking with a colleague last week about how most of our fellow doctors are pretty miserable. Over the last couple of decades we’ve ceded a lot of the control to big corporate entities, so we’re just widget-generating cogs in a machine. We’re working insane hours, and if we don’t want to we’re made to feel guilty about it. We’re evaluated based on things that are tough to control, like patient volumes and satisfaction. Every medical conference has half a dozen sessions on dealing with burnout.
A lot of my friends are lawyers, and they say it’s a terrible time to be a lawyer. There are too many of them out there, and the good money jobs are endless hours of soulless tedium. Anything remotely interesting pays shit. The court system is a train wreck in most places.
Other friends are teachers, and at least in Kentucky it’s a dreadful time for them. Our governor has spent his whole term demonizing them and “fixing” their retirement system by making it far less attractive. Pay is crap, resources are thinner each year, expectations are ridiculous, and there’s such a shortage around here that demands are increasing all the time.
So I have to ask–is there any profession that it’s a great time for right now? What about yours?
Neuroscience I feel will soon come into it own if properly paired with other professions offering practical applications. And professions that use what is known about neuroscience to find practical applications
Petroleum engineering is pretty bad right now after things being pretty amazing from 2004-2013 its been thin for a while now with prices being so far down. People are working longer hours and getting smaller to no raises but at least they haven’t been laid off (for the ones that haven’t)
I got out of that game in 2013 and the craft distilling world is doing great. Not as well as it was in 2010-2013 before everyone jumped into the business but most of that has to do with international markets drying up a bit due to the trade wars and getting close to market saturation in some markets. Still, most distilleries are doing well enough to pay their bills and start looking at expansion. Over all its a pretty wonderful time.
Physical security, i.e. egress/access control, video monitoring, lock systems, etc. is historically recession proof. When times are good, people want to protect what they have. When times are bad, people want to protect what they have.
Software engineering is pretty good (as always). I work out of my house, have interesting stuff to work on, and in general like my coworkers. Pays well too.
I’m wondering how much demand plays into certain professions being better to work in? Software engineers have been in demand for years; companies have to compete for the good ones, which means pay goes up & good companies figure out ways to keep good employees via nice perks, good benefits, etc. From what I can see, that’s not true when a profession is not in demand.
Yup, what I came in here to say. I didn’t have any specific experience in security before I started this job but I think I have enough now to ensure my employment until retirement.
Yeah, cybersecurity is a hot field. My undergrads get well-paying jobs pretty quickly. Some cybersecurity jobs have crummy hours, especially if you do incident response, but otherwise the hours are not bad. It’s generally challenging work with lots of new things to work on all the time.
With all the Vietnam-era vets retired, there are a lot of openings for helicopter pilots. Not enough new pilots coming out of the military or civilian schools for the number of jobs out there. Some jobs can be done by drones, but the industry is still a number of years away from taking RW pilots out of EMS or other passenger services.
I agree with logistics. Even if brick-and-mortar locations are becoming more scarce, goods and people are always moving around, and it’s happening faster and on a more global scale than ever.
Granted, I don’t think that all logistics positions are paying tons of money but the jobs abound and you don’t have to have a logistics or business degree to qualify for many of them.
In some fields of AI the professors keep getting offers to leave academia and work in industry, and now there aren’t enough professors to train the next generation of AI researchers at colleges and universities.