I was a middling naval warfare officer in the RCN (specialty ASW officer) for 15 yrs, followed by the same length of time as a military Training Development Officer, followed by 13 years as an Instructional Systems Designer (ISD) in civilian industry, working at CAE.
I retired last July and, for the moment, I noodle on my guitars (one beloved Epiphone SG Tony Iommi signature edition, one electro-acoustic Ibanez, and a Fender electro-acoustic bass), and spend time on my bicycles, and sorting things out post-autism diagnosis.
First, I still identify myself as a mathematician. Although my last published paper was in 2020 (I retired on the last day of 1999). During the pandemic, I also volunteered to chair PhD final exams over zoom, but they stopped asking me about two years ago. As for teaching, aside from one course I volunteered to teach around 2004 (basically, lecturing on a book of research I had just published) I have stopped that completely. But I still identify as a professor emeritus. Actually as [name of chair] professor emeritus of pure mathematics.
I am a “management consultant”. A job mostly know for borrowing people’s watches to tell them what time it is and where if I could tell you what I actually do, I wouldn’t be very good at my job. My job has been portrayed in pop culture as the “Bobs” in Office Space, the series “House of Lies” on Showtime, and by Douglas Adams as the useless segment of the population of the planet Golgafrincham, which, in addition to management consultants, includes telephone sanitizers, account executives, hairdressers, tired TV producers, insurance salesmen, personnel officers, security guards, and public relations executives.
Point of fact, I actually do own a “Deloitte” branded telephone sanitizer I picked up at an industry conference,
What I actually “do” (aside from selling my services and those of my firm) is sit at the intersection of technology and business for Wall Street banks and help them solve some business problems (usually with some combination of technology, project management, and business analysis).
Or at the very least, make a lot of money prolonging them,
I started my professional career as a software developer, then switched to testing/QA. At my last job, I was testing robots. I just started a new gig this week, testing an even larger robot. For the first time in my life, I am actually working on a robot arm.
After graduating as an engineer, and working a few short-term jobs, I wandered into technical writing and then task management for a team of technical writers.
Now I provide support and define processes for the technical authors, but that’s just one of the things I do. I have a new title since the beginning of the year, but a lot of what I do is “other tasks as assigned”, which includes defining terminology, specifying software tools and project management. So the title is to have something short for HR.
After graduating in computational physics and then a bit of research ( and some dabbling in Health physics) I spent 30 years in the oil and gas industry. I started on rigs working for what are called ‘service companies’ making measurements of the rock and where the hole was going, then moved through various support roles and management roles with several companies , both the big players and VC start ups, all in a similar space of making measurements and telemetry methods. I’d say I mostly deal with product management, which is mostly figuring out what the client actually wants to achieve then corralling the company functions to deliver something that gets that done from a hardware , data and operational point of view. I recently moved to doing a similar thing in mining, mostly copper and gold exploration. It has been a good career , plenty of drama for sure , but we did get to live and work all over the world and have friends in many different places and backgrounds.
Another GIS person here. Been doing it since before the acronym GIS was coined. So, 36 years. I’ve been with the same county government for 32 years.
Title is GIS Application Engineer, but like Alpine, I do more ‘data herding’, data design. I’m going to retire in about a year, so I’m staying away from application development (which can take years in it self).
I’ve been in mapping/drafting pretty much my entire life.
I am a retired electrician. I spent 42 years working as the lead technician at a fire alarm company.
In my third semester in college I came to the realization that, due to mathlexia, I was not really academically inclined. I joined the Carpenter’s Union which in the early 1970s meant that I worked a lot of odd jobs while being laid off due to the lack of work.
I worked for a year as an apartment complex maintenance man. The property manager padded the payroll so the jobs that were done by him, his wife, daughter and son in law were done by someone else, leaving his family being paid for doing nothing and living rent free. The property owners caught on and most of the employees that were actually doing the work were let go. This was in 1978, and jobs were scarce. I found work almost immediately running the tongue saw in a beef slaughter house. A year later I showed up to work one Monday morning and the doors were chained shut.
My brother in law was working part time at a small fire extinguisher company and told me to come in and talk to the manager. We chatted over coffee and he asked me when I could start. The next morning I was the sixth employee. A few months later my boss called me into the office. There was a box on his desk. He said: “This is a fire alarm system. Take it down to the Edwards Hotel and install it. There is an instruction book in the box.” I managed to get it installed and working.
That small company is now the largest fire alarm company in the area. From the time I started with seven people There are now sixty five employees and two locations. I have been retired fora little over four years but I still identify as an employee.
I’m an office manager at a commercial cleaning company. I do payroll, billings, etc. I’ve been at this job for almost 40 years. At this point I can almost do my job in my sleep. I don’t have any stress. I’m able to go home when my work is done and I no longer work on Fridays. (I’m salaried so am paid the same regardless of how many hours I work.) I want to work for as long as I’m able to. Being retired is not something I want to do. Maybe at some point I’ll shorten my week some more - take Mondays off.
Most of my income comes from teaching voice, primarily at a couple of local universities with occasional private students at home (trying to expand the latter). I also freelance as a classical vocalist, these days almost entirely in ensemble work, specifically a few professional choruses around town. Occasional solo work, but that definitely does not pay the bills.
For a very brief period in 1999 I worked in programming, specifically Y2K analysis and testing. Spent a year after that doing technical support for a Visiting Nurse Association before going to grad school for my Master of Music. Haven’t touched tech since.
Or maybe even locomotives? 
