I seem to be a Chemical Engineer, specializing in Quality.
How did I get into this?
The engineer part, because I wanted to be some sort of boss (I didn’t really care what sort of boss) in a factory type place (didn’t care what factory type place but it had to involve making things) and Dad said I wasn’t allowed to go to business school (because in his experience, women needed an MBA for the same job a guy would get with a BBA).
The Quality, because people working HR here in Spain insist in thinking of me as a chemist, not a chemical engineer, so they hire me for the lab, not the production area or maintenance.
Why am I still here?
Well, right now I’m unemployed, but since I’m over 25 and more than 2 years out of college, my best bet is jobs for which I already have experience. I’m also looking into “Organization” and “Change Engineering” type stuff, since my last 3 years were doing “Change Engineering” for the “Quality” part of a huge corporation.
I’m an Oracle DBA and computer programmer (the proportion of time spent in the two roles varies widely).
How did you get involved?
Always loved computers, started programming at an early age. Got a BS in computer science, did an internship with MegaCorp and then went on to work there.
Why are you doing the work you do now?
I got hired in California on a California salary, then transferred to Texas, but got to keep my California salary. I (and it truly pains me to say this) like living here, and don’t want to leave, but I don’t think I could get another job that pays as well, given that I only have 3 years experience.
Or, to be more succint, I’m too chickenshit to find another job and quit. I love databases and programming, but I hate working for MegaCorp. A little bit of my soul dies each day, and it doesn’t always return to me on payday. One of these days my blood pressure is going to either boil over into an enormous, barely-coherent pit rant or blow my eyeballs out of my skull. If the latter happens, my only hope would be that one of them shoots into the gaping maw of a slack-jawed middle manager and causes choking that can’t be cured by the Heimlich manuever due to the recipients porcine corpulency.
I love working with people and coaching my employees. Why are you doing the work you do now?
I was a stock broker in a pre-9/11 world and after a few years in sales, the burnout got to me pretty fast. I quit my sales job, and started delivering pizza. It didn’t take the owner too long to figure out that I was more than just a delivery guy so he had me running the day to day ops of his business while he looked into opening new restaurants, went on vacation, etc. We we moved the family to CA, this just sort of seemed the next logical progression. I can learn a lot, and hopefully be able to open my own place eventually.
What is your career?
I’m a product manager, specializing in capacitors, for an electronics distibution company.
What that really means? My job is to know all about the market for some of the electronic components that go into everything these days.
How did you get involved?
I moved several hundred miles to be with my SO, and I needed a new job. While I was looking, I decided to do some temp work to pay the bills. I ended up like the company I temped for, even though the job has nothing to do with my chemical engineering degree.
Why are you doing the work you do now?
I’m very good at it. It’s a job that I can leave in the office when I go home at night. My management is very cool about letting me do my work my way, without watching over my shoulder. I haven’t won the lottery yet.
What am I?
I have two careers running side by side:
Database Administrator and Application Developer.
Taekwondo Instructor How did I get involved?
I was a cop and was planning on going back to college to take a degree in Police Science. While I was looking through the catalog, I saw a degree plan for Management Information Systems. Career change.
I took Taekwondo originally starting in 1966. I almost made Black Belt, but for a variety of reasons, never tested. I had a nearly 20 year layout, then got involved with the American Taekwondo Association in 1987 and have been going non-stop ever since.
Why am I doing it now?
I like the challenge and the money. I get to be creative with a computer.
I love teaching. And with Taekwondo, I really do get to touch the future, because the majority of my students are kids. They get a massive exposure to courtesy, respect, self-discipline, perserverance and other skills that will help make them successful in life.
Accident. I graduated with a B.A. (Sociology major) and unsurprisingly, couldn’t find any work. So I went off to Asia “for a year” and ended up staying in Taiwan and Japan for a combined 7 years. Got a M.Ed. along the way.
Why are you doing the work you do now?
In Asia, the money was just too good to leave. Plus I actually loved teaching and living in another country. I just moved to Australia, so I’m currently unemployed, but I have an interview in about 2 hours, so hopefully that will change soon.
What am I?
Programmer for a defense company (N. Sane will surely guess who). I model things for large simulations. How did I get here?
Summarizing as much as I can: I left the oilfields with some savings, and started college to become a geologist. In 1983, everyone else (apparently) had the same idea. After biding my time, semester after semester, trying to get into packed mineralogy classes* I noticed that (in my minor) I had progressed to senior level compsci classes. A conversation with my advisor, followed by signing a few forms, and I was out, with a CompSci/Math degree. Took an offer from a defense company right out of college. Worked for all the majors (General Dynamics, Boeing, Honeywell/Sperry, Lockheed, etc.), as a job-shopper. After a decade or so of moving around, I settled here (kids, wife tired of moving, you know the drill). Why do I do it?
(1) It’s kinda fun. I get to do some neat real-time stuff; some sort of primitive graphics programming, and it’s fairly low stress.
(2) $$. Pays well. Flextime, plus 4-day workweeks. Lotsa vacation, plus Christmas week off. There’s a lake right outside the plant, and they let me bring my ski-boat into the parking lot (gotta get in those after work runs, right?)
*older dopers will remember those days of racing all over campus to get your class cards signed by the prof… only to discover the class was full.
I manage quality auditing programs for a major international standards certification company.
I helped runa company that happened to be the first of its kind to ever get ISO 9001 registration. We were later purchased by the company I now work for, and this was the logical extension of my talents.
The nice thing about my job is that I’m pretty much my own manager; I have masters to answer to but I don’t see them much and they have to let me do my own thing. I get some scheduling fleixibility, which I personally place a lot of value in, and it’s the sort of job that’s different every week.
On the con side, project managing is always stressful in that you’re always dealing with problems, and at the present time my company is not being well managed.
What is your career, or if you prefer, form of employment?
My title is Facility Manager but I think it really should be Inventory Specialist. I keep track of fourty-three thousand square feet of art and antiques.
How did you get involved?
I started out in retail, putting myself through college working at a relatives coffee shop in the kitchen. Within a year I was managing one of his shops and decided that college wasn’t for me. From there I went on to manage video stores and health food stores. When GNC bought out and closed the chain I was working for, and laid me off in the process, I decided that I’d had enough of rude customers and wanted to concentrate on the part I loved. The stock room. I wound up a recieving manager for Bed Bath and Beyond for a couple years before realising that I hated the constant rush of moving masses of freight every day. So I mentally conceived of finding a job where someone would pay me to take my time and impeccably account for storage. Someplace where doing the job right was more important than rushing to get it done. (Having only worked in retail) I had no clue who would want that. Then I found my current job at an art handling company.
Why are you doing the work you do now?
Two answers:
1- Because I love it. For the first couple years, I worked late every day, not because I had to, but because I was having more fun at work than I could have had at home. Even after 6 years I still love my job. There have been bad periods, mainly due to corporate problems, but my job is still interesting to me.
2- In three days, I won’t be (doing the work I do now). I’m moving to another state with my wife, with the plan that we get jobs there and then buy a house. (because we can’t afford a house where we are now… yes, Boston is that expensive.)
What am I?
Well, really it should be “What do I want to be?” as I’m not quite there yet. I want to be a theoretical physicist, studying the physics of spacetime. Ambitious, I know. How will I get there?
Haven’t figured this part out yet. Can I get back to you in 10 years or so?
Why?
Because I want to understand the Universe, and this seems like a good first step.
Another stumbled upon it sort here. I’d attended the University of Texas with the intent of bagging a B.A. and going on to law school (a late starter, I didn’t begin at UT until I was 22). During my senior year, with an ~3.6 GPA and a good LSAT (690 - they scored them differently back then) I realized that: a.) I could probably get into the law school of my choice (UT), b.) I wasn’t really that motivated to become an attorney and c.) I’d been just smart enough to wend my way through UT without having taken on much in the way of serious educational challenge.
So I aborted law school applications and dived into a hard sciences curriculum. Finally, after five and half years as a full-time student, I realized I was hungry, took the degree I was most easily qualified for (Psychology) in December of 1980 and went hunting for a job.
The first lead I got was for the position of geophysical technician, that was being filled by the guy who had occupied it and was being promoted to geophysicist. I read the Encyclopedia Brittanica entry on geophysics the night before my initial interview and essentially bluffed my way into the job.
There was an extreme shortage of geophysical interpreters at the time, and the company that hired me decided that I had sufficient hard science background that I’d be worth hiring to “grow their own” geophysicist. I, at the time, just wanted a corporate paycheck and to start eating regularly. And that’s what I got.
But time went on, and I discovered that exploration can be truly interesting. Five years of night school at the University of Houston followed, and they finally started calling me a geophysicist. Back then, before state licensing, you became a geophysicist when your boss started calling you one.
Come 1986, the industry tanked. Sub $10 oil and layoffs everywhere. Stacked iron all over the state. I was taking Differential Equations at the time and thought, “Fuck it!” and quit school.
But somehow - perhaps by virtue of being a rather cheaply paid geophysicist - I survived all the layoffs. In 1990 I started my own geophysical services company, struggled through the next decade and was finally, in 2000, offered a job (I wasn’t looking), out of the blue, by a strong up and coming company.
Why are you doing the work you do now?
The company I work for is great, I’m now a licensed Texas geophysicist, it is occasionally fun (I just bagged - last week - a huge discovery), it’s always interesting and I can’t imagine myself as anything else.
Hope that answers your question.
Hey, I’m also an DBA for YEARS (since Oracle v 5.1b in 1989)… also part programmer,
part unix Sun/HP/AIX/Linux/MIPS/AT&T admin, and part programmer.
Here I’ve been doing SQL, with varius Perl,Ksh, PL/SQL, or “C” (haven’t learned Java yet).
Along the way- Ive learned a few things that apply to MANY different jobs, especially the ones that you are starting to hate, because you have been
working way to much overtome for an un-apreciative pointy haired boss you now dislike.
Instead of waiting for your JOB to implode or YOU to explode, try some new tactics:
First: Working till 2:AM tends NOT to be rewarded
Sure, I have worked more than my share of 8:AM to 2:AM shifts, getting 3 hours of sleep and being back at work again at 8:AM… While this May get you through an OCCASIONAL deadline, I’ve found that working late on a regular basis has very little reward/bonus/promotion/etc.
In fact, many bosses aren’t even around to notice the extra effort you are putting in to your job, since they went home long ago. Some will mistake detication for free productivity - and just keep handing you enough work to make sure you keep eating lunch and dinner at your desk, and forfit a personal life.
Second:** I suggest that it is EVERY employee’s responsibility to maintain an active communication stream (even PR) with his boss, and co-workers.** Document what you do. Make the documentation readily available/obvious. Send an UN-solicited status report email to your boss at LEAST once per month, twice is better. The fact that the boss got something extra that was NOT asked for should make it stand out, and instantly suspect -but this is actually for YOUR benefit, not just the boss. Include some form of question about your work in the email, asking how to procede, or priorities, whatever… Because of that question, the boss has to at least acknowlege that you sent the message, and s/he read it. If you don’t get a reply, mention it in the hall or on the phone a day later, when you are talking about something else. After a few of these, the boss figures you are involving them in the decision process - and your subsequent emails DO get read with a little more detail - in case there were other questions.
Include a simple list of current tasks, and recent accomplishments. Including priority expected hours, requirements, problems, deliverables. If the boss wants to change the priority, OK- if not, then they have implied agreement with your current plan of action, in writing, which reduces disputes later.
Third: BE productive, but don’t be taken for granted.
You will get more milage from being 20 minutes EARLY to work each day, than staying late three days per week and working 10 extra hours. Being there a bit early, creates that image of relaible & eager – but if you were working hard till 3:am and were 10 minutes late the next morning, they ignore the extra 5+ hours of work, and make a mental note that you were late.
Bummer- but that’s life, (and they werent paying for late hours anyway, were they…)
In fact, make it a firm policy to finish what you are working on 10 min before the end of your day, spend 5 min documenting things, 5 min to tidy up or pack your stuff, and then cheerfully LEAVE! (with the unspoken implication that you have already planned things after work)
Now that you have THAT working schedule in place- the boss has to specificly ASK you to work late, and perhaps even pre-schedule, since you may have other plans right after work. If the boss ASKs you to put in the extra hours, then it’s no longer free volunteer labor, and you might expect to be paid too… or at least have comp-hours added for time off later. (well, you can hope)
Now- to make this work requires some personal DICIPLINE. Make the job hours PRODUCTIVE, not just THERE for nine hours.
**Time management is KEY, visibility helps, deliverables rule. **
When you get there early, don’t spoil the effect by grabbing coffee/gosiping/web-surfing/or writing ling winded replies like this one on Straight Dope.
use those 20 minutes to get moving before other people in the office. Communicate early, with a few emails, or voice messages left for people before they were in the office. By the time they arrive, YOU already have some momentum, and are harder to interrupt/sidetrack.
Don’t waste time mid day, by letting calls go long, chatting in the break room, or getting pulled in to impromptu “meetings” that start as “got a minute”, and wind up running half an hour.
If YOU already have a plan/focus/task, then when “Bob” drops by to interrupt, you can say:
I’m working on “Xxx” Can you put that in an email, so I’ll remember to get on it? If they insist on something NOW, then they understand you have something to get back to (as an “out”) but if they DO put it in an email, then they tend to think more about what they wanted to say, and put 20 minutes of thought in something you can read and respond to in less time.
If the boss wants to stack MORE stuff into your schedule, then YOU already have your day/week planned -and the boss needs to SET the priority on that task, and aknowlege that they have bumped something ELSE to lower/later status. DO be eager to take on productive work, and DON’t avoid things that need finished. That’s what they pay you for, right? But if YOU are organized, and the boss needs to justify giving you a task, then it might be easier to hand some of the “time consuming junk work” to some OTHER employee, who isn’t as organized, and who the boss may not see as being as productive/busy.
Six months from now, you have a boss that you have “trained” to work WITH you, instead of just throw things your way, and a boss that either approves of the work you are doing, or has had plenty of invitations to let you know what to do differently. You also have a great paper-trail showing the work accomplishments, when it comes time for a job review or even (:eek: gasp) a raise.
Seven months from now, if it becomes obvious that this really IS going to be a cruddy job forever, and you pointy-haired boss is beyond reason/training/help, then you have at least established some degree of control over your situation- and you can take that extra time after work to study for a NEW/better job, since you aren’t throwing your time at 3:am unpaid labor while everybody else has a life. You will either improve your situation at THIS job, or improve your situation with the NEXT one.
Of course, this does depend a job market with some space to move into.
Many of us have seen the IT market hit the dirt, where market-rate pay actually goes DOWN instead of up, and employers have an ability to pick strong talent at low-ball saleries… but that’s part of why you needed that evening time to study, and build yourself into the best hire prospect you could- right?
SO-- BACK TO the ORIGINAL comment above, about being too chickenshit to quit:
You don’t always have to QUIT a current job, even without another one to step into.
You can use the tactics above to exert some control over the job you DO HAVE, until it improves, or you have the time/energy to put toward getting a better job.
:dubious: **NOW comes the HARD part… making all of this stuff actually HAPPEN – in my OWN life, and job!!! **
(sometimes I forget - and need to heed my own advice)
I need to cut/paste/print or get a tattoo of this on my inner forearm for reference.
Oh Yea – to remain somewhat on topic: How did I get into computers and databases???[ul]
[li]I started learning computers in high school. We didn’t have a teacher who knew it, so I taught myself, then my brother, next we went back and taught the math teacher, who proceded to become the computer teacher.[/li][li]I made a name for myself in the tiny town I grew up in - and wound up programming for City hall while in college (I was the ONLY programmer, everyone else was a clerk type)[/li][li]I went to college for five years, to study Computer Science & Programming… but this was back in the days of VAX/VMS, Pascal, Fortran, COBOL, PL/1, and a dozen other dialects that are seldom used any more.[/li][li]I started doing contract & development work out of college, with that “new” language “C” that was just starting to become popular in business.[/li][li]I also did some database design using a heirchical db-VistaIII, for a federal government project.[/li][li]My boss was such a “pain” in the architecture, that HIS boss fired him, and gave me the lead DBA job.[/li][li]I got assigned to a job next year doing Oracle 5.1 on VMS with “C” development (fun / cool)[/li][li]Due to my “success” there, fo rmy next project I got tossed to the wolves, as LEAD Oracle DBA on a national project across 33 districts, on UNIX servers (I had almost never seen unix before!!)[/li][li]I spent the next three years working my buns off, but learning lots too.[/li][li]Ten years and four job projects later, here I am. (for better or worse)[/li][/ul]
I guess I’m off to bed, and setting the alarm 20 minutes early. There’s a job to tame, and a boss to train tomorrow.
One of these days my blood pressure is going to either boil over into an enormous, barely-coherent pit rant or blow my eyeballs out of my skull. If the latter happens, my only hope would be that one of them shoots into the gaping maw of a slack-jawed middle manager and causes choking that can’t be cured by the Heimlich manuever due to the recipients porcine corpulency.
