If you don't work IT, retail, or food service what do you do for work?
Sometimes on Lemmy these seem like the only jobs that actually exist, but I'm sure there's a lot of people here with different and unusual lines of work.
I don't really have a title, but I work in a factory.
Go to college kids. Fuck the expense, you still get many more opportunities that a factory scumbag like myself does not. If you don't know what you want or what you're capable of, who cares. Go anyway for anything and you'll meet people who you can network with and you'll be exposed to classes and topics you might not ever have considered. I'm the only scumbag failure in my friend group who didn't go to college and I'm the only loser working in a literal sweat shop while they all work from home with very nice salaries and wives/husbands they met at college. I'm still single.
Not to argue too heavily with your valid life experience, but I was one of the few in my friend group who did not go to college, yet I am doing somewhat what I want to do (tech related) while my friends do nothing related to their degree and make less :/
It's not a surefire way to get a better job unfortunately.
Go to college for something that you can get a good job in. I have an associates and my friend has a masters. I make more than she does, and always have in our respective carriers.
Just saying "fuck the expense" is the reason she got her batchelors in art sculpting, and had to get a masters in something more practical.
I'm of th opinion people like you should make more money and upper management should make less. No point in hiring management if no one works your factory. Manufacturing is some of the most important work there is
It's the correct move. I know a few Phd pro Ph who went this route in their 30s.
Instead of just listening to U1 students with the same bad takes/logic, they now help people with actual tangible problems in the real world.
They also went from "maybe I can afford name brand beans" to "maybe I shouldn't eat out every day this week".
that's pretty rad. i have a friend who teaches in chicago, the stuff he tells me he has to go through just to secure his place in the field is just ridiculous.
all the emphasis on new publications, new ideas, new this and that -- what if we already got the important ideas down years ago and now the work of philosophy is in putting it to practice? why demand that scholars demonstrate their capacity for new ideas instead of demonstrating a capacity for outstanding pedagogy of existing ones? it drives me nuts... we say all of modern philosophy is a series of footnotes to plato and yet expect our professors to focus on advancing the field rather than focusing on principles of quality education and mentoring
Yeah dude the grind to try and get a tenure track job is soul-crushing. I put out over 1000 applications over the course of four years. I had about 15 interviews, 2 second round interviews, and at the end, no job. I can get adjunct work fairly easily, but it comes with no health insurance or stability, and it's paid pretty badly. The adjunctification of higher ed has meant that a lot of otherwise good people have no future in academia, me being one of them. It sucks because I worked for fifteen years studying, teaching, and publishing on very some absolutely esoteric shit, and ended up with less job security and benefits than a Walmart employee. It took a lot of therapy, because this is the one thing I wanted to do with my life. But I know now that it's time to move on, and that I can do good somewhere else if I get the right skills.
I helped design large-ish electrical grids. 30-100k cables
Without the actual calculation bits, unfortunately.
Not very interesting. Bad software. Management didn't really care about the problem. I was there so the problem was "managed" from their point of view.
The boring part. Making sure that there are holes in the walls for sockets, enough capacity in the cable trays. Planning the routing, but I didn't have access to algorithm of the software.
Collecting the ever changing inputs from people who want devices with cables in rooms and spaces. :)
It's my experience in technical professions that many people consider their improvised solutions to be clever and thoughtful, and other peoples' to be shoddy and dangerous.
Are these side jobs under the table or things you actually have to get permits for? I've known a few people who do the former and it can be really lucrative
Screenprinting. I also did work as a quality tech for machining. Manufacturing jobs in general do not seem to get any public recognition even though they can be some of the most engaging and can cater to a lot of people that don’t enjoy the employee-customer relationship.
That being said, finding the sweet spot for management can be a challenge.
It’s a career path that’s practically ignored in schools and I wish math classes used more examples from engineering and manufacturing to answer the age-old “Where am I ever going to use this?” question.
Me too, right when the digital age was taking over. I was young so they had me help design display ads in illustrator. We'd print out the ads with the articles on a laser printer. Cut them and arrange on a page that was then photographed. It was the future back then lol.
I'm a linehaul driver, pic from my first day at this job. I pull a set of double-trailers back and forth between two company terminals overnight. Same route each time, home every day. Pretty chill and easy work, I just listen to audiobooks and podcasts all night as I try not to slap anyone with my back trailer. any recommendations for something new to listen to I'd love to hear it
I highly recommend Science Vs, 99% Invisible, and Cautionary Tales. Pretty good if you're into nerdy stuff. I also recommend Endless Thread if you're interested in stories about the internet. What audiobooks have you enjoyed recently?
Same here! Nice to see another tradesman on this site - we're definitely outnumbered. How often do you find yourself doing minor tasks from other trades - like wiring an outlet or plumbing a sink?
I do occasionally touch on others trades, and it's usually because I work on scattered sites where I and my one partner are in a house together alone. Requesting someone to stop what they are doing and come out to where I am to (usually) remove something that's in the way of my progress is a waste of both our times. I will take stuff out, but it's up to them to put it back, and I always let them know ahead of time to get the all clear and somehow still get talked to about it later.