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.
Electronics RF Engineer, working with legal compliance. Loads of calculations and paperwork. Occasionally, I'll get to test something with cool expensive equipment.
After a long and lucrative IT career I got a certificate in Ecological Restoration. I now do land stewardship, monitoring and maintaining habitats. Literally outstanding in my field, or marsh, or scrubland...
Pay for basic entry level field work is low but many factors at play. Private sector generally pays better than non-profit or government. Knowing native plant and animal species and their conservation status, along with knowing invasive species and how to manage can quickly lift you above entry level. Having certifications in soil, or water quality, or CRAM will boost pay and can lead to independent consulting work. All the field data goes into reports so word processing, spreadsheet and ArcGIS skills are another boost.
Yes it can be competitive, if you don't have a science background, need experience. Many people get experience volunteering. It is a great way to get familiar with habitats and species at the same time. Volunteering is a way start networking and learning about potential employers.
I'm a product development engineer in the biomedical industry. Although from what I read it seems I should have taken a few extra courses in school and gone into software engineering. However I do still enjoy my work (not more than not having to work, but still.)
Branch manager at a 3 trade business (HVAC, Plumbing, Electrical). Very much enjoy beating the competition and taking all of their great talent because they can’t treat them well. It’s not hard to actually give a damn about your people. Turns out, if you do that they like working for you and end up performing even more.
You can block the vast majority of harmful welding radiation with a long sleeve tee shirt. Throw on some sunscreen if you're paranoid about it. I generally wear a lab coat and that's plenty.
If you want something to worry about, worry about gas exposure. You can't see it, generally can't smell it, and if you can feel it, you're probably already fucked. Argon asphyxiation is particularly insidious. Close ur eyes for a little snooze on the job and wake up to meet God.
Audio engineer and composer. I do music for a lot of little indie games and short films, etc. and then I also mix music, and edit audio for corporate earnings calls.
So, your first thought might be for enhancing clarity using techniques like compression and limiting to give the calls a consistent volume and avoid spikes that might bust an ear drum.
This is partially true; I run all these calls through a compressor and limiter for that reason, though I am not encouraged by my employer to be obsessed with making the calls pristine...after all they are done on regular phone lines over regular phones (viz., not on nice microphone) and as such you can't exactly get Hollywood sound; you actually rarely useful data below 175 hrz and what is audible above 2500 us usually very useful when boosted (it becomes very essy, harsh, and hissy)
As a second consideration, many publicly traded companies, needing to carefully word their situations to their shareholders, will record two versions of their call and which one gets aired is dependent on news or other factors that come between the call and the airing of the call (could be a matter of hours, or a matter of days). This is also true to an extent and happens from time to time.
A third consideration you might have is, throat clearing, coughing, rummaging of papers. I'll tell you....the MFS have the driest mouths and lip smack louder than a firecracker. They also don't seem to realize if they shuffle papers next to the phone it will pick it up.
But no, even that is not the main reason.
The main reason they need to pre-record is because they can't read. They can't read simple sentences. I've picked a sentence out at random, and knowing nothing about their insane vernacular (we had fantastic EBITDA margins that gross outstanding for the coming tailwinds that outshine our core foundation pillars and drivers of growth) I was able to read them without messing up.
And yet they....will frequently have to read the same sentence 2-10 times. I'm not kidding. Most of these CEOs are fucking imbeciles and mean ones at that. They can barely read a sentence without fucking up. It sometimes takes me an hour to edit together a 15 min call.
On rare occasions it's because they care. I'm under NDA but I'll just say I have worked with a certain publicly traded meat-alternative company that has a lot of re-recording and edits but it's because their CEO (seems to me) very passionate about what he's doing and agonizes over the right word choices even up until the moment of recording. Props to him. He's taking pride in what he does and can actually read a full sentence.
Other people on the other side of the spectrum can't even be bothered to read their script before they show up and don't know how to pronounce their own product names.
TL;DR: I am mostly there to make sure I have a clear pronunciation of every line of the script, take notes on where there are errors, and edit the script together to make a coherent whole at the end without any gross factual error. I do a little bit of processing to get rid of throat clearing, make the volume consistent.
Machine maintenance / Macgyver. We make air filters and I have to make sure the machines that make them are running.
I also do any other random jobs. Currently I'm creating a simple webpage to submit machine issues that get sent to a Google sheet and an email sent out.
I also machine metal replacement parts. Of course I make any personal projects I want to as well.