How did you find the career you're in?
Personally, I've always loved the process of taking things apart, understanding how they work and putting them back together. I turned that into a degree in mechanical engineering and eventually a career in power plant operations. Couldn't be happier with my work than I currently am. Its WORK but I don't hate it and I feel like I'm doing something important.
I've always been unable to ignore bullshit from management at work. It's cost me jobs and promotions in the past, but now I work for a trade union, where the ability and desire to argue with bosses is a benefit rather than a liability.
I was on CL looking for an N64 controller and this drunk guy posted an ad for an English teacher in Beijing in the for sale part of craigslist.
I thought that misplaced ad was funny, applied, got the job and flapped over to Beijing to teach.
Rocked. made more than in the states working less than half as much ($2500 USD/month for 9-20 teaching hours a week), cost of living was insignificant, great food, learned mandarin, started traveling and never stopped, and a lot more!
I wish I had known about overseas teaching when I was younger. My kids about to be a teenager and am trying to get him to get the hell out of this country and go visit Switzerland or go teach English in Beijing something like that too. Just to get some experience outside the US. Once he's old enough of course, just planting seeds now.
That's great, let the notion simmer. I heard about teaching overseas multiple times before the right opportunity struck at the right time.
Teaching English is such a quick, comfortable route out of the US rat race, and travel is a wonderful way to build curiosity, respect and tolerance.
I worked with a 67 year old English teacher in Beijing, so with a teenage son, you're probably well within the comfortable age range for English teachers. With 2 billion English students, they aren't saying no to many native speakers.
You can always start with an hour or two a week on an online platform too, if traveling isn't in the cards right now.
Thanks for reaching out, someone else from the US I've been talking to just let me know twenty minutes ago they're moving to Portugal with their wife! I hope these posts stay useful, and I'll be here to offer advice and encouragement as long as I'm able.
If you or your teenager have any questions about travel now or later, let me know!
Thats a great story!
Thanks, it was definitely the pivot I needed at the time. I recorded a podcast episode with the full story, retelling it makes me laugh every time.
I was working at a hotel job part time while doing a bachelor's business degree when I finished the exam prep up to a point where I didn't see a benefit and tried out codecademy.
I had an incredibly pure joy of just creating shitty webpages and doing assignments, learned some javascript and then it hit me.
I started a compsci degree, stopped working and got some student loans and overkilled every programming assignment. I basically thought "If programming is the most valuable part, I'm just gonna max it at the cost of everything else" and it was a fantastic choice.
I applied to all the jobs in Iceland, nobody took me in so I started applying to bunch of jobs in all of Europe. Ended up landing my first job in Germany and that's where it my career started.
Are you remote or did you move to Germany?
I moved but then covid hit and I moved back to Iceland and got myself a remote job in the US as a full-time contractor.
Process is pretty easy for EU/EEA citizens.
My previous boss showed me the job listing and said that it was better than anything he could offer, and told me to apply for it out else he'd lose respect for me.
Sounds like a great boss
Sinceriously the best
IT professional for 20 years. C/C++ developer for 10 years prior to that.
My first job out of college was mostly luck. I took a job doing tech support but after a couple of years was able to transition into development work.
Virtually every job since that first one has been thanks to connections I made among coworkers. I got my current job because I knew two employees here. One of them was a co-founder of the company, and somebody I’ve known since the 1990’s and worked with at 3 other companies prior to this.
Basically because of video games.
It first started with doing some admin work for a very early online StarCraft tournament. Keeping the roster/grid up-to-date and posting results ... by literally editing the html file. Started out helping out more and eventually got into PHP code of this early tournament software and helped with that.
Then later it turned into writing scripts and addons for World of Warcraft, as well as just hosting the general infrastructure like forums, dkp systems and voice chat servers you need for a large guild. Even later external online tools for EvE Online (D-scan parsing, wormhole mapping).
Then I just got lucky and while telling someone all of these "qualifications" they basically just hired me. Even funnier, over a decade later an old WoW guildmate approached me with a programming issue ... and after solving it he offered me a much better job. That's were I work now.
This but it started with pirating video games.
In 2008, I was fed up with a combination of wage slavery and freelancing, so I started looking around for a proper career. I found a job posting on monster.com for something called "seismic survey technician". I was severely underqualified and I had no idea what it was, but it involved computery stuff with and emphasis on Linux and other unix systems, in addition to international travel which sounded interesting, so I sent in my application out of curiosity.
I ended up getting the job, turns out dicking around with Slackware and FreeBSD for 10 years was actually useful. Over the years since then I've carved out a pretty comfy niche in the industry.
Emergency/Crit care doctor.
I initially studied physics/maths with a goal to go into aerospace engineering. I was binge watching scrubs and I thought medicine might be cool so I did that, then I thought emergency medicine sounded cool so I did that, then I thought critical care sounded cool so I did that.
Basically I'm a child that makes poor life choices because things sound cool.
How are you feeling about it now ?
I have some regrets but ultimately it's an interesting job
C# Software dev....
Well i liked doing it during test runs. Wanted to be a cook but that doesnt pay. Neither does if you get a degree in history and i wouldnt have made it threw more standardised tests.
And that one company was the only offer i got to train me sooooo here i am. :)
Not that i dislike it. Its really fun. (Exept the user story writing. I really dislike that!)
We used to build forts for fun. Then later, skate ramps. I realized I was pretty good at building shit so I got a job as a laborer. Then I got a job as a roofer on pretty nice houses. That turned into sort of helper/ apprentice thing. My dad and uncle had a construction/contracting company but I refused to work for them because I didn't want to get a job because I was the owners kid. Later, my uncle blew out a knee or something and they asked me to come lend a hand for a bit. Turns out, they were really, really good and I stayed for about 20 years learning almost everything. Now I work as a project manager and finish carpenter on some pretty big, fancy houses.
Good on you for making your own start. There are many nepos in construction who know fuck all about anything but think they're qualified to run crews.
Truly, I think it shows real character to achieve what you have.
Thanks. Really, I got lucky with mentor types early on.
There was a dude in highschool in the theater group that did the tech stuff. Lights and sound, sets were another group. He was super rad. He taught us that figuring out how to do stuff was at least as fun as doing stuff. He also taught us a weird kind of loyalty. If we skipped class or whatever, we could come and work in the theater as long as we kept quiet about it and just worked. He wouldn't lie or cover for us but if we were there to learn or do, mum was the word.
My roofing boss took me aside one day and asked why I was trying to work so fast. I told him everyone else was cruising. He said "I dont pay you to do it fast. I pay you to do it right. Speed will come later". He also taught me it was crucial to know where the good lunch places were and to make the most of that break.
And between my dad and my uncle, I've learned that just because you're good at something doesn't mean you're a better person than someone, work ends at the end of the day, that if you're being paid to do something it means you're a professional and you should act like one, and to take pride in my work even if its for an asshole client.
I've worked for some shitty people too. They taught me that if I ever think I know it all, I should quit because thinking there's no more to learn just means I've given up trying. They also taught me that hazing is stupid and the only thing that achieves is getting the new guy to piss in your thermos (thats right Dave, you fuck. that was me that fucked up your coffee. Think about that next time you tell someone to move a pile of lumber back and forth 3 times).
Rust Software engineer.
At a very young age, maybe 12yo, a friend of my mom's knew I liked computers, maths, and english, so he sent a youtube course to me on python. And I just couldn't stop watching it. Since then I've learnt a few more languages, but Rust stuck in my mind and I simply loved every part of it. Recently I received an offer to work with Rust on a financial company and I've never been so excited about a job :3
You just described my nephew. He saved up to buy the dolphin hacking tool, I gave him an old laptop to do his more dangerous stuff on so he didn't break his current one, stuff like that. Built his own keyboard, 3d prints me fun shit like a pocket knife wall rack. He's barely in 6th grade. Loves making his own board game rules and messing around with programming and make space stuff.
He is a little autistic and has trouble controlling emotions, explodes easily, but can occupy himself with awesome tech stuff.
I'm autistic too :D
If you show him the game Kerbal Space Program I'm sure he'll love it! And always incentive breaking shit, it's how humans learn ❤️
Thats awesome bud!
I failed upward to the level of my own incompetence.
How's it going, Peter?
No, this is Patrick!
My career found me to be honest. My university study was a dead end (AI) and I needed money. My then-girlfriend had japplied for two jobs, one entry-level programming job and another one, not programming related. She had just been hired by the other company when the programming company contacted her for a second talk. Of course she declined, but they asked whether she knew anybody with a bit of programming experience who was looking for a job. The talk went well and within days I had an actual income.
Was recommended to me by my previous employer. Was the resident computer geek on my nursing unit. Not looking for a new job or anything. Out of the blue, my boss says IT is looking for computer geeks with clinical experience. Fast forward a few months, I am now an Application Analyst.
Mine was all over the place to be honest.
Couldn't afford college, so I joined the military as a weather forecaster - which is what I'd wanted to go to college for anyway.
After my contract, I tried to get into a college for meteorology, but because of the way some "classes" are graded for the military associates you can get, my GPA was technically too low for that program to accept me. I didn't really have another choice for a college at the time, so I did a ton of research on bls.gov and decided to get a degree in geology.
Gosh I loved that program. But unfortunately I got really sick midway through and spent a lot of time in the hospital. What I was diagnosed with basically meant that I would never be able to be a geologist, so I had to swap gears again.
Instead I found GIS and got my degree in technical geography. Took a ton of internships that landed me with a good resume.
Now I work for a utilities company, making maps that are used internally. Since it's utility work, we're union and we have great benefits and flexibility. It's really worked out for me
Maps rock yeah!
I was stuck working in restaurants in my late 20s recovering from alcoholism. Managed to get set up at trade school with a friend who gave me rides till I got my license back. Studied industrial electricity and got a job as a helper shortly after, I've been a licensed electrician for a few years now and work for myself.
I love my trade. It kicks my ass some days but most of the time its not bad, I make good money, and I can feel good about the work. I do a lot of residential service calls these days, I love fixing homes.
I asked my eldest child what he wanted to do when he was older.
He said "I want to be one of those people that put cables into people's houses".
Absolute lad. Electricians are fucking voodoo workers. I don't think he'll ever be short of work either!
edit: that said, if I had to change career tomorrow, I think I'd go into either data networking at the physical layer, or work for a telecoms firm dropping fibre and sorting telephony dramas and whatnot.
Aww bless! It's a great trade with a lot of directions he can take it for sure. It always feels so nice to be able to show up and fix a problem in an hour or two that was driving the homeowner nuts, most people are very grateful. I love being a house surgeon ;)
I had an arrow in the knee kinda situation when I turned 18 so I spent more time on computers
Luck. Nobody dreams about being an auditor( unless you are an accountant) but I had just graduated and was looking for a job like crazy and saw and add for a trainee program in a big4 company. Manage to go in and that's it. trainee programs in big comlanies can teach you a lot. 10/10 would recomend
Any dream I have associated with auditors does not end well.
exactly lol but they do make good money and it can be "confy" work so there is that lol
Did a few jobs while still in school, since then I was basically handed over to new jobs by reference. Never had to write a CV or ask for a job, always "when you are done here, I've found you someone who needs your skills".
A lot of accumulating pieces of luck. I started as a physical therapist, but burned out. A friend suggested a coding bootcamp where I made a new friend who used to be an occupational therapist. She got a job and then moved into digital accessibility (which we hadn't really learned about but made sense with our backgrounds). Her workplace had an opening in accessibilty and they hired me, so I moved and that's what I've been doing ~6 years.
As a kid I sat in front of a computer, so I got a job sitting in front of a computer. I do evening courses so I can get a different job sitting in front of a computer.
Manufacturing quality assurance. I don't have a ton of mech engineering in my area, so I broadened my search by just using "engineer". I had to sift through a lot of software/dev/etc engineering listings. I noticed there was a consistent stream of quality engineer, quality system type roles. Applied, and now it's my career trajectory.
It's a bit niche, the "real" engineers want nothing to do with it, and I get to dabble at various levels into all the products and processes. It comes with a good amount of documentation, auditing, pondering the true intent of accreditation requirements, and other mundane tasks, which is why so many people hate it. But maintaining the quality system maintains the business, so I have a job.
It's not ISO 9001, but it's similar. It has a ton added that's specific to the industry, so it's tangibly useful. Personally, I think ISO:9001 is a pyramid scheme. Under 9k1, you have to vet your vendors... Unless they're also 9k1 certified! Regardless, I'm surrounded by 9k1, so I have some local mobility as well as national mobility for the specific industry.
My last job was going out of business and one of my old coworkers recommended I go work at a slaughterhouse her son works at. Been there 4 months now and like it a lot more than my last job. Still a job though so only so much I can like it.
"If it wasnt work theyd call it play"
A strange combination of circumstances. I originally wanted to do maths research or, failing that, be a maths teacher.
After a stint of research, and given how long getting to a tenured position would have been (with all the sacrifices that demands by chaining one or two years contracts all over the place, and with no guarantee of success), I decided to stop applying after my last contract came to an end.
Meanwhile, I met my wife who lived abroad where my teaching qualification did not hold, so I took a leap of faith and when my contract ended I left my country to move in with her and figured I'd find something there eventually.
At the time, the standard pipeline for a maths PhD looking for work in the industry was to do "data science" so I learned a bit of deep learning (this was pre chatGPT) but very quickly decided I did not want to contribute to that. I decided to start looking for other stuff, loosely related to my degree (and had a shitty admin job for a month).
I luckily found soon after quite a niche job as a software engineer where understanding maths was really needed (working on the geometric kernel of a CAD program) and thus managed to get my foot in the tech door and learn "enterprise" coding there. I moved on from that particular job but remain in something very close to that.
Mom wanted me to go into music performance. I went into computer science both because "holy shit how cool is that" and to get out of music performance.
My alma mater had three computer departments: CSC/CompSci, CIS/Computer Information Systems, and Graphic Design. I've never been artistic, really, so I didn't have a lot of interest in Graphic Design. But I didn't know the difference really between CIS and CSC going into college.
I went to the head of the CIS department to ask about the difference and he was like "CSC is about building the plane, CIS is about flying the plane." Misinterpreting that to mean CSC was about hardware and CIS was about software, I thought I wanted CIS. When I met with the CSC head, he met with me in a little lab in the CSC department. And on the shelves on the walls, there were robotic coin sorters and Lego robots and stuff. And that's basically when I realized the CSC department was my people.
In the 1980s I took a BASIC class in a Radio Shack. I should have known then what career was for me.
In the 90s, after getting a shit degree in undergrad and having so much fun etting it, I joined the Army. I became the office super user, wherever I was stationed and I knew I needed too be in IT.
Built my own CMS while trying to put together my art and design portfolio website. Applied for a graphic design job. In the first interview it came up in conversation that I designed and built the website from scratch. 2nd interview they were very interested to hear how I built the site. Got hired. Showed up on my first day and was introduced to the development team. I was very confused because I thought I was going to be doing design work. Became the lead web developer of their marketing department. Zero experience. Been a web developer for 15+ years now. I keep accidentally doing well at this and can't get out now. I just wanted to draw.
I’m one of those useless management types. Basically got really good at managing processes and people and kept getting promoted. I landed my current job because of someone I used to work with. They needed a great operations manager for a new acquisition and gave me an offer he knew I couldn’t refuse. I LOVE the job and the field it’s in (the trades).
Analytical chemist.
Educated in Marine biology, started work on the dock that developed my ability to handle bizarre hours and self motivation, used the bizarre hours to get a harvest gig in wine making cellar work where I learned to grind, used my grind and bizarre hours to do some commercial electrical installation, then did some electric meter reading where I learned the importance of attention to detail, used all of the above skills to become a winery lab technician where I got experience working with high functioning lab equipment, wanted to get away from wine so now I'm a chemist.
Life is good. I've been more underpaid at every step of the way, but I feel that's allowed me to function with less stress at every step of the path.
I do nothing. I worked so hard for this! All those years sleeping my ass. All this time petting my cats. I had some jobs but, luckily, it stopped before it became a habit.
I got hurt on the job and was given compensation. While I was free someone suggested I get a book called "Discover What You Are Best At," by Linda Gail.
It's a series of tests and then a list of the jobs that use those skills.
I've read a few 'self help' books over the years, but this is the one that actually worked.
And no, I won't mention my career. What made me happy will probably make everyone else miserable.
I didn't - I created it.
I'm a self-employed home improvement contractor. I got laid off from my previous job as a plumber and I didn't want to just find a different company to do the same thing for, so I instead took this decade-long vision of a better alternative and turned it into a business.
Sounds like a plumbers answer.
Loved learning programming as a teen, never wanted to do it as a job, then when I got older I realized that's the only marketable skill I have, so I became a developer.
I fell into it, and let me tell you the excel skills of my coworkers is abhorrent. One of them maintains a shared workbook with 30 worksheets all held together by manually-pasted data and she acts like Vlookups are the greatest thing since sliced ass