What's Your Job IRL?

Music is eternally important for humans. If you can bring AKG Sextett magic to people's ears and minds in the 21st century while "Ode To Joy" (Beethoven) or "Ashes To Ashes" (David Bowie) is playing; you will have a job.

I am not joking. Bring back that sound to the world without all the acoustic and electronic hassle and your future is bright.

 

I’m one of those software engineers, too.

I’m working for a company that does output management software for mid- to large-sized companies, some very well-known among them, e.g. car manufacturers. Output management means printing and other forms of document output like email, conversion between document formats etc.

I’m the printer expert, i.e. I write the printer drivers for our software, develop special solutions for customers, and do 3rd level support for customers who have problems with printers or our software in general.

I used to do some development planning and herding of developers, too, but I’m glad I don’t have to do that anymore.

 

Printers are like cats. They do what they want, regardless.

Good grief! Did you make a pact with the devil? ...Or something?

 

One of my first baby steps from being a newbie user to being a Unix systems manager involved the problem that this system, which the company had bought, spat out a blank sheet before printing an invoice.

I became aware of drivers. I found that the "driver" concerned was a shell script. I found out about sed, pipes, and so on... and removed the the form-feed from the ascii data. (or maybe I just deleted the first 60 lines: it was 30 years ago).

From then on, it was just a matter of finding answers to problems quicker than our supplier's support people could. And I usually did.

 

Yes. Printers do strange things at times. But in the end they’re no more mysterious than any computer.

 

Product Specialist at a tech company. I've been doing support here for 8+ years so I'm pretty good at explaining what does and doesn't work, and internal people usually believe me.

 

I sometimes have to explain to colleagues the importance of duct-tape. Then we need it and people stop giving me silly looks.

The new generation still underestimates the importance of screw-drivers, bottle-openers, stanley-knives and duct-tape. I stopped caring. I save myself and get out.

 

Super-glue and Sodium Bicarbonate.

 

I started my new job this week.

I am back in logistics. I basically collect (pick) the orders for the client and bring the orders to the dock for transport. There are many opportunities for growth.

No more restaurant B.S., dealing with people who cannot read menu's and grumpy chefs in the kitchen. No more cliques, popularity contests and dealing with spoiled brats.

Best part: my Saturday and Sunday are back.

 

Super cool to see what bad-asses you all are. It's humbling.

I am a filmmaker. I spent years as an art film maker, editor-for-hire and commercial director. I also had an animation company focused on broadcast design and music videos a lifetime ago.

Now, when I'm not working on my own for-love stuff, I do lots of animation/design for mostly-docs and film titles sequences for feature films and TV. Title sequences are my favourite pro things - I get to do close reads of films by filmmakers I love, and create responses that set the stage. I have the privilege to work with some pretty fantastic and exciting people while doing titles.

My days are filled with a room full of computers, science-perfect monitors, and a nice headphone rig.

 

Just starting back up with the new season tomorrow!
I'm the Youth Conservation Corps Lead at Mt. Rainier, I run the crew of bratty 16-19 y/o for 8 weeks and teach em how to maintain trails, appreciate the natural world, and indoctrinate them with my oppressively hopeful ideology. The other 4 months of the season I work with the rest of the trail crew building bridges, repairing the trail, cutting trees and debris out of the way, and being a weirdo in the woods.
It's a weird job and there's nothing else like it, but it's perfect for me

 

I run a Japanese anime shop here in the Philippines. Apart from anime goods, I also take in orders for more unusual items from Japan. I'm a huge anime fan, and my work allows me to keep in touch with the latest trends. It's hard work as I do everything by myself (shipping, customer support, etc), but the nice thing is I work from home, and so I get to use my rig all the time.

 

The last 2 posts are outstanding, careers I never heard of.

(this thread is very interesting sometimes)

 

This is a precious gift you have.
The service to the kids and building of the infra should not go unappreciated.

Despite driving to the city almost every day, fortunately I live in the middle of nowhere, I go to woods as often as I can.
Although I built all modern lazy ass goodies into my house (ground heating, kick ass ventilation, automated smarthoume thingies) I insisted on a fireplace oven parallel to the central heating. Good thing I have some land and forests. I do my own firewood with an axe and a chainsaw. I split the wood in the forest and pile em in neat rows to dry and collect in the autumn.
Doing that the undergrowth takes cleaning of debris. It's hard but simple work and the mind is at rest.
Stress of my engineering work evaporates in the woods - it is magic.

 

Top thread!
Really interesting to read about the backgrounds and experiences of members here and defintely gives this forum a 'human element' so lacking in other forums.

For myself, it's been 30 years spent in various engineering and PM roles in various industries.
My formative years were spent in the nuclear industry in the UK, mostly spent designing materials-handling and re-processing technology for spent fuel. I also designed the fuel quality validation laboratories at the MOX plant at Sellafield as a green 25 yr old engineer, you know- the one that management at Sellafield decided not to use properly and led to the dissolution of BNFL due to mis-management. The infamy! lol

Then it was aerospace where I helped design the Eurofighter Typhoon multi-role combat aircraft, specifically the control systems for munitions handling and control-surfaces. That was a really interesting stretch that led to me being head-hunted by ASMi in The Netherlands who needed someone to re-engineer and re-package some of their core silicon wafer processing machines and that's how I ended up in NL.

20 years after coming to NL and I'm still here and after completing various consulting roles as well as working with my own data-management company it was time to call it a day and convert my lifelong hobby into a commercial entity, in the form of 'Chris Cables'.

I've been making cables since my teens. Then I started making them for friends. Then, over the years friends of friends and finally to people from all over the globe via various selling platforms.
Converting your hobby into something that can support you financially is idealistic at best and full of risk, but having experience as a product-development engineer and knowing the basics about how to justify and reach commercial viability has propelled me into what I do today.
I'm enjoying it immensly. The feedback from satisfied customers is always an absolute reward and joy to read/hear and the order book is currently at 420 orders fulfilled and rolling on with a 4 week build-queue.
I hope it continues to grow and develop in the right direction and I think I have the right things in place as well as a well thought-out business model, so here's looking forward to the future and helping make peoples hifi's and headphones sound great!
I'm not quite at the stage where I can confidently advise others to drop what they're doing to start their own enterprise but when I'm 2 years down the road with a bank balance that isn't in the red then maybe I'll be able to!
For the moment I'm just enjoying the freedoms, reward and enjoyment it brings.


Edit: making this post a bit more interesting with some photos.
This is a flask-handling system I designed that takes the flasks filled with spent nuclear fuel rods from delivery trains ready for handling/storage processing at Sellafield (Thorpe).



The same flask, after having been recovered from the rail transport area being conveyed towards the storage facility.


A prepared flask being lowered into one of the storage pools, thereby keeping the residual energy release at constant temperatures.


The whole process, from the initial design-brief to commissioning these material-handling systems took about 2 years and that was considered quick by most standards!
Things moved slow at BNFL.

 

This is the kind of work I know exists, but have no contact with. Amazing stuff!

 

I think this is one of the most worthwhile but sadly under-valued jobs you can do!
If you enjoy hiking and generally enjoy being outdoors then it's these folks who maintain the bridges, trails etc. who are usually the invisible link in whether your hike is going to be an enjoyable experience or not.

Here in NL we have such places such as the Amerongsebos and the Hoge Veluwe which are absolutely beautiful tranches of countryside, minute in comparison and scale to some of the beautiful parks and wildernesses that you have in the US and Canada but equally as important to folks who enjoy getting outdoors.

Few realise that it's usually volunteers and workers on modest salaries who actually maintain the trails and make sure that your outdoor experience is going to be an enjoyable one.
Grea tthat you're involved in getting a younger generation involved and hopefully it also instills a sense of value of the great outdoors into them!

 

I'm a neuro-ophthalmologist with hopefully a phd in neuroscience in about a month.

But also I can do general metalworking, woodworking, programming, have a small private electrical engineering laboratory, have general knoweledge about linux servers, I can sing really well, and have to go back to lifting cause I took a pause.

But at the moment, I'm a father, son, and a husband, and that's what I will try to be the most of all. Screw everything else, really.

 

@Case , my dad was a psychiatrist, and a psychotherapist. He really liked Jung.