I’m trying to give someone advice on choosing a career that will suit them better than the one they’re in and hate. I wanted to get together a list of good questions for them to ask themselves so they can use the answers to compare options like “do you prefer to work sitting or moving around,” “do you want to not work weekends” etc.
When not even my closest coworkers or boss could tell if I was working or screwing off because working on or doing research for my personal projects is indistinguishable from my work ones 😅
You know it when you go to work and it doesn’t feel like work. It doesn’t feel like an absolute drag to get out of bed.
I’m an HVAC engineer. I love my job, to me it’s like spending all day solving logic puzzles or a detective mystery. I found I was pretty good at it about 6 months into the job, when I figured out a problem the senior techs couldn’t. I enjoy being out and about instead of chained to a desk.
A job/career doesn’t have to be a passion. Just something you don’t dread everyday. My passion is in sports but somehow engineering was something I was good at, it felt satisfying fixing things. I’d never make my passion my job cause I know it would completely ruin it for me.
I can well imagine that is difficult to be passionate about some installation’s heating and cooling system. But problem solving IS something that many people are passionate about. Good distinction!
I used to work in the pharmaceutical industry and kept hitting layoffs. After the last layoff, I somehow reached a point of “F*** this” and went to a career counselor. They suggested I read " Do What You Are" by Tieger and Barron. That book helped me to figure out what was a good match for my personality, I switched careers and stayed with that job until I retired.
And what was it?
I left accounting and became a programmer.
Internet shit poster. Had a steady job at the shit posting factory for 25 years.
I went to university to study statistics, and I absolutely love statistics… but I was forced to learn SAS and, fucking hell, I hacked that program to shit… my presentations would have loads of pretty printing, multiple data ingest methods, proper error reporting…
So I switched into CS and liked it a lot… then I took a course on data modeling, which led to a course of Relational Algebra (essentially the abstract logical form of what you’re typing in SQL to your RDBMS) then I went on to become a developer and, while I am multiskilled and able to build UIs and backends and even embedded systems… I absolutely adore data architecture and DB performance tuning.
I really can’t understate how incredibly easy it is for me to look at a query over a system I understand and quickly identify likely bottlenecks and logical errors.
If you re-read my comment, you might notice there isn’t a single “Eureka” moment but instead are a series of them - I think that’s how most of come to be in careers we truly enjoy.
What social services is supposed to be would’ve been a dream come true. What it actually is these days is the opposite, an utter nightmare. I took a good look at their atrocities and gave it a hard pass.
Same with healthcare. I am a paramedic by trade, was the youngest in my class, youngest commander, went to work around the world, from the European Alps to the African jungle to Australian outback.
It was quite a journey.
But sadly I had to recognise that I am not cut out of the wood that is required to survive in today’s healthcare systems in industrial nations. It made me profoundly hate humans and even more sick humans. I dread every single day I still have to work with patients. Especially awake patients. I can’t handle them anymore. Don’t get me wrong. I am still giving 100%, sometimes more - and I don’t judge,like some other colleagues do over the years. I don’t care if you are a frequent flyer, a drunk or a murderer - I will give everything and be very nice to you. But inside me? I burn out.
It’s not that I can’t work with the misery,with things I’ve seen. It’s just that I can’t work with people and the system they are part of anymore.I am now lucky enough to mostly be “off the road” in a cushy,self employed, desk job. But still, I can’t fully leave healthcare,as I invested to much. And so I will torture myself again.
In less than 5 hours my alarm clock is going off for another shift. And I am dreading the moment it will.
Fuck.
“Social services” is painting with a broad fucking brush, my man. There are tons of orgs doing fantastic work in social services, it’s not all bad.
I am speaking of the American variety, specifically from the perspective of District 7. It’s so rare to go somewhere where they aren’t abusing power, for the very reason they’ve been made susceptible to that, that a generalized stance can be made and we can say there is a “grain” even if there are people who go against this grain. This is in fact historically established by design, Bill Clinton was said to be the US president the modern manifestation of social services began with, a part of his legacy he considers one of his whoopsadoodles. So it’s not just some random series of broad remarks.
I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about. I’m a social worker in the US, and there are a ton of jobs available to me, whether that’s federal, state, or local government, healthcare, schools, nonprofits, and more. The character of the job depends heavily on the agency and specific department within which you work, and there’s an incredibly wide variety. Pay is bad at some jobs and really good at others.
What is “District 7?” And who exactly is abusing their power?
If you don’t know the nine districts, that’s enough to suggest you aren’t a social worker in the same sense.
I’m sorry dude I’ve worked in social services in hospitals and local government for well over a decade now and have no idea what you’re talking about, “the nine districts.” You’re a social worker if you have a social work license and work as a social worker, not if you work at one of “the nine districts,” as you cryptically refer to what I can only assume is some portion of the federal government.
To not know would be like working in a company and not knowing your bases of operation, or like being a lawyer without having been to law school, so the assertions inspire either inexperience or skepticism. The actual social work institution (not just “working for society”) has its management divided across the US into subregions that typically encompass a few states, and they encompass your jurisdiction. If you were a CPS agent (which is a social services subunit), for example, the absolute limit in which one could relocate children without needing to consult another level of power would be the edge of a district. Each district also varies in their expression of authority, and thus experiences with people are different in each, but generally this institution known for addressing issues of abuse and handling insurance changes is corrupt in America as well as nations unfortunate enough to have modeled their equivalent after the American system, the CPS in particular has thousands of examples of footage of them breaking into homes to take children who haven’t even experienced abuse. If you consider yourself a social worker, I’d seriously suggest you look into who you’re working for.
Are you a troll? There’s not a shred of reality in anything you just wrote. The federal government has no role whatsoever in any CPS function, it’s entirely a state-based system. This is also just completely made up:
The actual social work institution (not just “working for society”) has its management divided across the US into subregions that typically encompass a few states
The social work profession doesn’t have a singular “management,” there are state licensing boards the same way there are for doctors and nurses. Licensed social workers work for literally thousands of different agencies and there are no “sub regions that typically encompass a few states.” Even better, almost none of the CPS caseworkers in my state are social workers. Social work has basically nothing to do with CPS. Where did you learn any of this?! Try to learn it again
I learned engineering and I were going to have the occasional personality conflict about the time I realized I’m an extroverted woman. Thankfully I’m a sarcastic asshole that thinks she’s the smartest person in the room so I can often recover from it
Well certainly not the career aptitude testing in high school, which put me in ministry (the religious kind), philosophy, or military.
I was a cashier at a bunch of places and kept ending up working in the back office, then developing ways to do the bookkeeping on the computer (this was so long ago they were using paper ledgers). I did accounting systems for years, but doing accounting now, with coworkers I like.
I would not call it a passion but an aptitude. And as my former boss says - so much better to have a job you don’t love with great coworkers, than a job you enjoy with people you don’t.
This kind of test told me I should be a librarian. Needless to say I am not that today and it would have been too boring (as a career no less) .
People don’t know shit and cannot tell you what is best for you. Even bosses and so on have no idea and you need to tell them what you would like to do for your development.
When I realized that what I want to do and enjoy in life has nothing to do with my career.
Work is work an and if you’re lucky maybe you get a job with a good team for good company. Maybe your job is even social positive an the that’s even better but it’s still a job not a calling so perfect it’s purely subjective.
I end up having similar conversations with college folks (interns mostly). I usually say something along the lines of:
- If there’s something that you’re so passionate about that you’re going to do it regardless, it’s worth taking a shot at making a living at it. Things like writing, acting, and music are really hard to to make it in, but if it’s really a passion, you might as well give it a go. It’s good to have a Plan B though.
- If you aren’t super passionate about something, or you don’t have the starving artist mentality or whatever, next is to look at things you’re good at that you don’t hate, especially if there’s room to grow in them. If you’re good at math, for instance, you could consider being an accountant.
- If you don’t feel like you have any especially marketable skills, then you’re looking for something that’s more broadly available, like retail or whatever. Of you can find something that teaches a skill, that’s a plus.
Broadly, there’s a passion, there’s a career, and there’s a job. There’s nothing wrong with any of those, but people tend to be happiest in that order. I personally wasn’t super passionate about anything, but liked computers, got a CS degree, ended up as a software engineer at a rocket company, and now manage the software organization there. There were other things I enjoyed, but I figured programming was the most marketable, and that’s worked out for me.
What people tend to like or hate the most about where they work are the people and/or the boss, and that can be good or bad pretty much anywhere. Good to watch out for red and green flags when you’re looking.
Except for the confirmation bias and privilege. https://youtube.com/watch?v=W3I3kAg2J7w
This is actually pretty solid. I’m firmly in the “passion” category, and while I’ve gotten better at it over the years, I often struggle to remember other people just have careers and jobs, and find true fulfillment elsewhere. Now that said, my passion pays somewhat poorly (but steadily!) and isn’t even slightly competitive (I’m even considering leaving the field at this point) but it’s something I care a lot about being done well.
I should have mentioned what you just did: your passion doesn’t have to be your job.
Tangentially, as I get closer to retirement, one of the things I hear from retirees is that they planned on doing a lot more of their hobby when they retired, but found that the hobby felt more like a job when they tried to do it all day. So sometimes it’s better that you keep something you enjoy as something that you can just do when you want.
I started programming as a teen. I didn’t realize I could do that as a job (weird, I know), so I looked into lucrative careers I could do so I could afford to have lots of free time to program. Then I discovered that programming was also a job.
Same. It is fun but was not a good fit. Because I didn’t want to code on my spare time as much. Now I am a game designer and it is exactly right. And it’s more fun to code on my spare time.
I had this one weekend when I was in tenth grade where I did nothing but write code on a fun project. Then I decided I didn’t like writing code. I don’t know why. Kids are weird.
I decided then I couldn’t make it my job. I managed not to program for three years. It turns out I’m bad at everything else. Miserable.
That was 22 years ago. That’s still all I’m good at.
I didn’t have nightmares until becoming an aviation maintenance technician.
The first time I ever set foot in a machine shop I was enamored by the machines. I also don’t have to worry so much about customers or socializing. It’s quiet socially, not so much decibel-y. Things are pretty straightforward and each machine sorta has it’s own personality. You can totally tell when its being just a dick that day, but treat it right and your job is easy.
Pretty similar here. First time I saw a CNC mill run I was immediately hooked. I used to work as a field service tech for a CNC machine tool distributor and I can honestly say that I absolutely loved the work. You drop into some random factory, spend between 3hrs and a week fixing it and then probably never see the exact same issue again. It’s mentally engaging but almost never tedious or repetitive. You can get stuck working late or even spending a night out of town with almost no notice but, I like things a bit unstructured so for me that wasn’t a big deal. Also, I’m problematically introverted so for me the field service gig was perfect. I got to work alone most of the time but I was also forced to interact with complete or relative strangers virtually every day which is good for me because if I can avoid people as much as I’d like, I get a little weird.
I knew growing up that I wanted to be a Paramedic. Both Grandfathers were part time/volunteer firefighters. My older sister became an EMT. I loved the TV show: Emergency.
I became an Army medic and continued as a civilian. This coming December will be my 38th year in emergency medicine. I’m still on the road. We’ll see how long I can last.
Doing your hobby / passion as work is the natural response, but it is not quite right I discovered lately.
A hobby is and needs to be undemanding and you really risk ruining the fun. instead of giving energy it takes energy.
What is much much more important is your colleagues They make and break every job
And if you want to choose careers, think about what type of person works there and the amount of communication
These things are much more important than if the work itself is fun
If you don’t want lots of intense communication and discussion about creative topics, don’t have a creative job. Like concept art or music. Have it as a hobby instead and do it for you.
I just love talking about game mechanics and player experiences in games, so my job as game designer is perfect. When I was a coder, it was fun but I didn’t get to talk to people and it ruined my hobby to be honest, I very rarely code just for myself anymore because it feels like a chore.
Also, being talented is a thing. If you are talented at something, probably try to use that. It’s a head start. If you really want to do something, you can learn it, but it is taxing and the energy can be used for more fun things if you think about it.
In the end you cannot really know how any job is before you try. The added bonus is that you get to see how different work is socially. Even in pure solitary work this matters more than you think, how it will feel to go there every day. If you are treated like a human. If you are respected etc.
Ever since I played watchdogs and shadowrun, I wanted to work in cybersecurity, especially as a Red Teamer, which is literally Shadowrun - you run complex ops that have to break in, and steal stuff from largre banks without anyone but the management knowing about the test, with almost nothing being off-limits, as long as it doesn’t cause some kind of damage.
Five years later, I do work as a Red Team Lead. Hpwever, our company was just scrambling to start doing RT since thats the buzzword now, and while we did have amazing pentesters, unfortunately pentesting and Red Teaming requires vastly different skills. Ypu never need to avoid EDRs, write malware with obscure low-level winapi, or even know what kind of IoC ajd detections will a command you run create, when you are doing a pentest.
But since no one knew better, and I love learning and researching new stuff, while also having Red Teaming romabticized, my interrest in it eventually led to me getting a Lead position for the barely scrambling team.
Mind you, I was barely out of being a junipr, with only three years of part time pentesting experience. It was NOT a good idea.
I quickly found out that RT is waaay harder and requires the best of the best from cybersec and maleare development. We didnt have that. Also, turns out that I love to learn now stuff and take on a challenge, but being a Lead also means you are drowning in paperwork and discussions with client, while also everyone from the team doesn’t know what to do and turns to me about what should we do. Which I didn’t know, and barely managed to keep learning it on my own. Our conpany didnt want to give us much time for learning outside of delivery, I was only working parttime, and I was slowly realizing that we don’t have almost any of the skills we need.
We were doing kind of a good job, most of our engagement turned out pretty well, but it was atrocious.
Turns out, I’m not good at managing and planning projects, or leading people. I’m better just as a line member.
