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Author Topic: What do you do and where?  (Read 565042 times)
Hawkbit
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Posts: 5531

Like a Klansman in the ghetto.


Reply #1400 on: December 17, 2020, 02:41:39 PM

When this thread started I wasn't part of the forum yet. Moved from Ohio to Seattle in 2011, finished my degree and was a product manager for a bunch of websites for a few years. That completely and utterly burned me out and I worked non-profits for a few years until I got tired of the bullshit. Ultimately I pulled an Office Space and I finally just went into the trades.

Currently working as a low volt/sound & communication electrician apprentice in Seattle and the north peninsula. I nailed my tests to get into the apprenticeship and I ranked 1 after my interviews with the panel. Having a four-year degree helped, but being a product manager and understanding how to allocate resources and people is what sold it. Rank 1 was awesome because it meant I got dispatched to work pretty much immediately. If all goes well I should take the oath to be a local 46 IBEW member next month.

So far I've worked in Columbia Tower, hospitals through the region, the Goldman Sachs building at 4th and Union and I'm currently working at FEMA region X in Bothell.

The FEMA building is wild - armed guards, escorts required at all times, etc.. It's a decommissioned Nike missile facility they turned into a FEMA bunker, blast walls and all. Can't talk specifics about the work we're doing but it's interesting. I'm working towards getting into the data centers in the PWN area; lots of stuff in eastern Oregon I would love to be stationed at permanently. 
01101010
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You call it an accident. I call it justice.


Reply #1401 on: December 17, 2020, 03:04:17 PM

When this thread started I wasn't part of the forum yet. Moved from Ohio to Seattle in 2011, finished my degree and was a product manager for a bunch of websites for a few years. That completely and utterly burned me out and I worked non-profits for a few years until I got tired of the bullshit. Ultimately I pulled an Office Space and I finally just went into the trades.

Currently working as a low volt/sound & communication electrician apprentice in Seattle and the north peninsula. I nailed my tests to get into the apprenticeship and I ranked 1 after my interviews with the panel. Having a four-year degree helped, but being a product manager and understanding how to allocate resources and people is what sold it. Rank 1 was awesome because it meant I got dispatched to work pretty much immediately. If all goes well I should take the oath to be a local 46 IBEW member next month.

So far I've worked in Columbia Tower, hospitals through the region, the Goldman Sachs building at 4th and Union and I'm currently working at FEMA region X in Bothell.

The FEMA building is wild - armed guards, escorts required at all times, etc.. It's a decommissioned Nike missile facility they turned into a FEMA bunker, blast walls and all. Can't talk specifics about the work we're doing but it's interesting. I'm working towards getting into the data centers in the PWN area; lots of stuff in eastern Oregon I would love to be stationed at permanently. 

Fuck off... *grumbles... I was going to pursue the electrician line as well until I found out I am red-green deficient in both eyes. Dreams dashed - that said, glad I wasn't the only one with crazy dreams. Good on you... but my jealousy abounds.

Does any one know where the love of God goes...When the waves turn the minutes to hours? -G. Lightfoot
Hawkbit
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Like a Klansman in the ghetto.


Reply #1402 on: December 17, 2020, 03:20:02 PM

That was 100% part of the test - I appreciate that you were frustrated by that. When they tested my vision for colorblind, they threw an unreadable card in the mix that caused me a mild panic attack.

It's been a net positive; less money but better quality of life. Even with the frenetic changing of job sites (swing shift one day, grave the next), working with my hands has resulted in a significant reduction in the anxiety I experienced working in tech. Instead of letting my mind spiral on five problems at once, I have to physically change something one at a time. At the end of the day I can see progress on a panel or a cable tray - not just in an abstract Jira ticket. It's a mental thing for me.

I thought I would be too old at 44 to join an apprenticeship; most of the folks in my classes are early 20s. A friend is an attorney for the plumber's union in Tacoma and told me a story of a guy that made journeyman at 63, so that kind of kicked me in the pants to make it happen. Our generation needs to work for like.... 50 years. It needs to be normalized that we can change careers many times and start things when we're older.
Khaldun
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Reply #1403 on: December 17, 2020, 06:21:52 PM

I'm occasionally tempted to seriously get plumbing or electrician training. I'm convinced it can be part of a lot more college educations than it presently is.

I think back to how absolutely apocalyptically awful "shop class" was in my high school and the high school educations of my friends and I think that's a big bad way we sort what you could or should know as an adult and the choices you could or should have.
Selby
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Reply #1404 on: December 18, 2020, 09:38:31 AM

Boredom strikes!  I make lasers.  Really big powerful ones.  I am the one who gets to deal with the line voltage and make it nice and compact and accurate for the rest of the system.  I'm the youngest one in my department by over 10 years, so I catch alot of hell for being the young kid.  Sure beats the hell out of being a garbage collector.
I don't make lasers anymore. I make the same pulsed systems for RF now. Same concept, different application. I'm finally not the youngest in my group - when I started at this place 11 years ago I was one of 3 people in our 20s of 40 people. Now I'm still on the younger side - the same 2 who were in their 20s are now in their late 30s and 15 people have retired while only 4 have been hired to replace them. My friend and I were discussing the other day how it's a grey workforce, we're just part of the grey now instead of being mocked by them (although I am still allowed to keep my ID photo from 2009 because I haven't aged any).

Ditto the "shop class sucks" aspect in junior high. Ours was mostly so society's rejects could screw around - having only 2 girls in the class didn't help matters much. I did learn how to use tools... kind of. It was mostly babysitting.

I do work with my hands though, I'm now on good terms with the union at work (IBEW) so I can build panels and high voltage systems as part of engineering "troubleshooting" without getting in trouble and it's much more fulfilling than putting budgets and spreadsheets together. That our society doesn't value people who make things is frustrating - but that's been changing a lot over the last 10-15 years compared to the '90s when I was told only morons didn't go to college. I keep telling my 18 year old she should learn a trade of some kind since she can't decide what she wants do in life. I say welding, electrician, or pipe fitting will always have you work.
Khaldun
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Reply #1405 on: December 18, 2020, 04:56:28 PM

In my junior-high shop class, I had an old guy reject scream at me over some obscure shit about the drill press, not even some safety issue but some aesthetic thing about the different things you'd drill for different reasons, no explanation just screaming--I remember he looked like the evil Nazi in Raiders of the Lost Arc (the guy who gets the medallion burned into his hand) and he had weird spittle links forming between his two lips when he screamed at people (which was every day, for no discernible reason most of the time). He was an insane cunt to the few women who were in the class rather than domestic arts--like on their case constantly, screaming all the time. I don't remember a coherent lesson from him about anything. The mechanical drawing guy the next "shop" semester wasn't nuts that way but he had no ability to explain why you would actually want to do this or learn this--it was just, "ok, here you are, my students, do this stuff slightly ok and whatever".

I really think we all get short-changed in terms of imagining what we could do.
lamaros
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Reply #1406 on: December 18, 2020, 09:16:13 PM

I got a career suggestion of being an actuary because I was good at math. Nevermind I slept through the classes, etc. My spec math teacher in my final year of HS told me "you could do really well at this, but you obviously don't want to, so I won't push you" and let me just do the subject for the uni entrance bump. If every teacher had that level of insight and respect... well, I probably wouldn't have ended up doing a subject I didn't enjoy just because it would give me a good mark...

But at the same time, it's asking a lot of teachers individually to provide such support to students. I think a lot of it comes back to the education system and the support the teachers get, as much as community, parental, etc support.
Teleku
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Reply #1407 on: December 19, 2020, 01:11:14 AM

Math teachers can be delightfully direct, yes.  In College, a friend of mine was taking Calculus with me.  End of the semester he is in the teachers office, desperately fighting over how he solved problems on the Final to and get the score high enough so he gets a C for the class and passes.  After awhile the he said the teacher just stopped, looked and him and said, "Ok, tell you what.  I'll give you a C- for the semester.  But you have to swear to me right now you'll never take another math class ever again."

 awesome, for real

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slog
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Reply #1408 on: December 19, 2020, 04:29:21 AM

I got a career suggestion of being an actuary because I was good at math. Nevermind I slept through the classes, etc. My spec math teacher in my final year of HS told me "you could do really well at this, but you obviously don't want to, so I won't push you" and let me just do the subject for the uni entrance bump. If every teacher had that level of insight and respect... well, I probably wouldn't have ended up doing a subject I didn't enjoy just because it would give me a good mark...

But at the same time, it's asking a lot of teachers individually to provide such support to students. I think a lot of it comes back to the education system and the support the teachers get, as much as community, parental, etc support.

Most of the projects I manage have at least one actuarial firm involved.  You dodged a bullet there.

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rattran
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Unreasonable


Reply #1409 on: December 19, 2020, 08:11:19 AM

Meh, even in the late 80s early 90s the actuarial stuff was all computerised tables. Actuarial is just a management path, and the tests are just seeing how dedicated people.
01101010
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Reply #1410 on: December 19, 2020, 10:35:26 AM

Math teachers can be delightfully direct, yes.  In College, a friend of mine was taking Calculus with me.  End of the semester he is in the teachers office, desperately fighting over how he solved problems on the Final to and get the score high enough so he gets a C for the class and passes.  After awhile the he said the teacher just stopped, looked and him and said, "Ok, tell you what.  I'll give you a C- for the semester.  But you have to swear to me right now you'll never take another math class ever again."

 awesome, for real

I did the same with Chemistry. Professor said if I came to every study group and made an effort, I would pass with a C and I was never to take another chem class again. Best decision I could have made. I didn't even get my final back so I have no idea what I actually did on it.

Does any one know where the love of God goes...When the waves turn the minutes to hours? -G. Lightfoot
Hammond
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Reply #1411 on: December 19, 2020, 11:41:05 AM

I have quite a few friends that work in the trades. The money is good but depending on what you do it can be rather hard on your body. Electricians, ironworkers, pipefitters all tend to have joint and back problems. Hopefully by your 40's you are working your way into management / project planning or moving into government work. I cannot imagine starting out in some of these trades later in life. However it guarantees you will always have work. You will always need trade jobs and as long as you don't work in a right to work state you should always be set.



01101010
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You call it an accident. I call it justice.


Reply #1412 on: December 19, 2020, 08:00:06 PM

I have quite a few friends that work in the trades. The money is good but depending on what you do it can be rather hard on your body. Electricians, ironworkers, pipefitters all tend to have joint and back problems. Hopefully by your 40's you are working your way into management / project planning or moving into government work. I cannot imagine starting out in some of these trades later in life. However it guarantees you will always have work. You will always need trade jobs and as long as you don't work in a right to work state you should always be set.

While I will always be fond of trade jobs, I have had a taste with odd high school jobs and college summer jobs. I know I would dread that first day of work where I had to go out into the elements or crawl underneath someone's house or into the attic. Having done all of that already, I do not miss that part of the job.

Does any one know where the love of God goes...When the waves turn the minutes to hours? -G. Lightfoot
Strazos
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Reply #1413 on: December 19, 2020, 10:25:28 PM

21 - Student

Currently a task monkey for VP/Provost of my school.

Fav drink: Bawls, with optional Penguin Mint (yeah, I ripped the idea offa someone with this part, heh).

Goddamn. That was a long time ago.

Since then:

Finished at school, worked odd jobs in security, banking document management, and...GameStop.  swamp poop
*Somehow* got picked for the Foreign Service just shy of my 26th birthday, in 2009.
Been in the same job ever since - DC, Benin, Mexico, Egypt/Israel, DC (again), and now India. Doing mostly consular work, but not always.
It would really take so doing for me to be able to stay around into my 60s, but that's so far off so as to be pointless to even think about.

Haven't had a Bawls in many years.


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Zetor
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WWW
Reply #1414 on: December 19, 2020, 11:32:54 PM

Man, a lot has changed...

Since 2005, I've got my Master's in CS and did a fair bit of R&D and consulting in the white-hat application security world (i.e. h4xx0ring t3h gibson when a client asked us to). Breaking things was fun, but during the last 5 years I focused on the more-productive-yet-boring aspect of appsec: educating software developers on secure coding, i.e. how to write code that is slightly less vulnerable than the ~industry standard~. (A lot of software - especially in the IoT world - is swarming with vulnerabilities that make them really easy to hack, but this probably isn't a big surprise)

More importantly, I have had my alcohol tastes permanently warped by pálinka (though I do like a good single malt). I also stopped signing my posts. That's progress, right?

Draegan
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Reply #1415 on: December 21, 2020, 04:58:06 AM

I mean, I have three kids, a wife and a house now. In 2008 I was just a few years in to living by in an apartment by myself for the first time.
schild
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Reply #1416 on: December 21, 2020, 07:27:43 AM

oh wow this thread

i'm approaching 40

i don't know what i'm doing next

i'm still in austin

(i know what i want to do, it's just unlikely it gets done unless i fall backwards into about 2.5m)
slog
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Reply #1417 on: December 21, 2020, 07:36:49 AM

Meh, even in the late 80s early 90s the actuarial stuff was all computerised tables. Actuarial is just a management path, and the tests are just seeing how dedicated people.

These days for me it's all about designing employee benefit programs that maximize value to employees at the lowest possible cost.  (I'm not an actuary, I just manage them)

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IainC
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Reply #1418 on: December 21, 2020, 01:44:57 PM

I 'do' the English speaking community for the Euro WAR servers.

Abiyt 6 months after this post, I moved to Germany to resume my game design career. I then bounced around a lot of places, and recently moved back to the UK to be the lead systems designer on an unannounced Jagex project.

All of that time though, I was doing variants of the same job in broad terms. Sometimes I was leading teams, sometimes I was the only designer at a palce, sometimes I was doing the consultant thing. Now I do the fun parts and devolve all the shitty donkey work to underlings.
« Last Edit: December 21, 2020, 01:46:51 PM by IainC »

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Abagadro
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Reply #1419 on: December 24, 2020, 08:28:55 PM

Quote
The FEMA building is wild - armed guards, escorts required at all times, etc.. It's a decommissioned Nike missile facility they turned into a FEMA bunker, blast walls and all. Can't talk specifics about the work we're doing but it's interesting. I'm working towards getting into the data centers in the PWN area; lots of stuff in eastern Oregon I would love to be stationed at permanently.

FEMA headquarters in DC is nowhere near that secure. Wild.

"As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”

-H.L. Mencken
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