What do you do for a living?

[Outback Bronze]

toilets/food/trash

Saw a couple of "floaties" lots of trash and they serve food on the beach. Pretty crazy stuff yeah.

 

[Space Lynx]

Saw a couple of "floaties" lots of trash and they serve food on the beach. Pretty crazy stuff yeah.

as a germaphobe, that is not a good time, would rather be on a less quality beach, with my own made picnic/cooler, and not many others around, even if it means a few more rocks in the sand, lol

 

[Dr. Dro]

I wonder how the logistics of that even works, toilets/food/trash, etc. That is wild.

I know in England people were swimming in sewage last year cause of overflooded sewer drains near beaches... too many people heh

They install chemical toilets like the sort of toilet you see in construction sites. They're... as nasty as you would imagine, with drunks doing their business everywhere, in, out and about. The "floaties" are the least of your worries, as with every overcrowded party you'll find all the undesirable elements in those events. I simply don't go, I don't like the hustle and bustle. If you thought that was crazy, though, look at the New Year celebration in Rio de Janeiro, or the Carnaval party.

I feel the same about chilling with my own picnic... like, I'll be honest. Mentally, I could be on the Mars pioneering mission, I simply don't mind being alone and isolated for extended periods of time.

 

[Outback Bronze]

New Year celebration in Rio de Janeiro

Yeah, hopefully will get the chance to check out Rio one day, not at NYE though. Too much.

They would like to take me to Bahia, just north of Rio, yeah?

Also, I asked my wife is she will take me to Columbia one day but she's not keen on it. Said it's too dangerous but from what people tell me Rio is worse so...

 

[Dr. Dro]

Yeah, hopefully will get the chance to check out Rio one day, not at NYE though. Too much.

They would like to take me to Bahia, just north of Rio, yeah?

Also, I asked my wife is she will take me to Columbia one day but she's not keen on it. Said it's too dangerous but from what people tell me Rio is worse so...

Well, it's quite a bit north, the distance between São Paulo and Salvador in Bahia is about the same as the distance between Perth and Adelaide, so you have a reference point. From Rio, I think it's around 2/3rds of the way. Last time I've been to Salvador was around 2007, I believe. While in Salvador you will probably want to visit the Lacerda elevator, best view in town.

Last year, I visited Fortaleza in Ceará state to uh, "catch up" with an old girlfriend of mine that I hadn't seen for quite a few years. I took this at the Beira-Mar:

The beaches in this region are simply paradise, so if you go to Bahia, you might want to spare a few days to visit Ceará and maybe Rio Grande do Norte if you can. The ocean is exquisite compared to the drab muddied puddle we have here in the lower southern hemisphere, this is very close to the Equator so you get those mythical Caribbean-like waters with intertwined patches of blue and green. It was amazing.

I'm unsure about tourism to Colombia as well, not over concerns with gang violence, but I just don't really know what could you do in there. Rio is very violent if you get off the tourist path, but I guess that's the same with most large cities in the world.

 

[the54thvoid]

Hate to be that guy - but this isn't a holiday thread.

 

[Dr. Dro]

Hate to be that guy - but this isn't a holiday thread.

That's fine, we'll get back on topic. I was being courteous to Outback

 

[Zareek]

I'm 46, I work as a DevOps Systems Administrator in the medical software industry. My job is 100% remote. That is awesome when it is snowing and the roads are crappy, or you don't feel well but not bad enough to not work at all. The lack of workplace socialization is a real bummer as well as some of the other things that go along with in person work. Overall, I'll keep on keeping on until something better comes along. I didn't start working in IT until I was already in my 30s and then never looked back. I really enjoyed my early years in the field, lots of hands on time with PCs and servers. These days the most fun I get is writing a quick and dirty PowerShell script. The Linux administration is also fun at times because that is only something I've been doing professionally for 3 years.

Working in your hobby is a double-edged sword. It can be fun, but enough of it and your hobby becomes boring too. In hindsight, I wish I would have become an electrician or a plumber. At the very least, something that kept me on my feet and running around all day. Maybe I should have continued in aircraft maintenance like I did in the Air Force. Oh well, back to the grind.

 

[sepheronx]

I'm 46, I work as a DevOps Systems Administrator in the medical software industry. My job is 100% remote. That is awesome when it is snowing and the roads are crappy, or you don't feel well but not bad enough to not work at all. The lack of workplace socialization is a real bummer as well as some of the other things that go along with in person work. Overall, I'll keep on keeping on until something better comes along. I didn't start working in IT until I was already in my 30s and then never looked back. I really enjoyed my early years in the field, lots of hands on time with PCs and servers. These days the most fun I get is writing a quick and dirty PowerShell script. The Linux administration is also fun at times because that is only something I've been doing professionally for 3 years.

Working in your hobby is a double-edged sword. It can be fun, but enough of it and your hobby becomes boring too. In hindsight, I wish I would have become an electrician or a plumber. At the very least, something that kept me on my feet and running around all day. Maybe I should have continued in aircraft maintenance like I did in the Air Force. Oh well, back to the grind.

better get back in the aircraft maintenance since those F-35's are dropping like flies. Prime time to make money.

I am a professional environmental engineer. My job is to collect bottles to bring back to the bottle depot so I can buy booze, and I also ask politely to people to "borrow" cigarettes' and promise ill pay them back but never see them again, so I can then sell to at a discount to the poor individuals who are on street corners whom are in need of a stress reliever. On some cases, I also like to pretend to be crazy and talk to myself. For some reason, people give me money for that when I am busy screaming at the fire hydrant.

 

[A&P211]

Lol. I have never been at a place where they steal bags from old ladies. But i have been at a place, where the boss only goal was to maximize profit. Even if that means lying to costumers for more sale.

Wow, I would think that employees dont stay there very long.

 

[Tomgang]

Wow, I would think that employees dont stay there very long.

Nope. I was there like 2 months and then i was out of there. Today there are no employees there as this shop was closed down do to complaints and bad reputation in the long run. Costumers droppet the place and as words spread, so would less and less people Agre to work there.

His greed, made him go bankrupt in the long run

 

[A&P211]

Reminds me of when I was on an older plane (MD80 which is no longer in service IIRC) traveling from WA to CA in the 90s, that got struck by lightning. The plane lost power for a whole 5 seconds but thankfully came back to life. I thought sure we was gonna die.

Planes take a lot to kill completely thankfully. Tons and tons of redundancy in them.

The old timer pilots used to call the MD series, mad dogs. They all tell me they were fun to fly, they were fast for the power they had and the noise they produced, they were loud. I've never flown in one but know old pilots who flew them. Alot of those older pilots transfered over to the 757, those planes are like rockets, too much power for its weight class. Those pilots say nothing new today fly like the MD or 757.

 

[Kursah]

Service Manager at an MSP. Started as a Level 1 tech 10-years ago, all I had done up to that point was workstation-side support on the side, never as a job or career. Was turning wrench as a GM mechanic up until early 2013, decided it was time to make a change. I always loved computers, overclocking, custom builds, tweaking things, break-fixing, etc., but had the mindset I needed a harder job to make it or whatever...that was stupid. But I gained some other skills outside of IT because of it, which surely has had its benefits TBH.

Earned my Associate's Degree in Network Administration, graduated 4.0 high honors in 2015. Started as a level 1 tech at the same time I started college, Help Desk and Bench work. By the time I graduated I was promoted to a field engineer and was on-site most days. By 2017 I was promoted to team lead, and had to learn how to transition from working my ass off all day every day to managing and coordinating a team of FE's and E's to do that while balancing my workload. That took some time but was a really eye opening and rewarding challenge that I learned to enjoy.

Because the MSP was pretty small when I started, and was growing, I ended up involved in the interviewing/hiring process early-on, around 2016 for hiring and 2017 for Level-10 meetings (for anyone that follows EOS). In 2020 I was promoted to Service Director (Service Manager), and been rolling that position ever since. This has provided an entirely new set of challenges in management and really ripped me away from IT tech work for about 99% of my time. I still work longer days, usually the first at the office and last to leave. But I've always been that way. I enjoy what I do overall, and helping build careers has become my new work addiction. I started with being fulfilled by being the hero, making people's days, saving the day, seeing and hearing people breathe a sigh of relief knowing their tech or data was okay.

Now, I get to help mentor, train, coach, guide a management team, engineers, techs, etc. to do the same thing. It has been one helluva ride and it all started with me working my ass off, gritting my teeth, and pushing forward, even when I felt I wasn't paid enough, even when I watched people pass me by (that may or may not have "earned it"), even when I watched poor decisions by management and ownership affect the company, etc. I made a decision when changing career paths, that was to be transparent and honest with my management, and not let them push me around. I'd allowed too much BS to happen while I was wrenching that led me to really be an unhappy human being overall...never again. Best decision I ever made, and it affected how I operate, manage, and how those around me do as well.

It has been cool to be a part of this company that was seen 10-years ago as the low-end IT place to work to cut your teeth, then go to the other place in town to build a career and get paid better. Now we're 4X bigger than when I started, we have 3 locations, we went from regional to national, and have some clients in other countries. We've expanded our service offerings, we have more clients and endpoints than ever. Its been a wild ride in some ways TBH. Is it perfect? No. There were A LOT of challenges along the way, but I told myself when I applied, I'm making this a career and I'm giving this job my all to make it happen. I earn at least 4X what I did when I started too, which is nothing to complain about that's for damn sure!

@Cvrk in your OP (I have not read every page of this), you mention you're a network tech. Are you motivated to be more? If so, what are you doing about it? (don't feel you have to answer to me, but you should be asking those of yourself and be brutally honest with yourself).

If you want to get up to higher-level project and senior engineer positions, I'll tell ya while certs don't hurt, a home lab helps more than anything I've seen. Its one of those things I implore and we've even gone as fare as created a tech lab so our level-1 techs can grow even if they don't have the means to build their own home lab yet. But just having a home lab itself isn't useful of course, its what you do with it, what you focus on, how much you invest in it and yourself with it. A career in IT takes a lot of time off the clock for most folks, myself included. I ended up building one to play with domains, DNS, WSUS, DHCP, routing, vlans, etc. Now it hosts all that, some Minecraft servers for my boys, Plex for my family, hosted storage access, replication and redundancy for failover, environmental monitors, etc. It isn't fancy, but its function, and I've learned sooooo much. Since I don't do as much tech work now, this is how I keep myself sharp and up to speed.

Feel free to DM me, I love helping people on their career paths in IT...and I surely don't have all the answers, there's so much shit I don't know, and there's a lot you might be able to teach me TBH. But, I get the feeling of being stuck, going nowhere, feeling worthless. That can be a career issue, job issue, mindset issue, or all of them at once. But you're a smart guy and talented enough to do well in IT, don't ever discount that. No hard feelings if you don't want to discuss this either.

 

[mechtech]

Yeah I'm cutting back my flight schedules (I can pass my assigned flight duties to my colleagues) so that I only work ~60 hours a month , which is barely working, that gives me more time to play games (and other trivial family matters )

Yep. I'm jealous.................

 

[Space Lynx]

Yep. I'm jealous.................

I only work 20 hours a month, but I'm poor as fuck (not horribly so since I don't have to pay rent, utilities, etc) and live with my parents, so

Do not recommend unless you have a good paying remote job that you can travel with a lot... that was my plan... but plans fail.

 

[1freedude]

@Kursah what is MSP? I work for MSP, but mine is Motorola Service Partner.

@Chrispy_ I am a veteran of Howmet. You worked blades and buckets, huh? IGT drools, Structural rules! I started when it was still ALCOA. I got hammered with the campaign during Arconic split...but was working at PCC while it was going on....shareholding has its responsibilities.

@nguyen good chance I made some of your engine parts....for both/all airframes you fly/flown.

@Cvrk your post #140 answered some of my questions. I up and quit a top level position at before mentioned Howmet to move across the country with my whole family. We got a property manager to pay the bills at our old house. I took a huge pay cut, but the quality of life turned out to pay dividends. I wanted to go out west (as we call it in the 'states) because I loved alpine skiing. It did not disappoint. I skied some rad shit. I also aquired the hobby of offroading. Well, true offroading usually involves travelling out of cellular range. I got into radio as a hobby to overcome that communication challenge. I was (still) totally hooked. I participated in emergency planning, mountain top repeater work, social events to drum up new people, and plain 'old chit chat.

You say, "1fd, where the hell are you going with this?" and I say....well, I quit my job again to change careers into the radio field. The only experience I had was my amateur license, and 4x4 mechanic work as hobbies, and of course computers as a hobby.

So far, it is working. I am 46, married, have two kids, three cars, and lots of fun at work. What Kursah said about working his ass off, yeah, do it. I mean sweat your nutsack until your pants are drenched hard work. But then stand back and say, "holy fucking shit, I just put a secure cellular comms system into a $200,000 swat truck." Then, go back to the shop and grab a broom, 'cuz you are low man on the stack.

In other words, dont worry about where you think you should be, or what other people have done. Take a leap and go with it. You'll be fine, so why not have a good time?

 

[snerd]

Retired.

 

[Count von Schwalbe]

I am a veteran of Howmet

go out west

quit a top level position at before mentioned Howmet to move across the country

Morristown? We renovated that plant. A cool 6 million for our scope alone.

 

[1freedude]

Morristown? We renovated that plant. A cool 6 million for our scope alone.

Nope. Hampton.

 

[Solaris17]

I'll tell ya while certs don't hurt, a home lab helps more than anything I've seen.

Yup, I will and have 100% generally hire someone with no experience and more common sense, then someone with a cert and bad habits.

A career in IT takes a lot of time off the clock for most folks, myself included. I ended up building one to play with domains, DNS, WSUS, DHCP, routing, vlans, etc. Now it hosts all that

sure does. I need to keep making my videos my wife told me its been a bit and I need to get back into it. FWIW to anyone and im sure it applies to other professions, homelabs are amazing. It gives you a lot of insight into how things really work. You dont even need to feel overwhelmed about choice.

Find something you hate, maybe you want a game server to start automatically without logging in. (this is a real thing) then spin up a VM, shit you dont even need a seperate machine do it on yours. The amount of things you rabbit hole trying to solve a trivial problem is real.

I remember before I became a storage admin way back my only complaint was I was destroying I/O on large clusters. We didnt have anyone specifically to handle that pain point. So I just did it myself. Then I got properly educated but I learned so much just trying to solve something that was just a simple number read out initially. You never know where your "small problem" will take you and I encourage everyone to chase it.

Also you and a few others hit a point I want to bring back to the front.

Learning. For whatever people pulled from my post, your post, anyones post. I am constantly studying. There is no free ride, no matter how many x####% you make over when you started I study EVERYDAY. No shit. I sit here and read white papers and log into my servers and try things, some days I just read tech news, other times I am literally sitting next to my wife watching starwars designing PCBs. It literally never stops.

You don't need to have that level of dedication, but you absolutely must stay sharp. It always starts because I get annoyed with the way something works and I just end up solving all the connected issues before I can finally do what I want.

Ultra super pro tip: automation. Batch, powershell, task manager, bash, shit create a service. Automation isnt a tool for lazy admins or engineers, its a way for you to buy your time back so you can do cooler shit. However, with that said, if you want to learn what processes are pain points that need fixing in a management role watch your laziest engineer do there work. People have a habit of avoiding things they dislike.

I encourage those to reach out to others in the thread maybe; it seems a few already are. I think people are under the assumption professionals are adverse to talking to people, especially in tech forums, and you are probably right, I myself wont involve myself with certain problems personally, because I dont want to spend my time arguing with someone that learned tech advice on tik-tok, likewise I hate solving family tech problems.

With that said, I love giving perspective or tips tricks or hints. Casual conversation with people actually interested is VERY different from people that are close minded, set in there ways or expecting free work. I am sure everyone in this thread in a profession you are interested in feels the same. You don't get good at something and not feel this way. From what I've seen anyway.

what is MSP? I work for MSP, but mine is Motorola Service Partner.

Managed Service Provider

But you're a smart guy and talented enough to do well in IT, don't ever discount that. No hard feelings if you don't want to discuss this either.

This goes for everyone. Though we are all from diff walks of life I can atleast speak from an IT perspective. You shouldn't discount yourself, and someones success should NOT be a measurement in which you benchmark yourself, this thread can unfortunetely also dash hopes I feel. There are for certain like many others in this thread, some pretty genius or cool things that we have all done. I certainly have had my moments, but there are deff things I am not great at.

Lets take a look at the source code for my ARC Flash Tool here on the forum. Have you actually read it? All good programmers comment. https://github.com/Solaris17/ARC-Firmware-Tool

// I am so trash at C# please help

// AppendTextToRichTextBox(richTextBox1, "Looking up GPU driver version:\n");
// Define and use the GetAndDisplayDriverVersions I want to combine this somehow? but I am trying to translate a powershell command and barely know what I'm doing.
// Get-WmiObject Win32_PnPSignedDriver | Where-Object { $_.DeviceName -like '*Intel(R) Arc(TM)*' } | Select-Object -ExpandProperty DriverVersion

// I should bring back the checkboxes but igsc has issues when I pass "null" values when a checkbox variable is empty.
// Maybe I can do some kind of truncating so it doesnt show as a space but its easier to just auto force and auto allow downgrade.

// I literally can't believe I got this to work.

// Lets do a software update
// Do some version checks
// Maybe make a temp process to close and open the new version later but file handling is hard and I hate it

It looks cool when its open, but I am legit stupid and not great with C#.

 

[Chrispy_]

@Chrispy_ I am a veteran of Howmet. You worked blades and buckets, huh? IGT drools, Structural rules! I started when it was still ALCOA. I got hammered with the campaign during Arconic split...but was working at PCC while it was going on....shareholding has its responsibilities.

Blades and buckets indeed! I was upgrading the automation of the wax blade pattern dipping in the investment casting process - IIRC it was a yttria-based dip for the first layer and smoothness and consistency of that first dip were absolutely key to surface finish quality and 100% coverage.

It was so long ago (nearly 25 years) as a fresh graduate - I don't know if they're even made that way any more but I'd imagine if there's any changes from then it'll be that 3D printers are now used to make the patterns?

 

[Cvrk]

Age: 36, Airbus A320/1 Captain for national airlines, I have flown Boeing 777 and 787 before too.

My hobby are just building PC and playing games, I have built quite a few PCs for my colleagues, leading them onto the road of PCMR...

one of my favorite games to play, would have been microsoft flight simulator. every time i look at it on the YouTube.
i installed 2 times. never ever..ever. got passed the tutorial. its a shame there is no eays mode. i tried keyboard + mouse, then controller. nothing works. the tutorial gets stuck, and does no longer telly ou whaty to do. ....i cant get the plane of the ground no matter what.


sorry. I digress

 

[nguyen]

one of my favorite games to play, would have been microsoft flight simulator. every time i look at it on the YouTube.
i installed 2 times. never ever..ever. got passed the tutorial. its a shame there is no eays mode. i tried keyboard + mouse, then controller. nothing works. the tutorial gets stuck, and does no longer telly ou whaty to do. ....i cant get the plane of the ground no matter what.


sorry. I digress

Well you have to turn on the APU and then the Engines, here is a simple guide for A320
1. On the overhead panel, Press the APU Master switch, then Start APU, then APU Bleed
2. In the center pedestal (between the 2 pilots seat), switch the Ignition switch to Ignition, then start the Eng #2 then #1.
3. Release the parking brake at the bottom of the center pedestal, Aircraft will begin moving
4. For take off push both throttles full forward, when the Aircraft reaches around 150kts you can rotate by pulling the side stick backward.
5. Fly the aircraft using the side stick

I actual played a bit of MS Flight Sim 2020 just to watch how the landing gear on A320/1 operate , funny how playing PC games help me in my job too

 

[gffermari]

Engineering Surveyor in a big-ish company in UK.
Now, I'm in a tunnel project.
In general, we support the company in every project they are in. From rail, bridges, pipelines, buildings, tunnels, etc. always from a surveying perspective.

 

[BillyF]

I'm 33 and I work on structure repair like paint, plaster repair etc.. funny thing is I have a 1st Uni degree but I have never found myself exactly like you said OP. I can do things and have a brain to learn and study but never found a direction or what to do. hopefuly in the near future.