Retired last July, so I really love my current position!

I worked in QA/QC mostly metals manufacturing related: petrochemical equipment vendor surveillance; large satellite ground station antennas; and my last job: a heavy/large fab and machining company with a niche product line for winches and crane drum applications. The work was the part I loved, the variety, and different applications encountered. I had opportunity to travel both domestically and foreign.

My first job in the field was a summer job in a new mfg. plant. I was hired as a inspector because I had coursework in drafting and blueprint reading. Before that Quality Control was a vague concept, but I had found my niche....

quote:

Originally posted by chbibc:

I went to college for mechanical engineering and being an ass (it only took me 6 years to earn my degree).

I had that skill mastered by the third grade. Took a while longer for the degree.

I love what I do.

Did the Aviation Electrician thing in the Navy for 23 years, got out and went a UAV company. Did tech writing there for 10 years, got my MBA and moved to the program office for three years. After working for the a particular manager who managed like an E4 suddenly in charge of a fighter squadron, moved over to one of the Big Three aerospace defense companies.

Been here for just over three years and loving it here 95% of the time (at with 50% more pay than the previous company).

I investigate spectacularly unexciting white-collar crimes and actually enjoy it. I will be retiring before I become "that guy," e.g. the one who should've retired years ago because the world changed and he wouldn't/couldn't and now just sits in the office and periodically rages about how the job now sucks. But for now, I actually enjoy it.

I also teach at the police academy-- law and firearms-- and will continue to do that even after I retire from the "day job," because it is an absolute blast.

Best thing I ever did was failing to apply myself in high school.

Current Job, I love; current Boss, not so much. It took me about 14 months to figure him out, now he thinks I am the cats meow.

I spend my days helping high net worth individuals figure out how to use financial products to their advantage, not the insurance company, bank, mutual fund, etc's advantage.

I am looking forward to 9 years from now when I quasi retire and go back to the undergrad classroom. I stopped my gig as adjunct faculty 4 years ago as work travel increased dramatically. I really miss teaching college. At 60, I am retiring and going back to teaching part time.

I really want to make moonshine too, but that is illegal...

I'm a software engineer, been writing code since I was a teenager over 40 years ago. It started as a hobby, and became my career. I love certain aspects of my job. I love the challenge of solving 'real' problems, but lately, all I do is read data from a database and put it somewhere on the screen. Not very challenging stuff. I love old 6502 assembly language and that's what I play with in my spare time to keep me challenged.

I’ve been a paralegal for close to twenty years. I’ve done exclusively family law for years, but am currently looking for a job (without a horrid DFW commute) and hoping to get back into more estate planning/probate work. I love and sometimes hate what I do. A lot of it comes down to who you work for and if they do or don’t screen who they will and won’t take on as clients, plus their personality. I worked for years for a guy who was a superb highly regarded family lawyer who had excellent “craydar.” He didn’t take on true crazies, at least not the readily apparent ones. No CPS cases. Backed us up and told anyone who abused us that he would “fire” them if it ever happened again. Last guy took anyone, sometimes to the point he had to have someone come “babysit” us at the office because he was afraid to leave us there alone. Cases that made me feel like I needed to take a shower when I got home. Too many emergency ex parte motions. Hung us out to dry when clients didn’t get court-ordered stuff back to us in time to be able to draft responses without having nervous breakdowns. Despite people tending to be at their worst during family law cases, I really liked and developed close relationships with most of my clients and loved a lot of what I do. Think I may be ready for estate/probate for the last seven or so years of my career. Not as many fights and most of it is not as fraught. Not saying fights over estates can’t be nasty too, but they tend to be the exception rather than the rule.

I love the career I chose. I entered the Marines out of high school, did a 5-year enlistment, then college and law school. I am a career prosecutor closing in on retirement in about 4 years. Seeing the worst of humanity on a daily basis certainly rents space in your head, but it is very rewarding work and there is never a dull moment.

When I retire I will continue to teach at the university level and at the police academy, and maybe do selective defense work (very selective).

Wouldn't trade what I've done for anything.

Drone pilot and communications specialist (video, photo, print, etc) for one of the largest construction companies in the world. The drone measures materials, areas, volumes, etc.

My freelance work includes filming a network television fishing show, and work for regional media/marketing companies, as well as some oil & gas drone work.

It's a pretty cool mix. Periods of LOTS of driving/filming/flying (currently) coupled with periods of not much going on (in about two weeks from now). I get to fly cool drones, film with cool cameras, and see some incredibly beautiful places.

Right now, I wouldn't change a thing.

Firefighter/Paramedic. It's the only thing I've ever wanted to do. There are times I get aggravated at work and a few days I don't want to go in. But I wouldn't want to do anything else.


Just got my real estate license as well so now I have something to do on my off days.

quote:

Originally posted by aileron:

quote:

700,000+ lifetime miles so far on United Airlines, hopefully reach 1M before I am done...

Be careful what you wish for. I am United Lifetime Global Service (GS) with a little over 4M butt-in-seat lifetime miles on United flying all over the world.

A lot of that was China which isn't happening any more until they stop the zero-covid silliness. And probably not nearly as much after that. I can fly business on flights to Asia so it's not that bad. Lifetime Gold is fine, gets you better treatment on most partner airlines in places I go.

I love the role of my job - Supply Chain Management - optimizing the process of getting the right parts in the right quantity to the right place at the right time at the best cost. It's about problem solving, getting people to buy your ideas and implement them, and working with different people in different roles in different countries. What I hate is the work environments of where I've had to do them.

I came out of the Navy with just a high school diploma either. Went to work at the Navy shipyard as a civilian and thought I was going to retire from Federal service. Every year was a scare of being shut down which eventually did happen. My wife encouraged me to get a degree.

I turned out I like going to school even as I worked. It would have been better if I had stayed in school to begin with. Ended up with two masters And the degrees helped me get jobs.

quote:

Originally posted by V-Tail:

quote:

Originally posted by Lefty Sig:

I am the corporate subject matter expect for assembly of our primary product lines, so I work with plants around the world. I've started up several new assembly plants in Asia, put a new line in Mexico, and now I am working on some projects in the US and UK. Also consulting on a project in Japan and maybe a project in Thailand.

Cover for your CIA assignments?

Cannot confirm or deny.

This year makes 20 years at the same Electrical Engineerig firm for me. We do studies and design for low, medium, and high voltage systems (industrial and utility). We also do a significant amount of acceptance and maintenance testing on the electrical equipment. Studied EE in college and found the job through someone that knows someone that knows someone.

I wouldn't say that I love it, but I'm satisfied with it. The income is good, and some jobs are very rewarding. I'm the only PE that's technically in our "testing" department. That means that only about 50% of my time is engineering, the rest is field work. I very much enjoy the field work, which is mostly limited to the more advanced testing and trouble shooting.

The company has been good to me. The owner genuinely cares about his employees and other than one employee in the time I've been here, there has been zero office drama. We all show up and do our jobs and are willing to go above and beyond to get jobs done and done well.

Even though I'm satisfied, if I woke up finacially independent tomorrow , my remaining days here would be very limited.

Been with my company doing corporate america office stuff for a large insurance carrier for over 16 years. I used to love it years ago when I had a great band of managers overseeing a good amount of staff. Now, it's quite the chore and I'm not happy, but it pays the bills.

I was barely out of high school and saw a high school friend of mine in the quad during our first year of community college and she told me about the career center on campus and ended up making a career out of working in call centers which helped me to get into my current company and move my way up.

Now due to being bought out by a large company and other layoffs/re-org's that regularly happen in corporate america, it's a chore to go to work. I do a lot of manual day to day stuff that is honestly expensive given what they pay me...but I can't hire folks and the work has to get done and my staff have cried, pleaded, and threatened to quit so I need to help them out. Was worse last year when I move to a new boss after my longest tenured (over 10 years) and best boss was laid off and I was ready to quit given all of this. I roughed it out and worked to improve things and assuage my staff and it's better but I'm still not happy at my job.

I'm getting my graduate degree and I plan to be an adjunct professor/teach like many of y'all here. I know it will have it's form of BS too but hopefully less stress than what I have to deal with. And who knows, I may hate teaching but I've really enjoyed it in the past when I've done it personally and professionally.

I do have a plan and I'll eventually be out of corporate america...hopefully sooner than later. Life's too short to do things that suck the life out ya!

Loved my job for 19 yrs

I’m 22 into it now and it’s become work

Company is become more focused on making widgets and analytics look good then letting me do what I was hired to originally (even though I’m $1.5mil over budget ytd)

“Paralysis through analysis”

I retired, I thought completely, from a law enforcement career the last day of 2015. However, due to the anti LE mess in 2020, I jumped through the hoops and got my peace officer license back. I then got on with a LE agency here in the Texas Hill Country where I'm back on patrol 12 hours a day. It has been almost a year since I've been back, and I can tell you, I remember why I retired in the first time around.

I used to. Not any more. I often dread going to work. Give me my paycheck so I can pay off my house and get the hell out of here.

Somewhere along the way somebody got the idea that numbers mean and can explain everything. What an absolute load of crap! There isn't anything that my company doesn't count, track, or analyze. Seriously. NOTHING! A lot of it is arbitrary in nature.

Case in point; last year my meet driver brought me a trailer with a bad tire. Picked up a screw somewhere along his way. I went on breakdown while waiting for the tire guy to show up and get me back on the road. The GPS showed me at the meet point which is considered on property. The next day one of my supervisors told me I need to hit "leave" so it shows me on road then go on breakdown. On property over-allowed is bad; on road over-allowed is ok. Really? Neither I nor the trailer have moved even a millionth of an inch and it's the same amount of breakdown time waiting for the tire guy. Simply a matter of pressing buttons in a different order but one is bad and the other okay.

2 weeks ago I wasn't given a tractor until 40 minutes after my start time. Late getting to the airport. Airport bitches to dispatch and the next morning a dispatch supervisor is giving me an earful about being late. "How is this my fault? You give out the tractors." "Did you tell anyone? Whom am I supposed to tell there, chief? Yesterday's dispatcher was listening when I called the driver to find out he was 20+ minutes away." I'll bet a $1000 that the guy giving me crap did ZERO followup with the other dispatchers to find out why one of them assigned a pickup to the driver that had my tractor when the driver wouldn't make it back by my start time. Even worse... behind the dispatch counter is a huge whiteboard with a couple hundred hooks for the keys. A whiteboard. Do you think anyone has marked the tractors that have critical pull times with a red, dry-erase marker? No.


I can type a hundred chickenshit examples of these sorts of things that happen daily. It doesn't matter how many people, locally or across the country, that have dropped the ball in front of you it's all about who was left standing when the music stopped. I kid you not.

I make decent money, have pretty good benefits, and at 22+ years invested I'm not leaving. Keep my head down, do the best I can, cover my ass, and try to keep my blinders on ignoring all the bullshit. Given what has been announced regarding the future it's only going to get worse.

Dan

I'm an architect and, yes, I love it. It's the only thing I ever wanted to do since I was about 13. It is not without its sucky days, but I find the work very fulfilling. I love to design, love to draw, and love to build.

I love part of my job, the ship driving part. Unfortunately right now I am doing project management for my next ship, getting it through all the Navy processes for upgrading/converting it from a former merchant ship to fulfill a different mission (training) for the Navy.

I have run vessels in every ocean of the world, everything from icebreakers to submarine support ships to oil and gas exploration. I spent almost 20 years running oceanographic research ships for several different institutions.
No degree, I'm what is known as a "hawsepiper" I originally started college as a pre-med microbiology major and dropped out my 4th year to join the circus Navy because I decided I wanted to drive ships.