I used to work as a line stander on Capitol Hill in DC. You get paid to stand in line for lobbyists for hearings and committees. Many times your there a day before and camping out overnight with all the other line standers. It’s like an old school concert ticket environment, if you ever camped out for concert tickets back in the day.
Actually the lobbyist are the ones that do most of the hiring for that position. I worked for the Dutko group at the time, before that I was a bike messenger and they get those jobs all the time.
I’m a metals engineer. I design and monitor processes to make metals with the right properties for a given application. That means lots of testing to prove it was done right, and testing usually means breaking shit to make sure it has enough strength and ductility.
It has pros and cons. The money is good and demand is higher than supply so it is pretty easy to find a good job, but it is a niche field so I have to go where the work is and aw(mm usually they put these places in the middle of nowhere in shitty republican states that have great corporate tax policies. It is also pretty much exclusively on-site work which means I have very limited choices of where I live.
I am a polymath and am good at lots of mathy sciencey things, I’m hindsight I probably would have picked something that allows for remote work. TBF remote work wasn’t much of a thing in 1995 when I chose this field but I wish now that I could work remotely.
All that said it is a good time and has treated me well so far.
I create control systems, currently in the automotive industry but the same principles apply to any control system, which is the thing I love about this subject. The skillset is about trimming down a problem to it’s absolute bare essentials. I always wondered what makes machines tick and control theory is the systematic expression of that pursuit. We model the system or phenomena in question and then develop the control in simulation. Once we have the desired result, it is usually realised as a software object that is embedded in a computer.
I started on this path as an unemployed and disillusioned 32 year old engineer, retrained over a period of 2 years and it turned out to be a huge source of fulfillment.
I’m a Dev(Sec)Ops Engineer, so I’m basically the guy who makes all the funky stuff in the background so developers can write their apps/websites and automatically roll them out on different environments and versions, also im more or less adding a bunch of tools for this and different platforms so the devs can do that autonomously without me being there 24/7
It’s becoming more common, but I work in the cannabis industry. People don’t tend to know much about exactly what I do and how weed sales works. The education and certification side of this is actually super unique. You do have to get a basic agent ID, but it’s really more of a background check than anything. But, because the rec market is so very new here, you are basically required to have broken the law extensively to have the knowledge and experience needed to sell weed. Everyone I work with has a criminal past, even if they never got busted. I talked about buying psychedelics on the darkweb in my interview, and my HR person knew exactly what the fuck I was talking about. It’s just one of the many wonderful things about working in cannabis <3
My main job is pretty commonplace but I moonlight as a fire performer. I got into it kinda by chance but it has consumed my life. I actually have to carry insurance and do have certifications to do fire. In fact, I’m licensed to write letters of recommendation for new performers. I also have to pull permits for it in my city.
I also do burlesque and sideshow, but there isn’t really a formal process other than deciding you want to try hammering a 5" nail into your head. Sideshow is best described as putting things where they DON’T belong. Being a social outcast and knowing people helps.
Would I do it again? Yes, it’s a fulfilling art form. But unfortunately the industry is superficial garbage, and the conditions of your birth will greatly affect the ratio between effort put in and success.
From 2005 to 2008 in South Florida I created and ran a permit expediting company. It came from my mom managing a construction company, them having too many contracts, and not enough contractors to run their own permits. I saw a need and got together with a couple of friends to incorporate.
We pitched it to the owner of the company my mom managed and got a contract from them. We eventually picked up other companies as well.
So the job went like this: one of us be assigned to a specific geographic area or company for the day, we would stop by the office, pick up the paperwork for whatever permits had to be filed, retrieved, delivered.
We would visit the city building department and depending on the city (each ran things in drastically different ways with no consistency) we would be there for 15 minutes or all day. Some permits would be a quick, single day turnaround or could be in bureaucratic hell for a month or two. We’d charge based on the complexity and time involved in getting permits approved. Then we would either deliver the permits to the contractor or the job site. On occasion we would deliver liens to customers who didn’t pay their bills which could sometimes get dangerous.
The only people I’ve ever met that did this exact type of work were people I met within city building departments. It’s a relatively boring, but uncommon profession.
The job came with all kinds of weird knowledge that I’ve never had to use again, like how many palm trees on the property equal a shade tree for the purpose of landscaping requirements. Than answer back then was 3.
The company was born out of a construction boom after Hurricane Katrina and died during the housing market crash of 2008.
Edited for spelling and sentence structure.
Also edit: sometimes getting permits approved would involve meeting with city engineers, making corrections on engineering documents, and just having a good rapport with the city.
Also, currently I am a change control analyst for a telecom company. My job description literally says “protect the network”. Essentially network engineers submit projects to me, I check the projects for accuracy, impact risk, importance, etc. A lot of the time, I reject work because of errors, cutting corners, not enough preparation, etc.
My job is to balance the projects being done VS how many customers I want to piss off because their services get taken down. My engineers either absolutely love me, or would like to have the opportunity to stab me in a dark alley, there really is no in between. Generally the ones I reject often for crap work are the ones that also want to stab me.
I work in disaster planning - so if you want a really good disaster to happen then give me a call.
To be more serious:
I write disaster response plans mostly for the medical field, e.g. hospitals, nursing homes. That starts with ordinary fires and flooding, but also includes things like “IT outtakes”(which kill far more people than fire each year), “supply line collaps”, etc.
We also train staff, mostly management, and conduct full scale exercises. Additionally I write medical intelligence and evacuation reports. These are basically “plans” for aid workers, expats. that go to risky places: “Oh, I broke my leg in bumfuck nowhere South Sudan! What now? Is there a hospital? Which one do I go to? Which one has actual doctors? Is there a chance that a medical evacuation plane can reach me?”
Originally I am a critical care paramedic and I am currently studying towards (another) master degree in healthcare management. Before I founded my current company I worked as a consultant for various healthcare related firms, before that as an ambulance service director.
But mass casualty situations always were “my thing” and the multi-stakeholder approach I take during planning talking to basically all roles in a hospital, from the higher ups to the guy in charge of waste disposal, is something I enjoy immensely.
I bet Covid got you a lot of fun data to play with re: “supply line collapse”.
I’ve always been interested in work like this–I took a class that covered lean manufacturing and kept thinking about how “just in time” inventory seemed like it’d be awful for a hospital, as the hospital would be MOST needed if supply lines collapsed, and JIT stuff seemed a dumb move. But I was only spitballing on the surface as an outsider.
And mass casualty events are generally centred around population centres. If a train hits that bus in bumfuck, it’s six hours before triage and transport
Yeah, thankfully in central Europe our “bumfuck nowhere” still means that some infrastructure is reachable within 120min usually - and as long as the weather permits we throw dozens of helicopters at it.
Personally I am far more afraid of other scenarios therefore.
I’m no bearings expert but my gut tells me that if I were to start making cheap toys for kids that centered around bearings that had no significant durability or precision requirements, I would probably not opt for a bearing design that was rare or expensive or unique.
In fact, I’d probably go knocking on doors of those companies that do have strict requirements and be like, gimme all the ones that failed inspection.
In fact #2, if i wanted to retire and make everyone in Lemmy threads like this one jealous, I’d start thinking about what other high precision parts probably get thrown out if they fail inspection, that I could buy for next to nothing, and how I could make that into a toy.
Parts of machines are cool. Parts of machines that are crafted to high standards of precision are cool. The toy probably invents itself. Going viral and getting as popular as fidget spinners tho… That seems harder.
I’m a designer, which is a well-known profession, but I design substations, which almost no one I’ve run into has heard of.
Substations are like giant jungle-gyms for electricity. They’re a grouping of electric structures that transfer high-voltage electricity to low-voltage, or low voltage to high voltage. They’re a major part of our electricity distribution system. You drive by at least one every day, most likely.
I got into it by chance. Right place, right time. I went back to school and got my AS in drafting for industrial design and manufacturing. I applied to this job on accident, thinking it was for manufacturing, then when I was offered an interview, accepted it despite the mixup. Why not? They offered about double what other jobs were for a drafter, so I took it.
8 months into the job, a designer position opened up, so I interviewed for that and got the promption!
Door is still wide open, despite the general idea that drafters are becoming less of a demand. Based on my experience, they’re sorely needed, especially for civil jobs. Also I get paid higher than a friend of mine who got her masters in interior architecture (also a drafting/design gig), with just my AS. I’d do it all over again in a heartbeat. Totally worth it.
Even with standard components, you’re still dealing with a wide variety of different sized city blocks with different types of buildings and industries, different grid layouts, etc. You also have to plan for potential future changes in load. Even if you have a large part you can copy-paste you still need to check all requirements and design the interconnections
I see. It’s just that here in the UK a lot of infrastructure like that is literally just copy paste boxes. I’m from a xUSSR country originally and there all the infrastructure is just factory built all the same stuff. Something custom is super rare. I guess everyone knows copy pasted Soviet house blocks, so yeah, infrastructure is the same.
I’m a kiln operator. I run a giant oven to dry red and white pine.
Dropped out of uni. Various retail and tech jobs for about 12 years. 4 years disability. Took an interview at a lumber mill because ‘cool tour’, took a job because ‘paycheck for a little while anyway’. Ran a planer for about 6 weeks and then offered kiln operator when their previous was poached.
On the job learning for me with the caveat that it was not a reasonable expectation to set. Typically one works under a senior operator for about two years not ‘you’re on your own but you’re good at google right?’
Certified by my work for government heat treatment programs, front loader/forklift operation and working at heights. One of those jobs where mindset is more important than education.
Would I do it again? Yes? I’d want more money for the work. There’s not a lot of people who will write an algorithm to interpret the data they gather in a 50c box. It’s a really intense combination of intellectual and manual labor and the compromise seems to be to plop the pay in the middle. Good pay for a lumber mill but shit pay for developing processes, an inventory system and an entire goddamned iOS app(that my boss didn’t even understand much less appreciate).
I wouldn’t expect the door to be open again in the future. There’s not a lot of kilns to run, they are increasingly automated and it’s a job people hold til retirement. The manager who hired me took a massive gamble on a physically disabled but intelligent person so that’s not easy to find either. Owner runs under the ‘warm body is better than no body’ premise. There’s not even any other mills close enough with kilns that I have other employment opportunities. I’ve got a very specific and reasonably lucrative skill set for a rare job.
Warp is more about the piling and stickering of the packs going into the kiln. Wet you can mitigate at home but once a warp is set you’re pretty much screwed.
The mill should have some sort of quality control in place to communicate these issues between the kilns and stacker crew. Find a different mill to buy from. Anything warped is pulled out before the planer at my mill and then sold as rough outs or goes to the chipper.
Ever seen 20 feet high of stacked lumber sway in the wind? Stickering can be a huge safety issue alongside quality.
I imagine if you took two seconds to contemplate how too many small businesses are run, you could figure out it’s shit management from your local companies and not this particular kiln operator.
I work in a museum adapting internationally touring exhibitions to align with their host communities. It’s a great career - there’s travel, I get to see behind the scenes of museum collections, and I get to study other cultures as a job. I do get paid to match the fact that I work for a charity.
My background is in the museum sector, which you can get into either through a PhD in study of a relevant field to the specific museum, or through a graduate program in museum/ conservation studies (which is what I did).
So far as I can tell, there are only a handful of people that do this job globally, which I suppose makes it lesser known!
Antenna engineer. It’s a subset of electrical engineering. It’s often referred to as black magic by other electrical engineers but I don’t agree with that. That would be an engineer specializing in PIM testing. Anyway, it was a great career and I was able to command a higher salary at first, because if you need an antenna engineer, you need an antenna engineer. Unfortunately very few companies need an antenna engineer so, no, I wouldn’t choose it again. Changing companies is too limited. Plus, due to lack of antenna engineers and the high cost of the resources needed to do the job, more companies are moving away from it, preferring to buy off-the-shelf antennas. This means there are fewer and fewer companies doing the real design work.
I got into it, because it was the first professional job I got. Sticking with it was easier than starting over.
I promise this isn’t a “OMG, AI!” question. But it involves kinda that thing.
A long time ago–probably over 15 years–I once read an article about some sort of…“evolved”?..method of generating novel antenna designs. Basically, the article said that the researchers said they had an algorithm or computer “evolve” some potential designs, and it spat out this really weird unintuitive design that was nothing like the human made designs. But it ended up working fantastically well or something when they actually prototyped it and tried it?
Not the person you were responding to, but I’m knowledgeable on the topic. What you’re describing is simulated evolution, and it can (and has!) been used to make anything from antennas to spray nozzles to mixer blades. Basically, you start with one or multiple base designs, then slowly alter parameters about the design (for antennas, this could be length, number of loops, loop direction, etc., or it could be more granular, like starting from a stump and extending or branching in random directions).
You generally have a group of candidate designs, called a “generation”, then randomly select from these designs, weighted towards the ones which perform better, and “kill” the underperforming ones. Then you make random mutations on the remaining members of the old generation to create a new generation. Continue until you have generations that are performing better than your current manual designs, if the evolution manages to reach that point.
There are additional things you can do to solve certain issues the evolutionary process might run into, like taking the parameters for your new generation from two parents instead of one (essentially, this goes from single-celled mitosis to sexual reproduction, and can allow two different evolutionary lines to share their progress).
I’m a geologist, but not the fun kind that gets to look at actual rocks.
I do environmental and some geotechnical work, which pretty much boils down to “Is the dirt poisoned?” and “How hard do I have to squish the dirt to make the future building not fall down?” There’s few things to get excited about, but it’s steady work and pays the bills.
I’m a county prosecutor (in the US). Prior to law school, I studied horticulture and worked on an industrial hazelnut farm. Law school only required an undergrad degree and a decent score on the Law School Amission Test (LSAT). Law School took 3 years and then a summer to study for the Bar exam. After passing the bar exam, one is generally qualified for an entry level attorney job with most DA offices, but the pay is generally slightly lower than you could find at a private firm.
However, government jobs are often sought out for because they don’t generally have a “billable hour” requirement. Billable hours are how attorneys generally charge for their services with a set price per hour. Most attorneys charge by 0.1 hours and each charge must have a statement explaining what it is the attorney did. This is sent to the client at the end of a job or month for them to know how much they owe. Most law firms require a out 1,600 hours per year (33 hours per week). An efficient attorney can probably get their ratio of billable hours to work hours to about 60%. This means if an attorney worked for 10 hours, they would generally only have 6 billable hours. This system often forces people to work longer hours to meet their requirements. However, if an attorney bills more than their requirement, they get a bonus based on amount of money brought in.
If I could do it again, I might do it. I generally like the work environment, pay, benefits, and coworkers, but someday I think I would have enjoyed a more physical job doing something interesting.
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