Career thread?

So lain, I thought this would be a good place for this What do you do for a living? (You can be vague) and what is it like? I'm an EE and I have worked in the industry for about 6 months now and it feels like i'm being killed slowly, sure it feels amazing when i get the wages and when I dont have to rely or anybody but I loath my life now. I feel like the human part of me is going away and I feel like some medieval peasant at the mercy of some knight I basically have a couple options now, go back to uni, try my hand at an academic career (which ive always wanted to do but its very time consuming and my grades arent very good either) or try my hand at starting a business or running away to mountains and doing subsistence farming. I feel lost and desparate. I really cant go on like this anymore. Appreciate any thoughts Pic is a private japanese rail, what a perfect career!

Software developer. It's nice but spending 40 hours working (or pretending to work) at a computer makes me dislike using my computer in my free time, which in turn slows down my progress on fun personal programming projects. >>55055 >I feel lost and desparate. I really cant go on like this anymore. Appreciate any thoughts The first year or so of work was similar for me. You sort of adapt to it. Once you've saved up enough money that you don't have to worry about starving in the foreseeable future, the pressure drops dramatically and work is less stressful and soulcrushing.

Data engineer. Currently earning 6 figures and saving up to buy some land and house cash in hand in the next 2-3 years. Before buying but after quitting I'm planning on having a 2 year sabbatical, travel a bit, buy the house and then probably go back to the industry to work remotely in a less stressful job for another year or so to save up some money to go back to college and do archaeology, then work in construction doing surveys.

>>55055 I feel similarly drained in the I.T industry after a similar amount of time, I don't know how people keep this kind of thing up for 30 years. Every night I have 60 minutes to myself after doing everything I need to, and I waste them every time, because you can't read a good book or immerse yourself on a one hour timer, not really anyway. I wish you and everyone good luck on making it through this.

Physics student here, I have no idea where I want to be in a a decade, but if somehow possible, I want to avoid a desk job at all cost. Right now I of course have to do a lot of studying at the desk as well, but I feel how it is destroying my body and soul, and that's although I enjoy doing the math exercises and all that stuff. Imagining being a codemonkey, having to program stuff I see no purpose in without a challenge would be the worst. I consider doing a phd but not sure about that yet, I also sometimes consider learning a trade after I graduate but that would feel like somewhat of a waste of the years I spent studying. >running away to mountains and doing subsistence farming or this nice option. Honestly, earning money doesn't feel like something that would make me happy anyways. I am currently poor as fuarrrk but I'm happy, I don't want to buy new stuff anyways and I'm sure I can get the money for food and rent somehow at least. >>55055 I don't really have enough experience to help you find the best way, but what would you imagine your ideal job to be like? How does it differ from your current job? Have you got any ideas for starting your own business? >>55081 Very specific, but I love that plan. Having such a diverse life is the dream.

>>55425 Studying physics without being passionately sure that you want to do a PhD is fuarrrking retarded. Even moreso if you want to avoid a desk job. Quit immediately. Wtf are you doing? - physics graduate

>>55426 I'm not studying it because I think it will get me a good job, I'm studying it because I enjoy it.

>>55427 that doesnt shield you from the consequences

I’m a young undergraduate CS student, been in an internship program and will probably keep switching internship programs til I graduate (can’t stand a full time job while enrolled in uni). I plan selling my soul to the corporate world after I graduate, since I have no other options because academic life is soykaf back where I live, working so hard I almost fuarrrrking bleed to death, saving some good money so I can enjoy a more comfortable life moving to a small city and working in a morgue or something when I’m ~30. I’ve already had a full time job before, so I know how soulcrushing it is to do something you know it don’t feel right; yet, I think that is the ultimate 21st century experience everyone will live through, and I’m ok about it.. I’m not a soykafty fetishist about corporate life, money or power, but I know I’ll have to live my whole early adult life pretending I am so I can achieve my ultimate goal: have comfort and time to do what I really like.

>>55425 If you want to do a phd, and don't want a desk job, try to make sure you look like a good candidate for some hands on experimentalist stuff now. Learn some practical electronics or machining or something, try to get involved in actual experiemnts as an undergrad. Lots of physics phds these days are basically programming and latex and math.

>>55425 being a professional scientist is a desk job, with very few exceptions. Personally I'm going for it because I want the kind of job where my coworkers are curious about the world and have the expertise to really push the boundaries of what is known. I've had all manner of jobs and they're tolerable, but I always felt isolated as the only person there interested in scientific research. Most of the benefits of a scientific career come from the scientific community.

I'm a patent examiner. This is a work to live job: you examine a certain number of applications every two weeks for 80 hours and you get a decent paycheck (up to mid six figures), fed benefits, and the ability to telework from anywhere in the us. The work/life balance for the pay can't really be beat unless you work for FANG or something. While this sounds nice, the work is mundane, stressful, and completely unfulfilling. But what work isn't? I get my fulfillment during my free time working on the things that bring me joy... Still, I'm in a quarter-life crisis right now and am seriously considering trying to get a scholarship to get a PhD in Mexico or something. I actually enjoy research and math-heavy engineering, but American academia is quite literally a pyramid scheme.

>>55462 I had to read through a handful of patents when I took a class on computer law. Can't imagine doing it 40 hours a week.

>>55469 I personally like reading and writing so it's not too bad. Plus, it's not like I read entire patents from cover to cover; I mainly am just ctrl+f'ing for whatever I'm looking for. But yeah, not an exciting field of work whatsover.

jI'm a junior full stack Angular 7/Java 8 at a huge medical company. I basically work on a huge codebase which is basically a frankenstein crud app. I'm on preproduction environments and the DB to thich the backkend connects to bottlenecks horribly. Say, I add a console.log somewhere to see something. That's 2 minutes of Angular recompile time + 5 minutes till I get to that part of the app in the browser because of the bottleneck. There is no type of testing, senior devs just implement something and then it goes to preproduction where best case scenario I have to refactor, worst case scenario I'm frankensteining the app more because I have no idea what they're doing and have no access to documentation because only analysts and the developer has access to that. All in all I hate my job, not because of the stack, not because of the pay but because how soykaf is done and I can't find any other work in my town. Also despite being a junior and telling them I've basically written a few lines of java and a simple frontend in React, in the first week I had some manager from the other part of the country breathing down my neck on why I'm taking so long, and then I got in a meeting where a senior dev basically told me "ohh so you know nothing then". I've worked with developers in the last 3 years as devops/sysadmin and I know for a fact it's not this bad on average I'm just wondering how the fuarrrk did I manage to get this as my first actual programming job. tldr: it's not always about the job, it's also about the field and what part of the field. For example I doubt my situation can be replicated in an environment related to secure software or something critical.

I work at a major power utility in Brazil, building strategies to detect metering fraud, energy theft and non-technical losses soykaf. It's a time consuming job, cuz field teams usually call me all the time to ask about legal and technical proceedings. Also it's incredible stressful, considering my "target audience". Once, I received a death threat from the city council leader for trying to interrupt his house's energy supply, even though he was in debt. Right now, I'm looking forward to change sector, there are some opportunities in smart grid, but first I need to finish uni (EE power systems), so I still got some miles to go.

How does one go about finding a career or job that fits me? I'm stuck in a job that is I don't like, and it's either the career, the supervisors and rules at the place I work, or both?

I'm a project engineer for jet engine program equipment at a major aerospace company. This basically consists of coordinating design changes between the designers and the field, providing engineering dispositions, and working with suppliers on any build issues they have. The position became fully remote after the covid hit, which I greatly prefer. Overall it's a pretty chill job, and working remotely gives me flexibility to choose my own hours and spend my downtime as I wish. Not having to commute or deal with office life makes it much less soul crushing, and I like having the option to relocate as I desire.