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How do?

As a wise man apparently said, find a job you enjoy, and you’ll never work a day in your life.

And I’m lucky enough to be finding that true, and have done since 2010 or so.

Now, I’m not expecting specifics. I’m aware that some such as I are asked to not be too blatant about where they work. And for some, it’s a straight up asking for trouble thing.

I do however want to hear about times when you haven’t enjoyed your job or career. As ever, I’ll start.

I count my blessings that I bloody love my career. It’s incredibly interesting to me, and every day brings new and challenging things for me to wrap my brain around. If that’s the key to staying young, I may turn out to be immortal.

The role itself is incredible, and I feel I add genuine value to society. Yet....there was a period where a god awful manager nearly drove me and the rest of my team to pack it in. No matter how much we enjoyed the actual job, that colossal arse made every day a chore.

See, my job involves knowing certain rules and regulations inside out, near verbatim. Yet it also allows for leniency. Where other kinda similar roles can only and exclusively follow the law, my remit is deliberately a wee bit looser.

That manager? That egotistical git! He’d never worked a case in his puff. At all. Not even close. He was ( and with apologies to non- stereotypical middle managers) the sort of middle managers look up to in terms of arbitrary nonsense.

We’d push for a promotion, feeling we’re up to specific guidelines and that? He’d just invent more. And if we met them? More. So on and so forth. He was a toxic presence in our teams. A toady. A crawly little bum lick the Big Boss looked on favourably because he sucked up. Never mind he barely did anything, ever after hours, he’d take the right person out for dinner or drinking etc, and just creep and crawl and pour honey in their ear ( I am categorically not ensuing any kind of physical inappropriate stuff).

Before and after him, our managers respected us. We were a team of perhaps 8, responsible for training and mentoring a division of around 100. In terms of quality and output quantity? We were the tops. Yet every time ‘mmm.....mmm.....mmmmmm I’m not sure because I don’t want it to reflect badly on meeeeeeeeeeee.

Not that I’m bitter,

But hey, that’s the ancient past now. And I’m back to loving each and every day. Even when I take annual leave, I find myself jonesing to get back in the saddle and start tugging on that thread and unravelling the issues.

Whimbrling aside for a second? I came to this specific role about 8 years ago. Before that, was a series of dead end jobs I found something to enjoy in (when I didn’t, I walked. Not ideal, but I’m sadly highly strung my nature, definitely not by nurture). So for fellow Dakkanauts that might not have found the right career yet? Keep the faith, brethren and sistren.

Everyone else? Tells us! Be as specific or as vague about your actual role as you like. It’s the why, not the what I find interesting!

Short version - Nope. I fell into IT when I left school and now twenty-odd years later I'm mid-level and watching my technical skills fade away :-(

Hmmm. I am a teacher, I teach science (Physics and Biology) to kids aged 11 to 18.
It is a challenging job, but can be very rewarding, and it has excellent holidays where I get a lot of hobby stuff done.
I really enjoy planning lessons, and the part where I am actually teaching the children. That is by far my favourite part. I love my subjects and enjoy getting to explain them. I am pretty good at this part by most accounts these days, though I did not start out great but I have been at it ten years.

But the job is wearing me down. Most people would expect that teaching is mostly what I have described above, but that is only part of the job. Of course, there is marking to be done, and some of that can be quite onerous, especially coursework. But that is par for the course. Every job has parts that are unpleasant but required. Marking is important.

What gets me down is the constant organisational changes for no reason. I am constantly being asked to build and rebuild curriculum to various different specifications and educational trends. In ten years, I have written at least two entire curricula per year every year. I often have to transfer curricula between online platforms and so on so my managers can pretend they follow up on it. Most of the stuff they make me do they then make me throw out the following year when some new trend comes along. The other plague is whole school initiatives. To get a promotion, each manager must oversee a whole school initiative. So every year we have a least four or five initiatives in play simultaneously from the various ambitious managers. Usually, they hang around for two years, implement their stupid initiatives, and then leave to a position managing somewhere else. Then the new person comes in, scraps all the old initiatives, and implements their own. This cycle repeats every 2 years at most, so I have been through it more than 5 times now. It is utterly demoralising and exhausting. Because overseeing an initiative apparently just means assigning a bunch of work to staff with no oversight on the workload. Because of this, I regularly work 50+ hours a week and sometimes have to work 70 hours. Remember this is while classroom teaching, a job that requires you to be fully mentally switched on and full of energy.

Over the past three years this has come to a head to the point where I am pretty burned out. My managers tell me I am a super valuable member of staff and they want my help with things, but I am utterly exhausted and just trying to make sure I do not let my students down. I have tried to communicate the issues to my managers but it falls on deaf ears, as they promise that "once these initiatives are done, it will all be over!" while beefing up their CVs for their next job, not caring what comes after.

Added to this, some of them are extremely ideological about education, for example they have insisted on a system whereby there is no consequence for poor behaviour or late submission of work, so trying to get coursework submitted on time is a massive problem as students take free extensions with no consequence and therefore it is really hard to organise my workflow for marking, and dealing with trivial discipline issues is made more complex by having no consistent system and a management who are overly sympathetic to poorly behaved students. I can manage the behaviour stuff pretty well but it annoys me that it is made more difficult so pointlessly.

I am gonna cut my hours back next year, focus on the older kids and exam classes and try and wall myself off from the incompetent managers as much as possible. Need to get my mojo back.

I'm in a strategic troubleshooter role in the public sector, and I love the job. Although nominally IT, I do a lot of business refactoring, and I've worked with a huge range of wildly different services and fantastic, dedicated people.

Colleagues can be... less than motivated, however.

I am and Efficiency Expert and Call Center Director.

In my last job, other people's livelihoods were on the line all the time and the stakes were much higher for my small community. If I screwed up and couldn't save the money, my neighbors were getting axed. More exciting and rewarding, but much more stressful.

My current role is a bit boring as the stakes are so very low, but the pay is good, and the work I can do in my sleep. If I can;t save the money, it isn't a huge deal and I will still get a big bonus. Boring and safe.

The government saw fit to let me fly their helicopters. Its a good go overall. The actual job is awesome; I've deployed/sailed regularly, flown 7 entirely different platforms so far (two operationally), and its challenging and interesting.

The downside is that I have 'secondary duties' which take up an increasing portion of my time, which cuts into flying or proficiency training/studying. The military is hemorrhaging pilots everywhere because you can make more money and work less in the civilian industry. The gov pension is pretty excellent though, which is why some are still sticking around.

They recently announced a slew of changes to retain pilots which are promising if they coalesce, meaning I'll stay in because other than the burdensome paperwork and unnecessary busy work we're forced to do, the job itself is awesome.

I paint miniatures for a living.
So, yeah, I enjoy my job very much.

I'm fortunate to have stumbled into my career out of law school. I was hired as a staff attorney for a government agency in their department of administrative hearings. A couple promotions and two moves later, and I'm a Hearing office Director (essentially middle manager/facility head) and I love it!

I work in IT for a pretty big company, I'm a technical lead to a team of people who administer datacenter operations.

I'm not sure I... enjoy it. The pros are that I'm pretty good at it, and I don't take my work home with me, and I like my coworkers and my team. It also pays pretty well.

The downsides are that once I took on the lead position, I definitely feel my technical skills degrading - it's more administrative than I would have liked. I think I have a lot in common with beast_gts.

But it's really all I know how to do, and I'm lazy and complacent, so I am probably here until I retire or die. There are no benefits to me furthering my education in my current area:, I am now right at the highest end of the Y between picking management and programming, and I'm disinclined to one and incapable at the other.

All in all, I wish I had done something else. My dad was a roofer who also did some construction work and it was a very physically arduous job (and he was often injured that I recall), at least he actually, like, built stuff. He had something he could point to, something meaningful, that he helped bring into the world.

All I have to show for my time are a million meetings and conference calls largely centered around wrangling people together and making them talk to each other.

I work at a GS, for a company that only pretends to care about its workers. Needless to say I hate it.

Short answer: no

Longer answer: feth no.

Bit of both.

I work as an environmental tech, and while a lot of the work we do is boring and repetitive, there are some gigs (mostly field based) that are really satisfying, and I enjoy being out in the world.

However, it's an industry that's hugely short term contract based, and I'm looking at transitioning to a more stable career in a different field. Working as a pure researcher is among the most stable you can get, and can be hugely invigorating, but money is always tight, and your position is often tenuous.

Looking for a career in the emergency services, which I have a fair amount of experience with through volunteer roles and family members.

My job, in and of itself, isn't all that bad.

My BOSSES, on the other hand, are bound and determined to make it as difficult as humanly possible. And if my immediate supervisor ever gets a clue, HIS supervisor overrides him and continues to make things harder and less efficient than they should be.

Sadly, this seems to be true across all companies in my field, so going elsewhere doesn't help. But I'm just too old at this point to re-educate and change fields; I'd never make enough money in the new field to pay off the new degree before retirement.

So I soldier on...

I accepted a long time ago that the things I find fulfilling are largely things no one will pay me to do.

So I don't particularly care about work fulfillment? I have a current job that pays well, has great benefits, and I'm very satisfied to do my work as best I can and go home at the end of the day and do what I like.

My only conciliation is that I’m jacking this one in any day now. Just as soon as that settlement arrives.

Hmm I’d say no, the pays not bad although is very repetitive at times. Even though it can be an easy job at times it can also be very frustrating too.

Still go in and do the job to the standard that’s required as it literally could mean life or death to guys in the field.

Yes? No? IDK
I work with children with special needs, Specifically i do ABA therapy. I enjoy it but it can be tiring being hit by kids and getting screamed at cause i wont let them play video games for the umpteenth time in the last 2 hours. But i want to continue.
My work seems to love me. Last time we had a meeting of all staff, we got paper shout outs, while otheres received like one or 2, i got 13. I have had supervisors tell me that they are surprised with how good i am with clients.
However.....that comes with a drawback, im put on difficult cases quite often, and being a big guy, quite frankly, i think they put me on cause I intimidate clients(Sure they might hit the 4'10 girl who weighs 120lb, but they wont hit the 300lb 6ft guy that looks like the kingpin)
But all this didnt help when i applied, im thinking "Im a Shoe in, been there the longest, only one applying with higher education and they love me. Well i didnt get it. I was told i wasnt creative enough but i was one of the top candidates, and they want me to stay with the company and grow so they will work with me me to get there.
Here is the thing, I think that is hogwash, I work with several of the most difficult clients there are, ones that have made others quit and where the parents love me, and where upset over schedule changes recently. If i got offered it, i would have been taken off all of those cases and put on significantly easier ones. So im wondering, did i not get it because they wanted me to stay with the difficult clients to avoid parent complaints or others getting put on and leaving?
All in all, I love it, i get tons of vacation and sick pay, i get to do fun things, but im not feeling like im being told the truth.....but who knows.

I'm a researcher and I'm very satisfied where I'm at now. I originally studied Biophysics and have changed the exact topics I'm working on a couple of times, in part because there are a lot of different fields I'm interested in. Luckily my current employer was looking for exactly that, as their research also touches a lot of fields and they were looking for someone with a "broad field of view". It also helps that when I can't answer a question directly, I quite likely know someone from my previous jobs who can help.
Also I usually can handle my work stuff in less time than I'm paid for and therefore are free and actually encouraged by my boss to spend the remaining time for said "broad view". So reading research papers from different fields, communicating with former colleagues or visiting other researchers we might collaborate with in the future, which is great. Also the working hours are flexible and home office possible, the payment good and the position is not limited - another plus as I have small children.

The only downside currently: It's sometimes quite lonely here since my bureau and lab are a bit offside and rarely anyone comes by. I would prefer to have some colleagues around for a chat now and then.

I did up until last year.

I joined the Royal Air force in 2010 as a weapons technician. I spent the first 3 years getting my engineering NVQ, then moved straight to 5131 Sqn, which was the RAFs explosive ordnance disposal squadron, and something of a specialist role for my trade. I spent the best part of 7 years living out most boys childhood dreams..Blowing things up, using remotely operated vehicles to disrupt IEDs, making and using door breeching charges, firing .5 anti materiel rifles on the range, tearing through towns on blue lights, learning how to make advanced IED circuitry with my american EOD brothers... I wouldve happily done it for my whole life.
Unfortunately last year, in the infinite wisdom of the MOD, the RAF EOD capability was scrapped, under the misinformed notion that the army could carry out our role in amongst their own.

https://www.forces.net/news/rafs-only-bomb-disposal-squadron-be-disbanded

Since then I've moved to a frontline helicopter squadron, and what a step down that was. My work now basically consists of checking the underslung load strops, and occasionally putting a GPMG on the helicopters.

To remedy this I've applied to commission as a UAV operator or helicopter Crewman/Gunner, but this is a long process. I have 2 years left of my contract, and if I dont make the commission, I will be leaving, and probably seeking a job in rolling stock engineering.

I do not like my current role - but it's a zero stress sort of job. No customer contact, only talking to fellow employees, no goals or sales, and it's all sitting in finance programs while I do whatever else on the side.



The plan is to change careers when I'm about 30

I tried teaching and hated it + paid in pennies - my current job pays more than a teacher my age.... and my job is handling some spreadsheets and painting minis, checking reddit, and watching movies while working. It's sort of a low salary but more than a teacher makes. Insane 45+ days PTO but I dont really need to take off. It's simply boring and I don't feel like I'm doing anything of value day to day. I take off 2-3 days a month for no particular reason.

 Ghool wrote:
I paint miniatures for a living.
So, yeah, I enjoy my job very much.

I did this but I'm no where near as good as you are. I helped out a few studios that needed mercenary deadline/rush jobs as a side gig. I picked up an extra 5-10k a year for a few years doing thi. I wouldnt want to do that full time but 10-20 hours a week already had me at a burn out stage. Luckily I'd work my normal gig while working on client's stuff.

I feel like painting miniatures for work would suck..well wouldnt suck, but I wouldnt enjoy it.. its the reason I never went into anything art related despite having somewhat of an artistic bent. I think the thought of having to work to other peoples designs or ideas, and to a deadline totally turns me off the idea. Its why I could never be a tattooer. because, generally other peoples ideas are cough STUPID cough.

Interesting thread, cool to hear what everyone does.

For me - honestly, yeah, I'm pretty happy.

I work in IT, and do fairly high-level desktop support for a global cosmetics and skincare corporation. I get to tinker with computers, I get to meet lots of (usually nice) people and help them out, and I get to know everyone from global directors to the folks who cart boxes around in the warehouse. I'm generally well-respected (AFAIK!), and am the person most people in the office turn to when they need help - which does feel good, but keeps me busy. For the job I do, I'm also pretty well paid.

The only down-sides are pretty limited scope to actually progress beyond this role, and limited training.

If money was no object, would I keep doing this? Maybe, actually. The only thing that gives me second thoughts there is that, although what I do does help people at an immediate level, ultimately all it really does is help a massive corporation make more money. And if I had complete freedom to do anything, I think I'd like to do something more altruistic than that.

Yes and no.
The job itself is awesome. It's useful, interesting, and I'm very good at it.
As long as pipelines or other industrial tech get built, they need to be checked properly, which is my job.
In recent years however, the company I work for was bought by a corporation which in turn was bought by the Carlyle group, and the corporate parasitism has set in.
On top of that, the office has become increasingly hostile to the people with the actual technical skills to do the job (often abroad in the arse end of nowhere or offshore for 12+ hrs a day 7 days a week for weeks or months on end) with incompetent project managers who not only have no idea of or respect for what we actually do, they have no interest in learning to do anything but bs or jockey for position within the company - to the point clients are starting to notice.
So, currently, I'm looking to save enough money to increase my NDT levels so I can move into a client rep or engineering position elsewhere.

I've been in the Indiana Army National Guard since I was old enough to enlist in 1992 with the exception of a 5 year break in service due to my first wife being a conscientious objector (notice I said first wife...) and picked back up after that marriage collapsed. I enlisted as infantry and spent almost 20 years in that MOS. but due to a spine injury during my Iraq deployment I was forced to get a permanent profile and reclass after passing my Fit For Duty exam. I wound up becoming a cook, which was never my first choice but turned out to be much more enjoyable than I thought it'd be.

After my deployment I was dropping applications places with no real intent on getting work as I had a chunk of unemployment that I could take after all my active duty leave paid out. I applied to Caterpillar thinking that my gak work history would keep me out the door but the application would keep my unemployment going for at least another week. Damn if they didn't hire me, and though I started out assembling large diesel engines there, a layoff and callback landed me in the Machine Shop, where I am to this day. Machining isn't anything I ever entertained the thought of doing. At all. I flat out love doing it, though, and am constantly striving to improve at it.

In short, yes I enjoy both of my jobs, but I honestly wouldn't have thought I would have.

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:
I feel like painting miniatures for work would suck..well wouldnt suck, but I wouldnt enjoy it.. its the reason I never went into anything art related despite having somewhat of an artistic bent.

I feel 100% the same way. I loved art related stuff when I was a teenager, and still do as an amateur hobbyist (just as almost certainly every single person on this forum does, presumably).

I intentionally avoided doing anything art-related when I was in college because I felt that if I did it professionally, I would grow to hate it. Since I also loved computing and technology, and now loathe almost anything related to IT and tech, I think that was a pretty good call in retrospect.

I know people say "do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life", but I always thought it more likely if you "do what you love for money, eventually you're not going to love it anymore".

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
The role itself is incredible, and I feel I add genuine value to society. Yet....there was a period where a god awful manager nearly drove me and the rest of my team to pack it in. No matter how much we enjoyed the actual job, that colossal arse made every day a chore.

Pretty much sums up my last job. Always loved my career but bad management, not feeling trusted or having my experience valued put me in a very bad spot. It's a couple of years of my life I'll never get back, but at least it's over now.

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:
Since then I've moved to a frontline helicopter squadron, and what a step down that was. My work now basically consists of checking the underslung load strops, and occasionally putting a GPMG on the helicopters.

Doesn't take a supersleuth to work out where you ended up. Armourers have always suffered on Pumas.

I missed them so much I had to come back (at least that's what I tell myself!).

I worked as an admissions advisor not two days ago until I got laid off recently. Honestly, it was my first real office job and the environment was a completely different world for me. It was a new branch altogether in Canada (the first one) for an American higher education company that basically provided coding bootcamps through universities they partnered with. It being a new location meant that I was with coworkers mainly around my age and we actually were able to dictate the work culture since we effectively set up the groundwork for it. There were growing pains, but it was legitimately nice interviewing people and figuring out if coding was for them. There were sales pressure, and ultimately I wouldn't have stayed in my position for too long since I can't see myself doing the same thing for more than 2 years, but it was really the people I worked with that made the difference, especially management being both competent and actually giving a rat's ass about their employees. Alas, all good things come to an end, as a bigger company bought mine out and subsequently decided we didn't match their business model and shut our location down. So while it lasted? I did enjoy my job. But it would definitely not be my "end goal" or aim for my career, I'm still moving towards career counsellor or academic advisor of some kind.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Ouze wrote:

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:
I feel like painting miniatures for work would suck..well wouldnt suck, but I wouldnt enjoy it.. its the reason I never went into anything art related despite having somewhat of an artistic bent.

I feel 100% the same way. I loved art related stuff when I was a teenager, and still do as an amateur hobbyist (just as almost certainly every single person on this forum does, presumably).

I intentionally avoided doing anything art-related when I was in college because I felt that if I did it professionally, I would grow to hate it. Since I also loved computing and technology, and now loathe almost anything related to IT and tech, I think that was a pretty good call in retrospect.

I know people say "do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life", but I always thought it more likely if you "do what you love for money, eventually you're not going to love it anymore".

I think that's a fair assessment and I think the problem is that for a lot of people their interest in art-related careers often isn't the same as their competency/ability in being proficient in that field. Art, being more subjective than most industries, seems to have a mixture of both luck and timing that you need a lot more of than other areas of work. If you have the technical skill but what you want to do isn't in demand or currently in vogue, you're out of luck. Or sometimes you have the ideas but you don't have the skill to pull it off. It's a very hit-or-miss type of deal and I think the frustration that comes with that does more to kill that passion than the monotony of doing it for money.

 Henry wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
The role itself is incredible, and I feel I add genuine value to society. Yet....there was a period where a god awful manager nearly drove me and the rest of my team to pack it in. No matter how much we enjoyed the actual job, that colossal arse made every day a chore.

Pretty much sums up my last job. Always loved my career but bad management, not feeling trusted or having my experience valued put me in a very bad spot. It's a couple of years of my life I'll never get back, but at least it's over now.

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:
Since then I've moved to a frontline helicopter squadron, and what a step down that was. My work now basically consists of checking the underslung load strops, and occasionally putting a GPMG on the helicopters.

Doesn't take a supersleuth to work out where you ended up. Armourers have always suffered on Pumas.

I missed them so much I had to come back (at least that's what I tell myself!).

Ha, Are you one of the engineers here?

I think it's fair to say that i enjoy my job some of the time. I work in the live events industry, doing all sorts of different things, from theatre to corporate conferences. Doing the creative stuff is fun, sitting through yet another session on something i couldn't care less about, not so much. At least it's varied, I can't imagine going into work every day to do the same thing all the time.

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:
Ha, Are you one of the engineers here?

I was. Still on camp, but now I investigate the problems the engineers can't fix and write procedures for them. Oddly, I'm now doing a similar thing with rules for a job that I do for Guildball as a hobby. If someone had told me as a kid that having a knack for memorising obscure rules, being able to apply them and being able to create improvements was a way of making a reasonable living, I'd never have believed them.