What careers don’t get enough credit for being fulfilling, acceptable pay and a good work life balance?
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I’ve done all kinds of random jobs but like to tell anyone who will listen that my time as a cleaner was possibly the best of them all.
I worked in a building that was entirely dedicated to operating and adminning a traffic tunnel, so there were normal office rooms but also cool control rooms full of flashing lights and interesting displays and friendly people who were only too happy to infodump about it all.
The top floor was entirely given over to a conference room featuring a massive scale model of our tunnel but also the surrounding road system, complete with tiny toy cars. That room also had a hot drinks machine that was entirely free to employees so most of my breaks were spent up there with a book drinking hot chocolate.
Yeah, cleaning toilets and buffing floors is not exactly going to keep your mind occupied, but that just means it’s free to wander to more interesting places. No stress, nothing to take home at the end of the day.
If you can get by on the generally lower pay and get to clean somewhere interesting there are a lot of unexpected perks, tbh.
The janitor on scrubs seemed like the happiest person in the building
Honestly this was on my mind because I saw a clickbait YT title the other day claiming that the creator had one chance to do a thing or would have to “be a janitor forever” which…a) that’s ridiculous and b) doesn’t sound half bad to me at all 🤷♀️
Note that it is nearly impossible for men to get hired in cleaning positions. I read a study a few years ago where researchers submitted a couple thousand applications to cleaning jobs with male resumes, and got zero interviews. Then they did the same with a woman’s name on the resume and applied to tech jobs, mechanic jobs, and other male dominated fields and got tons of interviews.
Not sure if OP is male or female, but it’s worth taking into consideration that they may face discrimination in that career path.
Interesting! I worked with both men and women at that job, but admittedly it was a long time ago now (and not in the US which I know most people here are) so I honestly had no idea this was a thing!
Still miss that free hot chocolate tho.
I hope the department of labor starts conducting sting operations. I would really love to see one of those HR shits in court on the stand and their employer facing multimillion dollar fines.
Trades. Learn a trade. Electrician?
My kid fell for this. They promise you’ll get paid while you learn. What they don’t tell you is that IF you manage to pass the entrance exam (he did) you get put on a list for open apprenticeship positions, waiting to be called in at any moment. While you’re on that list you don’t get paid. If you do get a spot, contracts only last a couple of months. Then you go back on the list. Rinse and repeat. And the longer you’ve been in the union the higher up you get placed on the list. So the older members get placed before the newer ones no matter what number they were in line. This “join a trade” push is similar to the charter school scam, siphoning up state and federal training funds without delivering results.
That sounds like a specific problem to whatever country you live in, not trades in general.
That’s US trades in a nutshell due to unions.
That has not been the experience of any of my friends in the trades and that’s not a small number
That’s the plumbers, electrical, boilers, elevator, carpentry, lathing, scaffolding, HVAC, refrigeration trades/unions at least.
Schooling is done and provided by the union and not secondary institutes, so they control everyone who goes through their system. In the vast majority of them, you won’t even get in unless you know someone.
You must not actually know anyone in a trade, or you know just the few people in trades that aren’t heavily unionized that aren’t like this.
It’s an extremely well known and common issue.
That’s not how it happens in Canada. Private institutions run schooling and the government oversees the apprenticeship program. Unions don’t have much say in it at all.
Went through the system in Canada, it’s great that they have also started harmonizing stuff across provinces too. Before if you were a third year in BC, you would have to start as a first year in AB as the schooling was too different.
Unfortunately there is some trades that you still need to know someone to get in, since you need a company to sponsor your apprenticeship before being accepted by the government program.
My partner is in an apprenticeship program for electrical and plumbing. We’re in a city so large, with so many tradespeople, that a given field has multiple unions within the same metro area. What you’re describing is not at all anyone’s experience in this area of the U.S.
This is such a bad take. Getting in to the apprenticeship doesn’t gaurantee you work. You have to look at the market in your area to see if there is work for the trade you are going in to. Schools and job posting can give you hints on this. You may have to move where the jobs are. It’s a reality.
That union runs on a seniority priority for job call outs. Not all unions go by this, the one I was a part of gave priority to those who worked least the last 365 days. Don’t paint the whole system as a scam.
Also my union didn’t have contracts for callouts. The companies asked for X amount of guys, they go out for the duration the project. If they like you and there’s more work available then they keep you instead of sending you back on the out of work list. But that’s the nature of construction, it’s up and down and you never know if you have a job after completing a project.
Apprenticeships work the same for non-union, but you have to look for more work yourself if you get let go, same as any other job in the world.
In my experience, plumbers and electricians are near impossible to hire. I’m a branch manager and unless they’re severely under paid or HATE the people they work for they won’t jump ship. There’s a major lack of them already and it’s only going to get worse. HVAC techs are the easiest to hire.
Not to mention how it’s an old boys club who are just doing their own union minimums when they offer apprenticeship spots, not even the people in trades want to be part of the trades pipeline
The only people pushing trades are economists realizing the implications of all the trade electricians being near retiring age, and amgy Republicans who see it as a way to undercut the political trends that increasingly college educated folks have been pushing
I’m totally pushing learning a trade for my niece. Most trades can’t be outsourced or done with AI. And it’s pure gold again from South Park. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RcoGzT9QrTI
Must be a state by state thing. My partner recently moved to trades from another career, and it’s correct that you get put on a list of apprenticeship positions, but they employ you to actively do work the entire time.
I’ve considered trades even with it being a full 180 from what I do now. Seems like location can vastly vary the experience. Build the base and bones of what society runs off of seems interesting though.
Have you considered the building or sales side of networking? One of my yoga teachers does communications systems design, installation and training and she loves it. Implementations in general is good work if you understand systems. Helping people get up and running, designing their setup.
I think that’s an idea that I might have to seriously consider. I loved building out my own, and it’s an area I have some general expertise in. Thanks!
Completely unrelated… be sure to get a will
If you’re outgoing at all, waiting tables is the shit. I support a family of five working 32hrs a week. I meet interesting people, including celebrities. My coworkers are some of the kindest and funniest people you’ll ever meet. And I easily get 15K steps in every working day at a minimum. Free food and sometimes drinks, of course as a perk. And your job is to make people happy, to make their lives better in an immediate and appreciable way, so it’s very fulfilling work.
But it’s not for someone with thin skin.
Some days I miss serving so dearly but I am not an extrovert at all and I absolutely hated having my pay depend on my mood. I’m not very fond of faking it and sometimes it was just so draining. I’m so jealous of the people that can do it well for a long time though, my sister saved up so much money and I had colleagues walking out making 2 or 3x as much as I did, and I wasn’t bad off myself at all most days.
I’m very much an introvert, just one with strong people skills. But you’re right that it can be draining. I love it, though, and I’ve been at it for decades.
I’m extroverted with thick skin, but also an empath. Working any job where I’m facing the public is incredibly emotionaly draining because of it.
Sometimes I miss working service jobs, but never so much that I could go back to it and be that mentally exhausted every day. I give you major props.
How old are you? I am assuming you are more interested in the trades?
If you like to travel go work for an airline. You could work as an aircraft mechanic if you are willing to go to trade school or work in one of a few different jobs around logistics or baggage handling. None of these jobs are customer facing, are often Union and you get to fly the world for free. Just make sure you get on with an international carrier or switch to one as soon as possible.
Mid-30’s working for a tech company as middle level leadership for the support department and need to find something new. Trades are certainly a consideration, especially having a family member or two that have gone down that path.
Well, if you are good at following very precise directions and documentation. Then being an aircraft mechanic could be a thing. Yeah you need some mechanical savvy too, but it’s all procedures. The one thing is you will work nights for the first ten years. Most maintenance happens over night when the planes are sitting at the gate waiting for the next day.
The certificate is called airframe and powerplant or as most people know it A&P certified. It is actually two different certifications but you need both to get anywhere.
Appreciate the additional details, that gives me some place to start with additional research.
What don’t you like about your position now? I spent 10 years in support department management and it drained the life out of me at the end. I moved into Infrastructure administration without any direct reports and now make better money and have fantastic work life balance. Pure tech is ezpz compared to running a team.
Probably not far from what you ran into. I’m 12 years into it and just losing my mind. I have an absolutely amazing boss and teams and managers under me that I mostly adore, but it’s just taking a toll mentally it seems.
Not sure if it’s the endless MVP products that never get touched again, the broken releases or just the bottom falling out of the tech industry but I’m just spent and have been so for a while.
How was your transition to infrastructure management? Did you have previous experience in that?
My management experience was at smaller companies, so I simultaneously ran a team and acted as a technical escalation point. It was actually a step down in technical skills to take an Infrastructure job at a big company - I suddenly wasn’t expected to know everything about everything and also only had to worry about myself.
If your positions have been pure personnel management you might not be able to move into tech as easily. In that case you might want to look into project management or compliance.
I’ve been on both sides and to this day am still a technical escalation point for some products even as a director. I’ll take a look at both that you suggested though. I kind of have a love/hate with project managers so not sure I could look myself in the mirror for that one. :)
I appreciate you sharing thoughts and ideas.
What is infrastructure administration?
Just a higher level sysad.
The military is also an option. If you’re a US citizen, you can enlist until the age of 39 in either the Air Force or the Navy.
Something really boring-sounding at a corporation, like auditing the document reviews, or matching invoices with purchase orders, or filing regulatory paperwork.
Those all sound like jobs that will be replaced by enterprise AI SaaS stuff.
The middle is definitely dropping out. You want to either be hitting this stuff from a very far up view or a bottom view. I look at my employer we only have four positions left
- Assembler
- Engineer/manager
- One very overworked accountant
- Two service techs.
Where did all the secretaries, receptionists, drafters, skilled techs go? Email, voicemail, solidworks, standardized parts, and database software.
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Lots of us would go crazy with that low level brain simulation.
If you can get factory work somewhere with a union, the pay is high, stress is minimal, and the overtime is optional. I was an engineer at a place with a unionized shop. They went on strike, so the company recruited the office to work production until they could get real scabs in. Zero stress for two weeks.
The point is to find some place with a union. If you go somewhere without a union, the pay is shit, management will treat you like shit, and you’re expendable. Plus, mandatory overtime.
Depends on the nature. Working union at a car factory or some high end OEM maker is fun working union at a sheetmetal or bindery and it is far less fun. Comes down to how valuable the product you are making per unit weight.
Stagehand work is tons of fun, honestly! If you’re American or Canadian and live somewhere with a decent music/stage production scene there’s probably an IATSE local in your area you can do gigs with as overhire.
If you don’t mind the hours, working on a garbage truck can be really good from what I hear. But oldy very dangerous too. My cousins husband was a garbageman, then he fell off the truck (I forget how) and was seriously hurt permanently. But until then he really loved what he did.
I don’t think many places have guys ride on the back of the truck anymore. It’s less dangerous and I assume less expensive to have one guy driving a truck with a robot arm to grab the bins. I’m guessing the money is still fairly decent, although the company that does ours seems to be having some sort of staffing problem. We’re supposed to have trash and recycling collected on Mondays, but for the past few months usually one of them won’t get collected until the next day.
If there’s can lifting involved, I would be worried about an unexpectedly heavy can fucking up my back.
Geotechnical jobs.
I live in a major US metro area, and finding time a damn soils engineer was a nightmare. There are very few around and it can take months to get on their calendar because they’re spread so damn thin.
They’re all getting way more money looking for oil.
That’s a good point. The problem is probably that they don’t want to do residential contract work. They’d rather work for big developers or energy companies.
I got to speak with a few soil engineers at a recent job site and they said the worst part of their job is that everyone hates that they’re around, because they’ll make or break a site, lol. I felt bad.
Start hiring people out of Alberta. Still lots of engineers looking for work.
Those people who go up alongside skyscrapers and wash the windows.
Honestly if heights aren’t an issue could be a great job.
Anything you do with an statistics degree.
I work as an environmental engineer that does inspections of industrial, government, and military facilities. Every inspection I get to tour a different place and learn how it works and how things are made. I’ve gotten to see some amazing places like
-NASA rocket testing sites -shuttered nuclear weapons production processes, -the factory that makes all the flavoring for Dr pepper/potpourri/cherry/fake almond (it’s made starting with paint thinner, yikes) -refineries -military bases
It’s fascinating to both see how the world actually works, and how stuff is made, the benefits to society/vs costs to society and environment, and every place has its own site-specific culture. I find so many people take for granted how our whole society is so dependent on a few resources, industries, and expert people working together.
I get to use soft skills to interview people and figure out if they are being honest or hiding something, use my engineering and scientific skills to assess sites, and have a mix of inside/outside work.
My work also does some good - helping develop cases to bring to enforcement. My cases have resulted in changes that improve living conditions for people near these sites, the workers at them, or the environment.
Environmental engineering doesn’t pay as much as other disciplines like a senior software engineer or something. But it’s a good income and the work isn’t as subject to boom/bust cycles as other sectors because it’s driven by regulations more than profits.
According to my Instagram reels lately, working in a mine in Australia
Met an Australian guy once who worked in a gold mine in Australia. He said it was hard work in brutal sun and heat, but the money was fantastic.
Waste industry any part of it. From dealing with smokestacks to garbage to agricultural to feces.
- Employment for life
- Get to make a difference, less pollution is a good thing.
- Salaries are high
- Get to work with the crazy but nice mother fuckers
- Always the badass of your friend group
Every work day I get up and go to my job. The world is that much cleaner because I did that. I get to work with my buddies. The work is mentally challenging and involves light exercise. If they fire me I will have a new job in under 6 working days (no exaggeration). And when I come home I can wait until my wife eats the first bite of dinner before I tell her about the frozen shitberg that my client was dealing with today.
CAD drafting.
Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of shitty CAD jobs out there, but there are also plenty of great CAD jobs as well. I got my AS in Drafting for manufacturing, but manufacturing paid pretty low when I started looking. So I applied for civil CAD jobs instead. Started out at $26/hr, which was a little under double what I was making at the time.
The great thing about CAD work is that there’s lots of room for upwards momentum. I applied for a designer position 8 months in, which bumped my pay to $30/hr. You can work your way up as a designer, or into project management. My company also offers continued learning, so if I get the bug to go into engineering (unlikely, math & physics is my sticking point) then I can, for free.
I was pretty active for a while in the CAD subreddit, and I was almost afraid to graduate because there were a few people in there who were so negative about CAD as a carreer. Turns out they don’t look for good jobs, don’t ask for pay raises or continue to learn. My experience in CAD has been nothing but fulfilling and exciting. I design substations, I’m learning a lot, my drawings literally build/extend America’s power grid, so I feel like my job matters and is important. I find ways to increase my knowledge and pay, and there’s tons of upwards momentum if I take it.
For reference, I was an animal hospital receptionist before I made the switch.
Sounds interesting. Brains not braining well on a Saturday what’s an AS? Associate Degree?
Probably an Associate in Science degree.
Associates of Science, rather than an AA, Associates of Arts.
Thanks!
