[Closed] What do you do and do you enjoy it?

Teach FE and some HE. Like the classroom/ workshop bits and love helping students turn project ideas to a product, unfortunately I'm also supposed to be social worker/ parent/ administrator.

Ps. Very frustrated by the quality of training for apprentices and the ability of them when they leave college.)

To be fair so are we, massive arguments every year in this but untill education is not graded on results....

I run a publishing business in London. Privately owned with big targets but I'm really enjoying it and have a great team - probably first job that's really challenging me. V. little travel involved which allowed me to do 12k km on the bike last year - all good!

Same/similar as maxtorque, except i'm on the OEM side.

And more of a focus on consumption than tyre smoking acceleration.
But still interesting.

Renewable energy lawyer. Used to love it when people were behind the industry and there was a lot of new stuff going on and before the evil Tory Govt decided it had been too successful. These days it's increasingly just people moving money around. Some of the stuff going on with large scale batteries is quite interesting.

Green woodwork & pole lathe / woodland crafts teacher, working with special educational needs groups mostly. I love the craft, and am very lucky to be 'pro' and make a living out of it. On the downside, it's no longer my hobby and passion; I very much want to shut the doors on it at the end of the day.

Aerospace Research Engineer looking at Design Optimisation and Additive Manufacturing- 2nd career after IT management. I'm paid less, but I like my job a lot more.

I have parts I designed on spacecraft, aircraft, submarines and helicopters. Quite satisfying.

I got to see an A380 get jacked up off it's landing gear last week...scary....then they retracted the gear....terrifying!

Agricultural banker for a small bank at the moment. Enjoy it. From next month, corporate banker for a very large bank. Hope I enjoy it...

I got to see an A380 get jacked up off it's landing gear last week...scary....then they retracted the gear....terrifying!

Yeah! I mean, like, that sounds cool and everything, but last week I saw a dude totally remove Tray 3 from the photocopier.
It was totally just lying there, disembodied on the carpet!...... Mind Blown 😉

Same/similar as maxtorque, except i'm on the OEM side.

And more of a focus on consumption than tyre smoking acceleration.

Same offer/threat applies then 🙂

After 32yrs self employed, I now Work part time in a Halfords Bikehut...I like it.

It was totally just lying there, disembodied on the carpet!...... Mind Blown

Programme manager delivering on site/RTB calibration/metrology solutions to one of the largest aerospace companies in the world, like ever.

I enjoy it, still get my hands dirty which is cool, have 'expertise' (giggles) in particular special processes which is nice. Work away from home an awful lot which is cack.

I got to see an A380 get jacked up off it's landing gear last week...scary....then they retracted the gear....terrifying!

Working in Singapore last year I was walking across an MRO site where they were doing the same with a KC135. Security guard came running over shouting all the way trying to get our attention, when he caught up he asked if we were Liverpool fans. Conversation finished with him pointing at us and saying "you know they say you never walk alone".

Really interesting range of ways to earn a living on here. I'm actually finding it quite an inspiring thread - it's good to know so many people have the right (IMO anyway) philosophy with work/money/quality of life even if they're not necessarily where they want to be in that respect at the moment.

Painter and decorator and disability adaptions. Happy with it. Have worked as A roadie, stagehand, deckhand, seafood chef, army recruitment, I.T. , barman, Home Office caseworker,bingo caller, banker not all in that order. Lots of jobs as spent lot of time travelling abroad. Going back to college was odd at 37ish but got my certs sorted out. All turned out well seen as I lived out of a bag for 10 years

Semi-retired scientist, love the challenges of discovering new things about the world, though after 20 years the process is a bit same old same old, even with location/topic changes. Still get a buzz from publishing papers, presenting new advances, making a contribution. Don't miss the bureaucracy, admin and internal report writing though.

Work for a small Civils and Groundworks company as Estimator, qs, buyer, contracts manager, jack of all trades.

Love it. Interesting work, great people to work with and gets me out of the office.

Mechanical Tech offshore. I work on a very old platform (40 years since first oil this year) and we actually get to repair things unlike a lot of places which either get vendors out or replace old with new, this is the bit I like.
Not really liking the industry anymore going back before the pay offs and cuts but I work 3 weeks away and 3 at home which is all I'm really doing it for now as I think I'd struggle going back to a 9-5 workshop job after all these years.

But who knows you never know what's around the corner

I am a Head of Science in a secondary school. I used to be SLT but hated all the meetings, and just wanted to be back in the classroom, with a bit of management! I love teaching, and thinking all day about Science education. I really don't enjoy all of the other stuff, and the inability to find staff!

Building Control Surveyor - Local Authority

Job kind of found me, I'd planned to work in motorsport, but have been around the building trade all my life. It doesn't really excite me in itself any more, if it ever did, though making the very best of it and doing the best job I possibly can keep me motivated enough. Plenty of leave, good salary for the area, flexi time, boss leaves me alone, customers are generall happy, I get good feedback. I can work from home or a satellite office 10 mins away, haven't been to 'the office' this week. *edit - working for a LA is like swimming in custard at times, worst bit of the job is council wide policies, intended to kerb spending in departments tipping money down the drain, when we're fee earning, and lots of stuff they foist on us is largely irrelevant.

Motorsport doesn't pay very well at all unless you're very good, or get a bit lucky, and even then, chances are it's not very secure, and you can get treated like crap. Working in it has also killed it as a hobby for several people I know, so I may be better off out if it, earning as much or more than I could in it, having more spare time to actually do it as a hobby and not getting totally put off spending my weekends under/in cars.

[quote="core"]Motorsport doesn't pay very well at all unless you're very good, or get a bit luckyI've done a few short (3-6mo) contract stints with motorsports related work, usually fairly lucrative, even if only on the overtime. Still have a few acquaintances who have been in and out of the business over the years.

Those who went in and managed to move up quickly (two) are still there, get seen on the telly occasionally and earn "significant" salaries, they also work 50-60 hours most weeks..... Everyone else just seems to spend time hopping between contracts.
You can generally get more money designing gear knobs for Opel.

I design software. Mainly web apps but also some hybrid/native mobile stuff.

I currently work within the startup scene in the geospatial sector. It's really interesting, and it's great learning about the technologies that makes software work. No two projects are the same.

I enjoy it.

specialist consultant/contractor doing all the weird/wonderful/bloody niche stuff that most other folks in our sector wont touch. Its varied, sometimes frustrating at times "interesting" (particularly some of the overseas stuff when there has been emergency evacs of our team due to rapidly deteriorating political situations, ebola, having to work in red zones with additional armed escorts and such like) after 20 years the amount of travel, particularly on UK roads is getting sodding dull though

I own a bike shop. Am I the first on this thread to say that?

I do enjoy it, some of the time. I made the jump and set up my own business, on my own in 2008 and it's grown steadily (but not consistently) since then.

I started it because I've grown up riding bikes and playing with Lego as well as helping my dad with a couple of not-very-reliable classic cars, so I've always been interested in how things work and how to fix them. After a degree in Physiology (which is basically that, but for humans) I temped in various jobs for a couple of years before realising that a) the area I lived in (SE15) needed a bike shop and b) I'd quite like to be the person in charge of that shop.

I worked for a couple of other shops for a few years, gained qualifications and experience, studied hard, learned from others' (and my) mistakes and eventually took my meagre savings, borrowed a fair chunk of my amazing parents' savings (and they definitely worked long and hard for it, council worker dad and mum who did admin in a GP practice) and opened my own shop.

I still spend some of my time mechanicking, mainly building wheels, but I've got two full-time mechanics and a part-time one who do most of the hands-on work. Even though it was that that got me into this and that which I'd prefer doing if I had the chance. I spend a lot of the rest of the time doing shop admin and trying to keep the business running (and occasionally looking on here when procrastinating or eating lunch).

Because it's my business, when it's surviving I'm OK with how it's doing and I can enjoy it, sometimes. When we get good reviews or praise, or just when we sort out really difficult problems or hear of our reputation spreading for the top-level jobs, it makes me very proud. We've worked hard to build expertise and although we're not yet Sheldon Brown / Lennard Zinn-level experts, we know our stuff, we're always learning and we're good at what we do. And that's definitely something to take pride in and enjoy.

One thing it certainly doesn't make me is rich, regardless of what else you may read on here. We're proud to be a London Living Wage employer; I don't know how many other bike shops could say that, certainly not many. Apart from my wage - I'm literally working below the minimum wage. Yes, it's my business, so if it ever makes much profit that I don't immediately put back into making the business better, it could pay me some dividends. But at the moment it definitely isn't.

When it's struggling, it's incredibly stressful. When I'm shuffling money from one account to another to try and pay bills and make sure my staff get paid, always before I do, and accounts to some suppliers are overdue while other customers want us to order in expensive stuff and compete with online shops on price and the money simply isn't there in the bank accounts, that is definitely the opposite of enjoyment. As much as some posters on here think that mechanics are all incompetent monkeys, or that everyone who owns a bike shop does a Scrooge McDuck with their piles of cash, that's simply not true.

I'm not after sympathy. Everyone makes their own choices and I still get to work with bikes sometimes, even if I rarely get chance to ride them. However, like most people who run their own businesses, I got into it because I wanted to earn money doing the thing I'm good at, but I now spend most of my time doing the business-running side of things. Which is not as much fun.

Measurement geek (metrologist) working for a motorsport bearing manufacturer
Pays well enough, plenty of kit in the gauge room to play with so happy days.

Cladding fabricator in a small company, could be worse!

Wow a real variety of jobs, I thought everyone on here was an IT manager driving an Audi! Big respect to a few on here, doing jobs I would never be able to do.

As a few others have said I fell into my job and really don't enjoy it anymore. Working for the NHS is full of BS now and is just target driven with only a little interest in the actual patients. But with a family to support not sure how easy it is going to be to change now.

For the past 5 years I have had a bit of a dream to open a shoe shop, but no idea where to start with that

Please stop with the trade lingo and abbreviations.
Outside of your peer group people may not know what they mean,
I certainly don't.

I design aftermarket locks and security parts for commercial vehicles mainly vans.
I end up doing lots of things like stock counts and inspecting components that are manufactured by sub contractors too.
Its a pretty good company to work for and i'm pretty happy there.

Title is "Account Technology Strategist" for Microsoft.

What that means is that I advise/support a small number of very big customers in how they can best use Microsoft stuff to help their businesses be better. Most of the interesting discussions are CIO/CxO level when we're looking at how technology can help transform how they operate or what they do. The fun stuff is around Azure; machine learning, IoT, predictive analytics, cognitive services etc.

I'm rubbish at Excel though.

Enlighten me CIO/CxO

I SAID STOP THE TRADE LINGO 😈

Army officer, and yes I do enjoy it. I've had some amazing opportunities for which I'm very grateful. Most of my time currently is spent doing administration within a reserve regiment but any given day can range from a welfare case, medical issues, discipline, career management, event organisation etc etc etc. Hopefully the next step is an MSc before moving into technical projects. However, i reckon I'll be out before long as having a wife and child makes the prospect of going away for extended periods of time hard to deal with: I signed up for this, my wife didn't so it'll be soon time to get a proper job.

(Goes back to page 1 of the thread for inspiration!)

Unemployed. Pay is awful but time off is excellent! Lots of bike riding a major perk.

Enlighten me CIO/CxO

Chief Information (or Innovation) Officer, or others at a similar level. Americanisms for board members that's been adopted over here. Director of IT, Director of XX, Managing Director would be the UK names but pretty much every big company uses CEO (Chief Executive Officer), COO (Chief Operating Officer), CFO (Chief Financial Officer) etc

Not really trade lingo, just modern large business lingo.

If you want trade lingo... TSP, CSA, DSA, SSP, ATS, AE, TAM... and they're just internal job titles.

Inspiring thread.

I'm an IT project manager, replete with industry standard Audi. 😐

No don't enjoy it. I'm not really an IT project manager, or a manager, or 'anything' in an office. But it pays enormously well for what I actually do, I get away with doing a pretty bad job in a relativity easy place to work and I'm very autonomous. If I can manage to balance that with other life stuff I'll be ok (hence recently taken up volunteering).

Lots of food for thought here though. My latest 'project' is a 3 year career change plan.

Ok cheers for that, I know a TAM i occasionally have working nearby me crabbit old git who smokes a lot

Policeman. It's been varied, did a few years in Southampton, a couple in Nottingham, and have been in Scotland for the last ten years, including a couple of years in a little unsupervised station covering one of the UK's largest mountain areas - very different to being in the middle of a big city. Last five years have been in CID, where I'm a jack of all trades - drugs, rape, sexual offences, fraud, burglaries, unexplained deaths, mountain/water deaths, child pornography, serious violent crimes, missing persons, a whole range of things. Do I enjoy it? Sometimes it's hugely satisfying, sometimes I hate it, mostly it's somewhere in between, but frequently incredibly frustrating. I can't think of what else I'm qualified for - anyone need someone to drive fast and get in fights?

NHS - National Health Service.

Some great and interesting careers!

I fell out of school into a sales job that I hated. After five years I quit , used my savings to get myself through college and ten uni (BSc and MRes). Spent almost the years working as either an environmental regulator (exciting job but crap pay), environment consultant (felt morally wrong charging the money we did to the MOD for no benefit), environment advisor (bio research laboratory who should tbh be shut down), environment manager for network rail (on the crossrail programme). Loved the company but not the role so became scheme project manager. Now I love the job, love the company, believe in what I am doing, see all the work I put iin being realised and can't wait to see the first electric train run on the tracks that my team installed.

Senior Zombie Maggot. (I got promoted today).

Supply Chain/Planning - never a dull moment!

Freelance engineer

I've built landfills, wind farms, hydros, major roads, ponds, power stations, housing estates, and now on an enormous concrete slab.

Variety and challenging. Love it.

Head of Maths in a secondary school.

Love teaching, hate all the crap (mostly target orientated) that dominates the profession now.

Barkm - I'll look you up when I get out so you can pass on some tips!

I manage three picture framing shops. Been working in the trade for 15+years and I genuinely enjoy it. The people I work for are superb and incredibly generous. The people I work with are great. Mostly art school graduates(so they can ,at times,be a bit eccentric), but keen and knowledgeable.
I really like my job. Previously I was a vacuum deposition tech which had some first class work jollies to interesting places, but was mostly about getting irritated with 'o' rings.
Anyway, off to Bologna tomorrow for the famaart.it trade show.