What’s everyone do for work.

Entire career in medical diagnostics R&D/troubleshooting. First 8 with a start up that was successful and sold and 28 with a large company that markets world-wide. Had a few great discoveries, one that changed the world of thyroid testing ~1990. Depending on your healthcare and where your blood is tested your blood may have been tested on the some of the tests I helped develop or supported/improved. Was able to work with people from all over the world. It was neat to get the perspective of normal people from other countries on world affairs and not just the info that’s spewed on TV news.
Wanted to be a fisheries biologist but that didn’t work out and I don’t regret it. I had a very rewarding career. Been retired for 4 years and 2 months.

There’s no shame in working in more than one industry or even in more than one career path. A lot of people have switched career paths and some of us pretty radically. I started out in aviation training as an A&P mechanic. I probably would have stayed on that path except through a series of recessions and a glut of employees, jobs were exceptionally hard to come by for many years.

After college, I was almost 20 years in marketing and sales management for a professional services company. I moved all the way from manager to director to VP.

Because of a combination of factors, I chose to quit and pursue a different career in a completely different industry. I now own them run my own business.

I think you’re wise to consider not just what you want to do but what industry you want to do it in.

That was a key factor for me. The industries we sold to became more and more competitive and with it their attitudes changed to become very hostile towards professional services and consultants. They seemed to resent having to come to us for expertise. I finally had enough.

There are some industries out there that are just plain toxic. The companies are dog eat dog and the only reason people stay is generally high pay. But that can only feed the bulldog so long.

One last thought. Trust your gut. I remember when I was interviewing for jobs years ago. I was called for an interview at a very well-known company. Oddly the interview was scheduled for Friday at 3:00. When I got to the interview I was parked and reception and 3:00 came and went. The hiring manager phoned out to reception. All apologies, I’m just having to deal with something blah blah blah could you please wait?

So I waited. 3:30 came and went 4:00 came and went. It was then that I woke up and realized that there were people scurrying about and rushing around like it was 10:00 on Monday morning and there was a crisis brewing. The place was just a hub of very intense activity and everyone wore a frown. On a Friday at almost 4:30. Lots of people came in the door, but nobody showed any signs of leaving.

I asked the receptionist for a piece of paper and I hand wrote a note to the hiring manager saying thank you for scheduling our interview but I am no longer interested in a position at your company. Best move I ever made. Listen to your gut.

Grouse you pretty much summed up what my sales role has been the last few years.

I asked the receptionist for a piece of paper and I hand wrote a note to the hiring manager saying thank you for scheduling our interview but I am no longer interested in a position at your company. Best move I ever made. Listen to your gut.

That’s awesome!

Transportation and warehousing here.. I started when I was 18 years old and still here 26 years later. Moving America they say… haha.

Mike Schulz wrote:

Riverrat, I worked for the USDA, FSIS as a meat inspector for 26 years, was a darn good job in the beginning, but by the end of my career it was a political mess.. be careful looking into government jobs is all I’m saying.

That’s interesting. I know 2 people who are long time Meat inspectors. They have said that the job has changed a lot over their career, but both still really like the job and have no desire to do anything different. They are paid well and have some of the best benefits I know of .

fishthumper,
oh I liked the job, not the politics’.. I’ve been retired for 12 years so hopefully it’s better now.. and different districts make a difference too..

Good stuff in here about being patient and knowing your worth. With sales/marketing/management experience you can work dam near anywhere and sounds like you have that part figured out

Not sure how the workforce demand is in the metro, but outstate MN we’re force to consider just about anyone right now. I’m a CE at a consulting firm and let’s just say finding qualified employees is a challenge. We currently have 115(ish) f.t. employees and 35 open positions listed on our website. Learn how to use CAD or run GPS and we’ll get you set up with HR on Monday

Well you all have heard of “Starving Artists”. I qualify as a “Starving Prostitute” and “Starving Porn Actor”, hey at least I tried. Kidding of course. I have been a Paramedic for I believe 33 years. I have worked in the field and inter hospital doing different things. I too would like to find something else. My back is shot. My knees, shoulders, and hips are going too. Sometimes my mind is ok, sometimes not. It is all I know that will pay what I need. I have a daughter in private college.

Ripjiggen wrote:

Grouse you pretty much summed up what my sales role has been the last few years.

The problem with selling and marketing for a professional services provider became that our expertise, to be blunt about it, made some of the client’s employees look bad. And rightly so! In many cases, they just weren’t very good.

But if course hell hath no scorn like an employee who has just been made to look bad by a consultant. So over time, the problem becomes we were fighting internal resources that didn’t want us there regardless of how over their heads they were in.

I’ve been in IT for 38 years now. I’ve worked for 4 different companies. I’ve never had to collect unemployment. Got laid off 1 time when they outsourced our entire department. Hope to retire within next 2 years when daughters are almost finished with undergrad degrees.

Sent you a PM, Rip!

I’m in the same boat, I haven’t said anything on this site about it, but I was laid-off 10 months ago during a big re-org after 16 years in Marketing with Best Buy. 16 years of leadership and impeccable performance was over in a 3 minute, HR-scripted, virtual meeting. the older you get and the higher you climb, the fewer positions there are and the less-attractive and more expensive you look to people who are hiring. It’s tough for an almost 50yr old in upper-middle management to get serious looks, most of those positions are filled via internal promotions.

Networking is where it’s at – a good connection is worth its weight in gold. I’ve been doing some independent consulting and there’s a huge and growing market where a lot of the more seasoned talent is going – I’m really loving the work and trying to grow it.

If anyone would like to ever have a 30 minute networking convo just to learn more about each other professionally, shoot me a PM and we’ll set something up! And if any of you small business owners need any help with Branding, Design/Ad/Marketing production, or Marketing Strategy, let’s DEFINITELY have a talk. Would love to see if I could help.

I work for a company that builds computer test equipment.
I’m the manager of the metal shop. Machining and sheet metal. Mostly prototype, fixtures and supporting the other departments. Most of the production work goes out to venders.

Ive been here since 1990. I lot has changed in 35 years. I’m getting tired. We are growing, more employees, more structure, more rules…more HR staff…

Overall still a great place to work. Its nice working with the younger people. Most aren’t as bad as the internet would have you believe.

I’m hoping to hang on for another 3-5 years. Fingers crossed.

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I would think that the older more expensive a person is the harder it will be to change careers. While it’s true it’s hard to hire good people it’s also hard to hire people who can seamlessly meld into a new organization. People get pretty set in their ways and how they want to do things

Self employment is tough to beat if you can stretch the finances until you can secure and build your client list. If you don’t want long hours with low average per hour pay for a few years stay where you are.

25 years with Cabela’s, Sidney, Nebraska- retired in 2008 – will fish till my worm falls off.

I’m “retired”, which means I do the same work but fewer hours than I used to work. Gotta stay busy.

Thanks for positive responses. Interesting to see what other people here do or did. Thank you to those that have reached out via pm. Already making a few connections. So far I have been just networking a lot and occasionally looking at job postings. Keeping busy by getting stuff done around the house and garage that has been neglected because of being to busy. Today was my first official day being done. Getting paid not working seams like the best job but know that can’t last. LOL

Dutch my skills are pretty transferable to many different industries. I am not 55 years old and don’t want to waste the rest of my work career in an industry I don’t enjoy, but thank you for all the positive feedback.

My situation won’t help but I offer it as incentive to explore your options if you’re unfulfilled or unhappy. I started trade school in a “skilled” trade, worked hard and took it seriously from the start. Joined the union and ended up running large crews on large commercial projects. Loved it until retiring in 2021. What I remember was around 35, listening to co workers complaining about their choice and how much they regretted it. I remember thinking, another 20-30 years of feeling that way…that’s gonna suck for a long time. I’ve got a 43 year old stepson now who is an engineer who has been with the same company he’s been bitching about for 15-20 years. He’s finally getting his resume out there. Life’s too short. I feel so blessed I was happy in my choice. Good luck to you…a first step can be hard but also be a lifesaver.

Rip, I wish you the best of luck and the others who are searching. I have been in this job essentially out of College. This will be 28 years. I am a senior business analyst working in IT for our back office software support (SAP).
I will tell you it just isnt as much fun anymore. The work keeps piling up with significant projects and new ones each year on top of the daily support related activities. At one time my team was over 40 people in this location and some offshore in India. Now its essentially a team of 4. We have had a bunch of retirements and they havent replaced a single person. I was able to coerce one back part time but its only 1 day a week, but that certainly helps and his contract is up after March and said he’s done for real this time.
We are in the middle of an SAP upgrade and that will be immediately followed by multiple rounds of DR testing. This is getting exhausting.
On top of this two of my other teammates are on the verge of retiring and that could happen this year. I told them if they retire I am going to quit because I cannot do this all on my own even though sometimes it feels like I am on an island.

CaptainMusky wrote:

Rip, I wish you the best of luck and the others who are searching. I have been in this job essentially out of College. This will be 28 years. I am a senior business analyst working in IT for our back office software support (SAP).
I will tell you it just isnt as much fun anymore. The work keeps piling up with significant projects and new ones each year on top of the daily support related activities. At one time my team was over 40 people in this location and some offshore in India. Now its essentially a team of 4. We have had a bunch of retirements and they havent replaced a single person. I was able to coerce one back part time but its only 1 day a week, but that certainly helps and his contract is up after March and said he’s done for real this time.
We are in the middle of an SAP upgrade and that will be immediately followed by multiple rounds of DR testing. This is getting exhausting.
On top of this two of my other teammates are on the verge of retiring and that could happen this year. I told them if they retire I am going to quit because I cannot do this all on my own even though sometimes it feels like I am on an island.

WOW, why wont they hire you some help????? thats crazy……i know a few who worked that type of job, trained people for overseas and then got cut loose………

glenn57 wrote:

WOW, why wont they hire you some help????? thats crazy……i know a few who worked that type of job, trained people for overseas and then got cut loose………

The simple answer is we still get stuff done with a fraction of the people. It probably wasnt fair to use that 40 number because at that time there were multiple significant implementation projects and a big number of those were just for those projects, but my specific team was still close to 20. All of our employed technical skilled resources were either let go or have retired. Only contractors now and all are offshore.

35 years in the Electric Utility, retired 5 years ago. Fishing, napping and doing whatever I want when I want. Was going to retire 7 years ago but the union made the last 2 years of work to profitable to retire.

I work at a local Circumcision clinic. The pay isn’t very good, but they let you keep all the tips!

I worked for 2 different GC for 12 years, mainly framing new houses. Some extremely large at over 15000 sq ft. After also having side jobs on evenings and weekends for 10+ years I decided I was ready to go be my own GC. Made it work through the Obama recession years when everyone else seemingly quit and headed out west to the oil fields. That got me pretty popular as a sub with whoever stayed. Been super busy ever since. Now I work with a cousin and my two oldest boys everyday doing mainly roofing with siding, decks, and pole sheds. It’s not for everyone, as you’re using your body and dealing with weather. But I love it.

I’ll take the claim of being the nerd of the bunch. My 9 to 5 is a Corporate Accountant.

I work in Quantum physics after joining the Army in the early 90’s they trained a few of us for a classified project that lasted 10 years before I was asked to go to area 51 where I joined a team studying the 2 UFO’s they have deep underground. We are still to this day trying to understand their technology, some of the things we found the world would never comprehend that’s why its still a secret to this day.

bigcrappie wrote:

I work in Quantum physics after joining the Army in the early 90’s they trained a few of us for a classified project that lasted 10 years before I was asked to go to area 51 where I joined a team studying the 2 UFO’s they have deep underground. We are still to this day trying to understand their technology, some of the things we found the world would never comprehend that’s why its still a secret to this day.

Pics or it didnt happen.

I work at a local Circumcision clinic. The pay isn’t very good, but they let you keep all the tips! woot jester

Pailofperch wrote:

I work at a local Circumcision clinic. The pay isn’t very good, but they let you keep all the tips!

Pics or didn’t happen

Damn government preventing perfectly well rounded citizens like myself from owning nuclear powered interdimensional time traveling engines just because I’m too dumb to understand how they work. I don’t comprehend how my flamethrower works either but that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t have one. I mean I barely started anything on fire I wasn’t supposed too.

tswoboda wrote:

I work at a local Circumcision clinic. The pay isn’t very good, but they let you keep all the tips!

Pics or didn’t happen
Would that be a hard or soft pass?