I’m a jeweler focusing on glass and so I spend a lot of time doodling around while my kiln runs. It’s really nice to work for myself but knowing my work relies on my ability to market it is pretty stressful.

Big tech Software Dev. ~6 years ago I had housing problems and assumed I’d live in poverty for the rest of my life.

Tech is nice. It’s stressful work though, and harder still to convince myself I’m burning out when I used to have it so much worse. It’s not not my job’s fault (I mean everyone is doing layoffs lately…), but I also have a lot of anxiety around financial stability.

This is literally a dream job for me. I mean I used to daydream about working here, and it’s genuinely worth that praise (at least with respect to my old jobs, though recent economics have dampened the hype.)

But despite my boss’s assurance to the contrary, it seems like my default assumption is that I’m a week away from getting fired at all times. The layoffs honestly helped that some, since (without getting into details I might get in trouble for) it wasnt really about individual performance. I’d be angrier about it happening, sure, but the fact that it’s so out of my control means worrying doesn’t help.

That, and the fact that I just hit a year of tenure here. I have a resume of industry experience, and that helps. And I’m not going to say that I’m infinitely hireable. But I know I’m good at my job, and having a year of this place on my resume is enough that I know I’ll always have work.

This didn’t answer the question as well as I could have, but whatever. There you go.

Happy to answer questions about tech and industry work as best I can though.

Edit: Actually I’m annoyed that I never really answered the post.

• What’s your work like? Lot of brain power and problem solving. It’s weird to see how much it affects me at the end of the day vs the more physically demanding work I’ve done. There’s a difference between coming home tired but mentally buzzing, and the sort of whole-body exhaustion I get from thinking all day.

There’s lot of coding. Yes, lots of meetings. That’s honestly more tolerable than the documentation I keep writing, and promising to write for some reason.

• What do you do? Back end software dev.

• Do you enjoy it? So much. I know I just went on this whole diatribe, but I really do love using my brain. They aren’t world saving issues, but it’s like a million little logic puzzles I’m getting paid to solve.

• Is there something you wish you could be doing professionally instead? OS or compilers. More interesting problems. I’m thinking I’ll try to change my team once I’m comfortable with the way I’d be leaving things here.

• What are some past workplace experiences you’d like to share? My boss is great. I keep getting great bosses. The thing about any place that has a good or bad reputation, it’s going to depend on the team. There will be shitty bosses here. Same withal any workplace I think. Someone here hates their job because the boss makes it suck. Mine doesn’t, and usually dont. I’m lucky in that, Ive seen friends who have shitty bosses when I’m doing great, and it sucks.

my point there is, don’t assume your work will be great because your company is.

I work with a very old ERP system (released in 2013) and each day it finds a new way to mess with us two developers working with it.

Spent the last 2 days trying to add new data to a report, glad that we finally got it to work this morning

I’m a graphic designer at a research laboratory. It’s exactly what I want to be doing & I feel very lucky to have this job. I spend my days designing fact sheets, logos, infographics, and various corporate communications stuff. I also fill in as a photographer some days.

I’m a senior software developer at my local NHS trust. I spend my days managing a small team of junior and senior developers, and between us we maintain and expand several essential clinical systems. My personal passion is writing web apps that are used by doctors and nurses across the hospital, anything that makes their work a bit easier or simpler.

Software development is something I always wanted to do. The job is well paid, I work from home full time, and my senior management are very supportive and flexible. I consider myself incredibly lucky that I’ve managed to find near enough my perfect job!

I’m shocked at how many of y’all work in tech/computers.

I probably shouldn’t be, but I am.

I’m a programmer. Just wanted to pop in and say that we shifted last year to a 32-hour 4-day workweek after we were bleeding good staff.

It’s life-changing. My work-life balance got an instant upgrade. What used to be a hard week is now so much more bearable. I can look forward to my weekend and actually take a full day to relax without worrying about losing half my weekend.

I’m a custodian at the HQ for a large international organization. It definitely isn’t what I’d like to be doing since I’ve had a 4 year degree for several years, but for now the pay is not terrible and the benefits are incredible. It’s definitely the easiest job I’ve had for the pay I’m getting and it’s a great environment. Beats all previous employment I’ve had the last decade. Other downside is that I have a two hour round trip commute and I start super early. But hey, basically no traffic both directions since it’s weird hours.

Ideally, I’d be doing A/V work or some design work since that’s what my education is in. With the market not being the best I don’t see those positions being open to me for at last a year or two. I’d also like to just transfer into that kind of position within this organization since I do like it.

A past experience: Fast Food.

It was my first job and I was generally well liked by everyone. One night a supervisor really got on me for making a small mistake and people thought I would quit because the supervisor’s reaction was so bad. I showed up for another shift and that supervisor apologized after being reamed by our boss. That same night I found them doing heroin in the bathroom. Yeah. Puzzle pieces fit together and they got fired. I got employee of the month.

I’m a database administrator. I was lucky enough to work my way up into that position at my current employer. My main duty is to keep the databases up and accessible, which allows the company to function. The most interesting thing I have been doing lately is migrating our onprem (virtual) databases up to AWS and Azure (although we are now going all in on AWS). We have migrated a few major systems that only allow for minimal downtime (15 - 30 minutes tops) so we have to replicate the data from onprem up to the cloud and keep the data in sync at the transactional level, until its time to switch application traffic over to the new database, and there has to be a plan in place to rollback to the old database with no data loss. Lots of moving parts and planning to make this successful. I really do enjoy the work. Of all the IT positions I feel like database is right for me and I just survived the second IT layoff of the year so others probably agree too.

The one thing I feel we need to do is get off of microsoft sql server and move to aurora mysql so we can save costs on licensing and take advantage of more AWS serverless features, such as auto scaling. Unfortunately the engineers need to be on board and so far the people that make the decisions are not.

I started at the company in phone technical support, moved to the Network Operations Center, moved to DBA, moved to senior DBA, and now I have the title of IT DevOps Engineer II, although I still feel more like a DBA than my current title.

I put in new production lines for an auto industry supplier. It’s stressful, especially lately with all the competition and labor issues. I like the work. I’m not a fan of the specific facility I’m currently working at.

I’m currently an operations supervisor in a regional distribution center. I started out on the floor, promoted up through the training program available, and now work in the shipping department. I honestly enjoy most parts of my job, particularly helping to problem solve in time critical situations. I did work in a more support related function before promoting, and I honestly preferred the workflow there. Operations can be kind of intense, and requires me to focus a lot more on the “accountability” piece of things than I would rather do sometimes. We recently got a new general manager whose focus is most definitely more on securing profits than managing retention and employee engagement, so you can guess what the main pressure on me generally is from my direct supervisors. Production, production, and more production. On top of that we have a slew of admin tasks stacked up weekly. We’re required to complete coaching sessions, audits, performance reviews, checks for missing product to reduce shrink, etc. All in all, I had a pretty good idea of what I was signing up for before I did it, but I really don’t feel like we get paid enough for what we do. I also genuinely feel like the associates don’t get paid enough for what we’re asking of them, but that isn’t necessarily something I can truly fight for being new in my role. On the plus side I only work three days a week, though they’re roughly 14 hour days. Then I have the whole rest of the week off!

I’m an electrical engineer at a public utility company. I mostly do distribution planning and project management. Really like what I do and I really love the company. I recently changed jobs to this one because I wanted to be a part of this.

The board of directors are elected by the customers, most the employees are in a union, and our rates are cheaper than private utilities. I don’t think many Americans understand this structure exist in our country.

I run the lawn care department at a non-profit landscaping company by day, and bartend by night.