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Work work work...


Ben Hutchings

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Accepting that the 'grass is always greener', I was wondering what amazingly interesting jobs other Members/Users have? Just so I can feel variously jealous and or grateful that I have the job I do (jack-of-all-web-trades).

Wife and I often say something along the lines of "the school careers advisor never mentioned that one!" when we hear about someone with a job that seems particularly interesting or good for the soul. The most recent example was someone PAID to walk around the highlands or somewhere equally bucolic checking on otters or something. Jammy git.

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Embedded software engineer - real time code for engine control at a well-known performance engine maker. In one sense, my job is to make racing cars go fast, but in reality it's a lot of sitting in front of a screen and unravelling somebody else's messy code to make it work in a way it was never intended to.

I have a side-line job designing electronics and software for "bench-top thin film deposition equipment" - high vacuum and high power to evaporate material so that it forms a very thin, even coat on a target.

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I don't get paid to walk the Highlands, but I get enough holiday to kinda almost make that the case. 😂 This snap was taken this morning. 😉

 

20210729_091904.jpg

 

That's the only perk to teaching these days.

Edited by ferny
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I bagged groceries in the US for a long time and cleaned up a cinema after showings. Found $20 once which at the time was... 20$ ! but enough to fill the tank twice and have a milkshake...

🙂

I kinda stumbled into my current position after doing German -> English translations for a long time it turned out I am good negotiator (essentially means I can give people bad news and they aren't upset about it...) So I oversee a portfolio of IT projects.

Training the dog is actually harder work!

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3 minutes ago, DVD3500 said:

Training the dog is actually harder work!

When you mastered that try training cats, they are much more cunning.

As for work, nothing to say - although I was lucky enough with my first job as it included getting into Buckingham Palace, House of Lords & commons, Tower of London so I got 'special' tours. Later job would be a case of 'if I told you I would have to kill you' (a bit)

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Senior commercial manager for a surfacing and civil engineering contractor, worked for the company for 25 years. Love the company, not so sure about the work these days, traipsing around building sites and dealing with bureaucracy!

Not sure when I will retire, don't feel much point in retirement and certainly feel more than able to carry on for another 10 years or so.

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I have spent the last 30 years since I graduated in engineering, working in factory that overhauls and repairs bits off railway rolling stock. When I first started there we were still manufacturing locomotives on site but those days are gone. At one time my office overlooked the static diesel test where we put locomotives under load whilst stationary. A 3000hp engine on full chat for several hours makes the windows rattle😄 My current role is to manage the team that interpret customer specifications into a format that our shopfloor staff can work too, provide the purchasing team with the relevant bill of materials, source the specialist tooling and answer technical queries received from customers, commercial, production etc. Good fun, made more enjoyable by the people I work with.

Bruce

Edited by Rubce
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As soon as I got my first pair of long trousers I had a part time job (Saturdays, and school holidays) fixing, and delivering telly's, and posh stereos (Bang & Olfsen, Dynatron, etc). In those days we were expected to un-box everything, set it up, put plugs on everything as they never came with them fitted, test it, and give the punter a run through on the basics, proper service! 

My first proper job after college was as a trainee manager in a Motorist Discount Centre. I remember the the owner of the chain bragging to us on a training day that he planned to have more shops than Halfrauds by the end of the year. He managed it some time later, and not long after the chain promptly went bust. He did own a Jensen Interceptor though, fair play.

After this came six month working in Sketchleys central stores driving all sorts of fork lifts. The money was good, but by the middle of every week the protective rubber gloves we were issued with every Monday had virtually disintegrated due to the dry cleaning fluids eating them. It took some months for my hands to recover after I walked out.

After that I spent six years in the RAF. Fantastic job, but the drinking was epic, and I'm not sure my liver would have survived any longer if I had stopped in.

and for the past 35 years I have restored, and sold spares for our cars............

 

 

 

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46 minutes ago, Slimboyfat said:

In those days we were expected to un-box everything, set it up, put plugs on everything as they never came with them fitted, test it, and give the punter a run through on the basics, proper service! 

Still happens here, although plugs are now factory fitted. We bought a washing machine earlier this year from our local hardware shop and they do the full stint, taking away the old machine and packaging as well of course. I had to check out their van to make sure none of our cats had stowed away. It happened to his boss once he told me.

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Thanks for the replies folks, quite a range here! Not too surprised to see quite a few also involved in something to do with IT/Software.

I think if I had to pick one so far it'd be @Rubce or @Slimboyfat at the top of the list. Although @Rosbif has been so vague maybe his later work is the most interesting 😅

Still no wildlife-spotting hill-dwelling types though?

I'm 43 now, and as long as I can remember I've wanted to be "a professional tinkerer" and have added 'part-time inventor', small batch brewer, mender of pushbikes, saver of analog cameras and maintainer of discrete electronics audio devices to the list since. Or course fiddling with classic cars comes in there too. Every single thing I enjoy doing is tangible/practical. Why on earth am I sat in front of a computer setting up Cron jobs and fixing Package Manager installation scripts? 🤦🏻‍♂️

*wanders off to look at fixing GT6 boot leak in the pouring rain* 🎻 

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29 minutes ago, Ben Hutchings said:

Although @Rosbif has been so vague maybe his later work is the most interesting 😅

It has been interesting in parts, seeing the kitchens in Buckingham Palace and walking the corridors, 'she' wasn't in residence, was great for an 18 year old country bumpkin, lunch in the house of commons nice , my first passport and 'trip abroad' were at the taxpayers expense as my job included visits to military bases around the world, I spent a month in Germany as a captain (we had to have a military rank that equated to our civil service one).The rest of my early career is/was subject to the official secrets act. Lots of boring stuff as well over the years. The most exciting event recently is today - road works in the village cutting off all but 1 route in and out. Watched all the chancers having to turn round 😁. Plus the MGB GT belonging to someone in the next village on the back of a low loader, from the logo on the cab he followed my suggestion of contacting the Peugeot dealer nearby about some work he wanted done. The dealer has several classics including British ones.

 

 

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1 minute ago, Rosbif said:

I spent a month in Germany as a captain (we had to have a military rank that equated to our civil service one)

Interesting! A friend of mine is a "Naval Architect" and has to have a navy rank for when he's aboard ship. At one time he was on the bridge of a destroyer and asked one of the senior officers "Am I the ranking officer on the bridge?" to which he got the response "Sir, we'll agree that technically that is the case, just so long as you agree not to give any orders"

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20 hours ago, sparky_spit said:

BT apprentice at 16, climbing poles and having fun. Managing design/development/deployment of BT smartphone apps at 57. Much less fun. Retired at 58

Also joined BT at 16 in 1969. Retired in 2019. 50 years mostly enjoyable. 

Danny

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Picked cotton as a young teenager. Not for long though - that is a tough job!

Part time “mechanic and welder” at a Triumph repairists  in Kingston while I was a student.

First “real” job in an experimental foundry trying to make metal matrix composites. Aluminium at 800 degrees C with 20+Bar injection pressures, with the dies heated to over 500C…… what could possibly go wrong?! That had its moments…… nobody died, but more luck than judgement at times.

Then a short stint as a technical author at Haynes. Mis-timed as it turned out as I got made redundant after about 9 months (last in first out), when they noticed they weren’t making any money!  This was inconvenient as we’d just bought our first house….

Then a few months odd-jobbing followed by 6 months as a welder-fabricator for a fruiting picking machine company (apples & black currants mostly).  Not quite as bad as picking cotton, but close!

Then managed to use the contacts and experience gained in my first job to get into technical sales with the controls company I’d worked along side then.  Very useful experience, but not very exciting and not well paid.

Then technical sales/estimator for a specialist butterfly valve company. That had its moments also, including a week in Baku representing them at an exhibition (no one else wanted to go!) and then an involuntary shift into project management (no one else wanted to!), looking after the biggest order the company had ever won…. Suddenly dealing with foundries, machine shops and actuator manufacturers. Very high stress…. Surprising how few choices there are when you are trying to get 82” bore valve bodies cast in aluminium bronze and then machined…. Had to go to France for that.

Looking for a quieter life I then moved to an investment (lost wax) foundry as an estimator. That wasn’t my best idea and not long after that I got a technical sales job with a local specialist pump company and I’ve been involved in that technology and it’s application for more than 20 years now.  Did a lot of service work in my first few years with them, most of that on sewage works. Not always fun but very “educational”.  One of the more fun aspects of the job is that it gets you in to all sorts of interesting places. The list includes,

many and varied sewage works of all sorts and sizes,

anaerobic digestion plants (the food-waste eating ones tend to be much nastier than sewage works!),
breweries,
cider makers,
abattoirs,
industrial bakeries,
jam factories,
paint makers,
plasterboard factories,
paper mills, 
veg and fruit processors,  
industrial dairies,
ready-meals makers,
sewage pumping stations and even the occasional waterworks.
Plus others I’ve forgotten no doubt….

Nick

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Hello all, very interesting thread for us nosey parkers!

I did a few years in factories and a slaughterhouse (rabbits, would you believe) before moving to London and temping in offices, then did a degree in electronic & electrical engineering, and have now been an electrical design engineer for 8 years. Working mostly on railway / metro rail projects. It's occasionally very interesting but mostly desk-based stuff with spreadsheets. The highlight was running a short-circuit test on the Thameslink railway at Blackfriars Station near St Paul's cathedral. I was allegedly the 'brains' of the operation, switching 30 thousand amps of DC current onto a direct short and measuring the current flow for 50 milliseconds before the circuit-breaker operated. That made a big bang. 

Our company is dabbling in electric vehicle charging now, which is technically quite dull but there's lots of work in it at the moment, as you'd expect.

Hoping to get a battery train charging thing off the ground but it depends on another firm finding the money for it first. 

The good thing about the job is I am no longer intimidated by automotive wiring! As a youth it was my least favourite aspect of working on cars and bikes but now it's the easy part. Not to say I don't still make silly mistakes of course... 

Pete

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I co-incidentally work for the same company as Pete immediately above, but well away from the stuff with big numbers.

Started working life with such exciting jobs as packing empty toothpaste tubes into boxes for shipping to Africa to be filled, and eating tomatoes (couple of pounds every day for 3 weeks) as quality control for M&S. Also had to analyse acidity and sugar content. If there ever was a job to put you off something for life, that is it.

A few years stocking shelves part time, and once finished at Poly I started doing IT hardware support, that has slowly morphed into software support as all hardware is now throwaway. Though I am a master at sweating assets and am the only one of the 10 in my team that will actually get a screwdriver out. Really annoys the users who would get a new laptop if they worked in a different office. 

Only ever really applied for the one job, all subsequent ones have been via TUPE.

After 25 years of 3rd party work we were taken in house, they doubled our wages and sadly we now have to work for a living. Didn't bank on that at my age. Used to travel all over the South East, now sit staring at a screen for hours on end.

Thankfully I am 55 in a few months and can retire, though hoping for redundancy, not looking good on that front at the moment.

Deskside support is not a major part of the companies ongoing plans, as we move to Win10 and a fully remote setup, so perhaps there won't be a role for me any more... 🙂

 

 

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2 hours ago, thescrapman said:

I co-incidentally work for the same company as Pete immediately above, ....

perhaps there won't be a role for me any more...

 

Colin that's an interesting point, I hadn't thought about the effect on you deskside IT support chaps. Good luck trying to get the redundancy if that's what you're angling for

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My life has been meandering. My Dad owned a few properties, had done from the early 60's. So as a teenger there was always some painting and odd jobbing to be done. I went through Uni doing an Environmental Science degree (actually a chemistry major with lots of fun extras tacked on), and landed a job in an analytical lab (I had worked there the previous summer). However after about 6 months my paycheck bounced. The owner paid me from his personal account, and I walked. Went to Amex, like just about everybody else in Brighton has done at some point. Or did, back then. Worked on customer service answering the phone. Meant to be for a month, but left after a year as I needed to move on. I did almost get a great job there, but the day I went to do the final bit of the application, they shut the entire dept. The Director was made redundant, but came to see me at my desk as he was being escorted off the premises so he could explain.

That left me jobless for a couple of months, so I did some painting/gardening etc. Then got a job flogging mortgages in an estate agency. When mortgage rates were 15%. So not great. 

Meanwhile, I was soon getting married. And I needed to get someting sensible sorted. Down the pub one evening a friend who had just finished his teaching degree suggested teaching. Sounded an idea, so next day rang the Uni, a week later a visit there and I was on the PGCE.

First year of marriage was spent driving up to a school in Mid Sussex and teaching so I could learn to teach. And then landed a job at a school just outside Brighton. Did 10 years as a full time science teacher. Meanwhile, I was giving my Dada hand one day as he was clearing one of his houses. I asked what was happening, and he explained he was selling it, and had accepted an offer. I asked how much, and thought it was VERY cheap. And off the cuff said I would buy it at that price. It happened, he gave me the mortgage at 5%. (Turned out the estate agent was trying to pull a fast one, as the buyer he had eventually found happened to be a relation... and increased the offer by 25% when they were told the sale was off)

I spent the next year renovating the place, most weekends, and a few hours every evening. It then let out to a bunch of students, and has been ever since. That led to buying a coupe more houses.

I stopped full time teaching to work on the new houses, but ended up ding 15 years of supply teaching, sometimes for an entire year. I did 3yrs of maths, a couple of science, best fun was 2 terms of teaching cooking.

Now, I have settled into a semi retired lifestyle. Done my electrical qualifications, so do some work for a rental agency. Plus general maintenance work. Today I am off to start painting the outside of a house. Or rather cleaning all the moss etc to prep it for paint. Then there is a roof to fix, a kitchen to put in....and probably 6 months of other jobs on the list. Luckily customers are usually in no rush. Besides, my Dolomite needs welding, as does a friends Herald. That will be 5-10 days, hopefully done over the next 6 weeks.

So in many ways a typical Brighton resident. Bit of this, bit of that....

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16 minutes ago, Clive said:

Did 10 years as a full time science teacher.

Cool! I did 5.5yrs lecturing in Software Development (Specialising in computer graphics and games technology) at Huddersfield Uni, I looked at going into teaching Maths/Science towards the end of that, I did 1 lesson in front of 14 year olds teaching maths in it scared the sh1t out of me. Maybe teaching in schools isn't for me! 😉 Big respect to those who do/did though!

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Land Surveying for me. Next month I'll have been with the same company for 28 years so they can't be too bad. 

Although these days I do far more measured building surveys than land, I still class myself as a Land Surveyor. 

Over the years I've done some interesting sites, some really nice ones - and a lot of awful ones!

Interesting ones include a nuclear power station and recently a gold mine in North Wales. 

Some stunning jobs along the way, like surveying an almost derelict house and land high up in the Lake District or a radio mast in the Brecon Beacons, make the horrible ones more bearable. Those are invariably in a certain place beginning with L (and ending in ondon) 

No plans to retire any time soon, although my hips, knees and ankles sometimes wish I did. The increase in laser scanning means more office work so physically the job is easier now. Can't see myself really doing anything else now.

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