Ask Lemmy

A lot of accumulating pieces of luck. I started as a physical therapist, but burned out. A friend suggested a coding bootcamp where I made a new friend who used to be an occupational therapist. She got a job and then moved into digital accessibility (which we hadn't really learned about but made sense with our backgrounds). Her workplace had an opening in accessibilty and they hired me, so I moved and that's what I've been doing ~6 years.

As a kid I sat in front of a computer, so I got a job sitting in front of a computer. I do evening courses so I can get a different job sitting in front of a computer.

Manufacturing quality assurance. I don't have a ton of mech engineering in my area, so I broadened my search by just using "engineer". I had to sift through a lot of software/dev/etc engineering listings. I noticed there was a consistent stream of quality engineer, quality system type roles. Applied, and now it's my career trajectory.

It's a bit niche, the "real" engineers want nothing to do with it, and I get to dabble at various levels into all the products and processes. It comes with a good amount of documentation, auditing, pondering the true intent of accreditation requirements, and other mundane tasks, which is why so many people hate it. But maintaining the quality system maintains the business, so I have a job.

It's not ISO 9001, but it's similar. It has a ton added that's specific to the industry, so it's tangibly useful. Personally, I think ISO:9001 is a pyramid scheme. Under 9k1, you have to vet your vendors... Unless they're also 9k1 certified! Regardless, I'm surrounded by 9k1, so I have some local mobility as well as national mobility for the specific industry.

Did a few jobs while still in school, since then I was basically handed over to new jobs by reference. Never had to write a CV or ask for a job, always "when you are done here, I've found you someone who needs your skills".

A strange combination of circumstances. I originally wanted to do maths research or, failing that, be a maths teacher.

After a stint of research, and given how long getting to a tenured position would have been (with all the sacrifices that demands by chaining one or two years contracts all over the place, and with no guarantee of success), I decided to stop applying after my last contract came to an end.

Meanwhile, I met my wife who lived abroad where my teaching qualification did not hold, so I took a leap of faith and when my contract ended I left my country to move in with her and figured I'd find something there eventually.

At the time, the standard pipeline for a maths PhD looking for work in the industry was to do "data science" so I learned a bit of deep learning (this was pre chatGPT) but very quickly decided I did not want to contribute to that. I decided to start looking for other stuff, loosely related to my degree (and had a shitty admin job for a month).

I luckily found soon after quite a niche job as a software engineer where understanding maths was really needed (working on the geometric kernel of a CAD program) and thus managed to get my foot in the tech door and learn "enterprise" coding there. I moved on from that particular job but remain in something very close to that.

Built my own CMS while trying to put together my art and design portfolio website. Applied for a graphic design job. In the first interview it came up in conversation that I designed and built the website from scratch. 2nd interview they were very interested to hear how I built the site. Got hired. Showed up on my first day and was introduced to the development team. I was very confused because I thought I was going to be doing design work. Became the lead web developer of their marketing department. Zero experience. Been a web developer for 15+ years now. I keep accidentally doing well at this and can't get out now. I just wanted to draw.

I’m one of those useless management types. Basically got really good at managing processes and people and kept getting promoted. I landed my current job because of someone I used to work with. They needed a great operations manager for a new acquisition and gave me an offer he knew I couldn’t refuse. I LOVE the job and the field it’s in (the trades).

IT

It was a place that paid a good wage that chose to hire me

That's really what decides most people's jobs

Analytical chemist.

Educated in Marine biology, started work on the dock that developed my ability to handle bizarre hours and self motivation, used the bizarre hours to get a harvest gig in wine making cellar work where I learned to grind, used my grind and bizarre hours to do some commercial electrical installation, then did some electric meter reading where I learned the importance of attention to detail, used all of the above skills to become a winery lab technician where I got experience working with high functioning lab equipment, wanted to get away from wine so now I'm a chemist.

Life is good. I've been more underpaid at every step of the way, but I feel that's allowed me to function with less stress at every step of the path.

Loved learning programming as a teen, never wanted to do it as a job, then when I got older I realized that's the only marketable skill I have, so I became a developer.

I got hurt on the job and was given compensation. While I was free someone suggested I get a book called "Discover What You Are Best At," by Linda Gail.

It's a series of tests and then a list of the jobs that use those skills.

I've read a few 'self help' books over the years, but this is the one that actually worked.

And no, I won't mention my career. What made me happy will probably make everyone else miserable.

In the 1980s I took a BASIC class in a Radio Shack. I should have known then what career was for me.

In the 90s, after getting a shit degree in undergrad and having so much fun etting it, I joined the Army. I became the office super user, wherever I was stationed and I knew I needed too be in IT.

I fell into it, and let me tell you the excel skills of my coworkers is abhorrent. One of them maintains a shared workbook with 30 worksheets all held together by manually-pasted data and she acts like Vlookups are the greatest thing since sliced ass

I do nothing. I worked so hard for this! All those years sleeping my ass. All this time petting my cats. I had some jobs but, luckily, it stopped before it became a habit.

My last job was going out of business and one of my old coworkers recommended I go work at a slaughterhouse her son works at. Been there 4 months now and like it a lot more than my last job. Still a job though so only so much I can like it.

I didn't - I created it.

I'm a self-employed home improvement contractor. I got laid off from my previous job as a plumber and I didn't want to just find a different company to do the same thing for, so I instead took this decade-long vision of a better alternative and turned it into a business.

Neigsendoig (my producer) and I used numerology to determine what we're doing now. We're both designed to be content creators, though it's mostly Neigsendoig who's been doing it more than I have.