What is the biggest lesson that employment has taught you?

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A central purpose of doing your job is to train yourself up to do the job you would prefer - either at the company you are with - or more likely at another.
Spend your time on interesting new skills
- Doesn't work, the job I'd prefer would be no job.
  Or idk, professional with-friends-chiller, or people-get-to-knower, or world-seer, or randomly-on-piano-player, or casual-video-games-player.
  
  The job I'd prefer is hundreds if not thousands of years from now. I want to have my own ship to explore planets and feed the data back to earth. New contact? Great send info to earth for ground troops to stop by and start procedures while i move to the next planet.
  A planet that's lifeless but good for resources. Great, send info to earth for mining ships to start work on it.
  Bad areas not suitable for ship travel (black holes, pulsars, etc etc). Ok mark perimeter for other ships to avoid.
  Mark scenic areas for possible stations to setup.
  Imagine thousands of ships that are doing this. So much data flow. Probably too much data for scientists to keep up 🤣
  Someone has to do it and not many would like to do it but those of us that would like to would have a blast! You could even do it as a 1 man crew with robots to help keep the ship going that way if the human lifeform were to die it's only 1 life vs the hundreds that would potentially die if it was a full crew of humans. The robots could even clean up for the next human to take over.
  But that's all a dream unfortunately.
  
  Yeah this is my mindset too.
  
  Everything except world-seer can be done as an at home aid for the elderly or folks with developmental differences. Pay is shit and you may have to do personal care things, but you also mostly hang out with generally nice or at least docile folks. But then there also can be random anger and poop. Scarily enough you usually need little to no qualifications for this work.
  
  I have a friend that works with special ed. No licence, no cert needed. He has to handle poop, spitting, blood and the sorts. On top of that, watching and caring for those that may have a seizure. It feels wrong to put on so many hazards and life determining issues to a person with little to no training in it. To top it off, he has to fight to get a full time potion to even get benefits.
  
  Fair point. I was thinking about an in home aid, which my partner did for 7+ years with developmentally impaired adults. It was rarely dangerous and the employees were prepared for each unique client, which they could spend years with if they chose to stay. The lack of professional training is not ideal nor fair to either party, but neither this is world we live in and those folks need aids who care. If you want to mostly hang out with folks and make a meaningful impact this would be a way to do that.
  
  I don't understand this mentality at all. No dreams? No drive? You don't want to make art, or raise children, or help your community, or cook food, or tend the earth?
  
  FYI This is the majority of the workforce. They have to work in order to do other things that are not paid. The are not interested in self improvement, climbing the social ladder, kissing ass etc. They want to do a job that doesn't suck, get paid a fair wage, and work a fair number of hours so they can do the things they actually enjoy.
  These are the people that drive human society. The most valuable portion that maintains our existence.
  
  Who says I don't do these things? Can you turn making art into a job if you want to do it for a few hours each month and aren't particularly good? Can you turn child-raising into a job if you only raise your own? Can you turn "community helping" into a job if you just help whoever you can for small things without any particular qualifications? Does cooking food for myself, family and friends pay anything? Does tending my garden pay anything?
  
  You've bought into the toxic idea that only paid work is real. Raising your own kids is work. Cooking food for your own family is work, growing food for your family is work.
  This kind of labor, and much more, is just as real and important as paid labor.
  
  The fuck? You do know you're in a thread about "jobs", not about generic "work", right? No one said anything about generic work, this thread was about jobs, i.e. getting paid so you have enough to live.
  
  Exactly, and that's a big problem. We need to talk about it, whenever the topic comes up. It's called "invisible labor" for a reason.
  
  I have no idea what you're trying to talk about. You're not making sense to me.
  
  I personally would love to do almost all of those things. I wouldn't want to do them as a job. There is an ocean of difference between doing something because it's enjoyable and doing it because if I ever stop for any reason, I will starve to death in a ditch. Tends to kill the fun.
  My ideal job would be chilling out as a professional student, splitting my time between large amounts of socializing and various crafting hobbies that are not stressful because my ability to live does not depend on them. Might even take up an instrument. Wouldn't play it for anyone, I just like learning things more than I like anything else. Which is not monetizable.
  Barring that, whatever allows me the most time to do so without making me miserable. Beyond the basic amount required to survive, life isn't about money. Life is life.
  
  You don't want to make the world just a little bit better for the people around you? To contribute something to society?
  
  Who says I don't? Just nothing I do can be turned into a job that pays enough money to live. I don't want to be doing one thing for more than 5-10 hours a week, and I want to do many different things, not stick with one for very long.
  I've created open source software. I've written guides for games. I've helped countless people with their problems, online and offline. All my friends would say I'm valuable to them, those are part of "society". I'm constantly making myself better, more knowledgeable, I am part of society, by improving myself I improve society.
  None of this is any job that pays any money.
  
  Sounds like you want to be self-employed
  
  Sure, can you help me get started and tell me how would I make money with what you've read so far from me? Doing things I want to do.
  
  Your problem is twofold: One, that you've bought into the idea that only paid work is meaningful, a destructive paradigm rooted in misogyny; and B, it's not that you don't like work, you just don't like responsibility. Which, okay, but avoiding it is still pretty immature. And maybe you're young, and being a dilletante is fine for now, but for your own sake you shouldn't aspire to make it a lifelong pattern.

597 comments