If you don't work IT, retail, or food service what do you do for work?
Sometimes on Lemmy these seem like the only jobs that actually exist, but I'm sure there's a lot of people here with different and unusual lines of work.
Wastewater-based epidemiology. Basically we track infectious diseases in wastewater, and the results guide public health decisions.
As someone who is doing disaster response consulting for healthcare and public health: I fucking love you guys. You make my job sooo much easier.
Seriously.
The surveillance you folks do is pretty much indisputable and far more incorruptible compared to everything else we do, in healthcare especially.
Very often you are my "discussion ending gun" when decision makers endlessly want me to prove their (flawed) point of view. A "nope, here are validated wastewater based numbers, you are wrong" is extremely satisfying sometimes.
Thanks folks!
Thanks for helping make sure I don't shit myself to death. I assume you help with that.
Actually COVID is one of the most used tests they do, at least around here. But you can do things like drug use, cancer epidemiology (for some cancers), etc. as well - and that is incredibly helpful from a public health point of view.
Because it's just like with Covid - we can't get proper data from patient sided tests because we can't test everyone. And even if we could,not everyone would.
But everybody poops/pees. And guys like OP interpolate from that.
As Philpo said, we mainly do covid, but we can do Norovirus, which is a common GI virus that can give you the shits.
Thank you for your service! One of the best things to come out of the pandemic IMO.
Engineer (p.s. don't become an engineer, it's not as great as they sold it to us)
Ain't that how all professional service are nowadays.
Doctors is the last gig and it is getting gutted as we speak.
Facts. I was talking to my doctor who is moving to Denver for another job soon. He was telling me how bad it was getting.
The hospital+clinics are forcing them to spend less time with patients,overbooking their schedules, and ordering tests that aren’t medically necessary to get the most out of a patient.
He’s leaving for a private practice job that’ll allow him to have more say so, it’s sad those who have been with him for the last 10+ years won’t benefit from him being around anymore.
I disagree, I'm an engineer and I prefer it over not engineering positions. My only ragret is not keeping up with coding since it was my favorite subject in college
My husband is an engineer. He loves his job most days.
Maybe it's my job, but I feel like I haven't had a job in the last decade that I really enjoyed. I might just be getting older and jaded.
That’s why I went backwards from SE back to IT. I enjoy working with people directly and helping them. It’s also a hell of a lot easier in terms of hours and crunches (we have no crunches).
Basically, I had to decide whether I wanted the money and “glamour” of working on a well-known hot project or to be generally happy with my life. I’m a lot happier now.
I think it depends on your field of engineering and how much you enjoy the work. I find environmental engineering to be satisfying and a very dependable/lucrative income compared to many other non-engineering fields I might have been interested in.
Add to that most other fields that pay similarly or higher (doctor, lawyer, etc) require more/costlier schooling and it's a pretty sweet deal to be able to go into the job market with only a bachelor's or masters and making a decent wage right off the bat.
Of course the same enshittification/race to the bottom for prices affects us too but I don't know if there's any career that escapes that entirely.
I would also think maybe certain engineering fields are more stable than others. Mine is particularly recession-proof since we're driven by regulation (and bipartisan-supported regulation at that), not the economy. Massive layoffs are not that common in many of the other more "physical" engineering fields like structural, electrical, or mechanical either and even if you are laid off there is usually another company hiring. The skills are pretty portable as well so if you want to change careers you have a pretty good chance at being successful.
Is it a field of rainbows and butterflies? No, but it's a hell of a lot better than plenty of other jobs out there and it pays the bills.
Oh, I know.
I'm a Stonemason, and I work in conservation.
Nice! I’m a trim carpenter and I work in historic preservation. I’m a project manager now but I worked my way up from laborer.
Nice!
OP clearly just wanted an excuse to show off their vast collection of response images....
Farmer!
Missed the opportunity to use Its not much but its honest work farmer. With the overalls, David Brandt.
When people work with hazardous materials, they hire me to make sure they do it safely or legally. I mostly work in waste handling, soil remediations and laboratories.
It's pretty fun and interesting, but it's been very bad for my enjoyment of homegrown food, swimming outdoors or going downwind of any industrial sites.
Safely OR legally? Shouldn't that be "and"?
Safely XOR Legally
"Either it's safe and it doesn't come up or it isn't and we have ourselves legally covered."
Some places skirt by the law and dump it where hazardous waste doesn't belong. This is done legally but is not at all safe.
Ah, ideally yes.
Thank you for what you do though, it's not glamorous work I'm sure but average person like me appreciates what you do
Branch manager at a 3 trade business (HVAC, Plumbing, Electrical). Very much enjoy beating the competition and taking all of their great talent because they can’t treat them well. It’s not hard to actually give a damn about your people. Turns out, if you do that they like working for you and end up performing even more.
I do cosplay erotica for a living. I make awesome costumes, I take them off, and just post to Patreon. I suppose it's kindof retail, as I'm giving the photos to people, as a reward for subscribing, but I set my own schedule and choose what goes out. The freedom is incredible
First, good on you. As a corpo wage slave who would not be good at either dressing up or removing said dressing, color me envious.
Second, any particular fandom pay the bills better than others?
Now that I'm asking I realize I probably don't actually want to know.
I specialize in powerful/domme energy characters, because unless you look like a little girl, you don't make money off the sweet/girl next door characters.
My most popular are Lady Dimitrescu (Resident Evil), Cammy (StreetFighter), Mad Moxxi (Borderlands), so video games, win!
Oh, and Velma... my most subscribers ever were for that set, but I shot with a porn star and it was my first girl on girl set. 😅
I run a business repairing consumer-grade 3D printers.
Sick. I have so many issues with my 3d printer printing petg. Such a pain in the ass.
PETG just is a pain in the ass sometimes. Really sensitive to moisture, and it loves to stick to hot metal. So it has a tendency to overextrude because of the steam, and bunch up on the nozzle, causing all sorts of havok.
The key to printing it is just keeping it dry -- the latest batches I've held feel like they're way softer than I remember, so I suspect mfgs are putting more glycol in it than before.
Also, do a sanity check and go back and print PLA from time to time. Sometimes you won't realize something else is wrong and you'll blame it on the filament, but something like the idler arm on the extruder is broken, etc.
You can print it on Textured PEI, or Glass - but I suggest putting a little glue stick down to act as a release agent on the PEI - PETG and PEI bond together too well in some instances (ESPECIALLY on smooth PEI)
I used to work at a place that made envelopes and printed forms.
Fascinating seeing 12 foot tall stacks of rolls of paper.
Used to work at a newspaper, can confirm. Giant rolls of paper are pretty cool.
Me too, right when the digital age was taking over. I was young so they had me help design display ads in illustrator. We'd print out the ads with the articles on a laser printer. Cut them and arrange on a page that was then photographed. It was the future back then lol.
I'm a therapist, and I train other therapists. And I supervise some therapists and I train other therapists to supervise other therapists. And I manage a team of therapists who train other therapists and who train other therapists to supervise other therapists.
Kind "in it" at this stage.
So, what do you do when you need therapy?
I find a therapist I don't know!
There's a few of them about!
Wow you're pretty high up there. So that sounds like you are yourself a supervisor and supervisor educator and supervisor educators' supervisor? Like some kind of a consulting group where my supervisors probably got trained? I don't actually know who does the licensing for supervisor status - I'm guessing it's just like the entry level where you have to get hours from anywhere that the state board vetted and stamped off on? It's so interesting to me how state licensure has such a long relationship with private entities.
I'm in the UK so it's a different structure than the US, and the role is different too, less overlap with the medical approach.
Most of what we so is training counsellors, the training of qualified counsellors in how to provide clinical supervision is a small part of it.
We're a private training company, doing counselling, legal, medical and accounting. I work for the counselling part of course.
Im an electrician, it's pretty sweet if you ask me. Not necessarily the job itself, but the money you can earn doing side-jobs
Are these side jobs under the table or things you actually have to get permits for? I've known a few people who do the former and it can be really lucrative
Depends really, some you just kind of go in and do, get paid, and head out. Some you have to properly sit down and get it inspected.
Keep in mind though that I am a baby electrician, I've only got like 6-7 months experience, so I might not be the best person to ask about this.
I used to be a Janitor, and now I'm a web designer. I still go to trash businesses and make them all pretty.
I put $1000 in bitcoin in 2012
Then i wake up from my dream and calibrate temperature sensors on medical refrigerators
I'm a storyboard artist/3d generalist. Basically I draw all day, everyday for short films and TV shows. I find it pretty awesome because A) I love to draw and now I get paid to do it which is, from what I understand, very uncommon for artists. B) I'm helping shape a story from basically beginning to end. C) I also get to do silly voices sometimes when they need someone to fill in.
But, a big downside is that I'm sitting and staring at a screen around 6 to 7 hours a day which destroyed my eyes and I get leg strain sometimes from sitting. I want to get a stand up desk eventually.
I coordinate an academic makerspace at a college.
Teach at a university
Teaches IT
I did think that after I commented. Mais non, teaching English Linguistics in France.
I'm glad to see there's a few of us in the 5 figure salary club here!
I'm scientific support for a major pharma company. I tell people my job is essentially to be Hank Hill, as I'm in charge of compressed and liquid gases. I keep everyone squared away with liquid nitrogen, liquid helium, liquid argon, and any number and size of gas cylinder.
It's not a bad job. Pay is ok for what I do, people are generally nice, and most days I'm done the bulk of my work in 2-3 hours, so the rest of the time is mine unless someone needs something.
The rest of the day I'll prep and respond to posts here, study music, read comics or books, and watch cartoons. Nobody seems to care as long as the work gets done.
It's low stress and a decent environment, so I got no complaints. It's not as good as my last job, doing data analysis of hazardous chemicals. The place was generally run really well and almost all my work was doing daily reports on inventory. I made macros to do everything, so my work was done in less than half an hour most days and I got to work at home.
Being a nobody in pharma is pretty great as long as your group is cool.
Mind if I ask a work question? I purchased a cannister of CO2 for a kitchen appliance, but have another project requiring nitrogen. Are there any cleaning procedures or vacuum seal requirements before changing gases to prevent contaimination/interaction?
It's more of a warehouse job than a science job, so I'm probably not qualified to help, but I love learning, so I did some reading.
Different mixes of CO² and nitrogen are available for both carbonating/nitrogenizing beer, and further mixes designed to pressurize the lines for dispensing. Replacement beverage o-rings seem to come in a number of materials from polyurethane, silicone, teflon, and others and looking at o-ring compatibility charts, they all seem to both be listed as compatible for nitrogen and CO².
Since you're not dealing with liquid gas, I don't think you need to worry so much about material as if you're using something food safe made for beverages, it doesn't seem to be an issue what they're made of or which gas you use as far as I can find. You also shouldn't need to worry about the nitrogen freezing the CO² and forming dry ice from the amount I could imagine you using at home.
Without knowing more about what exactly you're working on, that's the best general help I can dig up. Depending on what exactly you're doing, finding a good homebrew or scuba shop/forum could probably get you the most reliable answer to what you're working on since they'll both be blending those gases in a manner safe for the human body.
I hope that was at least marginally helpful!
I did work in IT, but now I'm retired young. I could go back to work and make double my income, but I just don't wanna. I'd rather have less income with a stable, comfortable life and the freedom to do whatever I want every day, than spend all day stuck in a job just to have no free time to enjoy the extra money I'd be bringing home.
I'd too choose freedom over more money anyday.
How did you retire early and at what age? If you don't mind my asking
I served in the US military. I was in the Air Force, but my profession was IT, so I spent my whole service working as a sysadmin.
You can officially retire and collect a pension after only 20 years served. I joined at 18, so I retired at 38 years old. Normally, a 20-yr pension isn't enough to fully retire on, but I got a bit messed up during my service. The VA gave me a 100% disability rating, which includes a monthly pay bigger than my pension! Plus. My wife also served and was medically discharged with a 100% disability rating as well. So she gets the same medical benefits and pay as I do (minus a pension).
With all three sources of passive income, we can live without working. We're not rich by any stretch of the imagination, but we pull in enough to live comfortably and have all our basic needs met.
Like I said, I could go back into the IT field and double my current income (or more), but then I'd be stuck working all the time again, and I don't want to do that. The military was a 24/7 gig for 20 years. "Service Before Self" was one of our core values; we always had to prioritize the mission over our personal lives, and we could be recalled to work any time, day or night. So it's nice to actually have some "me time" now, where no one can make me go anywhere or do anything. Not looking to go back to work and give that up so soon.
I'm a museum curator based in Europe (very different from the Americas). It's a wonderful job of travel, being close to history and bringing some goodness into the world, if you don't mind the salary of working for a charity.
Librarian at a PreK-5 school (3-11 years old). I teach 45 minute classes to everyone each week. 700 kids, 32 classes. Less stress than classroom teaching while still following the same schedule.
I'm in IT, but one of my lifelong friends is a radio tower climber. He drives up to the mountains, climbs these 500' radio towers, and repairs them. Another close friend is an audio engineer. Another close friend owns a taxi company in a small tourist town. Another friend is a building maintenance manager. Another friend is a regional bank manager. There are millions of jobs out there. Lemmy just attracts a specific kind of person.
I'm an artist in animation ✏️
Insurance claims investigation. In-house PI, essentially
Kinda like that but I'm fatter and swarthier
I work with school kids who have disabilities.
How many years did you prepare the image collection before asking this question, OP?
I work in IT, by the way. (Don't use Arch though, Tumbleweed crew represent!)
Tumbleweed gang 🤙
I work as a theatre tech (light and sound) at a college(theatre arts department). I do however use Linux and made some scripts in Python to control my ligtdesk and sound table. So a bit of IT related work. But also talk with students about the creative part of lights, sound and projection and how they can use it during and after there study in there shows.
I also do some shows for them in the small Theatre in the college and outside the college.
And give them a workshop teaching them the basics and how they can tell to a tech what they want and how they can do somethings themselves.
I'm a linehaul driver, pic from my first day at this job. I pull a set of double-trailers back and forth between two company terminals overnight. Same route each time, home every day. Pretty chill and easy work, I just listen to audiobooks and podcasts all night as I try not to slap anyone with my back trailer. any recommendations for something new to listen to I'd love to hear it
Snack food manufacturing, running machines that put snacks into bags and then those bags into boxes.
No fork lift access unfortunately!
Construction electrician
me too. just started actually. well actually VDV
Machine maintenance / Macgyver. We make air filters and I have to make sure the machines that make them are running.
I also do any other random jobs. Currently I'm creating a simple webpage to submit machine issues that get sent to a Google sheet and an email sent out.
I also machine metal replacement parts. Of course I make any personal projects I want to as well.
