Just Curious - What's Everyone's Profession Here???

Space shuttle door gunner. It's a surprisingly easy lateral move from my old job as a submarine screen window repairman.

Former rock star, now retired, living on my private island, occasional public speaker, industry leader consultant when bored.

Just kidding. IT of course.

“AROO!! AROO!! AROO!!”

No, not really. I’m an English teacher & childcare provider.

Used to work in IT, but preschoolers are generally easier to please.

I have no idea what is called in English. I just work at a car park. Just above minimal wage, it pays my bills, finances my hobbies, is stable and once I'm out of the door at the end of my shift it is not my problem anymore.

I'm a cashier. Are you proud of me mom and dad?

I used to teach, now I wait tables. I've also been a computer tech, event security, summer camp counselor, and lay minister.

I'm thinking about switching it up again. Maybe electrician?

My profession is whatever job I can get with a HS diploma. Right now it's a crane operator, I climb 1-3 stories to troubleshoot problems for a warehouse in 34f or -15f. Actually not bad, coworkers on my shift are pretty cool, pay is good, benefits not bad. Just allot to learn with the program and system they use. Still in training, wish my luck keeping this job till I get a college degree or trade.

IT support for a non-profit. We are a small IT dept so I do everything from installing printers to managing our network. I've been at this job for 20yrs. But worked in IT for 25ish.

Environmental health officer, aka health inspector.

Most people don't know who we are, but we play a huge role in the background on education and prevention for public health issues like food safety, communicable diseases (gastro, outbreaks, pandemic, tattooing, beauty parlours, mosquitoes, rodents, flu, covid, etc.), health of the environment (soil, air, water),... We are a jack of all trades kind of profession.

...

I’m a professional do-nothinger!

Geographer, I make maps

I am a caregiver for high functioning adults with special needs. The pay isn't very good and there's no benefits. I love my clients, they are hilarious and they like to tell me how awesome I am. I don't let it get to my head because that's one of the behaviors they do to get what they want or need.

Welcome to the IT help desk, im here because you broke something.

And I cosplay as a sysadmin at home for fun. Would like to make the jump professionally, but being able to turn work off at home and not be on-call is too important.

I make knives. I write about knives.

What? Those are totally some of my professions.

I used to be a scientist, lived the startup (hardware) dream, now thinking about next moves - world needs housing, right? Maybe reskill to civil engineering?

Surprising thing: hardware startups face so much upfront capital cost that they're almost impossible these days, also, I'm starting to wonder if we maybe have enough Science/Tech and that investment could be better directed to short term material needs of people and the planet

I'm in education. It's pretty alright. The kids aren't alright, though.

I restarted my career during Covid after my consulting business dried up. 5 years in, I'm a sysadmin at a state university. But I am working on an escape plan from IT. I also chair a very active queer non-profit and sit on a lot of coalitions so time to myself is often at a premium. That's not even mentioning my toddler son...

Mechanical Engineer. 14 years in automotive interiors. I design tooling for instrument panel toppers, door uppers, arm rests, etc.

Primarily, the type of tooling I specialize in is known as edge wrapping or edge folding. Basically, you have the plastic "substrate" and the leather or vinyl "skin" that is either vacuum formed or press laminated to it. Extra material is left around the edges, and that is heated, wrapped, and glued around the back of the part with a number of metal fingers. I do the wrapping tooling, as well as the lamination tooling.

The most complicated tool I ever designed was for a large, flat component behind the back seat of a car, by the rear window. Let me walk you through the sequence for it.

• Operator loads plastic substrate in tool upper
• Operator loads flat skin pattern in the lower on skin pins, and a clamp in the rear
• The infrared heating shuttle moves in and the upper closes to the heating position, where the skin and substrate are blasted with tens of thousands of watts of IR heat to activate the glue
• The IR shuttle retracts, and the tool fully closes to the lamination position, and the skin pins all retract. In the case of this tool, it had (I think) 0.25mm of compression a-side of the part.
• Seven slides extend to laminated areas that were either undercut in tool draw, or protruded in a way that prohibited skin loading.
• Three 200C hot air heaters extend down from the upper to heat the back edge of the part, and around the two speaker openings.
• Once those retracts, 25 edgefolding pieces wipe the skin around the back, and up through the speaker openings (that's the coolest part)
• The edgefolders retract in the reverse sequence of which they extended
• The slides retracts
• The tool opens, and the skin pins extend
• the Operator can now step in the light curtain to remove the part, then return with the new substrate and skin.

So far, I would say it is the pinnacle of my career. But car parts are getting more complicated all the time. My design focuses lately have been focused on simplicity over that level of complexity. Where can we use a guided cylinder where we used to use linear rails? Can this detail be made in multiple pieces to reduce waste material? What components can be 3D printed? It's great fun, really. I do love my job.

NOC technician. I monitor the internet infrastructure for a school district, remotely troubleshoot networking equipment, dispatch field resources, set up maintenance projects, coordinate with vendors, that sorta thing.

Scheduling and event organizing at a small college.

I'm working in IT as a software developer 👾 Not sure if it's sustainable until retirement though, maybe I'll try something new at some point... I always dreamed of becoming a train driver

I used to work in IT, got fed up with that and switched to trades (joiner, tiler, and such), started doing property renovations, then covid & lockdown stopped that.

Then my parents got ill and I pretty much have to take care of them.

Automate stuff, fix stuff that does not automate.

Nice try, FBI

Translator and proofreader. I've translated everything from HSE manuals to emails used in a divorce case.

Warehouse worker. I mainly do labeling and loading/unloading etc but I do any other task as needed. I am also full-time uni student in CS.

Used to be cop.

Went into a completely unrelated line of work purely because it was remote, promoted from there.

Edit for the curious who want to know why I'm not a cop any more: https://lemmy.world/post/43267939

Programmer and systems admin

Pediatric physical therapy.

Professional wanker.

I make things look nice by covering up blemishes with an explosion or skin from a foot or a piece of furniture. I'm a compositor.

Software developer

I thought there'd be more of us...

I used to work for a city school during the summer to get school books ready for the year/ recycle old ones, retail, bike mechanic, 3rd party labor builder for various companies, mostly bikes and furniture, and most recently at a factory cutting aluminum.

Nowadays I mostly look for jobs.

Railway signal maintainer.

I take care of crossing warning devices, switch machines, signals, track circuits, and wayside hazard detectors.

I was in tech, both IT and business enablement roles. I got replaced by AI so now I'm a professional curmudgeon.

I’ve been a dispensing optician, IT support and consultant, project manager, international NGO director, now I work as regional lead for a men’s charity and have qualified as a psychotherapist. So that’s happening now.

Software dev and in privat game dev/modder

City bus driver. It's not the most exciting job I've ever had, but it's a union shop(which really kicks ass!!!), has steady hours, pension, vacation/sick days, and healthcare.

It can be infuriating dealing with people who definitely do not have their shit in a pile. But it also feels really good being there for the community. I'll probably stick with it for a bit.

I'm a software engineer and it feels gross to say for some reason

I'm just a poser though, because I have no thigh-highs

Freelance artist. Make 2D and 3D digital art.

Commissions are mostly furry. Because of course. But I'm working on a sci-fi universe, and I practice a lot of 3D modelling with Bionicles.

Youth worker

Mechanical engineer working on the operations side of a power plant.

Electrical engineer. I primarily do work on water treatment plants, but because my company has few electrical engineers, I work on a variety of jobs

Maintenance engineer for a major window manufacturer.

Previously I worked in Healthcare in various different roles.

Legal analyst

I'm a network engineer for a Swiss ISP that serves only a specific niche of institutional customers, not home users.

I think there are still many who don't know this: All important internet links go over fiber optic cables with lasers and photo diodes at the ends, and in the backbone everything under 100 Gigabits per second is slow.

The speeds you are used to as a consumer are mostly limited by the last mile to your house, be it wireless, DSL on telephone wires, or DOCSIS on coax cable. Everywhere else 10 Gigabits per second is like the minimum. Our current generation backbone routers can't even do 1 Gigabits per second interfaces anymore.

I'm herding electrons. AKA I design chips for isosychronous low-latency networks.

Electrical engineer, I'm more on the prototype side of circuit board design

I am a master of the custodial arts.

I'm a parish priest in the Episcopal Church.

Lots of people assume priests only work on Sundays. They also assume that we don't have much of a life outside of the priesthood. I get that sometimes when I'm getting dressed after surfing ("you guys can surf?"). I also have a wife and four kids, which also surprises people (my wife and I sometimes meet up for lunch dates and I always get amused when I see someone who thinks they've happened upon some scandal in the making).

In the middle running away from tech (10+ years) to join the circus. That's not hyperbole

I'm a credit card number distributor.

Full stack developer. Our stack is soggy cheese.

Junior researcher in food microbiology, with a background in general food technology.

Figuring out cheaper ways to enrich foods using microbial producers.

Systems Engineer/Programmer. Been doing it for ~26 years.

No profession. Didn't choose any !!

I do the 3Dies

Lawyer, specifically a civil litigator.

Software Engineer

I studied bioinformatics, got into IT, got pushed into sales, got out cause I hated that. Now I'm a barkeeper. Not yet sure what I'll do next. Maybe IT again, if I find a company that sucks less.

Also the sysadmin for a small non-profit, which is a lot more fun than any corporate job I had.

I was self-employed in media for around 10years. Mostly Album covers, posters and some clothing. Mostly in reggae. Than, with 37y, I did an "apprenticeship" for 3 years and now I'm a webdev. Mostly typo3 and a bit wordpress.

Lumberjack in Antarctica, it's cold and pointless but nobody's got to do it

Or you could, like, not help our future doxxers find us and fuck up our shit 🙄

Product designer in observability field

Marketing. Sorry about all the emails and texts.

On this account, I’m a live audio technician. I run sound for events like concerts, musicals, dance shows, etc…

I also do a little bit of networking design, installation, and management on the side. Mostly because lots of devices these days are using audio-over-IP and video-over-IP systems like Dante. Nothing super fancy, but I can at least configure VLANs on a managed switch, and have gone through the SysAdmin “locked myself out of the firewall” rite of passage.

Don't want to give specific details about me personally, so I'll be vague. But just wanted to represent that I'm not tech/IT focused on my work.

It still is a STEM job with 2 postgraduate degree+diploma level qualifications.

Was a wage slave all my life until I retired. The best I could do in life is sell my time for money. I didn't care who I sold it to.

Opened a consulting business a couple years ago, a solo thing. Before that 15 years in energy tech product.

Embedded engineer writing firmware and what such

automated machine design. mostly automotive crap.

sure does pay the bills what with the always available overtime, but it also has a shit effect on hobbies because (1) there's only so many hours a week you can spend using a kb/m and at a desk, and more work cuts into gaming, (2) there's only so many hours you can spend staring at a screen, so more work cuts into gaming or other media, and (3) when your day job is designing machines and solving problems, more of that cuts into playing Minecraft or Factorio or something because hey that's like the exact same type of thinking.

there's a reason so many engineers are into climbing, cycling, camping, woodworking etc

I quit work at 35 and am now 61. Preferred to do my own thing, which in retrospect means I'm way to busy

Nice try, FBI.

I'm a professional pedant, but it's only seasonal part time work.

I work in ecommerce/cpg supply chain as an supply/demand planner, I find it enjoyable. If any of you guys are hiring let me know lol.

I’ve been in the animation industry for 15yrs. Mostly in the commercial space, so nothing for movies.

911 call-taker

Former machine learning researcher. Worked on image search, then language modeling for general search. But then VC started throwing money at it and the landscape just kinda' changed. The research was still great in academia, but a bunch of dipshits took a useful technology and decided to use it as a way to funnel money from everyone into their own coffers.

Now I build stuff to monitor power lines and prevent wildfires.

One thing people don't usually expect: machine learning isn't magic. The computer doesn't just "do the work for you". There's a lot of planning, theory, and experimentation around seeing if and why something works.

I'm a CNC laser operator. Basically I cut metal with lasers.

TCOB, takin' care of business.

Voip engineer / telecom

Sysadmin or something like L2 helpdesk.
Depends on the day.

sw engineer since abt 1997 and firefighter since abt 2005.

Telephony engineer

RF Engineer.

I was a special education teacher in an inner city school district for 11 years. I started in high school my first year and then went to elementary the last 10. It was to weird being 22 teaching 17 year olds.

Anyways, did 3-4 for a couple years, then 5-6 a couple years, finished in k-1. I was diagnosed with kidney failure a few years ago and retired early because I'm on dialysis. I invested very well so I'm good financially, but I miss working with kids, not so much getting fucked over by the school district, but that's a wother thing.

Pseudo-pilot/simulator operator for the Norwegian air navigation safety provider, Avinor. It's a quiet life, but the hours are humane and it doesn't require a medical certificate (which I lost after having a li'l stroke some 15 months ago).

IT, did a lot of work in a high traffic (big scale & high redundancy) environments.

Im 'always' right of course but I don't give fucks enough to discuss with everyone.

Since I've died once I'm clearly now technically undead.

Stay at home dad 😊

Cybersecurity (AppSec), was a software engineer for many years before that.

One day there was an incident and I tended to the recovery…

IT. I've drifted from telecommunications to cinema.

CEO. Disaster/healthcare management consultant. Critical care paramedic.

Well. Technically I am a CEO. My company is smallish, but we are a proper joint stock company (who I am the sole owner)m I founded it in 2020 and we consult in disaster management and healthcare management so for the "hot end" of healthcare.

I am still qualified as a critical care paramedic but only work in that field part time now.