What is your job?

LockAndLoad wrote:
- Taught one of my developers how to use his IDE (grrrr...)

That's not a developer... that's an intern...

A 45-year-old intern. He's inherited and I cannot seem to run him off (or have him fired). But he is the single biggest reason why I am grumpy at work.

I play the tuba for a living.

Seriously.

I'm a Component Design Engineer for a Very Big tech company. I write software debug tools for our products. It sounds about as glamorous as it is, but I get to see a lot of very nifty tech.

I work at a small ISP based in NYC, where I've been for ~4 years. What I do can change greatly from day to day. Wednesday I spent most of the day working on various nonsense to work towards becoming officially PCI and SAS70 compliant. I did hate my life that day.

Yesterday I split my time between writing tests for a mod_perl application that I maintain, and training our newest hire in the ways of unix and dealing with our clients.

Today I spent more time training. I updated the schedule of our technical staff. I also spent time decommissioning some of our canceled colocation clients, which consisted of removing old ethernet, shelves, pdu's, updating our documentation, and preparing a server for shipping. In between all of that I spent a fair amount of time playing a bizarre version of hand-ball that some fellow employee's created.

I do really enjoy my job; with the occasional exception I work whatever hours I feel like, I usually enjoy the work itself, and its a generally laid-back and fun atmosphere to work in. The pay is on the low side, and occasionally I consider going for a 'real' development job somewhere, but it appears to be difficult to find one with an atmosphere I like.

I could have sworn there was thread similar to this about a year ago. Oh well...

I work in the I.T. department of a midwest auto manufacturer where I lead a small group of programmers comprised of full-time employees and contractors. I tend to let the senior members of the team handle the 'sexier' projects while I run interference and help maintain a hodgepodge of applications. In a given day I may work in SQL Server, Java, Visual Basic 6, Delphi 4 (shudder), or even the company mainframe looking at COBOL code (more shudder, even though COBOL in where I started in programming).

I'm still with the same company.. Venture Capital/Private Equity. Its been kinda slow on the deal side so we've been working on raising a much larger fund for next year to hopefully make some larger investments in some later stage companies.

Only big news for me is I finally woke up enough out of my malaise to get my ass back to school. I'm in the first semester of 20 months straight in an Executive MBA program at St. Joseph's (go Hawks!). So far I'm loving it.

I'm new to this group so this thread is a good introduction to me ... so here goes:

I am a program management support contractor for the Air Force Air Education and Training Command's Civil Engineer. My particular group cleansd up old bombing ranges and other sites with spent military munitions. Mind you, I am at the program office so no working in the field but I do love my job. I do a lot of PowerPoint slides and collect, analyze and display program management info to my clients so they can make better decisions on how to clean it up.

I am also the program manager for a contaminant plume modeling program (based on NASA'd WorldWind program ... much like Google Earth).

At home, I have a 2.5 year old son and so gaming for me is usually late at night or maybe mid afternoon on a weekend when my son is napping.

My main game is Guild wars.

MacBrave wrote:

I could have sworn there was thread similar to this about a year ago. Oh well...

**politely clears throat**

I'm a physical medicine and rehabilitation resident, finishing my final year of my residency. PM&R is not a super well known field of medicine. We deal with musculoskeletal problems that people have (particularly neck and back pain), as well as take care of folks with disabilities, both congenital and acquired (like brain injury, spinal cord injury, stroke, multitrauma). Its a rewarding field, and certainly easier to do things like have a family and play games than say a field like neurosurgery. This final year is very nice, except for the stress of looking for an actual job once I'm out.

I know there are other medically-employed goodjers out there, c'mon guys, represent!

Laralyn wrote:

At home, I have a 2.5 year old son and so gaming for me is usually late at night or maybe mid afternoon on a weekend when my son is napping.

3 year old and 5 month old here - your gaming hours are strangely similar to mine!

I had a job with the Feds as a capital markets analyst but I turned that down so I could move to Taiwan. I'm currently interviewing with 3M for a position that is unkown, but I've met with two VPs and next week I'll meet with the President. Right now, I think it's all a prank.

Wow Ulairi! I hope you get this job and it makes you oodles of money and happiness. Best of luck.

I work for a big company based in Central America with over 500 stores in 18 countries. Last year they started a small project in the US and I came on board as the "Sales Dept Director". Since then we have 4 stores in Houston and Los Angeles and we are opening a new store in New York in October.

I love my job. I help with the management of a small project backed up by a big corporation and so far we are doing great in the US with big expansion plans. I do a lot of traveling around checking out our stores, training our sales personnel and also meeting and closing deals with our distributors, since I'm also responsible for the merchandising. Things are really hectic this year, with many business possibilities and because we are pushing forward with the expansion of our stores to new territories in the US. I can't complain much though, it's a great place for me to work with big chances of getting promoted to a better position if I my play my cards right.

Edwin wrote:

Wow Ulairi! I hope you get this job and it makes you oodles of money and happiness. Best of luck.

Thanks. Right now, I'd settle for a ticket and visa to work in taiwan.

I always said if McCain wins the election, that I'm making like cartman and saying "screw you guys".

Officially, my title is project manager and trainer for a property management company that deals primarily with large master-planned communities throughout California. Realistically, I'm the easily-accessible computer geek who can fix things, who's also the grand-poobah-master of all things related to our web-based software systems we use to get our jobs done.

I'm also an occasional game show contestant to pump up the funds, which is fun, but doesn't really pay the bills regularly. If I could get a job on the production side of things, or as a writer for them, I'd be a very happy camper, but I'm going to wait to bug some of the peeps I've met recently until after my next appearance to try to finagle a way in.

I write.

I'm a geologist... named Rob. My specialty is paleoseismology, which is basically digging trenches across active faults and looking at the strata to figure out exactly where the fault is (since you need to set buildings back a certain distance from active faults and Californians want to use as much land as they can) and determining how active they are to help with long term seismic hazard assessment. My company also does a lot of site characterization for proposed power plants. I am happiest when I am in the field and dirty. When I am stuck in the office, I refresh GWJ a lot.

I'm a software engineer / technical lead for a large financial institution. I've built and maintained web sites in ASP+Javascript, frontend apps in VB and C#, and many backend apps in Java, C++, and Perl.

Yeah. It's as exciting as it sounds.

oldmanscene24 wrote:
spider_j wrote:

I'm a senior Crown Prosecutor.

My apologies, but when I first read this, I read, "senior Clown Prosecutor." I thought, "What a cool job!"

Well someone's got to do it! We can't have clowns just running wild in the street, now, can we?

Kilaban wrote:

I play the tuba for a living.

Seriously.

Dude, I want your job. Seriously.

boogle wrote:

Sell a little dope, little meth.
In all seriousness last real job I had was mowing lawns/translator before my boss got charged with possession and lost the business.

LoL

FYi I like to stalk.

Current job: (in 3 days ugh, student again)

Previous job: Data entry (also ughh)

georob wrote:

I'm a geologist... named Rob. My specialty is paleoseismology, which is basically digging trenches across active faults and looking at the strata to figure out exactly where the fault is (since you need to set buildings back a certain distance from active faults and Californians want to use as much land as they can) and determining how active they are to help with long term seismic hazard assessment. My company also does a lot of site characterization for proposed power plants. I am happiest when I am in the field and dirty. When I am stuck in the office, I refresh GWJ a lot. :)

Cool...
IMAGE(http://wearscience.com/img450/destroy_the_moon.gif)

I'm still the Purchasing Manager for a manufacturing facility, only now I am in the middle of training my replacement. I've taken a promotion, which will breathe new life into the operation, and my work self. I am moving into being the Project Manager, making sure that we build exactly what the customer wants.

I've been with the company for over 10 years, and have learned enough of 3 trades to find work in any of them if the need ever arises. Since I have been working in the office I've gotten married, had kids, and gained weight.
I love my job, as long as there are things for me to learn. I believe there will be for some time yet.

Deputy Sheriff for a large, well populated county in Florida. I don't c*ck up my evidence.

I currently working for a Fortune 500 brokerage firm. My role is Relationship Partner in the Private Banking sector, which is essentially a liason between the firm's highest-producing Financial Advisors and the various services areas that provide support. I've been at the firm for 7 years and in this role for 2 1/2. In case you're wondering, it pays sh*t.

In addition to work, I'm also attending the University of Advancing Technology for a Bachelor's in Video Game Development. I've taken all of my courses online as a "distant student". This coming Sept. will be my 4th and final year and I'll graduate in August 2009. Overall, I'm disappointed with how things have gone in terms of the quality of education, cost, etc. and rather pestimistic about the liklihood of actually landing a job in the industry. But, I got far enough through it where it was better to see it through an at least walk away with the degree.

ShadeRaven wrote:

I write.

Care to elaborate? I enjoy writiing in my spare time and am curious to know more.

Graphic Designer for a piss ant little sign shop(sorry, it's been a bad week.) I freelance in my spare time (hah!) so that my skills don't completely leave me. Looking into going back to school to get a masters in illustration...or maybe hamburglary.

My title is officially Engineer, but that doesn't really say much. More correct would be a Game Programmer, specifically for Casual Games. Been doing it for a few years, got hired right out of college. Work for a very small, self-run company. I'm not planning on making casual games a full career, as I would like to move up into games that AREN'T directed for 40-something, mother of three stay-at-home moms. Overall though I couldn't be more appreciative for the opportunity that I got and everything that I am learning about the industry and game programming. Dream place to work at...Double-Fine, Valve, Nintendo, in that order.

I would have to say though, that it does make you look at games differently, how they are constructed, why there are bugs, etc. I feel really sorry for the QA guys that have to test our lazy programming results day-in and day-out.

I work in an actuarial department of one of the larger life insurers in South Africa. The work's had its ups and downs over the years, but overall it's not too bad. Lots of database and spreadsheet work (plus some financial modeling for variety), mainly to produce the fancy figures in the company's financial statements.

I called a halt to my actuarial studies though. If actuarial exams existed in Greek mythology, Tartarus would have Sisyphus write them repeatedly instead of bothering with the boulder.

I'm an Electrical Engineer working in power systems. My previous job was working as a Transmission Planner, where we focused on making computer models of the power transmission system, and run simulations on those models to determine what projects are needed to expand the transmission grid in the future.

I recently transferred to a position in Nuclear Power. Now, I'm a Design Engineer at a nuclear power plant. I work on support and changes/modifications to the electrical distribution system in the plant. The type of work ranges from the mundane, such as doing the engineering to install new floodlights, to calculating electrical loading on emergency diesel generators, to substation modifications to protective relaying, and so on. I'm learning a tremendous amount about nuclear power, and I'm finding that aspect fascinating. It makes me want to go back to school to get a degree in Nuclear Engineering.

We recently got some training in the simulator, which is a full-scale copy of the control room in the plant. I got to trip the reactor offline, start the generator, move control rods, and some other tasks. Neat stuff.

I'm a .NET developer. I work for a company that creates Public Safety and Records Management software for government agencies.