The Lemon Fool

To turn wheypat's post on its head . . . is anyone actually in a job where they love every moment of it?

Do you wake up early and think, 'I love my job, seeing as i'm up early, let's go for it!'

Or do you think every morning, 'Another day, another dollar. Let's get this over with.' and countdown the hours till its time to go home?

I know which camp i'm in.

If I had my time again, i'm not sure what i'd do differently. I'm good at figures and accounting stuff, much as i'd love to be good at something more exciting like music/film/tv which is what I really enjoy.

Too late for me now but it does bring it home to you just how important those career conversations are that you have with your parents, teachers and peers at a crucial time of your life.

Just because you are good at something, it doesn't mean you want to do it for the rest of your life.

HYD

Too late for me now but it does bring it home to you just how important those career conversations are that you have with your parents, teachers and peers at a crucial time of your life.

Actually, the impression I have over the years is that these conversations are not really very useful at all. I've never met anyone who had anything nice to say about teachers giving career advice. The truth is that even those who are excellent at teaching, most go straight from school to teaching and don't have much experience of the real world. Advice from parents is useful but can be very biased.

I reckon that most of us just muddle through and discover for ourselves where we want to go. When I was about 33 I was seriously considering leaving science and going into teaching. I still think I was more cut out for it than what I was doing, but the more I looked into it, the more I realised that I'd be making a mistake.

Steve

Howyoudoin wrote:To turn wheypat's post on its head . . . is anyone actually in a job where they love every moment of it?

Do you wake up early and think, 'I love my job, seeing as i'm up early, let's go for it!'

HYD

I'm one of the lucky ones. I retired 8 years ago, but in my working life, I don't think I had a single day when I wasn't looking forward to work (except perhaps one day in Finland when my finnish colleagues had perhaps plied me with rather too much drink the previous evening).

I can't say there was any real planning to my career. I started out designing telephones and associated exchange equipment, then moved to a company defining chips to go into telephones, and helping customers to integrate the chips into their products, and then moved to a big global chip company and worked in marketing. Just a few years previously I could never have dreamt that I would ever work in marketing but it worked out really well, being able to use the technical expertise I had built up. 10 years later, I was working on software to support marketing and management, and 10 years after that I was working on defining business processes and software for taking customer orders, planning production and getting product to the customer, which involved training a lot of people which I really enjoyed. And then into business intelligence to define metrics and measure the performance of those processes.

I think the real key for me was moving to a big global company. I worked with a lot of brilliant people of all nationalities, and due to the size of the company I could always evolve my job role but continue using the expertise and experience I had built up, so I never felt like a new employee working in a strange new world.

Looking back, I would not have changed a thing.

--kiloran

Well, it's 20 years since I retired but I think that every job that I had was one that I enjoyed doing. Looking back at National Service, my feeling was that anyone who decided at the outset they would not enjoy it had their wishes fulfilled. I was lucky in that much of mine was spent learning to fly, but the Meteor conversion stage was less enjoyable, particularly when my instructor did his best to kill us both. We survived, just, but a comrade was less fortunate.

None of my jobs were "routine", except perhaps for a summer job bus conducting, and that was enjoyable. I got to travel a lot around the world. In process plant contracting, variety tends to be the spice of life. I was mostly in sales and marketing, where contract negotiation always presents new problems and challenges.

The worst job is having to fire someone who has been doing a good job. The American expression "had to let him go" conveys the level of regret.

TJH

My career advisor suggested engineering. I'm allergic to oil, it brings my hands out in blisters!

I really don't know how it related to any of the subjects I studied.

It turned out, years afterwards, we discovered every male friend in my school class got the same advice.

formoverfunction wrote:My career advisor suggested engineering. I'm allergic to oil, it brings my hands out in blisters!

Most engineering these days is done on a computer screen. Engineers never touch anything dirty. That's a technician's job.

Gryff

By enlarge I love my job. I work with great people, I earn a lot, it allows me to live where I want, it has taken me to every continent (bar Anartica) and someone else pays. The only down side is it does take me away from my wife and kids for 20ish weeks a year. But when I was lying on a beach in Australia in January sometimes it seems worth while. I'm approaching 50 and should be able to retire at 55 and be very comfortable. I could probably go tomorrow, but I do like what I do, so I stick with it.

Sure, I have bad days but they are few and far between.

So on a scale of 1 to 10 I'd rate it as a 9.5 - I get that the travel side isn't for everyone. If I was 25 and single I'd rate it as 10/10

formoverfunction wrote:My career advisor suggested engineering. I'm allergic to oil, it brings my hands out in blisters!

Even if your career advisor knew that, there are large areas of engineering that involve no more contact with oil than ordinary life! And large numbers of non-engineering jobs that do involve more contact with oil than ordinary life...

Gengulphus

formoverfunction wrote:My career advisor suggested engineering. I'm allergic to oil, it brings my hands out in blisters!

I'm not allergic to oil like that, but I've always avoided getting my hands dirty. To the extent that I opted out of all classes in things like art or metalwork as soon as I could at school, to avoid all that filthy paint, clay, etc.

Much - probably most - of my professional career has been in or around engineering. With nothing dirtier than a computer keyboard.

Perhaps I should say in that case an apprentership in an engineering company, in this case the largest local employer, and they most certainly were metal bashers!

They actually offered me an apprentership. It was a choice of that or the civil service at 17. I ended up working with the City.

Fun how things work out.

Then private equity and finally social care.

Now a day is just gardening, beard tending and managing my own portfolio, with a little Linuxing on the side.

stevensfo wrote:

Too late for me now but it does bring it home to you just how important those career conversations are that you have with your parents, teachers and peers at a crucial time of your life.

Actually, the impression I have over the years is that these conversations are not really very useful at all. I've never met anyone who had anything nice to say about teachers giving career advice. The truth is that even those who are excellent at teaching, most go straight from school to teaching and don't have much experience of the real world. Advice from parents is useful but can be very biased.

I reckon that most of us just muddle through and discover for ourselves where we want to go.Steve

I finished Uni in 1985. Home Computers were abundant, IBM PCs were becoming mainstream STC was developing System X a digital telephone exchange and the Internet was a couple of years away. Went to the careers adviser at Uni and he told me that electronic valves were the place to be. Must have had a friend with a vacancy. Decided that whatever my choice of career, it's not going to be any worse than that advice.

Do you wake up early and think, 'I love my job, seeing as i'm up early, let's go for it!'

Well, I don't do 'early', but otherwise, yes. I have worked for myself for the last 20 years with a main job and a Retainer that pays well for little brainpower. I've managed to be last man standing in two different niche skills in my time, both of which I have done / am doing well out of. Working for yourself and having the work come to you does make it a bit of a no-brainer answer to the original question....

Absolutely no regrets, however there is an alternative path that I ever so nearly took at 40 and it would be nice to know how that would have panned out.

kiloran wrote:I retired 8 years ago, but in my working life, I don't think I had a single day when I wasn't looking forward to work

I'm sure that is true but, on the other hand, there has not been a day since I retired 17 years ago when I have missed working.

Lootman wrote:

kiloran wrote:I retired 8 years ago, but in my working life, I don't think I had a single day when I wasn't looking forward to work

I'm sure that is true but, on the other hand, there has not been a day since I retired 17 years ago when I have missed working.

Strangely, I feel the same. It was a surprise to me, I thought I really would miss it. Years before, I thought I would work to 65, but as I approached 60, I felt that it would be better to retire sooner, while I still had my health/marbles. I worked with my bosses to wind down over a period of a year or so and spent that time on knowledge transfer, so when the big day arrived, I was already in the right frame of mind.

I do miss the day-to-day contact with the people I worked with, though I'm still in contact with some of them.

--kiloran

kiloran wrote:{I do miss the day-to-day contact with the people I worked with, though I'm still in contact with some of them.
--kiloran

Arrange for a lunch to be held every month with retired colleagues. Then you can all agree how your former employer has gone to the dogs without your expertise. At least - that's what I do. Unfortunately my retired colleagues have a nasty habit of dying - and it puts a bit of a damper on the occasion.

tjh290633 wrote:
None of my jobs were "routine", except perhaps for a summer job bus conducting, and that was enjoyable. I got to travel a lot around the world.

TJH

Some bus! How fast did it go?

Howard

scotia wrote:

kiloran wrote:{I do miss the day-to-day contact with the people I worked with, though I'm still in contact with some of them.
--kiloran

Arrange for a lunch to be held every month with retired colleagues. Then you can all agree how your former employer has gone to the dogs without your expertise. At least - that's what I do. Unfortunately my retired colleagues have a nasty habit of dying - and it puts a bit of a damper on the occasion.

Do you think it is something in the food . . . ?

Watis

Howard wrote:

tjh290633 wrote:
None of my jobs were "routine", except perhaps for a summer job bus conducting, and that was enjoyable. I got to travel a lot around the world.

TJH

Some bus! How fast did it go?

Howard

30mph speed limits in those days, Howard, but a Dennis Lancet 3 could do 60 with the wind behind it. Not as fast as a Midland Red CMT motorway cruiser, reputed to have done 90mph on the M1 before speed limits were introduced. Folkestone, Dover and Ramsgate were the nearest I got to going abroad in those days. We did occasional reliefs on East Kent's 62 service, Hastings to Margate, limited stop route. You needed a lot of big silver on that trip and came home with more in notes than you had taken in fares. Not good if you had Rye Harbour school run the next morning, but that's another story.

TJH

Watis wrote:

scotia wrote:

kiloran wrote:{I do miss the day-to-day contact with the people I worked with, though I'm still in contact with some of them.
--kiloran

Arrange for a lunch to be held every month with retired colleagues. Then you can all agree how your former employer has gone to the dogs without your expertise. At least - that's what I do. Unfortunately my retired colleagues have a nasty habit of dying - and it puts a bit of a damper on the occasion.

Do you think it is something in the food . . . ?

Watis

Maybe that's why the organiser keeps changing the venue. But that won't help if it is one of the participants emulating a certain character in Agatha Christie's "And Then There Were None" (US edition title).

Those who think they might be missed at work when they retired should watch that Jack Nicholson Movie "About Schmidt". Nothing like coming back to see all the guys after you retired and seeing your pet project plan notes in the skip!

kiloran wrote:
I do miss the day-to-day contact with the people I worked with, though I'm still in contact with some of them.

I appreciate what I am about to say is not what kiloran meant, but it reminded me of something.,..

I spent 16 years IT contracting. One contract at a totally ghastl;y client/environment I was in a small support team. Chatting one morning we were talking about working from from home and one guy said he wouldn't want to work from home because he would miss the social life at work.

I thought that summed the entire shambolic place up. Whenever I hear that company's name mentioned in context with any projects I shudder still.

didds