What do you do for a living?

[Justin Baker]

Right now, working sales in macy's bedding department. As far as retail goes, this store can be pretty hardcore at times. A lot of expectations to be a perfect salesman and juggle a million things at once. This is just a holiday job, I am only 19.
It's one of those jobs where you work 6 hours and feel like you worked 10.

[Kyle Hetzer]

Critical Care Paramedic. Work interhospital critical care as well as 9-1-1 emergency response.

[Todd G]

Was one of 3 in the US building 19th century wood cameras for tintype/ambrotype/ daguerreotype photography. Now, slowly moving into 17th century furniture such as Queen Anne stuff. Mostly hand woodworking; handcut dovetails, and hand carved details, etc. Things are purposely a little slow right now due to new kiddo.

[josling lidwell]

Geologist (or Earth Scientist in the new terminology)

[John Emery]

Avation machinist, fuel systems. I'm the "churn and burn" repairman.
So that's what the pencil thingie does. Cool, I might have to use it again.
I'm also a part time nerd, science olympaid coach and boy scout leader.

[stephan q]

Carhartt Durability Tester. Custom Builder. Remote, off-grid cabins are my favorite, but I will build anything. The greener, the better. Discount for BPL'rs given.

[Q Smith]

futurist and strategy director for a F200 company…

[Carl Zimmerman]

Retired cop.

[Chris Jones]

"Environmental Engineer – designing the remediation of toxic waste sites.

I studied Chemical Engineering at Berkeley so now I'm cleaning up after my former classmates."

David,

You took the path I should have taken. I did my senior research (thesis) on a toxic waste(water) remediation project myself, and I enjoyed it immensely. I especially liked the "make the world a better place" implications of doing such work. Alas, it was in my final year of college only did I realize I should have majored in engineering, which would have allowed me to pursue work in environmental remediation.

I am considering heading back to school to see if I might be able to rectify this situation, however I am concern with regards to employability. I am not young anymore (been out of school for 15 years), so I wouldn't want to do a MS in engineering only to find out that a company wouldn't consider me in the first place on basis of age (and making a career change so late in life). Could you provide any advice/insight? Thanks…

[David Thomas]

>"I wouldn't want to do a MS in engineering only to find out that a company wouldn't consider me in the first place on basis of age (and making a career change so late in life). Could you provide any advice/insight? Thanks…"

Chris: I have a co-worker and friend doing environmental engineering and he got his BS (Ag Eng) in his early 30s when he decided he didn't want to be an old guy swinging a hammer. And his MS (Env Eng) at Berkeley at age 42. And he's found a number of jobs in the 15 years since then.

But, I'd have to caution you that a lot of us got into Environmental Eng (in California at least) 15-20-25 years ago. And it's a more mature market now than then. There's more competition for the jobs, the margins are tighter and your best chance to get promoted is to poison your boss (ah, but we know how to do that!).

People do this work from a variety of backgrounds. I've worked with, of course, lots of Civils and Geologists. But also geographers, biologists, chemists, and even a few liberal arts types. The geographers usually come up through GIS systems, the bios in EISs and bio surveys, the chemists in the lab or in toxicology. The trick, in my mind would be to be in office that valued cross-training and didn't pigeonhole you into whatever your starting position was. I started as a tech before I had my BS, was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, worked as a system designer, got my Engineeer-in-Training and later my PE (there are paths to do so without a degree) and went Staff Eng, Project Eng, Senior Eng. Then I thought I should graduate before my children do and finally finished my degree.

I too, like the "make the world better place" aspect of it. I learned long ago that writing a better computer game, sending out 700,000 pieces of junk mail or making "products for a better tomorrow" like Cheetios or Naplam didn't excite me. Nor did working for some huge, Dilbert-like corporation. The other continuing draw to Env Eng is all the head scratching work. There's a ton of stuff we DON'T know how to do still, and while cleaning up a corner gas station – impossible 20 years ago – is now easy, heavy metals, chlorinated solvents, and pesticides are tougher. We keep getting better at it, and it's kind of cool to spend some toxic polluter's money to learn how to do your job better. That's UNLIKE a lot of engineering work. At a utility or DOT, it's pretty cookie-cutter. Important stuff and important to do right, but not a lot of creativity involved. Whereas it's an odd month that I don't come up with a patentable idea.

One approach would be, if it works financially, to apply for technican positions and sell yourself like this: "I want to be the quickest-learning, most talented tech you've ever had." (all PMs fight to have that guy on their jobs, it adds huge value, avoids many problems, etc). "And, I want a path for advancement. Where can that tech position lead me?" Professionals who have come up the ladder that way are, IMNSHO, much more capable of teaching others, budgeting their projects and designing equipment when they've been in trenchs. Also, the hands-on professional can always pitch-hit doing field work when the projects or budgets demand it. Whereas other professionals, tasked to write the reports, would have no idea how to operate the pump to get the water samples that generated the data that went into the report.

This work is 10% stuff you learned in school and 90% stuff you learn on the job. As are most tech jobs. Coming into it with a different academic background, IME, adds to the team because there are already plenty of civils and geos at the table.

Hope that helps, David

[David Thomas]

>"Carhartt Durability Tester"

Stephan: I like that.

I know some of those here in Alaska. Including a few who live off-the-grid. But I suspect you mean off-the-grid cabins WITH the comforts of home. Up here, it means kerosene lantern, Coleman stove, ice chest, wood stove, outhouse, hauling water from the Merchantile, doing your laundry at friends, working 3 months in the summer at a setnet site or on the slimeline, and dog mushing all winter.

[Louis Brooks]

Official cat herder, er, Head of IT for a academic research library.

Thanks,

–louis

[Chris Bowman]

Cable guy here, or you could call me a telecommunications engineer. Install and troubleshoot all sorts of video, telephone and internet systems.

[Author]

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