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Koopa
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Posted on 12-29-19 04:17:51 PM Link | Quote
I've been thinking about the future and my whole career trajectory quite a bit and I'm realizing I'm not entirely happy with it.

Right now, I'm studying to become an electrical engineer. Doing hardware design or embedded programming or something. And I'm being hit with the realization that this is NOT what I want to do for the rest of my life. I don't like the job options (defense? blegh. making consumer electronic crap? no thanks.) and while I sometimes enjoy the work I didn't care much for the embedded programming internship I had this past summer. Too much pressure, too much tedium, and I'm getting a bit tired of this whole computer thing really.

So a friend of mine has given me the idea of being a librarian. Get a masters in library science, help people research things, catalog and search for and archive papers and such, work for a research firm or a university or the like. I'm liking this idea. It jives a lot more with my values and my strengths. I like the idea of making more of what we already have instead of making new crap. I like helping people. Plus with my experience with databases and programming and such I'd be super duper helpful and in demand. Maybe. I need to do more research on this.

I think being a librarian would be a much better fit for me than engineering, although I'm saying this probably with a romanticized view of the profession and blatantly ignoring how difficult jobs are to find in the field, how much work the Master's degree would be, how low the pay is, etc.

Any thoughts on this? Anyone know librarians who can talk about their experiences? (Oh, and if anyone else also hates their jobs and wants to speculate about other options feel free to jump in! I'd love to help you hash out ideas.)

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Arisotura
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Posted on 12-29-19 10:29:49 PM Link | Quote
well, glad you found something that you like... I hope it's not going to be a neverending limbo of 'wait 10 years for a job opening'.


also, well

I'm currently working in construction, mostly renovation; wanted to be an electrician, or something, but:

* cool and all, I like building things and working on things and all

* makes me dysphoric. working with 99% men, about half of them are strangers and will see me as male even if I'm out to them because it's just too complicated to explain transness with language barrier; wearing shito work clothes that (obviously) are nowhere near feminine, and the ensuing avalanche of 'sir sir sir sir sir sir sir sir sir sir sir sir sir sir sir sir sir sir sir sir sir sir sir sir sir sir...'

* it's a dead end. at some point I will need to have my own vehicle, you know, to go see clients and transport all the tools and hardware and shit. but a) I don't have the means to buy or maintain a vehicle, and b) I avoid driving like the plague because it's a constant source of stress and I always feel like the worst will happen and that I'm just unfit for driving. so, no point investing myself in a career where I will end up being basically useless.


so, welp. what else can I do?


coding?


seems like, as much as I despise the modern web, it'd be the least shitty avenue (unless I could get hired by a videogame studio that isn't all 'make games that are addictive and suck money out of players' pockets', but lol at that happening). the rest would be smart Q-tips or expanding Skynet or violating human rights or whatever else. ugh, really feels like capitalism has turned everything to shit.

question is, how long could I stand that kind of job?

and would anybody hire me anyway? lol

is there even a way in other than 6+mo of unpaid internships? (like, your unpaid shit is great and all, but how do I pay rent in the meantime? solliciting State help from idiots who think you can live with 350€/mo?)

welp.


sdghcjjgfh

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Kuribo64 - melonDS
RanAS
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Posted on 01-24-20 11:58:04 AM (last edited by RanAS at 01-24-20 12:01:46 PM) Link | Quote
It's good to try different things out to see what you'll end up liking. Doing a short course or a short college degree on anything will give you enough of an idea about the field for you to know if it's something you'll want to pursue or not, and paid internships could give you some insight as to how work will be in that line of business (or not sometimes).

The problem comes with the fact that, nobody has infinite time to figure out the best career for them. Expenses come fast and these decisions take much longer than a single month to make, so you'd need a fallback plan. Preferably, you'd want your fallback plan to be something that's always in need and that won't absolutely drain your energy every week and will leave you with enough free time to focus on learning whatever else you want to pursue. That's more or less what I did with accounting during high school. I do well enough with accounting and the numbers and the spreadsheets and stuff, but taxes and the legalese stuff absolutely drain me.

After the fallback plan, well, it's back to experimenting and trying things out. Things worked well for me because multiple people were recommending I go to college to become a programmer, and then a year passed since I started college and now I'm a web developer I guess. But in my case, my interests aligned with a field that's very much in need. IT in general is just a very broad field with many career paths.

Do I like what I do? Yeah, actually. Although I usually go against contributing to the bloat of web libraries, my work deals with making SAP solutions, basically ERP-like applications with a database, back-end code and front-end code for organizing internal processes and stuff. Because these solutions need to be contained within the 'SAP ecosystem' (which is basically what I call the array of different services they provide), and since I make front-end code, I absolutely must use the absolute unit of a bloat library that is SAPUI5. How bad is it?
20.8MB (1.34.7 runtime, minified, zipped)
6.8MB (1.34.7 runtime mobile, minified, zipped)
52.1MB (1.34.7 SDK, zipped)

Yikes. SAP is kinda like Apple in a way, but for corporations instead of consumers. The only reason business use their services is because it's SAP, and if you have a bit of your system running on an SAP solution, then it just makes sense to convert everything to SAP to prevent integration issues. But like I said, these are internal solutions, so the people using these programs will be using the intranet rather than the internet (for the most part). Anyway, this is just my experience so far with careers and stuff. I'll probably be seeking to learn more about web-related things, both SAP (for work) and non-SAP (for academic purposes, hobbies, projects and etc.) as well.

There's no real formula for finding the right career. You can either jump in to fields that are in need, or try for a field that's less in need but that you're more confident you're gonna like it. There is a japanese concept of 'Ikigai' but really that just helps you categorize your potential career paths between 'what I'm good at', 'what I can be paid for', 'what the world needs / what's in demand' and 'what I like doing / what isn't going to emotionally drain me'. If you're confronted with too many options, Ikigai can be a nice way of organizing them. But if your problem is a lack of options, then it sorta falls flat until if you find more opportunities. All and all, it's just complicated.

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BatElite
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Posted on 02-16-20 02:48:50 PM Link | Quote

Two years ago, I tried doing electrical engineering and it ended up being a terrible thing. Most importantly because the school for some reason thought that groups of students who were largely fresh out of {middelbare school} (though I wasn't) would be able to teach project management to themselves from scratch. As a result the projects I was in generally had difficulty getting off the ground and several members just refused to show up to stuff. That doesn't take away from the fact that I didn't really succeed in making many functioning things.

TBH I should make a journal entry on this sometime. It's a mess.

Now I'm studying Archaeology, which seems like it fits me better. It's...maybe too easy at times, but...at least I'm mostly having a pleasant-ish time with it.

Good luck!

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Tarale
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C:\ DOS
C:\ DOS RUN
RUN DOS RUN
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Posted on 02-19-20 07:43:17 AM Link | Quote
I have often mentally flirted with library science and man it is super hot, I dig it

I don't know what I want to do when the boy goes to school. Art? Library science too?

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nym
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Posted on 03-14-20 05:41:44 AM Link | Quote
I have a friend who majored in history and ended up as a librarian. He loves it, but it was really hard on him when he was looking for a job. If you're not willing to move, you'll probably have a long wait ahead of you. But if you don't care for where you live, it might be easier. Library science is one of those passion careers that equates to low pay (for the work and knowledge required) and relatively competitive positions. But you never hear librarians complaining about how much they hate their jobs, so there must be something to it.

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Kaj

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Posted on 03-14-20 05:11:44 PM Link | Quote
for a while I wanted to do something computer related, for a while it was software or web shit but then it became hardware. it was all vague though, the dream was crushed by my fear of college. i'll just do computer stuff as a hobby.

lately i've just been thinking i'll work retail, but not at walmart, probably at a retro game store, vintage clothing store, record store, something cute like that. maybe dealing with shitty customers will help with my anxiety
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Jul - General Chat - Musings about careers New poll - New thread - New reply


Rusted Logic
Acmlmboard - commit 47be4dc [2021-08-23]
©2000-2022 Acmlm, Xkeeper, Kaito Sinclaire, et al.

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The alt attribute should be used to give a short description
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These measures are needed for people using non-graphical browsers.

For further advice on how to make your pages accessible
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You are recommended to use CSS to specify the font and
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You are recommended to use CSS to control line wrapping.
Use "white-space: nowrap" to inhibit wrapping in place
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