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Dream Jobs of 2004
prostoalex writes "We've read about the worst jobs out there, the most overpaid ones, the worst job postings and the outsourcing tendencies. Can an article on employment in scientific and engineering fields can have a positive outlook? February issue of IEEE Spectrum talks about the dream ('coolest, baddest, hippest, grooviest') jobs, where people have fun and enjoy what they're doing. IEEE publication covered the dream jobs for Electrical Engineering majors only. The linked article is actually a story about 9 different people with 9 different jobs, each leading to a separate article."
I don't want a dream job...
Dream jobs eliminate the one good thing about life. Vacation. Whether that be on the weekends, your random days off in the middle of the week, or the two weeks you spend lounging in Jamaica.
They don't call work "work" for nothing. If it was fun they would call it Vacation. Work gives me something to look forward to when I don't have to do it. It shouldn't be an escape from your family, it shouldn't be fun, and it certainly be something you overly enjoy...
My enjoyment everyday comes in the form of looking forward to the weekend when I spend my free time geocaching with my friends or myself. If I enjoyed work I would probably be sitting in my office working. What good does that do me?
We are a sad society when we put work in front of our "real lives".
Remember that before you go off in search of the job that you just can't wait to get to everyday. Family, fun, and vacation > work.
BTW - I don't mind my job in the least. I don't complain about it and I don't hate coming to work everyday. I just think it's better to enjoy yourself outside of your job.
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If I wanted a list of what's hip & cool, I wouldn't look in IEEE magazine to find it.
There was a show on the History Channel this week about the autobahn. They did a short piece on some lucky bastard who works for a Porche tuner. His job? Take each new, handbuilt car onto the autobahn late at night, and certify just how fast it can go.
Let me tell you something: if you think you have the worst job, there's always a more dire one.
I had a job where I was supposed to engineer "smart" plumbing fixtures - keeping water temperature right, measuring turd/bowl ratio, etc. It paid the bills, but it was boring as hell - and always got blank looks at the local SCA meets.
When the tech boom subsided, I lost the job. I wasn't too worked up about it. I found another job quickly, but little did I know it would turn out to be even worse. It was similar to the above position (experience always helps when applying), but, as I found out upon showing up on day one, I was to be engineering urinals. I fear parties, for people inevitably ask me what I do. Ten years of higher education for this, and people piss on my designs!
So, don't complain about your job. At least your products aren't full of piss.
No, I'm not bitter...
Sure, astronaut, deep sea submersibles, yeah, yeah. But they left out bikini team oiler.
Oh, they are talking about dream jobs for Electrical Engineers only?
In that case: A great dream job would be a trophy husband to a beautiful, weathly, fun-loving supermodel.
What? You think having EE degrees means they would rather stare at oscilliscopes all day!?
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
I don't know, I would guess CowboyNeal has pretty close to the ubergeek paradise job. I mean, come on, he's got unlimited mod points for God's sake!
I have discovered a truly marvelous
I work for IBM. A nice person from that company trained me how to do the job. He was nice but he seemed very sad. Anyway ,I now have a job and I can feed my family.
"First, I would invest half of it in low risk mutual funds, and give the other half to my friend Asadulah who works in securities..."
// "Can't clowns and pirates just -try- to get along?"
Naysayer that I am, I think a "dream job" is impossibly subjective.
Some people may be thought to have dream jobs because it pays well in general(professional sports stars). Some people because it is something you wish you were paid for (professional gamers or err.. movie critics, if you like). Some may have dream jobs because you wish you were doing that job (it's description, at any rate.. some people entertain fantasies about being a photographer for a magazine like Playboy :p). Some people may wish for cutting edge technology jobs.. Hey, when Marcelo Toscatti was interviewed, I remember a comment saying "he's 20 years old, kernel maintainer and married".. :)
So what is it that we like about these jobs ? The fact that the grass always looks greener on someone else's pasture ? or the fact that we wish we were doing something else ? :)
For me, the job I landed immediately after I graduated was my "dream job". Hey, I was paid to code. I loved writing code, I liked finding tricky solutions to problems, I just liked my job. The fact that they paid me (obscenely well by the standards of an undergraduate who had been paid nothing before for doing mostly the same thing) didn't even enter the equation. For about 6 months or so, I was one happy puppy. Churning out code, design specs..researching things I wanted to do, learning new stuff.
Then the rest of my life kicked in. You figure out the 12 hour days are ok, but you didn't want to stay in office and miss the rest of your life pass you by. A progamer interview I saw recently (ShowTime, a War3 player) said he plays almost continuously for 15 hours a day. I may like gaming, but I couldn't take that continously for too long. Even people with dream jobs need to find a balance somewhere. If a dream job demands all your energy, your time.. leaves you with no energy for anything else.. then it won't be your dream job forever.
A true dream job (definitely not something you can be paid for, so I wonder if you can call it a "job" anymore) would allow you balance. If you're earning a wage for it, then sooner or later, you will find yourself wishing for something else.
My $0.02
The linked article is actually a story about 9 different people with 9 different jobs, each leading to a separate article.
Actually, like the article says, they really do talk about 10 jobs. They just don't link to the last one in that summary page. Here's the index page:
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/contents/index.html
You probably shouldn't click this.
how many times have you heard people say that they loved computers until they started working with them professionally?
There is no dream job. The fact that it's a job takes all the enjoyment out of it.
PNL is hiring a Senior System Administrator for the world's largest Linux cluster and 5th fastest supercomputer.
$345 a week and all I have to do is send out three resumes during that week.
That Master's degree sure is serving me well now!
that if you find a job that you like, you'll never have to work a day in your life.
Friend, if the best thing about your job is the time you spend away from it, you're in the wrong job.
I'm not saying it should be the centerpiece of your life. (Indeed, my mother tells me that we are a nation that worships our work, works at our play, and plays at our worship. *grin*) I think I have my dream job, but I'm not going to pass up spending time with good friends to get in a few more hours just for fun. But if you dread your job to the point where the only enjoyment is looking to leave, you need to find new employment.
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
Now I'm doing pure research and some teaching, in Boulder, CO. This turns out to be closer to my dream job -- more flexible hours and lots of self-directed variety to the tasks. It's certainly not for everyone -- I basically sit around staring at equations, or images, or image-processing software, most of the time -- but every once in a while I get to figure out something nobody's ever known before, and that keeps me going the rest of the year.
Of course, the problem with a self-directed job is that you're always with your boss... :-)
A: Because it feels so good when I stop!
Rich, loving, sexy wife: Honey, I'm home. I made another million dollars today. And I stopped at Fredrick's Of Hollywood today, but that's a suprise.
Lucky husband: Great. Oh, the 25" mirror for my new telescope arrived today along with the racks of G5 XServes. I'll mount the mirror out in the Large Array tomorrow morning.
--- Ban humanity.
Smithers: Uh, hello. You got a Help Wanted sign in the window?
Moe: Yeah, I need someone to help me with the midnight beer delivery. Your job is to distract Barney until it's safely off the truck.
Smithers: I'll just wait out back until then.
Barney: I look forward to working with you!
I worked in a morgue. It was a wonderful job
Think about it for a moment. The co-workers were (dead) quiet, I could play all the loud music I wanted and none of my co-workers ever complained.
I could read on the job, sleep on the job (overnight stay was part of the job) and no one cared.
Granted, it was a little cool at the place, but Management realized it was a dead-end job, so they allowed you free reign. We ordered pizzas, had friends over, watched movies, even got paid pretty well!
Only problem with the job was, as I said earlier, it was pretty much dead-end, though if I died on the job, they had full benefits.
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.