What careers don’t get enough credit for being fulfilling, acceptable pay and a good work life balance?
I’ve done all kinds of random jobs but like to tell anyone who will listen that my time as a cleaner was possibly the best of them all.
I worked in a building that was entirely dedicated to operating and adminning a traffic tunnel, so there were normal office rooms but also cool control rooms full of flashing lights and interesting displays and friendly people who were only too happy to infodump about it all.
The top floor was entirely given over to a conference room featuring a massive scale model of our tunnel but also the surrounding road system, complete with tiny toy cars. That room also had a hot drinks machine that was entirely free to employees so most of my breaks were spent up there with a book drinking hot chocolate.
Yeah, cleaning toilets and buffing floors is not exactly going to keep your mind occupied, but that just means it’s free to wander to more interesting places. No stress, nothing to take home at the end of the day.
If you can get by on the generally lower pay and get to clean somewhere interesting there are a lot of unexpected perks, tbh.
Note that it is nearly impossible for men to get hired in cleaning positions. I read a study a few years ago where researchers submitted a couple thousand applications to cleaning jobs with male resumes, and got zero interviews. Then they did the same with a woman’s name on the resume and applied to tech jobs, mechanic jobs, and other male dominated fields and got tons of interviews.
Not sure if OP is male or female, but it’s worth taking into consideration that they may face discrimination in that career path.
Trades. Learn a trade. Electrician?
My kid fell for this. They promise you’ll get paid while you learn. What they don’t tell you is that IF you manage to pass the entrance exam (he did) you get put on a list for open apprenticeship positions, waiting to be called in at any moment. While you’re on that list you don’t get paid. If you do get a spot, contracts only last a couple of months. Then you go back on the list. Rinse and repeat. And the longer you’ve been in the union the higher up you get placed on the list. So the older members get placed before the newer ones no matter what number they were in line. This “join a trade” push is similar to the charter school scam, siphoning up state and federal training funds without delivering results.
That sounds like a specific problem to whatever country you live in, not trades in general.
This is such a bad take. Getting in to the apprenticeship doesn’t gaurantee you work. You have to look at the market in your area to see if there is work for the trade you are going in to. Schools and job posting can give you hints on this. You may have to move where the jobs are. It’s a reality.
That union runs on a seniority priority for job call outs. Not all unions go by this, the one I was a part of gave priority to those who worked least the last 365 days. Don’t paint the whole system as a scam.
Also my union didn’t have contracts for callouts. The companies asked for X amount of guys, they go out for the duration the project. If they like you and there’s more work available then they keep you instead of sending you back on the out of work list. But that’s the nature of construction, it’s up and down and you never know if you have a job after completing a project.
Apprenticeships work the same for non-union, but you have to look for more work yourself if you get let go, same as any other job in the world.
In my experience, plumbers and electricians are near impossible to hire. I’m a branch manager and unless they’re severely under paid or HATE the people they work for they won’t jump ship. There’s a major lack of them already and it’s only going to get worse. HVAC techs are the easiest to hire.
Not to mention how it’s an old boys club who are just doing their own union minimums when they offer apprenticeship spots, not even the people in trades want to be part of the trades pipeline
The only people pushing trades are economists realizing the implications of all the trade electricians being near retiring age, and amgy Republicans who see it as a way to undercut the political trends that increasingly college educated folks have been pushing
I’m totally pushing learning a trade for my niece. Most trades can’t be outsourced or done with AI. And it’s pure gold again from South Park. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RcoGzT9QrTI
I’ve considered trades even with it being a full 180 from what I do now. Seems like location can vastly vary the experience. Build the base and bones of what society runs off of seems interesting though.
Have you considered the building or sales side of networking? One of my yoga teachers does communications systems design, installation and training and she loves it. Implementations in general is good work if you understand systems. Helping people get up and running, designing their setup.
If you’re outgoing at all, waiting tables is the shit. I support a family of five working 32hrs a week. I meet interesting people, including celebrities. My coworkers are some of the kindest and funniest people you’ll ever meet. And I easily get 15K steps in every working day at a minimum. Free food and sometimes drinks, of course as a perk. And your job is to make people happy, to make their lives better in an immediate and appreciable way, so it’s very fulfilling work.
But it’s not for someone with thin skin.
Some days I miss serving so dearly but I am not an extrovert at all and I absolutely hated having my pay depend on my mood. I’m not very fond of faking it and sometimes it was just so draining. I’m so jealous of the people that can do it well for a long time though, my sister saved up so much money and I had colleagues walking out making 2 or 3x as much as I did, and I wasn’t bad off myself at all most days.
I’m extroverted with thick skin, but also an empath. Working any job where I’m facing the public is incredibly emotionaly draining because of it.
Sometimes I miss working service jobs, but never so much that I could go back to it and be that mentally exhausted every day. I give you major props.
How old are you? I am assuming you are more interested in the trades?
If you like to travel go work for an airline. You could work as an aircraft mechanic if you are willing to go to trade school or work in one of a few different jobs around logistics or baggage handling. None of these jobs are customer facing, are often Union and you get to fly the world for free. Just make sure you get on with an international carrier or switch to one as soon as possible.
Mid-30’s working for a tech company as middle level leadership for the support department and need to find something new. Trades are certainly a consideration, especially having a family member or two that have gone down that path.
Well, if you are good at following very precise directions and documentation. Then being an aircraft mechanic could be a thing. Yeah you need some mechanical savvy too, but it’s all procedures. The one thing is you will work nights for the first ten years. Most maintenance happens over night when the planes are sitting at the gate waiting for the next day.
The certificate is called airframe and powerplant or as most people know it A&P certified. It is actually two different certifications but you need both to get anywhere.
What don’t you like about your position now? I spent 10 years in support department management and it drained the life out of me at the end. I moved into Infrastructure administration without any direct reports and now make better money and have fantastic work life balance. Pure tech is ezpz compared to running a team.
Probably not far from what you ran into. I’m 12 years into it and just losing my mind. I have an absolutely amazing boss and teams and managers under me that I mostly adore, but it’s just taking a toll mentally it seems.
Not sure if it’s the endless MVP products that never get touched again, the broken releases or just the bottom falling out of the tech industry but I’m just spent and have been so for a while.
How was your transition to infrastructure management? Did you have previous experience in that?
If you can get factory work somewhere with a union, the pay is high, stress is minimal, and the overtime is optional. I was an engineer at a place with a unionized shop. They went on strike, so the company recruited the office to work production until they could get real scabs in. Zero stress for two weeks.
The point is to find some place with a union. If you go somewhere without a union, the pay is shit, management will treat you like shit, and you’re expendable. Plus, mandatory overtime.
