Ask Lemmy

Most people don't love their job.

If you are going to be a disposable slave, you want to be the highest paid disposable slave.

Just pick something that pays well and stay focused. It takes decade or more to get it done.

Flop flopping is not a viable strategy. This is a long game and you have 1 shot to get it done.

Alternative is crushing poverty

I had several careers doing vastly different jobs - both white and blue collars - in seven countries. I can tell you what I did to land my jobs, but bear in mind that I'm close to retirement, so what I did back then may not work anymore, as the job market was probably more more open when I started out.

I basically applied for jobs being brutally honest about what I could and couldn't do, about my flaws and my strenghs. For instance, one of the things I always said during job interviews was that I'm terminally lazy, and that's why they should hire me because I will work long hours to put something in place that will allow me to not do something repetitive more than once. Turns out, this line was both true and the thing that sold my application for most of my employers.

Also, when I changed jobs completely - for example when I went from computer programmer to CAD designer - I applied for a job at small companies that didn't necessarily have the money to pay seasoned engineers and told them I was a fast learner, and proposed a big pay cut for 6 months until I proved that I could do the new job I had no experience in. A few key employers took a chance on me, allowing me to change career. And of course, once I had experience doing whatever new thing I set out to do, I could apply for another job in that field and claim experience.

Finally, I did not hesitate to find employers abroad. If I saw a company I liked that offered a job in another country, I applied, flew over to the interview, and if my application was selected, I relocated. I did that 6 times. It's not for everybody, but if you're mobile - or extremely mobile in my case - it increases your chances to find your dream job.

Of course, as the years passed, I accumulated quite a resume with an eclectic variety of jobs I held, and places I lived, and my resume spoke more and more for myself as a proof that I could do all those things, so I had less and less trouble finding jobs with employers that knew just by reading my resume that I can adapt to anything.

Would this work today? Maybe. I know the job market is a lot rougher than when I graduated. So don't necessarily take what I did as something to follow verbatim today. But maybe some of the things I did would work for you too...

I took the first job I could get, and then when I was tired of that I took the next first job I could get.

I was very lucky. I got my diagnosis at age 44, right when I started figuring out I was good at identifying and resolving process gaps. With meds, I found out I was really good at it, as well as rapidly understanding very complex processes, and being able to explain them to different parties. Suddenly I oversee a bunch of data architects and software engineers who do file ingestion and data analysis. And without me, they function like a squabbling kindergarten, if they function at all.

Money, job security, affinity. So now I'm in Business Intelligence.

Looked up which were the highest paying jobs for people not inheriting wealth or social connections. Realized the field was oil & gas and the highest job was Petroleum Engineer, took Chemical Engineering because of its wide applicability, accepted I'd be working in the boonies for at least a decade of my life, made it work.

5/10. Wouldn't recommend for the loneliness.

Took apart a computer that I didn’t own… said “oh shit, I gotta put this back together and make sure it works!”. Put it back together, it worked. 30+ years later… I work in the computer industry.

Separate what makes you money and your ability to support yourself from what makes your life worth living. Two massively different concepts!

Good luck!!

How I chose:

Look up something I love deeply on the US Bureau of Labor Statistics website, and then go to that most applicable job, then look at jobs that are related in some way and rabbit holed until something made a comfortable amount of money but also seemed interesting enough.

Then I don't burn out on my passions and have a good paying job that's cool enough

Wanted to be an officer in Navy. Ended up enlisted, in the engineering department as a mechanic. Got out and use those skills to fix ships as a civilian. Have had a couple other jobs outside of marine repair, but currently working in a ship repair facility.

I guess I kind of got lucky.

I always liked computers, and I like solving problems. Got hired as a database administrator for a small research center in a large university.

I've changed jobs a couple times over the years (decades, actually). As it turns out, computer nerds who like to solve problems are valuable, and I've been generally left alone to solve problems ever since.

Current leadership team doesn't want to solve problems or work more efficiently now because if you depend on one person to make the team more efficient, and that one person leaves, you'll have to hire someone to replace him.

So instead, you just hire 10 people for the same pay to do the extra work they have to do when you don't have someone making everything easier.

Oh well.

I found I could not make enough money in the profession I chose that I had a passion for and my interest also fluctuates wildly. I went into tech for better pay (at the time). Tech jobs very often do not last and I do not compromise on pay for anything I have done before but will for roles where I will be working with something new. Thats a bit tough in a time like now where the places are asking for the moon and paying minimally but anyway given the way tech is you can find yourself working with new things.

Money and stability.

Except I cant get a job that offers that either.

Something that fits your skills while only being somewhat soul sucking.

I tried a bunch of different things, mostly in the trades / trade adjacent work (welding, wood working, etc) and really liked it, but I have incredibly unsteady hands so just didn't do well in the job I did land.

Planned to go the engineering route in college, but then discovered I had a knack with computers. Don't particularly enjoy it (I do HATE the office work aspect) but it just makes sense to me while not making any sense to most. So found I could make money with my skills and just stuck in that lane.

I'd say it comes down to finding something you can tolerate and have reasonable promise at skill wise and that pays the bills.

Job hopped until I settled into something I finally enjoy.

I highly recommend making a good impression and being a team player. About half of my jobs came from recommendations from people I had worked with at other jobs.

My adhd was mostly untreated til about a couple years ago, and I was tryna get into film or TV production, but indecision paralysis hindered me 6 ways til Sunday, and being diabetic was also a major hurdle cause I needed good insurance. Thankfully my dad was a union electrician so I got into that easily. But I couldn't handle construction and quit after 3 months. Then I went into something more residential, but injured my wrist. Luckily they let me do dispatch and other desk job stuff there and I just kinda stayed, cause going to one location and staying there really worked out for me.

I studied physics in undergrad, and was planning to continue to graduate studies. Took me until my senior year to realize that I actually found most of the work in physics to be extremely boring, and I was actually just following the degree path out of an egoistic desire to prove how smart I was.

But now that I'd lost my path in life so close to graduating, I realized I needed to find another, fast. Luckily I'd been taking classes for a CS minor, so switched that to a major and graduated with both degrees with an additional 6 months of classes.

However, since I'd been banking on physics, I only had one summer to do a CS internship, got it at a no-name local company, and ended up in .Net development after graduation. Despite what Lemmy might say, .Net is actually not that bad - at least as a developer. The documentation is good, the tooling mostly makes sense, and corporate support is pretty responsive. But it doesn't lend itself to working on sexy, pro-social, world-changing tech. So I generally found my coworkers and company to be pretty boring and closed minded, and the work we did to be quite meaningless.

Due to the lack of social connection at the job and meaninglessness I felt about the work - in combination with the fact that I kind of felt I'd been forced into the occupation by circumstance - I suffered from a pretty consistent depression for about 5 years while working in software.

Luckily, my actual passion was the outdoors. During college, I'd taken 6 months off to hike the appalachian trail, spent my weekends going to the mountains with friends, and spent weekdays riding bicycles around town and dumpster diving - I was happy doing these things, and realized I didn't need much in the way of money or material posessions to make me happy.

So when I got my software job, I immediately started saving as much money as possible and putting it in investments. So after working for about 8 years, I was able to retire.

These days I work part time rigging concerts, do little diy projects around the house, and go rock climbing. So on the whole, I feel like it worked out well. Though now I have the itch to get back into software and prove that I could do the thing where I do something meaningful and enjoy it and make tons of money.

ahdh, I work at a bank because it pays well for not having a degree

I needed a stable job so. And it was the easiest way to get it.

After I chose to follow my passion and started working on that, which is my current job. Just to find out that not because you work in your passion your job is going to be fun.

Then I realized than a job is a job. And most jobs are shitty. So I focused on working as little hours as possible and just enjoy my hobbies.

Mostly due to necessity but my wife told me I should consider psychology so I'm now in training to work in the field. I think I'm a natural at talk-therapy, at least compared to most other things I've tried, lol, so I can only thank her for the recommendation and support. It was either that or philosophy, but I couldn't properly think on how to monetize it. 🤷

I wish I knew. Ideally I planned to build a set of skills that can be applied to solving multiple very different problems.

It worked for a while. For a short time I had jobs whenre proving myself by doing was appreciated more than having formal credentials. But even then, my need for constant change was not understood. People even thought they were doing me a favor by giving me a long-term stable project as a reward.

Everything since has been hell. In the corporate world the idea of transferable skills doesn't exist, actually it's actively looked down on. Unless you have the exact same job description in your previous job they won't even consider letting you do it, even though it's 80% the same.

Try a bunch of stuff, find something you don't hate and that pays enough to survive on. Try something new if you get bored. I've had quite a few different jobs, or the same job in vastly different places. Sometimes I like them and sometimes I don't.

I remember taking a career quiz in high school (on scantron, lol) and being told I should be a librarian. I was so confused? It's been more than 25 years and I'm now thinking yeah, maybe that was the job for me lol.

Needed a job in high school. Went to university and decided I didn’t want to be in the field I had chosen when I graduated. Focused on first job field and got very good at it. Moved up the ranks. Got an offer at a company in a different industry from a former peer and leap frogged to the next pay band while getting out of my 20 year industry.

My hobby is technology. I decided against going that route when in school as I didn’t want to kill my love for it. But that meant sticking with an industry I didn’t love for a long time. Found I love developing people through it all and management was my thing. Great news about that is people are people and managing them doesn’t change from industry to industry so I can go pretty much anywhere.

Well, i knew how to build a computer relatively early in life. I was advised to go for a specific cert (security+), got it, got hired into a service desk role just about immediately (DoD), and I just kinda went from there i guess?

I picked it because I was good at it, and there were multiple facets to expand to. I fell into a niche for a few years and then promoted to a generalist position where I am basically half department head and half principal engineer. I basically quit jobs every 2 years, and had a high track record of being hired back to the same teams I quit when I ran out of money.

Dropped out of college. Parents said DO SOMETHING OR MOVE OUT. I needed the whip cracked in all fairness. Went to school to become a stengroapher. Burned through the program, been doing it for 17 years now.

I was more concerned about AI before AI really showed up, and now I'm okay.

I just always followed my passion: IT. But I really don't work well in groups or with someone above me so I rarely did that. So basically I retired somewhere in my 20s, which already was over 20yrs ago. Since then I live ny passion at home, tinkering with my servers, smart home and just general coding. Rest of the time I enjoy with wifey and travel. Guess I'm one of the luckier ones.

Not every job is a great fit for someone with ADHD, but some of that is a learning curve as well. If you're worried about it I'd recommend looking into the kinds of work that are more hands on, active, and varied.

Beyond that, you don't choose a job for life. You don't even necessarily choose an industry for life. Most people will change jobs, industries, even entire careers once or twice. I'd expect people with ADHD probably more so.

You look for something that aligns pretty well with what you want, while doing that you figure out what parts of it you're good at or you like, then down the line you steer your career in a direction that aligns more with those things. You do that two or three times and you end up with a fulfilling career you may not have known existed at the outset.

Land Survey. I stumbled into it by accident and it is perfect for ADHD folks. It’s a combination of cartography, history, law, geometry, geography. You can be in an office, you can work outside. Best part is, you can get licensed with out a degree in a lot of states. And, even if you don’t get a license, you can make a decent living at it.

Money and its ability to support my (future) family was the biggest deciding factor for choosing IT. The other factor was not wanting my passion (playing music) becoming a necessary burden to make ends meet, with the resulting stress killing my passion.

It's just a job. Some days it's good, some days it really fuckin' blows, but overall, it's tolerable.

I like my job but I don't really think its the norm. I loved physiology and anatomy, bio based sciences and was watching a lot of House MD during my senior year of high school (interestingly enough, since then I never had interest in any medical shows ever anymore. Also house wasn't that great but HS me liked it).

Chose nursing and was blessed to have always worked around others that actually fucking cared about patients. If working in other hospitals with more jaded or burnt out nurses im sure my experience would be different. Make money too while helping them navigate the current healthcare system. So good pay, nice coworkers, and interest in what I do. Likely never going to be laid off. Most people are not as fortunate.