Describe your career

[sbr]

I still haven't decided what I want to do when I grow up, which is a problem for a 46 year old.

I worked in the restaurant/bar business most of my early life, then got hired on as a non-union electrician.  After 15 years that company went into the side of a mountain and I joined the local union and have been working with the same company since 2010.

Work isn't terrible, pay and benefits are reasonable.

[Jaron]

This was a depressing read.

[jimmy olsen]

I am now the 1%, but it's really not that different from the 5% or the 10%.  The .01% is where the real shit happens.

Elaborate

[Maladict]

This was a depressing read.

There's a reason people spend so much time here.

[Monoriu]

I am now the 1%, but it's really not that different from the 5% or the 10%.  The .01% is where the real shit happens.

[Richard Hakluyt]

I think there may be a fair few of the 1% here on languish, especially if we mean 1% in a global sense.

http://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/050615/are-you-top-one-percent-world.asp

[Martinus]

I have the best words.

[Jaron]

I have the best words.

Milo is not a career.

[Savonarola]

I studied electrical engineering in college.  Electrical engineering has a number of different sub-fields as an undergraduate we took courses in them all; but had to select a field of focus.  I chose controls, figuring that, since I lived in Michigan, I'd work in a factory.  Instead I ended up working in radio; which is communications and electromagnetics.

My first job was as a temp with Nextel.  We were working in a warehouse when I started.  They stuck the engineers out in temporary offices in the garage and they put us on the same thermostat as the server so air conditioning blasted out even in the winter; but Nextel cared, they gave us space heaters.  One of my bosses melted his sports coat when he left it hanging over his chair too close to the space heater one day.  We also got an infestation of biting ants.  Fortunately I was on the road most of the time back then.

I went to AT&T/AT&T Wireless/Cingular/AT&T Mobility next.  I stood on a lot of rooftops looking for antenna placement, and ended up on the wrong side of many zoning boards.  One time I was at the Grosse Pointe Yacht Club all decked out in my suit and tie; and then had to climb the yacht clubs tower.  It was narrow and filthy on the inside; I ended up with a suit covered in pigeon dung and AT&T ended up with a dry cleaning bill.  Another time we built a site in the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel.  Naturally everything that could go wrong there did and I ended up going up again and again into the ventilation shaft above the tunnel to repair or reset the coaxial cable.  The shaft is caked with soot and filled with rats.

In time it became obvious that AT&T just wanted people to follow cookbooks and press buttons.  That wasn't for me, and I wasn't too sad when I lost my job.  I ended up working on the railroad; which is decidedly lower tech, but allows for actual engineering.  While our society gives status to people who put on a tie and work in an office; I think there's something to be said for putting on a hardhat and going out to the field.

I'm nowhere near where I thought I'd be as a young man; but that's probably for the best.

[The Brain]

I studied Engineering Physics, with a focus on nuclear and particle physics. Have been working with mostly nuclear stuff since, currently I'm [spoiler]nosy little fucker, aren't you?[/spoiler].

[garbon]

I studied Engineering Physics, with a focus on nuclear and particle physics. Have been working with mostly nuclear stuff since, currently I'm [spoiler]nosy little fucker, aren't you?[/spoiler].

It looks like your command of English grammar is slipping.

[The Brain]

I studied Engineering Physics, with a focus on nuclear and particle physics. Have been working with mostly nuclear stuff since, currently I'm [spoiler]nosy little fucker, aren't you?[/spoiler].

It looks like your command of English grammar is slipping.

It is what it is.

[Barrister]

Okay, so there's a few serious replies, so I might as well go ahead.

I always wanted to go into law and be a lawyer.  I remember age 12 or so we had an assignment where you created a fake business and had to do up the company books.  It was mostly an exercise in writing cheques and balances expenses.  But my fake business was a law firm.  Years later I was contacted by a childhood friend of mine via email.  When I told him I was a lawyer he said it was the least surprising thing he'd ever heard.

So I went to law school.  I think even pre-law school I always wanted to big a bigshot corporate lawyer, living in a big fancy house rubbing shoulders with the titans of corporate industry.  I pretty much only took corporate law courses, and got a job at a big law firm in Calgary.  It wasn't #1, but it was a decent start.

Your first year in the real world is called "articling" - it's a kind of legal apprenticeship.  I started doing corporate work, but as Martinus will tell you it's mindless work at that level.  Really dreary stuff.  And also this was post tech bubble, so markets were pretty cautious and quiet.  There wasn't always a lot of work.  So what I remember is one partner started giving me small claims files.  And these files were kind of fun.  I could handle them myself.  You got into court very quickly.  I discovered I really liked being in the courtroom.

So once I was called to the bar, I switched into the litigation group.  The trouble at big firms like that though is that as a junior you really need to be aligned with a strong partner to feed you work.  Since I had come from the solicitor's side I had no such person.  I started doing some steady work for one partner, but he really didn't have enough to keep me busy.  My billables sucked, so I was let go after my first year.

I didn't know what to do.  I started applying around to other big and medium-sized firms.  But at this time my girlfriend of the time (we'd been together for a year now) got a job as a Crown Prosecutor in northern Alberta.  I didn't know why the hell she'd want to go there, figured we'd do the long-distance thing, but she guilted me hard into looking for a job up there.  So I did - I got a job at  the town's biggest law firm (8 lawyers), which branch offices all over the place.  So I started doing a little bit of every kind of litigation.  Mostly family, but I started doing some criminal, and some civil litigation.  I quickly realized that family law sucked, but criminal law was kind of fun.  I was also dumped by my girlfriend 2 weeks after I moved up there, and she turned into a huge crazy psycho ex.

So after about a year with this small town firm, I wasn't quite sure where my career was heading.  The firm was happy enough with me being there, but I wasn't "from there", so I had trouble seeing a long term future for me.  I also found out that my ex (who didn't just act psycho to me I later found out) was let go from the Crown's office.  I wanted to do more criminal work, but there was a partner at the firm I was at who was always going to take the majority of criminal work.  But then a light turned off - I could apply to the Crown's office in another small town!  And I did, and I got the job.

More later if I have time.

[mongers]

I studied electrical engineering in college.  Electrical engineering has a number of different sub-fields as an undergraduate we took courses in them all; but had to select a field of focus.  I chose controls, figuring that, since I lived in Michigan, I'd work in a factory.  Instead I ended up working in radio; which is communications and electromagnetics.

My first job was as a temp with Nextel.  We were working in a warehouse when I started.  They stuck the engineers out in temporary offices in the garage and they put us on the same thermostat as the server so air conditioning blasted out even in the winter; but Nextel cared, they gave us space heaters.  One of my bosses melted his sports coat when he left it hanging over his chair too close to the space heater one day.  We also got an infestation of biting ants.  Fortunately I was on the road most of the time back then.

I went to AT&T/AT&T Wireless/Cingular/AT&T Mobility next.  I stood on a lot of rooftops looking for antenna placement, and ended up on the wrong side of many zoning boards.  One time I was at the Grosse Pointe Yacht Club all decked out in my suit and tie; and then had to climb the yacht clubs tower.  It was narrow and filthy on the inside; I ended up with a suit covered in pigeon dung and AT&T ended up with a dry cleaning bill.  Another time we built a site in the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel.  Naturally everything that could go wrong there did and I ended up going up again and again into the ventilation shaft above the tunnel to repair or reset the coaxial cable.  The shaft is caked with soot and filled with rats.

In time it became obvious that AT&T just wanted people to follow cookbooks and press buttons.  That wasn't for me, and I wasn't too sad when I lost my job.  I ended up working on the railroad; which is decidedly lower tech, but allows for actual engineering.  While our society gives status to people who put on a tie and work in an office; I think there's something to be said for putting on a hardhat and going out to the field.

I'm nowhere near where I thought I'd be as a young man; but that's probably for the best.

And quite possibly one day, you'll be known for something you've written.

[Eddie Teach]

And quite possibly one day, you'll be known for something you've written.

Sadly not the Diary of a Young Raccoon, lost like tears in the rain.