In 2008, I was fed up with a combination of wage slavery and freelancing, so I started looking around for a proper career. I found a job posting on monster.com for something called “seismic survey technician”. I was severely underqualified and I had no idea what it was, but it involved computery stuff with and emphasis on Linux and other unix systems, in addition to international travel which sounded interesting, so I sent in my application out of curiosity.

I ended up getting the job, turns out dicking around with Slackware and FreeBSD for 10 years was actually useful. Over the years since then I’ve carved out a pretty comfy niche in the industry.

I failed upward to the level of my own incompetence.

We used to build forts for fun. Then later, skate ramps. I realized I was pretty good at building shit so I got a job as a laborer. Then I got a job as a roofer on pretty nice houses. That turned into sort of helper/ apprentice thing. My dad and uncle had a construction/contracting company but I refused to work for them because I didn’t want to get a job because I was the owners kid. Later, my uncle blew out a knee or something and they asked me to come lend a hand for a bit. Turns out, they were really, really good and I stayed for about 20 years learning almost everything. Now I work as a project manager and finish carpenter on some pretty big, fancy houses.

Was recommended to me by my previous employer. Was the resident computer geek on my nursing unit. Not looking for a new job or anything. Out of the blue, my boss says IT is looking for computer geeks with clinical experience. Fast forward a few months, I am now an Application Analyst.

I was stuck working in restaurants in my late 20s recovering from alcoholism. Managed to get set up at trade school with a friend who gave me rides till I got my license back. Studied industrial electricity and got a job as a helper shortly after, I’ve been a licensed electrician for a few years now and work for myself.

I love my trade. It kicks my ass some days but most of the time its not bad, I make good money, and I can feel good about the work. I do a lot of residential service calls these days, I love fixing homes.

My previous boss showed me the job listing and said that it was better than anything he could offer, and told me to apply for it out else he’d lose respect for me.

In the 1980s I took a BASIC class in a Radio Shack. I should have known then what career was for me.

In the 90s, after getting a shit degree in undergrad and having so much fun etting it, I joined the Army. I became the office super user, wherever I was stationed and I knew I needed too be in IT.

I chose from a list of vocational schools that the GI bill would pay for.

Imagine my dismay after I graduated the schools, Veterans Affairs told me I have to pay all that money back. So I’ve spent the last 15 years working those jobs to repay the government all that college money they said I earned for serving in the army. Thanks for all these years of empty promises & torture, GI bill.

Manufacturing quality assurance. I don’t have a ton of mech engineering in my area, so I broadened my search by just using “engineer”. I had to sift through a lot of software/dev/etc engineering listings. I noticed there was a consistent stream of quality engineer, quality system type roles. Applied, and now it’s my career trajectory.

It’s a bit niche, the “real” engineers want nothing to do with it, and I get to dabble at various levels into all the products and processes. It comes with a good amount of documentation, auditing, pondering the true intent of accreditation requirements, and other mundane tasks, which is why so many people hate it. But maintaining the quality system maintains the business, so I have a job.

It’s not ISO 9001, but it’s similar. It has a ton added that’s specific to the industry, so it’s tangibly useful. Personally, I think ISO:9001 is a pyramid scheme. Under 9k1, you have to vet your vendors… Unless they’re also 9k1 certified! Regardless, I’m surrounded by 9k1, so I have some local mobility as well as national mobility for the specific industry.

A lot of accumulating pieces of luck. I started as a physical therapist, but burned out. A friend suggested a coding bootcamp where I made a new friend who used to be an occupational therapist. She got a job and then moved into digital accessibility (which we hadn’t really learned about but made sense with our backgrounds). Her workplace had an opening in accessibilty and they hired me, so I moved and that’s what I’ve been doing ~6 years.

A strange combination of circumstances. I originally wanted to do maths research or, failing that, be a maths teacher.

After a stint of research, and given how long getting to a tenured position would have been (with all the sacrifices that demands by chaining one or two years contracts all over the place, and with no guarantee of success), I decided to stop applying after my last contract came to an end.

Meanwhile, I met my wife who lived abroad where my teaching qualification did not hold, so I took a leap of faith and when my contract ended I left my country to move in with her and figured I’d find something there eventually.

At the time, the standard pipeline for a maths PhD looking for work in the industry was to do “data science” so I learned a bit of deep learning (this was pre chatGPT) but very quickly decided I did not want to contribute to that. I decided to start looking for other stuff, loosely related to my degree (and had a shitty admin job for a month).

I luckily found soon after quite a niche job as a software engineer where understanding maths was really needed (working on the geometric kernel of a CAD program) and thus managed to get my foot in the tech door and learn “enterprise” coding there. I moved on from that particular job but remain in something very close to that.

Mom wanted me to go into music performance. I went into computer science both because “holy shit how cool is that” and to get out of music performance.

My alma mater had three computer departments: CSC/CompSci, CIS/Computer Information Systems, and Graphic Design. I’ve never been artistic, really, so I didn’t have a lot of interest in Graphic Design. But I didn’t know the difference really between CIS and CSC going into college.

I went to the head of the CIS department to ask about the difference and he was like “CSC is about building the plane, CIS is about flying the plane.” Misinterpreting that to mean CSC was about hardware and CIS was about software, I thought I wanted CIS. When I met with the CSC head, he met with me in a little lab in the CSC department. And on the shelves on the walls, there were robotic coin sorters and Lego robots and stuff. And that’s basically when I realized the CSC department was my people.

My career found me to be honest. My university study was a dead end (AI) and I needed money. My then-girlfriend had japplied for two jobs, one entry-level programming job and another one, not programming related. She had just been hired by the other company when the programming company contacted her for a second talk. Of course she declined, but they asked whether she knew anybody with a bit of programming experience who was looking for a job. The talk went well and within days I had an actual income.

Emergency/Crit care doctor.

I initially studied physics/maths with a goal to go into aerospace engineering. I was binge watching scrubs and I thought medicine might be cool so I did that, then I thought emergency medicine sounded cool so I did that, then I thought critical care sounded cool so I did that.

Basically I’m a child that makes poor life choices because things sound cool.

As a kid I sat in front of a computer, so I got a job sitting in front of a computer. I do evening courses so I can get a different job sitting in front of a computer.