What do you currently do for work?

Hello forum. It’s been quite a while for me.
I’ve been browsing away on the mostly the projects people do on this forum, with some exceptions.

Curious question:

Wondering what most of you do for work. It’s more of a general question focused on IT related positions, but anyone can feel free to answer. I’m genuinely interested in what those that take interest in Tech related stuff does for a living.

I myself have a bit of a tech career but I’m currently looking.
No, that isn’t a call for assistance in my search. This question comes from more curiosity, especially with the job market changing in the current time. I’ve met a few people that have pivoted both into IT related positions and out of the industry entirely.

Please be specific if you can, in my current job hunt lots of IT related titles don’t match job descriptions and has also been my experience with lots of the work that I’ve done.

I’m also curious if you like your job, or if you don’t, or maybe you just do it to get by. Do you get to do anything cool? I find it interesting to see how many jobs (including those not directly in IT) end up overlapping with personal projects.

Anyway, apologies if this doesn’t follow the meta or whatever.

2 Likes

Data entree and maintaining files for ISO at an industrial chemical additives company. Specifically for the preventative maintenance of equipment.

Do nothing corporate job where I sit at my desk and read books most of the day lol.

Though I am currently studying for an A+ certification after my daughter was just born. Hoping to create an IT position where I work or find a new job in 2022.

5 Likes

Was forcefully dropped out of an “almost at my bachelor thesis”-spot from uni due to too many failed math exam attempts, which was caused by a 50/50 mix of corona related bumps in the road and me not being good at higher calculus.

I am currently in an apprenticeship position (which means 2 days “tradeschool” and 3 days working at my employer, yay German education system!) with junior admin responsibilities.

Task wise, just the usual help desk and housekeeping tasks the senior admin does not necessarily have time to do.

6 Likes

I should have been working in the computing industry because I applied for BS Computer Science/BS Computer Engineering/BS Info Tech and all was open but for some reason out of a whim I took a totally unrelated college course because I was good at it during highschool.

Now I work in the healthcare sector as a non-tech related job somewhere in Southeast Asia. I still love my job because it is very tech adjacent and I get to fool around computers.

4 Likes

I started off riding backwards on an fire engine and got moved to a squad company. Worked that job for several more years. Did a lot of good work, learned a lot about life and respect. Public service and the fire service changed me for the better for sure; but, while the other firefighters were chilling in the lay-z-boys after dinner, I was reading textbooks.

Studied a lot of mathematics… stuff like calculus, set and graph theory. Also, started teaching myself how to program. Studied algorithms and data structures. Implemented them in C. Learned to compile code on Linux using gcc and tools like valgrind. Along the way got okay with Linux.

Wrote and hosted few applications. Received an award from The State for one program, and the Certificate of Merit from my department for two others. After I finally felt I had “paid my dues” to my community, city, and the public, I snagged a job as a jr sysadmin.

Worked it for a few years and became a sysadmin at a university. Bothered the comp science and math professors on my lunch breaks. Learned a lot more there.

Now I’m a cloud engineer.

Every step of my journey has been really awesome.

12 Likes

Nothing.
And enjoying it.

I’m old.

15 Likes

This answer is one I hope to have in the future

except the old part

3 Likes

Research Scientist so basically I get to code and play with cool hardware for my day job, its pretty nice!

7 Likes

My current work (2 years now) is both related to, and not related, to IT.

I work at Wesco/Anixter. Wesco bought Anixter recently. Anixter pulls in about 10-20B a year in profit I believe. they are global.

I prepare materials for IT customers. I cut cable (copper/alum/glass) from giant donor reels to smaller sizes for customers. That is my main job, but I have learned almost every job on the floor. One job I have not tried yet is server building. We do that too.

It is unionized, pays great and has really good benefits (dental/vision/physio/etc…). I really love the physical work, keeps me in shape.

I have worked twice as hard for half the money. This is a dream job for me… in terms of a 9to5’er.

2 Likes

I spent about 2 years as equipment quartermaster for a company that built automatic blood testing machines (no not that shit Elizabeth Holmes was involved in). Most of the stuff was just an elaborate pick and place machine only instead of grabbing a component it was grabbing a few milli or micro litres of fluids and depositing them into reagents viles then bake em cool em make em wait precise times before retrieval whatever, just automated the whole lab tech portion. Cool stuff tbh but I was just keeping the test gear working so that stuff could be assembled and vetted. They like to cross the T’s and dot the i’s when it comes to medical stuff so someones multimeter or o-scope they used on their station to make sure whatever is measure is whatever its meant to be has to be regularly calibrated and checked to make sure it is behaving as it should. Simple shit really, follow the manufacturer’s procedure’s sign your name and date bing bang boom. Mind numbing.

Le Coof arrived and well I took the opportunity to do what I always want to do so I quit to make a game. Then I found out what I always knew in my heart of hearts, making a game takes a shit load of time and effort. I’m having fun with the fact my morning commute is just walking into the room I do my “work” in.

3 Likes

Being old really isn’t that bad.

3 Likes

You have you have been disciplined and responsible in your younger years for you to really really enjoy it.

The variety of careers listed is fascinating. I’m a Technical Lead for a team of Salesforce developers.

Sorry but this comes to mind when you say technical lead for a team:

image

But for money, I am employed to discover and implement technologies that may help our customers workflows in whatever industry they are in.

1 Like

Retired electrician and electronics specialist with a very strong background in computer technology
So right now my job is spoiling my granddaughter

7 Likes

Did you answer your own question though? All I see is “bit of a tech career” but then ask us to be specific? You have my curiosity lol.

As for me, my job title is “IT Specialist” at a university. My day to day is identity management - making sure things like Azure AD / on-prem AD / PKI / and Google all work together to provide a single sign on experience. Yay SAML.

I’ve been involved in almost every project that pops up, like the initial foray into Azure / Office365, or setting up Horizon and Workspace One, and helping NOC configure Cisco ISE, and lately the Apple/Mac team needed certificates issued to their devices (to play nice with Cisco ISE) so I setup Jamf + Jamf ADCS Connector + an actual ADCS server.

Pretty much anytime I hear there’s an ongoing or upcoming project I inject myself, because I already know they’ll want some type of identity management solution (LDAP/AD/Cloud/SAML/ADFS/whatever) for ACLs and accountability plus I want to learn something new.

2 Likes

Full-Time Adult student whose side gigs are from writing to cinematography, have shot a few weddings, a principal cinematographer for a movie. Tech is basically old passion here my parents plopped me in front of a computer at a young age so currently one of my side gigs is as a tech support for my local school.

1 Like

So I don’t work in IT but I work in and around it because of my job. I do HVAC automation control. I design and program software for proprietary Hardware to control AC equipment. This equipment can read the temp and humidity it can control the air flow of outdoor air to improve the CO2 level in the room if it gets to high. I also draw animated graphic this reflects the equipment that I am controlling. All this equipment is talking on a RS485 network back to a headend controller that is running Linux with access database to handle all the points. From there it talks bacnet over IP to the other headend controllers and then it reports to a master server. We do school, hospitals,. I have personally done the O&M building at NASA the Launch platform at NASA. Its a really great field. The programming I do in the actually controllers is more logic based because I draw the program logic and it compiles that into binary and runs it.

5 Likes

Sweet! Played with some of this stuff a while back when I worked for a printing company who had several machines we needed to track and control. But that was lego’s compared to this!

This is really cool stuff.