I saw the grass was greener on the other side. I can’t say it is or isn’t. Just different problems.

What I have done is follow my interest and curiosity. It has served me well in the technology industry

I’m a software engineering manager at an aerospace company, have been here for more than 38 years, and I love my job. It’s not exactly what I wanted to do when I was in college though. In those days I really liked art and I really liked computers, so my plan was to go into computer animation.

I graduated in 1985. For context, that was a full ten years before the first Toy Story movie, which was the first fully computer animated feature film. Most computer animation in those days was for commercials, small scenes in movies, shorts, etc. Only problem was, there had been a heavily or fully computer animated film in development, but it got cancelled my last semester, so there were suddenly a whole bunch of unemployed computer animators with actual experience.

I ended up just sending my resume to every place that was hiring programmers locally and ended up getting hired to work on the shuttle program. I’ve really enjoyed the hell out of it. That’s a nice thing about software: you can do it for pretty much every industry.

Went to work in a warehouse because I just needed a job. Discovered that logistics was interesting to me, so went to evening college to get an associate’s degree in logistics management.

Now 8 years later, I look after the supply chain for 4 warehouses in 3 countries while working from home.

I’ve been a 911 dispatcher for about 5 years now, and if all goes according to plan I’ll be here about another 20-30 years until I can retire.

Before this I was working in a warehouse. That pretty much solidified for me that whatever I ended up doing I wanted it to be in the air conditioning. I saw an ad that they were doing a hiring event in my county and I went, passed the aptitude test, got an interview, etc.

A couple people over the years told me that they thought I’d make a good cop, but I really didn’t want to be a cop. I briefly looked into being a park ranger, but I hate school and police academy (since park rangers are law enforcement) sounded even worse than regular school to me. So public safety type jobs were already kind of on my radar. I have some decent first aid background from being involved in scouts back in the day, know that I can keep a pretty cool head in an emergency, and I’m decently technologically literate (I was a computer science student for a while but dropped out, like I said, I hate going to school) so dispatching seemed like a pretty good fit.

People get into this field a lot of different ways, probably just about everyone I work with was doing something different before we decided to apply here- warehouse, auto glass repair, first responders of various types, sex toy shop worker, military, waitress, tow truck driver, military, high school graduates, people with degrees, we got a bit of everything.

I always found medical things fascinating. But I hate people so being a doctor or nurse is out. I also like working with my hands.

Did some googling and stumbled into a career where I get to cut up human organs removed during surgery. It can be pretty cool!

Path of least resistance. Chemistry was easy to me and eventually graduate school was posed as just the next thing for me to do. So I did it. And kept doing it because it took more energy to stop than to continue. And then finished and found a job in something very close to my PhD.

I happen to like the work still so it hasn’t been negative. And I have time for other things too these days.

I was good at math and science in high school and went to college for Engineering Physics because the school I got a scholarship to didn’t offer more conventional engineering degrees at the time. I ended up not liking it very much, but I finished.

Graduated in the late 2000s into an uncertain economy so I applied for and won a graduate school fellowship. I decided to study computer science. Got a PhD but all it taught me was I didn’t want to be an academic.

So I decided to start a business with a friend while I figured out what to do next with my life. Ended up growing that business for several years and sold it.

I Still didn’t know what to do with my life, but still had to work for a living so I took a co founder position from a hacker news “who’s hiring” thread. Figured I could give that a couple years while I figured out what to do next.

Lo and behold I worked there for a few years and we sold it. The purchasing company offered me a full time job so I took it until I can figure out what to do next.

I feel like eventually I’ll find my career, but I keep putting it off and stuff keeps happening so I guess I’m not in any real hurry 🤷‍♂️.

I work in cybersecurity.

I picked computer engineering at the recommendation of my last math teacher in High School. I spent the majority of my childhood and teenage years playing with one form of technology or another, so I figured it made sense. I had a non-linear college career, but at the end of my 4+1 (accelerated grad school) I reconnected with one of my freshman roommates who graduated three years prior, got a job where he worked. That place fell apart after a venture capital group purchased it (seems to be a consistent story…) And ended up following one of my friends/former coworker to my current job.

It more or less chose me. Went to University with hopes of becoming a Software Engineer, then decided a couple of months in I’d made a huge mistake and actually hated this coding stuff outside of the small programs I’d made before. The UNIX systems fascinated me, then a fellow student said “oh you should try Linux!”. Got heavily into the Linux stuff, pretty much did that to the detriment of my studies but didn’t care because I hated all those stupid programming classes. Did a couple of contracting things on the side for a company a friend worked for. Then when he heard I was miserable with University and about to quit he said, my boss likes your stuff and there’s a position open here so come on over.

So, after dropping out of University I did Linux and Solaris administration for a few years (with a bit of FreeBSD thrown in), and basically I’ve been doing that kind of stuff ever since. Even the 15 years I spent in various technical support roles I was supporting Linux systems. Now, I’m back in a job being a sysadmin for, you guessed it, a bunch Linux servers, among various other things! 30 years in the industry with a penguin by my side.

80s kid, grew up with 8-bit micros, learned to program because what else could you do with the things.

Went up the ladder through c64, amiga, msdos and windows, got sent a couple of network cards to review from my brother who worked for an electronics magazine, and that entailed setting up a bunch of PCs in a home lab kind of environment…

And from there I just flowed into tech support, and moved up into sysadmin.

I just didn’t have the resources and opportunities to become a full-on developer as I’d initially wanted - it would have taken more continuity and focus than I had available in my life at the time - and you need to get in on the ground floor and keep a constant trajectory if you want to keep up in that field.

But ferreting through log files and applying my full ADHD to arcane constellations of failure - that, I can do. Packrat brain, breadth-first search and random hyperfocus means I track down and fix all the weird shit that stumps my coworkers.

I’m basically button-mashing my way through the whole game, and somehow haven’t died yet. Just don’t tell anyone, or they might fix it.

It became what seemed like a natural path to take. My father worked in a computer science field, tech and gadgets where always around.

I think what really did it for me was being younger and trying and succeeding on occasions to circumvent my father’s parental controls on internet access.

Accounting here.

I initially went to college on an art scholarship - and hated that. Was hoping to be creatively challenged, but was surrounded by mostly delusional trust fund kids painting meh still-lifes, that couldn’t handle constructive criticism. Seeing graduates get jobs as baristas didn’t inspire me with much hope. I wasn’t happy.

I had a few jobs before where I learned some excel skills. I figured - why not? Plus it felt like the most logical rebellion against art.

Working in the industry for like ~12 years now. Good work life balance, some disposable income, living in my dream city. Career was a good choice.

Though, I’m not doing art anymore. But I got really into music and recording since college. During the pandemic, I started side hustling in ghost writing and commissioned music. Started doing stuff for free until I had a few credits to charge. It’s not super lucrative (can’t leave the day job), but earning supplemental regular income doing creative work has been deeply rewarding.

Got into being a low voltage electrician out of pure luck.

Kiddo on the way, just a dumbass working at Dominos… But it turns out a family member goes fishing with a guy who works for a fire alarm company. Talks about me to em, which then turns into them saying if I wanna work hard I should get a real job.

Long story short, that company ended up having to lay me off because of their own fuckups, but my foot was already in the door. Besides fucking up plenty myself, I have found myself in a very good position from all the “courses” I have since taken, and would suggest everyone else also take this route. If you’re willing to learn, and enjoy working on your own, low voltage is the way to go. It is also a relatively safe field. I have been electrocuted a few times, but purely due to my own negligence (or for fun, 24vac ain’t that bad), and nothing long term has ever come up.

I learned the hard way that depending on an employer for your immigration status creates a power imbalance that is easy to exploit.

So I started my own technology company, and promptly lost every dime to my name.

The only way left was up. There was no joy in that journey.

I totally got lucky. My parents bought a family computer when I was a kid and for some reason I thought it was cool. Since then, it was a given that I would work in computers. I’m a software engineer now.

There was a brief moment in university where I failed math and physics—twice—and I thought I wasn’t going to make it. I ended up switching to a similar major, but without those classes as requirements.

-Did an IT degree because I had a general interest in the area -Left uni with no direction -Worked in a financial call centre for a while -Got seconded to work on some call centre technology testing work -Moved to doing more business analysis and liked it -They wanted me to go back to not doing that, I disagreed and left for an actual analyst job -Joined a financial technology company and rose up the ranks there -Over the last 5 years I’ve gone from Junior BA > Product Owner > Lead Product Owner > Product Manager -Now kind of want to go back to being a product owner

To summarise, I kind of went with the flow and gravitated to where my interests took over the course of years. I didn’t start with any distinct inspiration.

A series of fortunate events. 3 year course at university doing Product design. then about a year in and out of retail jobs. then i saw in a news paper a listing for a job which required a designer. At the time the store i was working at was very happy with my work, but the boss was an amazing person. They drove me to the first interview, as it was very close to their house.

3 Interviews later they called me saying I got the job, and it has been that way ever since. I feel lucky that my current career is a similar path to where i wanted to go. It was either an IT role or a design role, and my teachers at my school heavily encouraged me to take the design route.