Chippys_mittensDo you feel your job is important and are you proud to do it?
ExtremeDullardI have a great job, I’m reaching the end of a successful career and I’m very happy with the choices I’ve made in my professional life.
But my job is NOT important and I’m not proud of it. I’m only proud of having the honesty of doing what I’m paid to do well. Beyond that, my job is a means to an end: supporting my loved ones. They are what’s important. Nobody goes to their grave reflecting of what they did for a living.
Thats an interesting perspective, thank you.
Same. I wrote software for a company that nobody would miss if it never existed. I’d like to be more useful to society, but first I’ll make sure I have something saved up for my retirement.
I want to drop out, but I don’t have any other opportunities. My summer internship interviews went very badly. I always feel out of place at school. I don’t want to do the work. It stresses me out, I procrastinate, I do like 1/4 of the work I’m supposed to. Anything else would be severely underpaid or require even more schooling than finishing this program. I’m just kind of pushing through even though it looks bad and hoping it’ll work out in the end.
Whats the goal?
It’ll be an I’ll just be applying until someone says yes kind of deal.
No i mean career wise
I’m in law, so it’s not a goal as much as that’s just my field. There are a lot of kinds of jobs that I’d like and I probably won’t get any of them. I’ll probably also apply to a bunch of jobs I won’t like and won’t get almost any of them. Eventually one will say yes.
All you can do is keep trying. It seems like you’re pretty down on yourself though. I’m sure you’re better than you’re giving yourself credit for.
gigastasioI should probably state what I do first: I’m a lab tech for a company that does materials testing for a large number of aerospace and automotive companies.
It’s incredibly important, and we don’t fuck around. There are international specs and standards that we are held to, and laws that ensure we follow them. I’m doing my tiny little part to ensure that any vehicle you climb into is as safe as it can be and yeah I’m a little proud of that.
The job itself can be a bit of a grind but I like it primarily because I can go about my day with no one pestering or micromanaging me, and it’s a good brain challenge occasionally.
Definitely important!
My job is super important. I am proud. I work in security for medical records.
However, most people shit all over me for it. It sucks. It’s ’not a real job’.
The only thing I can think is it pays poorly? Does it?
150K. People tell me it is not enough to be happy or secure, esp women on dates.
I feel pretty happy and secure.
USD? Thats around what I’ve made for the last decade. Its absolutely enough to be happy and secure. If a woman tells you that on a date shes the wrong one brother.
Yeah. Well I don’t meet anyone here who agrees with me. They all think they are in poverty even when they make 300K.
The median US full time salary is 62k, you’re earning 2 and a half times that. Anyone who tells you that’s poverty is either full of shit or deliberately trying to bring you down.
No, they are just people who make 200K-300K and think they are in poverty and struggling, so they think anyone who makes slightly less must also be living on the streets.
They don’t acknowledge that people who make 62K even exist.
Yeah, literally fuck those people they can suck a dick and have a smile. You’re doing well. There will always always always be a bigger fish, be content with your scaly ass doing fine. Find a girl who doesn’t ask your yearly salary on date 1.
That’s ridiculous I promise you’re just around the wrong people.
Thats wild
Then you’ll forever be unhappy and surrounded by people you hate. Again, thats assuming EVERY HUMAN in your city/area truly is as affluent and elitist as you say. I find it essentially impossible to believe but I’m not you. Also, if you’re making 150 and people making 200 are shifting on you they are genuinely stupid. I make a bit more than 150 and I’ve had several years where I was over 200 with overtime. There is a difference, sure, but at that point its honestly minimal.
I do work that I love and find rewarding, I continue to create systems I am very proud of, and I work for a company I have high respect for that makes products I believe in.
I can’t think of any work I’d do for free, those are called hobbies.
That’s good to hear!
Yes, Buddhist academic makes me feel good. I get to study what I love, teach those interested, and pursue interesting research. It’s also right livelihood so that’s a plus.
Thats a super unique gig, good for you!
PriorityMotifNo and no, I’m thinking about working for myself as an independent automotive diagnostician. That would still be somewhat unethical and hard work, but at least I’d face real challenges and be helping people on an individual level. I can’t just quit my day job right off the bat due to health insurance. I’d have to start doing work on the side, but business insurance plus equipment and subscriptions would make it difficult to break even. Plus I haven’t worked on cars professionally in about 12 years so I’m not up to snuff on working on newer cars.
That would be a pretty difficult path. Good luck figuring it out
smegNo and no. I help produce luxury goods for obscenely rich people… 2 units of our product, depending on configuration is my entire years salary…
I know the feeling. I worked as a gunsmith for a certain well-know ultra-luxury hunting rifle maker, and obscene is the word: we made 12 guns per year and that kept 15 people employed. Our cheapest shotgun sold for just under 100k. Our customers would come and buy those things as if it was some cheap trinket.
Yeah, it gave 15 people a job. But nothing of value was produced to society.
Left as CenterHope one ends up in a museum as a hisorical art piece?
I used to study architecture so this doesn’t sound bad to me at all 🥰🤣. I have already mentally prepared myself in case i need to live that life.
Not that proud, as it’s a fairly trivial IT thing with niche elements. “Anyone” could do it, but there are so many different elements, all of which are trivial separately, that there aren’t a whole lot of people in the world who can do what I do.
So while my work is (mysterious and) important for the particular industry I’m in,I’m sure any IT geek with networking and linux experience could do it after a few years of training.
As for importance, kinda. The higher-ups consider it important enough to grant me every demand I stated when they tried to poach me from my previous employer. I was looking for an excuse to turn them down, but they agreed to everything. For example, my contract stipulates that any flight over four hours warrants business class.
Boomer Humor DoomergodThe work I do is fun, and there have been quite a few times I was proud of who I was able to help out.
But a lot of what I do is supporting organizations I vehemently disagree with, even if I like the people I’m helping. And that mostly outweighs the good I feel I’ve done.
If I had to use Windows or wear pants it wouldn’t be worth it.
Im not working but when I have I did believe it was important and Im not sure proud is the right word but I did manage to not work anywhere were its like eeewwww about what my company does.
Yeah, although I admit that I thought biotech was the most interesting and important thing I wanted to do back when I chose it over 20 years ago, but knowing what I do now, I wish I had gone into machine learning instead.
I’m a self-employed home improvement contractor. I fix and install stuff in people’s homes. Yeah, I’m proud of what I do and think it’s important - and most of my customers seem genuinely grateful for my work too.
I know my job is very important and I’m proud of my work. That said, I’m also burnt out.
Thats tough, hopefully you can find a way to maintain in the future.
I’m taking off.
Will society collapse without me? No
Will the company collapse without me? Probably not, but they’d be a lot worse off.
But I love my job and the people I work with. Plus I know I’m basically unfireable.
No and no. But I try to do well to my coworkers despite this. I hate it. And could love it if we weren’t in a corporatopoly.
TrackinDaKrakenMy job as a graphic designer was mostly selling other people’s overpriced crap. No, it wasn’t important, but I did enjoy doing it, and I was occasionally proud of what I produced. But, the end purpose for my product was nothing to be proud of.
I had talent and I made a living with it. There are much worse ways to make a living. Fortunately, I retired before AI slop took over. I can only imagine what the job is like now.
I’m happy with the work I do—I find it rewarding personally and the inkling of a possibility that it might be useful one day for any number of biological applications is exciting.
Unfortunately, I am entirely replaceable, compensation is meh for the level of education, and society as a whole does not place much value in basic sciences so career prospects are bleak (and this was BEFORE the current administration).
I think my job is unimportant in the grand scheme of things, but sort important to the company and at least at the end of the day I got something done.
I do enjoy my job the hard days go by fast and usually feel like we accomplished something. The easy days I can fuck around or work on projects I find interesting. Most days I learn something new at the very least so that’s good.
I’m sure I could make more somewhere else but I make enough as it is and somewhere else I’d probably have to work a lot harder on less interesting stuff.
911 dispatch, yeah, kind of important.
Wish I could do it for just fire and EMS, and not police, but that’s the way the system works, and the most interesting calls I get are for police I suppose.
In a more ideal world where people don’t have to work just to survive and make ends meet, I probably would still do it, just not on a full-time schedule. It’s one of those things that needs to get done but that absolutely not everyone is cut out for, so I think it’s important for those of us who can hack it to step up to the plate to do it.
As far as whether I’m proud of what I do, well I’m proud that I get to help people, I’m proud of the skills I have that allow me to do it well, but otherwise it’s just a job, I don’t brag about what I do (although I do have a ton of interesting stories from it that I like to share)
And since it is a full time gig and I have tons of things I’d rather be doing, I’m looking forward to hopefully being able to retire someday and never having to go into the office again.
Researcher. Important? Kind-of, I work in a supposedly very important biomedical research area but my position itself is not that important due to a variety of reasons…
Am I proud? Hell no. I’m only staying because I get paid enough (especially since I lived on near-poverty income for 5 years and below-average for another…). I’d disappear the moment I have a better opportunity, or if my paycheck is gone
CarbonIceDragonI work somewhere that makes measuring/inspection/imaging sort of equipment that has a rather wide variety of uses, so I get somewhat mixed feelings when it comes to pride. Sometimes it’ll get announced that NASA is buying our stuff to inspect their space probe for defects and I’ll be proud of it, and other times it’ll be like a coal mine ordering it and I’ll feel disappointment. On the whole I think its generally a net positive, but it’s not something truly crucial for society and more a thing that makes a whole lot of different stuff slightly easier or more efficient.
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