What do you do for a living?

I work as a Collision Center Manager for a large shop in Ann Arbor (suburban)....Went to school for Health Admin at EMU and got my Masters in Public Health soon after. Early in my professional career did Fetal abnormalities research and have been published twice. I soon was hit hard with the reality of paying student loans and doing medical research wasnt cutting it. ($$) I went to work between grants at Varsity Ford in the body shop...unfortunately I made MORE money in a month than I did in 6 months at the U....and never looked back.
Been in the business since 2002 and dont plan on leaving it. I do work a lot of hours BUT get compensated EXTREMELY well and get treated fantastic. I love the bodyshop biz...
 
Go through mechanical engineering, you can be an engineering technician and do the hands on along with desk. I worked with a bunch when i worked at the Ford test track in Dearborn. Seemed like a great job.
 
Bateater said:
I do IT support for a major company, I sit at a desk all night on facebook watching movies, the job is VERY boring and I'm about to look for a more fast paced job.
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Use your downtime to study for technical certifications or finish up a degree.

ZJeepMI said:
Those of you with IT jobs, what do you like or dislike about it? Are you paid decent enough to live comfortably?
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I've been in the IT field for a number of years. The pay is fine.

The pros are schedule fliexibility, growth (lots of different areas of IT), etc.
The cons are stress, off-hours work, etc.

wikdsvt said:
I charge people anywhere from $150-$250 per hour. College is OVERRATED!
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You can charge that because you have a legal degree. I agree that a generic degree is useless, but if you're going to school for a specialty it can definitely be worthwhile.

wrath said:
Few fields in IT has survive outsourcing as beautifully as development. Code assembling has largely been outsourced to India. However, someone has to fix their junk (problem solving). And someone has to take what the "business" needs and come up with an end product (creative end of the spectrum). There aren't any other jobs in IT that I'm aware of that a 30 year old can make $100k+/year by sitting at home in their pajamas.
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I'm involved with storage (network connectivity to support replication for DR, HA via active/active across sites, data migrations, data tiering - that sort of thing) and telecommute. There will always be a need for people who understand what they are doing (and that's not what you get in India).
 
LITTLEMAGS said:
I work as a Collision Center Manager for a large shop in Ann Arbor (suburban)....Went to school for Health Admin at EMU and got my Masters in Public Health soon after. Early in my professional career did Fetal abnormalities research and have been published twice. I soon was hit hard with the reality of paying student loans and doing medical research wasnt cutting it. ($$) I went to work between grants at Varsity Ford in the body shop...unfortunately I made MORE money in a month than I did in 6 months at the U....and never looked back.
Been in the business since 2002 and dont plan on leaving it. I do work a lot of hours BUT get compensated EXTREMELY well and get treated fantastic. I love the bodyshop biz...
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Wait, There are bodyshop managers that get compensated?!?!? well?!?!?!? Fawk I need to find a new dealership.
 
If you like working on cars, get an engineering degree. That is what I did, and now I work on them everyday at GM. I went to community college first. If you get an Associates from a Michigan community college, then most universitites will accept them and only make you take a copule of classes. I ended up transferring to Oakland University, and they only made me take two mare liberal arts classes. You can take all your calc, physics, and chem and transfer it in. That is most of what pre-engineering is anyways.

-Geoff
 
I've been working as an automotive machinist for the better part of 12 years. I still enjoy it and look forward to going to work (most days), however lately I've been thinking about going out on my own doing metal work. I enjoy working with metal, welding & fabricating, there isn't much I can't do, and I own a lot of metalworking equipment. I'm thinking of starting small, not quitting my job and just doing work out of my garage at first. We'll see, I've been talking about it for a while, and still haven't done much.

As for what everyone says about doing what you enjoy and then not enjoying it, it hasn't happened to me yet. I still like my job after 12 years. I'm still young though. (33)
 
ZJeepMI said:
Well if you mean hobbies, I love the mechanical aspect of cars. Not fixing them, but the design of the engine or transmission. I find it really incredible that we are able today to make fuel efficient, powerful, incredibly smooth engines. But, I'm also very good with computers, and do enjoy working with/on them. I won computer geek in high school my senior year :thumbsup:. So, I'd probably do well at a computer based job, hence my interest in computer science.

Right now I work in a screen printing shop. It's boiling hot in the summer, and super cold in the winter. I come home covered in ink/dirty water/whatever else I come across everyday. I don't like this kind of work at all, it's mindless work for 8 hours straight and there is really no end product. Plus having to dress crappy everyday and coming home smelly is a huge bummer for me. I'd much rather go to work in a shirt and tie and do something cool or important, but it is just a college job.

Those of you with IT jobs, what do you like or dislike about it? Are you paid decent enough to live comfortably?
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Never ever ever take a career based on pay. Pay should in all honesty equate to about 5% of your decision making process for a career. Save yourself the hassle.

As for IT. It's a good job, but IT is a very broad field. That's like saying you like cars. Pay in IT can range from $12/hour to hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. There's a galactic shortage of developers right now, and mobile development is only going to get bigger. If you can sit at a computer and write code all day every day, then you can make really good money. Starting Developers at my company are starting at around 50k. Get some experience and you can make 100k easy.
 
stalked_R/T said:
If you can sit at a computer and write code all day every day, then you can make really good money.
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More like 'think all day, then write a little code'. Also factor in sitting in meetings and dealing with clients/users and QA.

Depending on what you're working on, programming can be hell. Working some massive, boring, undocument project on a platform and language that sucks? Not fun. Doing new stuff with new stuff? Usually fun.
 
If school is right for you, do it. If its not its a huge waste of time and money. You have to be honest with yourself and what you really like to do.

I suppose a degree of some sort is great to fall back on, but if something doesnt work out it would be equally as good to have skills to fall back onto.

I have a college education and dont use it at all. I wish I would have presented my parents with a business plan and they would have invested in me, and my business instead of college.

Thats just my oppinion, Im not telling you not to go to school, but if you are going to go, now is the time.

Maybe if computers is your thing, try to fire something up on your own while getting an education. Create a market for yourself.
 
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Step 1: Get ??? Engineering degree
Step 2: ???
Step 3: Profit

Fill in ??? with whatever you want. If your technical at all, you'll make it work and have fun with it.

I develop control systems for (mostly) automotive R&D.

-Rob
 
Training / experience is key, but so is getting it documented
& certified.

I worked my way into a very nice job. I was a “Supervisor
Park Ranger”. That meant I was a salaried department head.

An enjoyable job, with a few big headaches, but I liked it.
The problem is, that by working my way up, I never got a
degree. That wasn’t any real issue until I was laid off & lost
my job.

Now I’m unemployed, looking for a similar job that requires
a degree. I don’t feel like starting all over again, so I might be
trying something new this time around.

One thing I have been doing is taking advantage of a lot of free
training from the Department of Homeland Security, FEMA,
Michigan State Police and this past week, a really nice one
day class by the AMA, for certification in Basic Disaster
Life Support (BDLS).

I’m not make’n a dime doing any of this, but at least I’m
adding some good training & personal enrichment and its
great resume stuff!
 
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