What do you do for a living?

Wow, thanks for all of the replys. I'm definitely more interested in cars than I am computers, and I'm not sure that i'd like to be stuck doing repetitive programming everyday. I do repetitive work now, and I start to get really antsy after an hour or two of the same thing. Any Mechanical/electrical/civil engineers here? I don't think I would do well in a job that doesn't have some sort of guaranteed base salary, I'm all about stability and I'm most definitely not cut out for any sort of sales job.

Right now I'm taking all general classes that are under the macrao agreement, which is a program that transfers to a large list of universitys, including Michigan Tech and Lawrence Tech, one of those would probably be my choice if I did some kind of engineering or computer science degree. I for sure would like to finish with some sort of bachelors degree, and if I don't absolutely hate school by the time i'm done I would be up to going for a masters.

I guess what I'm afraid of most is spending all of this money, and dealing with all of these student loans and ending up with a degree that will be outsourced, that just isn't in demand anymore, or something that I absolutely hate. Computer science probably wouldn't be perfect for me, I really don't do well with sitting still doing repetitive things for a long time, and that seems like a large portion of that job. Engineering seems interesting, but Civil engineers have been cut heavily in the recent years, and I don't know much about any other type of engineering.

Thanks again!
 
Are you smart? Nuclear Engineering is tough as shit, but you're good for job security for a very long time with very good pay. Any type of engineering based in enegery production will net you a good job.
 
stalked_R/T said:
Are you smart? Nuclear Engineering is tough as shit, but you're good for job security for a very long time with very good pay. Any type of engineering based in enegery production will net you a good job.
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x2 theres alot of money in the power industry not to mention you can go anywhere and get a job(some where warm) lol
 
I work in the service department for a large automotive engineering firm. We design and test engines for any manufacturer. I maintain and repair all the instrumentation and dynamometers and also set up new test cells. It's an interesting job. You're always learning something. Pay can be great depending on your abilities. I started at fords dyno lab 7 years ago or so and moved on from there. I have no degree and have earned well above the average salary the last few years.
 
WhiteHawk said:
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
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Same here. I started at HFCC and transferred about 55 credits to U of M dearborn. IIRC only one class didn't transfer.

ZJeepMI said:
Wow, thanks for all of the replys. I'm definitely more interested in cars than I am computers, and I'm not sure that i'd like to be stuck doing repetitive programming everyday. I do repetitive work now, and I start to get really antsy after an hour or two of the same thing. Any Mechanical/electrical/civil engineers here? I don't think I would do well in a job that doesn't have some sort of guaranteed base salary, I'm all about stability and I'm most definitely not cut out for any sort of sales job.

Right now I'm taking all general classes that are under the macrao agreement, which is a program that transfers to a large list of universitys, including Michigan Tech and Lawrence Tech, one of those would probably be my choice if I did some kind of engineering or computer science degree. I for sure would like to finish with some sort of bachelors degree, and if I don't absolutely hate school by the time i'm done I would be up to going for a masters.

I guess what I'm afraid of most is spending all of this money, and dealing with all of these student loans and ending up with a degree that will be outsourced, that just isn't in demand anymore, or something that I absolutely hate. Computer science probably wouldn't be perfect for me, I really don't do well with sitting still doing repetitive things for a long time, and that seems like a large portion of that job. Engineering seems interesting, but Civil engineers have been cut heavily in the recent years, and I don't know much about any other type of engineering.

Thanks again!
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I worked through college and my former employer payed about 5k per year while I got my mechanical engineering degree and now work at an oem. Sure there are some fields that could pay me more but at least I go to work and enjoy it most days. Don't let anyone tell you that you can't enjoy a job. Sure I'd rather be home with my family but you could say that about any job. If you are into the automotive field, you're probably best off pursuing a mechanical or electrical engineering degree.
 
I work for Ford Motor as a Prove out Tec. I love my Job. Get to work on and test drive all kinds of cars and Trucks.
 
stalked_R/T said:
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.
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This is very true, especially in MI. There is a shortage of GOOD programmers in MI, so if you're good at it, and have good exp, you'll get serious money. On top of that, if your native language is English, you'll be more desirable and never out of work, ever - oh and you can demand more money because of that :). Currently I am a Sr. Software Engineer/Team Lead, but I also have my own consulting business on the side - which is taking off...looks like I might be moving on to bigger and better things soon. I love what I do, and to be in programming, you have to love it or you'll absolutely be bored and hate it. Good luck with your choice.
 
Open up a on line store selling medical marijuana and sell hydroponic equipment/grow lights.
This country's going to pot anyhow....might as well get a leg up in the industry.
 
Falcon64 said:
Stay away from all forms of public service. The pay
sucks and you get treated like crap because everyone
is on edge.
[\quote]

THIS!!!

I work as a sales associate at a salvage yard in Jackson. So I deal with the slum of town that want something for nothing. And the pay is shit. And honestly, don't do something you enjoy as a hobby. Because the hobby aspect goes out the wi ndow when you do it 40 hours a week. I got into the automotive feild because I enjoyed it as a hobby and its what I knew at 16/17 and stuck with it. Now every time something starts to fail on my car I don't fix it until I absolutely have to. Do something that pays the bills and call it good IMO.
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Be very selective if you decide to get a computer degree. I have a computer degree and related certs in the field and I can't find a job in the computer field making more than I make now. As stated developers and mechanical engineers are pretty safe for a good job.
 
Need a degree, specifically something technical. All technical fields go in cycles. There is going to be a shortage of Electrical Engineers starting now until about 6 years from now. It's similar to what happened to ChE ten years ago. CE field is going to be in the shitter for 15 years, even for those with PEs due to both residential and commercial building being pretty much nonexistent... with experience being king.

Mechanical is going to taper off here pretty quick. It may get delayed if the economy doesn't pick up because people won't retire.

Geo and Petrophysics is a good place to be. Nice thing is that you can work outside if you want to.

And speaking of retiring, the only reason Engineering jobs haven't been spiraling out of control is because of the poor economy. There is already a shortage of engineers but it would be much worse if so many hadn't delayed retirement.

mdhmi said:
Use your downtime to study for technical certifications or finish up a degree.

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.

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).
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Experience tends to trump certifications but some certifications are still valuable. I'm planning on getting CISSP piece of paper someday, unless it gets diluted also. It's been on the to do list for years. A lot of the rest are only valuable in the consulting/contracting world. I have a bunch of crap that I don't even tell anyone about. Certified Oracle or SQL anything is a farkin' joke for example.

The best part of IT is that it is always changing, which sucks if you are the complacent type. Whatever you learned 5 years ago is pretty much worthless today, except the experience gained by learning (aka, how you arrived at the answer). IT has become a commodity for the most part and now the goal is to drive down wages just like they have in other fields. It's becoming easy after all.

For example, historically DBAs get paid the most because it is fairly difficult to understand (relational databases and modeling/architecture isn't easy) and you are trusting these people with your business' most critical data. You don't want to underpay them because if you do they will be crap employees and accidentally destroy your data or be crapped on employees and steal your data. India and data obfuscation and/or encryption has made both a non-issue.

Storage is getting that way also. You'll see it happen once the various storage device makers start consolidating. It will become a commodity also. Thankfully it's only one of my "other duties" because no one else has any experience running enterprise storage in my group. EMC beginning with FLARE 28 basically made idiot tiering easy with FAST. FLARE 30 is pretty rock solid after we got them to fix a fairly large bug specific to our setup. Storage Pools and metaluns make it even easier to avoid "getting it wrong". Throwing some SSD at it will hide almost all problems and it's fairly cheap... for a while. MV/CE and RP/CE allow you to do some pretty sweet shit when it comes to geographically dispersed clusters, you don't have to just copy data to another SAN with MV like in the olden days. Good storage engineers still know how to tune from the filesystem and design of the server, to queue depth and execution throttle, to how to configure the storage on the SAN. But it doesn't take the smarts it used to in order to do "an ok job".

Networking is already well on its way now that companies are allowing remote support of critical infrastructure. Need not be in the country if you aren't the one putting it in the rack...

But anyway, if you are ambitious and truly talented you will make money in IT no matter where you go... especially if you also happen to care about what you do. It's just that certain parts of IT allow for more mediocrity.
 
soap said:
Highly disagree with that. The market is FLOODED with "laid off" ME's, most of whom also have an MBA and years of experience.

--Joe
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Can't speak for everyone but I have a friend that graduated and had a job within a month in the field.
 
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