Looking forward to seeing some interesting jobs I haven’t really thought about. Bonus points if it’s an IT job.
Electrician, especially if you’re ok with relocating. So many places around the world lack electricians when the infra just keeps growing everywhere.
What’s it take to learn to be an electrician? Like where do you go to learn?
Your local electrical union will place you in an apprenticeship.
It wasn’t when I took it, but condominium superintendent. I fell into it. It’s very minor work since all the repairs are done by contractors. I’m just a homesteader essentially, I get up and make sure the property is cared for.
I get paid $50k a year plus benefits, pension, Union, and I get a rent free condo unit, free internet and cable, free phone.
The free apartment saves me roughly $2500 a month on rent, in this ridiculous city I live in, so that alone makes this job extremely worth it
have you had to evict people yet?
Condos are privately owned, so any renters in the building are the individual unit owner’s concern. I only deal with the common areas and amenities, if there’s a flood in a unit I can shut off the water and call a plumber. If there are any other issues in a unit, I can suggest contractors for the owners to call. My job is mainly to coordinate contractors, keep an eye on things and make sure stuff is getting done.
If I ever have any residents who are causing issues, I just pass it up to the manager and condo board, so I don’t have to deal with confrontations or anything like that.
I had a friend who managed a huge building of both private owned and rentals. it was trip what people did on their way out. some nightmare scenarios. and some people would give him things like a kitchaid mixer or old stereos or furniture etc. the evictions and occasional death were the hardest on him. he lasted about 7 years before the management company changed hands and started messing with his deal.
How did you land this job and what country are you in?
I just took a job as a condo cleaning staff to make extra money. The fact that I was younger guy, who speaks perfect English made me kind of an elite hire for the cleaning industry.
So once a building needed a super while one was on vacation, I tried it. After that, I just got a call from the company owner one day saying a condo needed a live in super, so I went in for an interview.
All I had to show was that I have common sense and I’m able to put together an email/incident report.
General handyman is also a good job if you know what your doing. Lots of smaller condo associations would love a someone they can pay $40/hr to fix a mailbox, paint a sign, fix siding, paint a deck, replace shingles, change light bulbs, talk to contractors, etc.
Industrial PLC is probably good money. Building and maintaining all the industrial automation.
If you aren’t risk adverse I hear undersea welders make a ton.
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Getting sucked into a pipe through an opening that’s a few mm thick isn’t my idea of a fun death
Yeah, nah, fuck water. I’m good
In Norway, fishing has the reputation of being a good fit for many who struggles with more theoretical professions while being very, very well paid. Like highly paid IT consulatant sallary.
https://80000hours.org/ probably has information relevant to you, and they do have specific comments about IT roles, and many careers they talk about are related to computers in some way.
US government jobs. Find something you’re interested in, get some education, take the civil service exams, profit.
When I was early 20s, I wanted to get rich quick. Followed my dad into insurance, even though I had no interest or sales skills. Learned a lot! And dad was a stunning salesman. Made about every penny off referrals, because he hooked people up with products that worked for them, not a monolithic company. (He represented 20 or so firms.)
Yeah. Easing into IT worked out, and I’m doing well, but looking at where I’m at 30 years later, fuck me, I should have stuck with forestry and been a ranger. I’d probably be retired by now and raking in pay. Benefits out the ass, all that. Imagine how healthy I would be after 20-years of ranger work! I’m OK now, despite a “sinful” life. :) Then I could retire to my dream job, being a campground host at a national or state park. LOL, live on a lake and tell the kids to keep it quiet and keep the beer on the downlow. Walk around killing the occasional fire ant mound.
And while we’re at it, US military. God. Damn. I could have learned IT properly, retired after 20-years in, came back and consulted for the DoD. My bf in high school went in a fat body, came out hard, spent a couple of years active, then went National Guard.
Retired after a few years in, and then once a month on exercises, he’s fucking loaded. Retired at 39. Collects classic cars for kicks.
And for those of you who think “military” = “combat”, LOL no, most of you couldn’t get into combat if you tried. He only saw “light” combat in central America, in the early 90’s (we were not in El Salvador, did not happen!) He got in the fight because he begged for it.
Nobody should join the US military.
As a vet I can’t recommend the military
The military sounds like a great job except for the whole - supporting the US government murder and exploit third world countries and enforcing even more inequality in the world - thing. (Yes, even if you’re not actually holding the guns)
In the IT field particularly, if you like programming, Ada and COBOL are easy to learn, not desirable for young people because they’re not fashionable languages, and pay well because the old people that know them are retiring.
If you learn to code in COBOL, there will always be demand for your coding skills. But you’ll want to kill yourself because the only code you’ll ever get to work on is half-century-old spaghetti that has absurdly high uptime requirements.
Currently working on a programme of work for a huge client whose core system is still running the same COBOL spaghetti that was written in the 80s. The demand for COBOL developers to support or update these systems, and the compensation they get, is wild.
The course I took in college had 2 required classes for COBOL. A large majority of students did not like it, but I understand why it was (and still is) being taught. Huge demand. I enjoyed it at first, but then gradually started to dislike it, especially when getting into more complex problems. I’d have commically large files where 60-70% of the file itself is taken up by data definitions. Not to mention that the logic itself could probably be a fraction of the size in higher level languages… Not forgetting to properly tab your code was also hard to get used to. I’d consistently lose marks on that.
If you can learn to love it, it’s probably a fantastic career path…
Those who do enjoy it, I really do envy you. I really did want to like it, but it just didn’t work out.
I was thinking the same thing lately… Which organizations do you know of using these?
In the last fifteen years, I’ve worked at banks, insurance companies, and telcos on COBOL, and defence contractors and telcos with Ada.
There is always talk about replacing these huge legacy systems with something in Erlang, or Rust, or even Java (!); but some of these systems are more than fifty years old, with patches on patches, so in my opinion, replacement is going to be cumbersome and impractical.
Give it a decade or two, and Java will be the new COBOL
People have been saying that for like a decade now
A decade ago I said it was 3-4 decades away
The finance sector has been good to me, worked at the same place for 8 years, was well paid, got laid off due to cutbacks as my skills were not needed anymore, but got a good deal and am now at another finance company earning more and doing more interesting stuff.
My roles have all been in IT.
If you don’t mind, what set of skills got you employed ?
I don’t mind, I have two trade school educations in IT, both dealing woth networks, one also focusing on Windows servers, active directory, stuff like that, the other focused on Linux.
I then started working at helpdesks, and at my last job I started as a helpdesk technician, and wuickly got tasked with managing their Linux systems in addition to being part of an advanced internal helpdesk dealing with everything from ordering equipment to configuring AD policies and Microsoft 365 systems while also being a VIP tech for the top managment.
The VIPs and Linux stuff was never the main focus, but I learned a lot, and combine that with my personallity of being patient and positive I had a great time and made a huge impact on the company.
I can’t say too much about my current place of work due to NDA, but there is a lot of work that needs to be done, and I have tried to hit the ground running.
Please also not that this is a European perspective.
If you want advice on what you should focus on to improve your chances, I can share a few insights…
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Right now, IT is moving everything to the cloud, you don’t have to like it, but you have to deal with it.
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This does not mean that traditional skills from running servers are useless, it jist means you need to apply them in other ways.
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Networking can’t be completely run in the cloud, even if the management portal is located in the cloud, you still need switches, routers, access points and firewalls on site.
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Linux will suddenly pop up, learn how to navigate it, how to manage files, especially permissions, learn the basics of vi and nano, vi exists on every normal Linux system, nano is not uncommon and is far easier, but it is not uncommon to find it missing on servers.
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Working with AI is a fad right now, it will be of less improtance in the next years, but new AI and LLMs are constantly being improved and users will learn how to use the tool more effectively, learn how to use it now, so that later when it matters far more you will be prepared.
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Most improtantly of all, have an artistic hobby outside the computer, it is increadibly improtant to have a creative outlet, for me it is photography, I bought a Panasonic Limix S5 with several lenses last spring, upgradibg ftom the Lumix GX80, and I get rid of a lot of stress by taking photos, and it is fun to show my coworkers my new photos and gear.
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Machinist, electronics, or glass shop at a large university. Half make more than most professors (although that isn’t saying much)
High value crop consultants - good ones can make a surprising amount of money (200k+) This isn’t your dumbfuck row crops like corn and soy. Think fruit trees, nut trees, viticulture, vegetables, organic production etc.
Many college graduates have a job offers their junior year. Anymore you’ll want to have a double major of biology/Ag.
If you really want IT. Then telecom
Most people in telecom are old and are analog phone people, they don’t know ip/sip and don’t want to learn.
It’s basically a small networking job that you never get calls on nights and weekends about and if you do it’s a system you can reboot remotely. If it’s not the system it’s a switch and its someone else’s job.
Telecom isn’t sexy but it’s still needed, no one’s going into it as it’s not ‘sexy’ and to be honest it’s easy AF.
Telecom seems fantastic except it’s really hard to get into At&T or Verizon at the moment
You don’t need to work with the big guys.
Small businesses, managed service, utilities, hospitals all need telecom guys. Ive been out of telecom for years and I still have recruiters occasionally reaching out to me.
All of this is true. I work with telcom and it is needed in all these areas. I’d add schools, government, anywhere with lots of phones.
How would you prepare for telecom? I’ve got a background in IT and have been trying to switch to Software Engineering by learning React and TypeScript. Would the skills compare at all?
No idea if those skills would be transferable. I was on the small to mid sized biz side. Never worked for a provider or anything. Mainly managing, installing and configuring systems.
Once you understand the basics of telephony it’s pretty easy. It’s getting more complex now since it’s all ip/sip based but because that’s a skill that is lacking because everyone who does know that wants to be a network or security guy, not the phone guy/gal.
If you are working it now. Figure out who’s doing your phones and express interest in learning. It’s how everyone I know got into it.
HVAC. Takes just as much to learn as other trades but you make way more money.
Honestly, some of the trades sound great. I really do miss back in the day when Discovery wasn’t complete trash and Mike Rowe wasn’t a complete loser, Dirty Jobs gave me a lot of respect to the often shit upon working class.
Learn FORTRAN, and you’ll be set for life.
I’m listening… Where will I use it?
Where will I use it?
In the heart of every financial company that has been around for longer than 30 years, lies old code.
The keys to their kingdoms are made from the old code. The old guard has a foot in the grave, and the finance people will pay through the nose to keep everything exactly how it is.
Got it, curious though, don’t they use ( or somehow switched) something like oracle technologies (java, SQL, etc), with all the promises they claim everywhere?
That sounded like outdated advice 20 years ago, and it still does, but somehow it still isn’t… yet… 😅
And it never will be. The o̸͎̎̔͆͂̆͝l̶̨̠͇͉̺̃̿̈̌͐̇̆ͅͅd̷̛̤͔͍̼̟̭̏͐͌̌̚ c̸̫͙̫̰̜̝̒́̌̃̉̅ǒ̴̢̗̺́d̷̥̣͎́̐̅̒ͅe̶̥̾̽͐͜ endures, evermore.
COBOL
