How did you end up in your career?

Fascinating to hear everyone’s stories. Thanks for starting this thread, and thanks for sharing, folks!

My story isn’t as inspiring, mostly a result of my being a dumbass and/or falling ass backward into or out of opportunities out of luck.

Graduated high school, got my BA a year later. Struggled to find work as a photojournalist, found it overseas as a conflict photographer. Bounced between embed jobs and foreign correspondent gigs.

Came back, kept getting laid off when newspapers began failing (curse you, Craigslist and short-sighted management!) so I embedded again. Got blown up, worked and wandered in Europe, came back to Seattle for a friend’s wedding.

Head injury turned out to be chronic and I learned I was going to be a father, so I enrolled in teaching school and became a teacher.

I enjoyed being a teacher until the job became too much of a political football with ridiculous mandates and lack of rationality at both ends of the spectrum and a vanishing middle. The past few years, in one of the wealthier school districts, I’ve had classes of 45 students in a classroom with desks for 32, and the budget crisis is just getting started. AI is going to tank Seattle’s economy in the next 2-5 years, and I can’t count on enjoying my retirement in my later years (or even making it to then), so I’m out.

In June we are getting on a plane and moving to the Netherlands. I want to enjoy my kids (9 and 13) while they’re kids, show them other ways of living and coexisting in the world, and spend my “retirement” trying a new venture in a new place. I’ve got enough salted away that we’re set through their time in college, so we’re good to go no matter what.
 
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I found that interesting to read and your new adventure sounds similar to what I plan on doing! Do you have family in the Netherlands or do they have good foreigner visa programs? What's the story there if you don't mind me asking? @J Watrous
 
J Watrous said:
Fascinating to hear everyone’s stories. Thanks for starting this thread, and thanks for sharing, folks!

My story isn’t as inspiring, mostly a result of my being a dumbass and/or falling ass backward into or out of opportunities out of luck.

Graduated high school, got my BA a year later. Struggled to find work as a photojournalist, found it overseas as a conflict photographer. Bounced between embed jobs and foreign correspondent gigs.

Came back, kept getting laid off when newspapers began failing (curse you, Craigslist and short-sighted management!) so I embedded again. Got blown up, worked and wandered in Europe, came back to Seattle for a friend’s wedding.

Head injury turned out to be chronic and I learned I was going to be a father, so I enrolled in teaching school and became a teacher.

I enjoyed being a teacher until the job became too much of a political football with ridiculous mandates and lack of rationality at both ends of the spectrum and a vanishing middle. The past few years, in one of the wealthier school districts, I’ve had classes of 45 students in a classroom with desks for 32, and the budget crisis is just getting started. AI is going to tank Seattle’s economy in the next 2-5 years, and I can’t count on enjoying my retirement in my later years (or even making it to then), so I’m out.

In June we are getting on a plane and moving to the Netherlands. I want to enjoy my kids (9 and 13) while they’re kids, show them other ways of living and coexisting in the world, and spend my “retirement” trying a new venture in a new place. I’ve got enough salted away that we’re set through their time in college, so we’re good to go no matter what.
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I can think of far worse countries. My previous employer ASML, is a Dutch company based in Veldhoven. Disappointed I never had the chance to visit.

The Dutch I have met have been great people. Also pretty sure they have aliens secretly helping them. I jest, but the tech they have developed is beyond mind blowing, and is the epicenter of the current geopolitical tech conflict. Google EUV Lithography if you want your mind blown.
 
J Watrous said:
Fascinating to hear everyone’s stories. Thanks for starting this thread, and thanks for sharing, folks!

My story isn’t as inspiring, mostly a result of my being a dumbass and/or falling ass backward into or out of opportunities out of luck.

Graduated high school, got my BA a year later. Struggled to find work as a photojournalist, found it overseas as a conflict photographer. Bounced between embed jobs and foreign correspondent gigs.

Came back, kept getting laid off when newspapers began failing (curse you, Craigslist and short-sighted management!) so I embedded again. Got blown up, worked and wandered in Europe, came back to Seattle for a friend’s wedding.

Head injury turned out to be chronic and I learned I was going to be a father, so I enrolled in teaching school and became a teacher.

I enjoyed being a teacher until the job became too much of a political football with ridiculous mandates and lack of rationality at both ends of the spectrum and a vanishing middle. The past few years, in one of the wealthier school districts, I’ve had classes of 45 students in a classroom with desks for 32, and the budget crisis is just getting started. AI is going to tank Seattle’s economy in the next 2-5 years, and I can’t count on enjoying my retirement in my later years (or even making it to then), so I’m out.

In June we are getting on a plane and moving to the Netherlands. I want to enjoy my kids (9 and 13) while they’re kids, show them other ways of living and coexisting in the world, and spend my “retirement” trying a new venture in a new place. I’ve got enough salted away that we’re set through their time in college, so we’re good to go no matter what.
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You are sure picking a good time to get the hell out of this place. Makes me wish I was younger. I'd be in Norway or New Zealand in a heartbeat.
 
Left high school early and got diploma at local community college, screwed around a couple years in various construction jobs and did a drywall apprenticeship and worked as a non-union ironworker. Went to Alaska in ‘76 with intent of getting on the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, got a union job and partnered up with a fellow starting a company doing guardrail, metal bin wall, highway sign systems, fence and miscellaneous metals. After 8 years I got my contractors license and went out on my own, construction was booming with oil money pouring into capital projects, highways, schools, bridges, even a prison. In 1985 oil prices collapsed and Alaska ceased all capital outlay construction spending, people were walking away from their homes, it was ugly. I had just gotten two nice (big) jobs and contracts were cancelled for lack of funding. I struggled through spring and summer of ‘86 when a fellow contractor told me California was on a prison building boom and screaming for Ironworkers with my experience in prison systems (electromechanical doors and gates). First phone call I made I was asked “how soon can you get here and how many men can you bring.”
Broke my heart to leave Alaska, I had ten acres overlooking two ponds and 160 acre wetlands with Sandhill Cranes and geese, a view of Mt. Redoubt across Cook Inlet, 6 miles from the Kenai and Kasilof rivers, and had just finished building my house, a 5 year project when things crashed. Luckily I had no debt but did have 2 kids and a wife to provide for so 5 days later I was in the East Bay working on a jail under construction. Brought the family down a couple months later and worked on new prison and jail construction for next 10 years, also some time at Edwards AFB where we built a electromechanical slide gate 300’ long on rails for the space shuttle and worked on the gantry that picks up and loads the shuttle onto the 747 for the trip back to launch point. I got 12+ years pension credit in less than 10 calendar years. Went to work for the state in a pilot program using inmates to help build in existing prisons, hiring key personnel from various union halls and inmates as labor and occasionally some with construction skills. I was given a budget and a set of plans and went to build the project. Built housing units with precast concrete, clinics and offices with CMU, maximum security units, wastewater and water treatment facilities, remodeled the hospital at San Quentin and more. It was fun and challenging. In 2006 I moved into HQ and had 6 prisons in my portfolio, including San Quentin, where I handled emergency and special repair projects and helped manage their facilities maintenance budgets. Not as much fun and on the road a lot, but boss and coworkers were the best, really enjoyed that.
I didn’t realize I probably have ADHD until a few years ago when a young relative was diagnosed and I asked the symptoms. When described to me I said “that’s me”, probably why I couldn’t focus in college unless it was a subject of interest. I have no regrets, had a lot of fun and worked some really cool places with some wonderful people, retired with greater security and benefits than any of my highly educated siblings.
 
jeradjames said:
I found that interesting to read and your new adventure sounds similar to what I plan on doing! Do you have family in the Netherlands or do they have good foreigner visa programs? What's the story there if you don't mind me asking? @J Watrous
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The Dutch American Friendship Treaty allows Us citizens the opportunity to move to the Netherlands and stay indefinitely so long as they are willing to 1. Start a business and 2. Maintain a balance of €4500 in said business’ account. The business needn’t make a profit and after 5 years you can live in any EU country.

The other one I was considering was Portugal who will let you stay forever provided you have €800/month or more in passive income (such as renting out your home in the US). Lately, though, new business prospects and acceptance of foreigners has taken a hit there.
 
This is an interesting thread and I’m happy to hear the trajectories of the working lives of others.
I’m a furniture maker.
I studied classics and poetry at university. I worked as a carpenter during summer breaks. After graduation, while waffling on grad program decisions, I went back to swinging a hammer. I made what seemed at the time to be good money and, to a large extent, could control my schedule so I could play in bands and chase steelhead.
I did that for most of my twenties and early thirties. Build decks. Side houses. Make records. Fish most days in Jan, Feb and March.
At some point in my early thirties I got tired of the inconsistent nature of the work I was doing and found that I had less interest in the cycle of recording and touring that music entailed and labels demanded, let alone the endless hours in a van and nights in bars.

In 2012 I made a shift to working in a small mill/furniture shop. The consistency of the schedule was a grind but health insurance was nice.
The business grew quickly and by 2020 the shop was a factory with 50 workers on the floor. I was executive level Production Manager and deeply unhappy. It was profitable and soulless. It didn’t seem worth it. I quit.
I kicked around for a few months.
One day I got a call from the foreman at a prestigious little furniture shop who’d heard I was looking for a new position. A couple weeks later I was working there and I’ve been there since.
The pay is what you’d expect at a furniture shop that markets its pieces as handmade, but the schedule is outstanding. I’m on the water easily 100 days a year. I spend a lot of time with my family. We live in a little old house near a river and own half a cabin on the coast. We’ll never be rich but at least we’re together.
 
J Watrous said:
The Dutch American Friendship Treaty allows Us citizens the opportunity to move to the Netherlands and stay indefinitely so long as they are willing to 1. Start a business and 2. Maintain a balance of €4500 in said business’ account. The business needn’t make a profit and after 5 years you can live in any EU country.

The other one I was considering was Portugal who will let you stay forever provided you have €800/month or more in passive income (such as renting out your home in the US). Lately, though, new business prospects and acceptance of foreigners has taken a hit there.
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Keep in touch via email with a friend who retired to Portugal a decade ago, states a growing resentment has been generated by the number of ex-pat's moving in and buying homes with cash, driving up the cost to where the younger folks are getting priced out of the housing market in the best locations...sounds familiar
 
SurfnFish said:
Keep in touch via email with a friend who retired to Portugal a decade ago, states a growing resentment has been generated by the number of ex-pat's moving in and buying homes with cash, driving up the cost to where the younger folks are getting priced out of the housing market in the best locations...sounds familiar
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I'm currently working in Mexico and there's a bit of that sentiment down here too.
 
I read Mexici City is getting fed up, housing and such.
 
School never interested me so went straight out of high school to deck handing on salmon/tuna trollers in the summer and fishing for Dungeness in the winters. My captain sold his boat mid season and his wife was a bookkeeper at the grocery store. She said they had an opening on night crew and I thought it would be a good short term job until the next salmon season. Unlike commercial fishing, I found that you actually got a paycheck every week! While I wouldn't recommend retail of any kind, especially grocery, it was an industry that did not require a degree. It turned out I was good at it, went into management, and retired pretty damn comfortably. You might be surprised what a high volume grocery store manager makes....
 
I won't bore you with the twists and turns of my "job portfolio" over the years, but there has been one constant since I was 16...
In every job, I went out of my way to continue to learn new skills and meet new people, then leveraged those results for personal gain at the next job every single step of the way. I haven't loved every job I've had, but I've been goddamn good at them and been rewarded in kind. I just turned 56 and will be retiring very comfortably in less than 4 years.
 
My dad brought home a Macintosh Classic, from work, when I was about 6. I was glued to it. Now I make iPhone apps for one of the big 5. I’m very lucky to have known what I wanted to do, from a young age.

My parents nearly talked me out of it though. I was applying for university when the dot com crash was still a fairly recent memory. Everyone said there would be no jobs and my parents thought being an accountant would be a safer career path, which is hilarious in hindsight. I ended up with comp sci and accounting degrees, but I really hope I never have to use one of those.

Anyway. I suppose my career path is evidence that if you’re passionate about something, you’ll probably do a decent job at it and someone might value that. I’ll be hesitant to give that advice to my own kids though, because you can be passionate about some really dumb shit and end up under a bridge too.

AI is really the thing everyone should be thinking about now. Entire professions are going to become obsolete. Mine will be among the first to go. Generally speaking, jobs with a physical aspect are safer, because robotics are not progressing at the same speed. However, every profession will change in some way. For example, AI isn’t likely to replace plumbers any time soon, so a lot of people want to become plumbers. Subsequently, it is highly likely that there will be an oversupply of plumbers and that profession will become much less lucrative.
 
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Although it’s now history for the most part, my life has been blessed with enjoyable work since 1962. Still in Junior High School I started a part-time job at age 14 at the Eaton Canyon Nature Center in Pasadena just a few blocks from where my family lived. There I learned taxidermy and the basics of entomology. Both skills gave me a head start later in life. Once in high school with a driver’s license I got a well paying full time summer job working in a Southern California Edison main garage pumping gas and washing vehicles. In 1966 after graduating from Pasadena High School I headed off to the University of California Riverside where I landed part-time jobs as a contract taxidermist and bird collector for both the university and the San Bernardino County Museum. Unfortunately while I was a good taxidermist and very handy outdoors in nature, I was a marginal student and left UCR in the spring of 1968. Headed off to Aspen, CO for the summer to fish, bum around and work in a gas station to pay the bills. Leaving UCR made me vulnerable to the draft so in July 1968 I enlisted in the USAF and began my long and fruitful USAF career.

My entomology background allowed me to advance right out of basic into my first AF job—pest control in a civil engineering squadron. In a strange career twist in early 1969, the AF was looking for volunteers to teach English in Vietnam to Vietnamese Air Force officers and I took the bait. After a year in RVN I came back to the US at McChord AFB in Tacoma where I spent two years, met my wife now of 53 years and then on to Malmstrom AFB in Montana for another two years in the pest control world. Although pest control was not a demanding job there was really no future in it and working with toxic chemicals had definite downsides. So, another dramatic turn in my career path emerged.

The USAF had a rather small organization called the Air Force Office of Special Investigations which handled felony level AF related crime and AF related counterintelligence and anti-terrorism matters. They were always recruiting agents and again I took the bait. Once I became a Special Agent and a credentialed Federal Law Enforcement Officer in early 1973 an interesting and varied career odyssey ensued. I tell folks I just went from one kind of pest control to another. I got my first assignment in Alabama, home to a very large contingent of my mother’s family. Then off to Alaska where in 1977 I got accepted to Officer Training School and eventually got commissioned in February 1978. After a couple of years back at McChord I was off to AFOSI units in the Philippines, then to England, then to Germany and finally to Istanbul where I spent two years in the U.S. Consulate. After ten years living outside the US investigating major crimes in the AF and doing some counterintelligence work I came back to the US in 1990 as a student at the AF Command and Staff College in Alabama. When I graduated I was fortunate to be retained on the faculty for several years before I made my way back to AFOSI in Washington DC for my final AF tour.

When I left the USAF in 1996 I was a Lt Col and didn’t regret anything my 28 year career had bestowed on me. The day after I retired I went to work with a former AF colonel associate and started on a 25 year career as a strategic planning consultant teaching strategy and helping enterprises of all sizes and reach to become more successful through strategy. I really enjoyed teaching and the exposure to all manner of industries, public, private and government enterprises was very rewarding and well paying. In 2021 after 57 years of interesting and varied employment I called it quits and settled into serious retirement,
 
My plan was to major in business. Due to circumstances, I failed to get into the school of business. Some of those circumstances were my own doings. Some weren’t.
I met an advisor who told me to just get a degree and don’t waste the credits I’d already earned. She also asked me which courses I enjoyed and basically said whatever career path you choose, you are going to get training.
I ended up getting a sociology degree. After graduating I worked some unfulfilling manual labor jobs that didn’t pay great.
I needed a change and so I applied for a sales job. That lead to positions in three different companies all in the same industry before I finally settled in. I worked for big companies and a smaller family owned company. Both had their positives and negatives. The negatives being corporate bs to nepotism….
I will admit that after doing the same thing for 40+ years, the shine wears off and things got a bit monotonous at the end. Demanding customers, increasing quotas etc had me ready to hang things up, which I did this year. The last few years were a grind, but the goal line was in sight so I just kept my head down and powered through. I wasn’t going to change careers or positions at my age.
Getting a nice big paycheck after a good month of sales was rewarding plus the other perks of the sales game. Don’t get me wrong, there we some bleak periods like the 2008 financial crisis and Covid. Nobody was buying much of anything.
In the end, I didn’t love my job and certainly don’t miss it. It did set me up well for a comfortable retirement which was my main goal during my working career.
Just one other piece of advice. Regardless of how much you are making, keep investing, max out your 401k etc. You may need to sacrifice some things in order to do so, but with the way things are headed much of your retirement will be dependent on yourself. I know this isn’t easy in today expensive environment for young people, but just do it. You’ll be happy you did.
SF
 
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I got an accounting degree out of college. Went to work for a small CPA firm, got my CPA license. Work for CPA firms for a few years. I really like accounting, doing taxes, etc. But....it wasn't exactly fulfilling.

In college, my girlfriend and I had spent a summer backpacking in Europe. We were staying in a small beach town in Turkey, and the family next door was from Edmonds. Talking with them, they were working for a small international non-profit in Kazakstan (or maybe Uzbekistan?). That non-profit was based in Portland. I told them I was studying accounting, and they mentioned that they really needed financial help. As a kid, my mom read Marco Polo and similar books to us. It was cool thinking about the Silk Road and the chance to go visit cities like Samarkand and Bukhara. I filed this all away in the back of my mind.

A couple years into my career, I end up moving to Portland. I've always read the newspaper since I was a kid, and in the summer of 2001 I saw a job ad for that international non-profit. I fit the job requirements. Applied, and got hired in August 2001 with a start date of Nov. 1, 2001. A lot of the world changed in those months. So a few months into my new job, I got sent to Quetta, Pakistan for 6 months (this was March 2002). Quetta was like going back in time to the Raj, with the added excitement that several of the high up Taliban were living there, including my next door neighbor. Craziest 6 months of my life, but I learned a lot about myself and how to do the work. For the next few years I bounced around the world - Mongolia to Liberia. One of the first civilians to go into Iraq in 2003. Lived Sudan for a year. But over the years I got more family responsibilities and became an HQ-only person, with odd exceptions. After 20 years, it seemed like enough for a variety of reasons. Looking back, I realize now how all consuming that work was - I was my work and I didn't leave it behind pretty much ever.

Now I work part-time domestically. The job is fairly easy and I leave it behind when my work day ends. I qualified for this job because I maintained my CPA license for the past 25 years even though I didn't need it for the work I was doing, and because I had relevant experience from my international work. Part time really frees up time for other things, which is great.

I guess my advice would be to try to give yourself as may options as possible. If there is a professional certification in your field, get it. These certifications make you more in demand, which increases your options. Try to figure out what interests you, that can make a job be more than a job.

Thank you for the chance to go down memory lane!
 
The trade unions are becoming deluged with applications for apprenticeships from younger folks realizing the safety net such jobs offer as AI becomes a global white collar job displacement tsunami, so they are being very careful to limit the number coming into those trades to protect their current journeymen. Same with the rural and metro firefighting/ paramedic operations. Having a relationship with someone who is either in the system or is a trades employer is increasingly essential to procuring placement.
 
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