Looking forward to seeing some interesting jobs I haven’t really thought about. Bonus points if it’s an IT job.
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
Being a monarch or some kind of royalty seems to be excellent financially and often overlooked.
Economists don’t want me to learn this one crazy trick, but now that I know, I’ll get to work becoming a royal. Thanks to this advice, I’ll be rich by the end of the week.
Brb building time machine.
All these poor millennials are buying too much avocado toast. Here’s how I became a homeowner at 18 by pulling myself up by my bootstraps:
- Get your dad to spend 300k of his 1mil/year income on a house for you
Don’t forget a religious figure head. Worked for Mr. Hubbard.
Garbage truck driver
🎶 I’ll take out your junk
And I’ll crush it doooown
Jesus in the rear view
And the highway patrol
Is up ahead 🎶
I had a friend that worked garbage trucks. It was an early day but the pay was good and you’d be done with work by noon
It’s not an easy job. You’re constantly moving weights (the truck lifts the garbage bin, but moving a 120 lt bin full of garbage from its spot to the truck and back is not easy either). When your friends are done with their workday, it’s time for you to go to bed. You have to work with bad weather, because trash bins must be emptied no matter what. I work in the IT of the company that does the garbage collection in my area. My colleagues are not very enthusiast of their job, lol. But it’s a stable job, at least. Pay is decent, but I wouldn’t call it good. In other countries though, people doing the same job are getting paid better than in Italy
We have this in my city, so it’s literally just driving the truck https://youtu.be/QxhHkoz99D8?si=QWjJCJAZcqdXIXIo (I haven’t watched the full video, but it appears to just be 18 full minutes of our garbage trucks.)
Ah yeah this was for a city in the US. It’s definitely not easy!
Honk honk
That’s one of the perks, yes
Tech support for factory machines. I used to work in a fairly modern (in terms of products) factory, and the SMT assembly machines were positively archaic. Most were decades old by the time I quit, they all had their own quirks, and very few people who could troubleshoot them. The factory was shut down every weekend, and getting the machines to talk to each other and the server on Monday mornings was a ritual just short of praying to the Omnissiah.
Piggybacking off this, CNC machining has a lot in common if you don’t mind getting your hands just a bit dirty. It’s a lot less manual labor than you’d expect and you typically won’t ever have to deal with a customer.
GCODE is simple to pick up the basics if you have any familiarity with 3D coordinates and many colleges will offer a fast-track course for around $2-3k. Depending on the area, some shops will even cover this cost while you’re starting.
I’ve done some gcode but moved onto other programming(mostly c# so completely different. One thing I HATED about gcode, I don’t know if it was just my machines or gcode in general(most of mine were based on fanuc cnc controllers typically seen as top of the line) , we were not able to name variables.
I create a variable and assign it #315. What does #315 do? What does it mean? Who knows… Better have notes or comments to explain or your fucked. I can’t say variable x_offset_tool_15 nope…just #315.
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I have been working in power plants for over ten years. Entry level plant operators can make six figures with a high school diploma. At a decent plant, you’ll be balls to the wall busy on 5-10% of your shifts, pretty steady with general routine stuff that’s mostly just confirming that shit is normal 80% of the time, and the remaining 10% is in outages which can vary between busting your ass and waiting around but it’s rough either way because you might be working every day for a few weeks. Every plant I’ve been to does 12 hour shifts with pretty frequent changes between days and nights, which is by far the worst part. You’ll have an easier time getting in and moving up if you are pretty good with STEM stuff, but you’re fine if you passed honors physics in high school. V=IR and PV=nRT will get you really far. Spatial reasoning skills are also really helpful.
I’m at a combined cycle natural gas plant where I started as an outside operator almost 3 years ago at $39.80/hour and am now a ZLD water treatment operator in the same plant at $52/hour; control room operators start at about $60/hour here. I had a really shitty 12 hour shift today so I earned every dime of that wage, but sometimes it’s only like 4-6 hours of work in a 12 hour shift and a bunch of reading or YouTube in between while monitoring everything. Even the tough shifts are kinda good sometimes because I get to work the puzzle part of my brain.
What starting jobs does your plant offer right now? Are they hiring? I’m not interested but I am wondering if your experience is colored at all by a different job market.
Did you have any experience prior to 3 years ago?
My plant in particular has a roster of only about 30 people, only about 5 of which are what I would call entry level. Right now we’re fully staffed, but every couple of years we get a few people who leave. We’ll have probably two retirements in the next couple of years, and who knows who will say fuck this place and go elsewhere. But this is all for in-house stuff. I got into the industry as a contractor with a few different companies making less money and running harder for a long while, so that made me a much more attractive candidate. But really I just carry myself well and know how to sell myself and appear respectable even though I feel like a 10 year old trapped in a 35 year old body most of the time. Idk what I’m doing half the time, but neither does anybody else in this stupid world lol.
A super easy way to get your foot in the door for the industry is to look into companies that support outages. It can be irregular work that requires travel, but companies always need bodies just to be a general laborer. You might just be carrying shit for “skilled” workers for a while but you get familiar with processes and can find advancement opportunities from there. I started with radiological decontamination and radiation protection for nuclear plant refuel outages. Most of those guys seem to have like an 8th grade education, so it’s pretty easy to stand out in a positive way and receive recognition.
Probably the best thing for my career to really get where I am was when I somehow talked my way into a job with a major company as a water treatment FSR to handle water treatment for a big nuclear plant. I learned a lot through that, and I’m still very much learning every day.
Not gonna lie: When I started reading your comment, I was fairly sure this was gonna be some kind of Simpsons joke.
The real Simpsons joke is affording a big house with a garage, two cars, three kids, pets, and vacations on a single income from a high school education. My wife and I are a DINK couple each with associates degrees in a two bedroom apartment with no pets.
D’oh indeed, Homer. D’oh indeed…
The year is 2024, and we’re all Frank Grimes now: https://youtu.be/axHoy0hnQy8
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/axHoy0hnQy8
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
I don’t know if it was created by the show, but if it is, by mentioning “Dink” you seem to be a fellow Doug enjoyer.
I don’t think Doug invented it, but probably helped popularize it.
Yeah, I like Doug. Killer Tofu is unironically a fucking bop. But now that I’m older, Doug might have had some kind of social disorder or something lol. But he also has a ton of similarities to JD from Scrubs, another show I really liked.
I still blast it out every now and then. That and Banging on a Trash Can
It was doable back in the day, especially if nuclear plant workers make as much as the OP says.
My family was exactly like the Simpsons in terms of what we could afford growing up and who was working. Although my dad worked in an auto factory as opposed to a nuclear plant. He was first a line worker but then managed to be trained to repair machinery.
In the year 2024, it’s hard to fathom how that was at all possible to do, but times were different back then. I will say, I’m fairly certain that my parents were also in a ton of debt when I was growing up. It’s just that they used to give loans to everyone (hence the housing market crash in around 2009 or whenever it was).
There are a lot more jobs in the medical profession than doctor or nurse. It’s indoors so climate controlled. There’s 2 yr programs that start out around 60k a year.
Unit Clerk here is a 4ish month course plus a practicum. GF is union and gets shift premium for working outside business hours.
Dental Hygienist. They make like $40/hour to clean people’s teeth. It only requires an associates degree and you can get it from community college (aka cheap).
Dental hygiene is a pretty awful field for most people though - there’s a lot of depression and heart problems from having to cause people pain (even if you logically know it’s good for them). This is a great option for some people but if you consider yourself empathetic I’d urge some caution.
Some people also don’t brush or just have putrid breath
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That’s actually pretty tempting… I’ve wondered if I could hack it in dentistry before.
Offshore seismic survey. The positions vary in title, but technician, observer, seabed logger, etc are, quite honestly, easy as fuck. If you’re able to display reasonably good troubleshooting skills and adaptability to a “different” kind of job, you’re golden. Pays quite well too. Your background certainly plays a role, but it’s more about being the right kind of well-rounded personality.
Pros: Computers, heavy machinery, robotics, nice people, loads of travel, nice ships (most of them, at least), five weeks at home to do whatever you want, well paid.
Cons: Five weeks offshore gets tiring, you sometimes find yourself in the shittiest shitholes in the world, the work can be really repetitive and boring, and if you’re unlucky you will find yourself on a ship with shitty food.
Source: I used to be one. Now I hold a more specialized supporting role instead. Been in the industry since 2008, and before that I had no fucking clue what I wanted to do with my life. It didn’t take me long after to figure out “what I want to be when I grow up”. I’m now 41, not quite a grownup, but I definitely am happy with my career.
Trades. Become an electrician or a plumber or any number of other skilled contractor position. Financially you’ll be set for life.
Well, idk about set for life. Most trades I know spend all their money on toys, and get too old physically before realizing that maybe they should’ve been saving for retirement all those years.
I had a travel job broadly under the umbrella of trades, we were pulling like 85k+ between overtime and per diem working 6 days a week. Maybe 2 months into this job we were having some meeting about the upcoming 2 week break for Christmas and one of the younger guys makes some comment about missing out on hours and says ‘man we’re broke’.
I’m just sitting there like ??? I thought you guys were exaggerating about the $1k+ nights at strip clubs.
An Arborist I knew made bank, but threw it down the sink with every paycheck.
Be sure to learn how to invest kids, compound interests pays well and you don’t have to work doing something you hate if your money works for you.
Union trades. That’s where the money is, unfortunately for this conversation few areas have full union coverage.
I’ve worked in NYC. You can not do much in commercial buildings without union help.
This is not a universal truth. I am a union electrician and I make decent money but I am most certainly not set for life. It takes some significant overtime but it’s not uncommon for guys to take home 6 figures.
Helped change a water heater at my parents place. Got quoted 1k in labor. Took us a little less than 2 hrs of actual work to do it. Had to buy new flexible connectors and Teflon tape. Possible fire or water damage is no joke so i understand the hesitation to DIY, but the work is pretty straight forward.
Trades are absolutely a viable option. There will always be a need.
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What country are you in?
Trades generally make a decent amount. Masonry, carpentry, welding, transportation, electrical, plumbing, waste management, etc all have decent pay rates in most first world countries with codes and regulations.
Communications and drone operators might have a future career, depending on the job and company.
I’m in India. Everyone I talk to just recommend either working as a developer or working abroad.
They do have a reason for saying this though. The average electrician , plumber and carpenter that they know are all make enough to survive but not enough to lead a lavish lifestyle. People who work in waste management and transport usually make even less than electricians and plumbers.
Maybe things are changing these days, I’ll have to talk to the right people to get a better idea…
Here in my part of the US, electricians are middle class ($80-120k/yr) and trade company owners well above that.
Trades are one of the best ways to become the owner/self employed and make a lot more. If you are smartish and have your life together you can make a killing.
That makes a huge difference. You’re going to get mostly West-specific answers that will be useless over there.
Learn ServiceNow or any other cloud based platform. Get on LinkedIn and build a recruiter relationship. You’ll be drowning in jobs.
Where in india
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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I cant comment on the ubiquity of these jobs. But I work for a (non us) national government organisation with a union. Pay is the same the country round so living in a relatively major city with significantly lower cost of living than the majors means I get a pretty damn good quality of life, better cost of living and job security out of less money than some jobs.
Its not just the dollar figure but what it gets you and where.
Database Administrator (DBA) can be a lucrative position with a low barrier to entry. Can bridge nicely into data science/AI if you want to go that route. Data is the new oil, and AI/LLMs are the refineries.
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.
