What do you do at your job?

[martyjhuebs]

I'm a U.S. Marine. I used to train Marines how to protect themselves In a chemical evironment but now I use modeling software to plot Chemical, Biological, and Nuclear incidents as well as radioactive and toxic industrial material releases within the United States, Canada, Mexico and the Bahamas.

 

[Twins_Dad]

I write discharge permits for wastewater treatment plants, telling them how much or how little of what can or can't be in their effluent. You haven't lived until you have smelled the headworks of a treatment plant or a digester working away in the 110 degree CA heat.

 

[MonkeyBot]

I'm a software developer that works on software to program smart cards. All those fancy new credit cards you're getting with the chips in them? Not that new, I've been doing this for 15 years.

 

[pointcity-homebrew]

I preform research and testing in the area of high voltage. Most of the research we do is centered around lightning effects and protection systems. The testing we perform is for industry. Objects like bucket trucks for utilities, transmission devices, cabling etc. It is a fun job, great environment and secure.

 

[passedpawn]

I'm a U.S. Marine. I used to train Marines how to protect themselves In a chemical evironment but now I use modeling software to plot Chemical, Biological, and Nuclear incidents as well as radioactive and toxic industrial material releases within the United States, Canada, Mexico and the Bahamas.

NBC training. I remember that.

I did a ton of hazards analysis when I worked at a DOE facility that had nuclear materials. They sent me to several lengthy courses in Tennessee to learn about plume analysis and modeling. Pretty interesting at the time.

 

[bruteforce]

Data scientist at a national lab. Get every other friday off, 3 weeks of vacation, an extra week off at christmas, and no one cares if sometimes I get too caught up in research to notice that I've been there for 3 days straight and haven't slept.

 

[1977Brewer]

I supervise the facilities for one of the largest ceiling fan and lighting manufacturers in the world. We make nothing in the half million square feet of warehouse we own. 100% imported from China, India, and Italy. If it's not a computer or printer, it's my problem. 70 + forklifts, the phones and faxes, janitorial, plumbing, electrical, dock equipment, vending machines...all of it. My problems. I also get to stock the bars for our big trade show in Dallas twice a year, so I'm the company booze buyer as well.

For as much as I have on my plate, it's a chill job, and it pays fairly well.

 

[Cheesy_Goodness]

Bean counter.
Depending on the time of year we're either doing personal income taxes, cost studies, internal audits, or taxes for co-ops.

Lately I've been redesigning some old tax models that were super cumbersome to use and nearly impossible to understand. They're a lot clearer and more automated now but it takes some work considering it takes 4 different models before a return is ready to go.

 

[hunter_le five]

I work for a bean farm.
I count the beans, and make sure they're all still there.
Well, mostly I manage those who do the actual tallying.
Sometimes I give beans to those we owe beans to.
I make sure no one is stealing our beans.
Every two weeks I divvy out some of the beans to employees, so they'll continue to show up and grow more beans.

That, and dick around on HBT.

Edit: dammit cheesy

 

[grevengrevs]

Nothing anymore. I retired last year. Before I retired I was active duty Air Force and the department supervisor for the Arab languages. Linguist all 20 years but most of the time was teaching others how to read, write, and speak Arabic and a few of the dialects.
Now, I make beer, bullets, and go to school.

 

[nDub]

Civil Engineer working as a "Sanitary" Engineer for a large city Utility Company. Mostly what I do is help maintain regulatory compliance for the large regional drinking water system as well as a handful of small water systems. We also have a biology/chemistry lab so I work in there sometimes. Best days are field days.

 

[BGBC]

One of my summer jobs back in college was working for a startup water treatment technology company. Part of their proprietary process required a certain chemical in pelletized form, but you could only buy it in powdered form. So part of my job was to help run the machines that would turn powder into pellet. Thankfully we only needed to run this production line 1-2 days per week, because that stuff was the worst.

Skin rashes anywhere I'd sweat through the cheap suits they provided (no AC in the space they rented out of course) and by the end of the summer my nose hairs were bleached blonde, even through a full face respirator. Good times.

 

[m00ps]

Im a fledgling engineer at a specialty chemicals plant. We make all kinds of additives to various consumer products like shampoo and toothpaste which I neither know anything about or am able to pronounce. We also make some sort of flocculating agent that is in most BMC beers in addition to Sam Adams and Sierra Nevada. Some of my more "organic" oriented friends have stopped drinking those after hearing about it

Fun fact: we are also one of two plants in the US that is allowed to have GHB (aka one of the date rape drugs) in its pure form. So theres a lot of security around the plant. Supposedly, the tank its in is unmarked and the location is only known to a select few. Cameras with DVR are on it 24/7

 

[TheCADJockey]

I've had a ridiculous amount of jobs due to changing college schedules. Some of the more interesting ones:

:: A soda-jerk at a local ice cream parlor. It was fun. I got to wear that stupid old fashioned paper hat too. The biggest perk was seeing the ear to ear smiles. Ice cream really does make people happy.

:: Archery director at a cub scout summer camp. This was pretty awesome. The kids frequented the rifle range more than archery, so I took a lot of naps and got to shoot my longbow for the majority of the day. Oh.. was also the bugler, which was not so great. There may have been a few times that breakfast was held up because I accidentally slept in.

 

[aces-n-eights]

Right now my job is to breathe. I'm retired so as long as i inhale and exhale on a regular basis, they will continue to send me my retirement check.

My career was US Army. 20 years in the Corps of Engineers. I did some construction engineering and some combat engineering, but my main career path was topographic engineering - i was a map maker. Interesting work. My wife is also an Army retiree so we are happily double-dipping the retirement fund!

 

[BroomVikin]

I am a freelance utility and cameraman for ESPN and NBC in the NE area. Most of the stuff I do is just on NBCSN and the lower ESPN channels but I have worked on things like Monday Night Football before. Most of my job is running cables, we're there at least 6 hours before the show running thousands of feet of cable to cameras, monitors, mics, you name it. The fun part is that after the show, we have to coil it all back up and load it back in the truck!

During the show if I am a utility, I help a handheld cameraman manage the cable trailing behind him, it involves a lot of running in shows like football. If I am the cameraman, well I shoot video. I'll have my specific assignment, and anything else as dictated by the game. I basically just try as hard as I can to not be chewed out by the 2-3 people in the broadcast unit(s) that are trying to "tell the story".

I don't think people realize how many people(and how much money) it takes to put on shows like that. Regular old college football is going to have at least 5 cameramen, 2 utilities, 1 audio mixes and at least 2 assists, 2 replay operators, a graphics operator, director, technical director, AT LEAST one producer, 3 Broadcast Engineers(what I hope to be one day), a red hat(not sure what theyre real title is, they stop the game for TV time outs), a "Video" person(they make sure all the pictures look good and manage the iris levels of the cameras remotely from the truck), and of course all the talent, play/play color and probably a sideline reporter.

That isn't even including the people back at base, but that's probably only one or two people.

Sounds kind of similar to what I do. I'm a Technical Director for a "major cable news" channel. It's basically a glorified button pusher but there are lots of buttons and if I hit the wrong one people around the world see it. Essentially all of the cameras, remote events, reporters, live "beauty" shots, graphics machines, video playback servers, pretty much any video source comes through my video switcher. I then "switch" the live broadcast as it's happening. I'm lucky in that it still allows me to travel on occasion to do live events but doesn't keep me on the road for weeks on end away from my family (and my fermenter! );.

My office:

 

[SharonaZamboni]

It's important to have a job that makes a difference, boys. That's why I manually masturbate caged animals for artificial insemination.

I hope the pay is good.

 

[hunter_le five]

I hope the pay is good.

The satisfaction of a job well done is pay enough for him.

 

[Rhumbline]

Nothing anymore. I retired last year. Before I retired I was active duty Air Force and the department supervisor for the Arab languages. Linguist all 20 years but most of the time was teaching others how to read, write, and speak Arabic and a few of the dialects.
Now, I make beer, bullets, and go to school.

Were you in Monterey? I spent a lot of time there, Russian Linguist.

Now, I do construction planning & management. Riding herd on major and minor construction projects on our University's campuses. I also do the designs for small renovations, which is a ton of fun.

And I'm the Space Management guy. I track and manage how much space a department has and how they use it. I'm the guy who has to tell Suzy that no, she can't have an office bigger than the University President and if she wants a private bathroom I'm going to have to ask the Cabinet to approve it.

 

[schematix]

I'm not sure I can adequately convey how tickled I am that my cheap shampoo/conditioner is packaged in a way that involves a 'secret process'. I have zero doubt that it is a complex operation that requires many highly skilled people, but I really had just never considered it before. Cheers!

The secret process doesn't make your cheap shampoo/conditioner/bodywash/lotion/2n1/3n1 any better. Their trade secret is in the design of what is essentially an inline blending system. It just makes it so they can mix it faster and thus cheaper.

Typically the blending process is done in large purpose built blending tanks. It takes a few hours to mix a batch. Plus the floor space of a mixing tank, plus the cost to purchase the mixing tank. The entire blending system they have is about the size of a large desk. The actual mixing area is about the size of an apple. Pretty nifty. Wish I could tell you more.

 

[iijakii]

I sell industrial pumps and diesel packages and what not. Have any questions about moving large volumes of poop, fish guts, potatoes? It's not too exciting.

 

[Psylocide]

I buy things.

Also, I read HBT a lot and post here once in a while.

 

[bliss46]

I run marketing for an advertising technology company... what we sell to big brands and advertising agencies is software and services to manage online advertising (search ads, those creepy ads that follow you around after you visit a site, email, facebook ads) - most of it comes down to tracking customers and their behaviors to make sure they get the right ad at the right time at the right cost to the advertiser.

Me? I don't do any of that - I run the marketing of that software - and specifically to companies outside the US. I am based in NYC, but my team is spread over the world, which makes for some fun travelling (my person in Brussels has standing orders to do brewery runs for me before my next trip to that office).

It's not a bad job, but I've gotten to the point where I don't do much of anything anymore except have meetings and tell other people to do things. Which is much more unsettling than it sounds.

If you ask my wife she'll tell you that I write emails and make powerpoint decks for a living.

 

[Rivenin]

I do IT support for a medical manufacturing company.

what I do,

People press wrong buttons on PCs, i go back in time and have them click the correct ones

It's a fairly small company though, so i spend a bit of the day reading and researching beer.

 

[sasky7777]

nuclear reactor technician at a university research reactor. Sounds cool. Isn't. I supervise routine maintenance. I train 18 year olds how to operate it. Most of my time is spent filling a chair and waiting for my idiot boss to invent some bs problem. I do a lot of audits and paperwork and make sure my bosses ducks are in a row. I drink a lot of coffee and design a lot of beer recipes at work haha.

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[sasky7777]

I manage a retail that sells crop inputs. I have a background in agriculture and farming. My job involves a lot of selling and some education on new technologies and products.

 

[Rhumbline]

I sell industrial pumps and diesel packages and what not. Have any questions about moving large volumes of poop, fish guts, potatoes? It's not too exciting.

It is when they get moved to the wrong place!

 

[mattv21]

I work as a 3D Piping Designer for a Drafting/Design company. I design the piping in many different types of facilities pertaining to the oil/natural gas and sulfur processing fields. Currently we are wrapping up design on a large gas processing facility that is already well underway being built in Texas. Most of my day is spent in AutoCAD, manipulating and routing 3D objects to connect point “A” to point “B”. I like to explain it to people who have no idea what I’m talking about as being similar to piecing a bunch of Lego’s together, but on a computer.

 

[iijakii]

It is when they get moved to the wrong place!

Hah. Or when someone doesn't refill the diesel on a sewer bypass pump and floods a few homes with poop. Think there's still legal battles going on with that one...

 

[bbohanon]

I am in the upper echelon of IT. I watch others work much less than I do, get paid more than I do, and ***** far more about how bad things are than I do but never have the stones to find somewhere else to be.

All in all, typical IT.

 

[Mexibilly]

I coordinate and manage all Environmental regulatory compliance necessities and associated internal activities, track and compile all necessary data, schedule required testing and file all reports with state and federal regulatory entities for a facility that is owned by the largest foundry organization in the world.

 

[MonkeyBot]

Were you in Monterey? I spent a lot of time there, Russian Linguist.

My sister and her husband were both Russian linguists. They were in Monterrey around the 92-93 time period if I remember right. Brother went there too but never finished. Apparently assigning someone with minor dyslexia (dysgraphia specificall) Hebrew isn't conducive to success. He was there 96-97 I think.

 

[gl_az]

Software Engineer, I work on one of if not the most widely used Open Source database servers in the world. Chances are that every one of you has executed my code in some fashion, particularly if you shop online or use any social media.

 

[jrcrilly]

I help to keep criminals on the streets where they belong (defense attorney).

 

[hezagenius]

I used to be a civil engineer (still am I guess) designing water resources structures and making sure places don't flood when it rains. Probably the coolest thing I did as a civil engineer was to check the paint thickness on the inside of a water tower to make sure it was thick enough to prevent rusting.

Got bored of that and went into quantitative finance. I used to build asset pricing models for fixed income securities, derivatives and options. I currently build credit pricing models for mortgage-related products. I work for a bank considered too big to fail.

 

[Ridire]

I don't want to sell anything, buy anything, or process anything as a career. I don't want to sell anything bought or processed, or buy anything sold or processed, or process anything sold, bought, or processed, or repair anything sold, bought, or processed. You know, as a career, I don't want to do that.

 

[Ridire]

I help to keep criminals on the streets where they belong (defense attorney).

In reality, I am also an attorney. But a very different kind of attorney. I am a dual licensed attorney and CPA. I spend most of my time helping people buy or sell businesses.

 

[wallybangbang]

I'm a career Paramedic and have worked in healthcare for the past 25 years and currently a night shift operations supervisor for a small crew of 18 medics and EMT's. My main focus is ambulance and 911 dispatch operations for a county of just under 90k during the night shift hours. Secondary duties are endless, but I handle all PR and large scale event and MCI planning that goes on in our county.

I'm fortunate to have a good shift of employees who gets along well with each other. EMS can be a very demanding job where you often question your sanity for choosing it as a career. My payday is not the money, the benefits, or the uniform, but rather the handshake and the occasional sincere thank-you we get from our patients or their family. There is very little reward in this type of work, so we all strive to make a positive difference to those who call us for help.

KT

Good to see some other EMS folks on here. I have been a Paramedic since 03 and am currently the QA manager for an 911 ambulance company in the SF bay area that runs about 40K calls a year . I was a field supervisor for a number of years before I got promoted. EMS is a crazy job, you get to see the worst society has to offer along with LE and the Fire Departments. A very hard but also very rewarding at times. I feel your pain on secondary duties being endless, i get bombarded all the time with the operational overflow stuff that operations is too busy for.

 

[wobrien]

In high school and college I worked for my family's jewelry shop. I repaired Jewelry and even made custom stuff for my then girlfriend (now wife). I loved that job.

 

[Ridire]

In reality, I am also an attorney. But a very different kind of attorney. I am a dual licensed attorney and CPA. I spend most of my time helping people buy or sell businesses.

Oh, and I am also the CFO of a privately owned manufacturing business that has been around since the 1960s.