Did you stay the course on your career or work life path?

[Underboss]

I started out as a tool and diemaker, went through my apprenticeship stamping out micro electric components ie chip contacts etc. Hated it. Inside a factory all day.
I was fortunate and got a job on a tour for a major artist, took some time off from my career and it opened my eyes. There is so much more out there.
There is so much more that I did because of that.
What about you? Did you follow your career start to finish, or did you zig and zag. ( Nothing wrong with zig and zag, thats what I am calling what I did)

 

[Boat Bum]

Software engineer for 32 years, retired from Hewlett Packard. Spent just over 5 years consulting at Northeastern University in Boston after that. Tended bar at a Marriott for fun a couple nights a week after that. Haven't worked in the last 4 years, I'm done.

 

[Phillbo]

28 years with the same company and then got layed off. Told corp america to suck it and never went back. Retired about 8 years earlier than the plan but it's working out well.

 

[JBright11]

34 years with a family-owned 3PL business. Love the work, love the ownership.
There were 11 employees when I started and about 100K sqft of warehouse space.
Couple of hundred employees now, well over a 1M sqft of space and I sit in an office, not on a forklift.
4 more years to go until retirement!

 

[TheLooks]

Where to start.....I will just say I zigged and zagged for all my career. Spending the most time building custom homes.

 

[T’sOVR&Explore]

I started in the electric generation industry after getting a BSME and BSEE, then after a couple of years at the power plant, went into contractor corporate aerospace jobs, somehow kept employed as rocket programs came and went, continuing to work directly with our excellent craft labor crews in all disciplines in the first decade, got moved up, finished final years in design review of launch complex systems and a stint of that on several types of science payloads that went to ISS.

But rocket work was all generally structured as a corporate "body shop" experience. By the time I had retired, my wish was to have instead been an electrical lineman and be able to fo do all my work outside, not just on the days where engineering work had me in a launch complex cryo yard or up on a service tower.

It is a love of radio tower climbing and working aloft gained from the amateur radio hobby and that early informal training from our scrappy ex-navy electrical shop foreman at the power plant (who was happy to mentor a young engineer who owned tools and wanted to learn the shop's perspective on big motors and high voltage gear) that generated a yearning now to go back in time and pick up that zig or zag path not taken.

I don't know if I would have had what it takes to calmly work on 230kv high lines while suspended from a helicopter, but there was more satisfaction from doing the recent hot swapout of a friends fused-by-lightning main breaker on his house wearing my arc flash ensemble than I was getting from sitting on console wearing a necktie and a headset during any of the latter series of rocket launches we did.

God's Grace kept my family fed through program endings and company layoffs that somehow left me surviving, appatently with the dual discipline background, hands on hobbies and having been alongside many mentoring craftsmen of the trades, being just enough to keep things going.

 

[TheLooks]

I worked on high steel a couple of times. Met an old friend back in Maine that got me a job with a DOT bridge crew. Spent 2 summers and then went in another direction. He went to high steel work with a big company and traveled the world. That was a zig or zag I wish I had taken.....

 

[Phillbo]

I've jumped off of a few radio towers. Might explain the 3rd eye

 

[AbdRahim]

Started out pursuing my Dad’s dream, Quicky discovered I would hate doing that. Zig and a zag. Retired early to do what I thought was my dream. That lasted about 5 years. Really enjoyed it, but realized, even that was hard work. So now I guess I am really retired.

Fascinating and creative topic.

 

[Kevin D Pem]

I was at one time a prototype machinest. Very much discontented, so always had side hustles. Then for the last 5years in that trade I had a garage shop that My customers billed as a design shop.

When NAFTA offered to bankrupt me, I changed gears and became a commercial electrician. The pay was so low in AZ, I started a handyman side hustle that consumed My time and became a full time gig.

Then went sailing and installed instrumentation as other sailors learned of My skillset. Now as I move around, I find people still bring me out of retirement with everything car/RV related small jobs.

Never had a real plan, but I have had a full life.

 

[team bradfield]

My dad owned a construction biz, I learned welding, fabrication, iron work, pipe fitting before I was 20, he was killed in a vehicle accident, business closed, i hired on with an industrial construction company, food, chemical and railroad facility, they folded, started my own company jumped on the frac sand arena, along with food and railroad, great time, loved it, sold my business and bought a DS and travel

 

[T’sOVR&Explore]

@team bradfield -
Your father, gone too soon, would certainly regard what you made of yourself with great satisfaction, that what was mentored Dad to Son took root and went foreward despite the adversity. I am humbled and honored to have a view to yours and others' stories shared in this thread and on the excellent forum that we enjoy.

 

[rjshiflet49]

I started a newspaper job at age 19, just a week after I got married. I was sports editor for the newspaper in the town where we lived (19 miles from my hometown). 15 months later I was promoted to editor of the paper where I stayed another two years then was hired away by my hometown newspaper. Over the next five years I edited that newspaper and a couple of trade magazines, then I was hired by a horse registry to edit their magazine. Later I was promoted to Executive VP to run the organization. When they made the decision to move from Texas to Oklahoma, I resigned and went to work at a major radio station in Dallas/Fort Worth doing listener involvement/community service work.

Later I transitioned into Marketing Director for a group of five radio stations then became Internet director for all of ABC Radio Owned Radio Stations.

After 30 years I retired from the radio industry and had worked my way up to the corporate director level overseeing about 500 various radio station and network websites, doing training (and repairing what got broken) and support for local webmasters.

I retired at age 65 and haven't looked back. In fact one of my vendors called me shortly after retirement and offered me a lucrative job. I told him "I've tasted freedom and you don't have enough money."

My career took a drastic and notable shift in 1985 when I walked through the doors at that radio station having never had any schooling or training in the radio industry.