Like many Kossacks, I'm looking for a job, and not necessarily what I was doing last. It sounds like a lot of people are gainfully, happily employed here, so I'd like some feedback from you. What job field would you recommend to your fellow Kossacks? Or what area of study would you recommend to us?
Is your company hiring? Do you find it hard to find good employees in your field? Does your community need a service or business that isn't there? What should we be learning or training for? Or conversely, what fields have too many people in them already? I'd like to be a technical writer but the last time I looked into it, I heard that about 40% of the tech writers in the Bay Area were unemployed. Is it any better now here, or in your area?
Here are the fields that I keep seeing jobs for:
- administrative assistant: you'll never make enough money to buy a house, and you'l be bored out of your gourd
- nursing: you get to cover for incompetent doctors, and you get to work the graveyard shift for years on end. Oh boy!
- retail clerk: ugh
- sales account rep: I'm morally opposed to selling people things they don't need, so that's right out
With regards to areas to go into or fields to study, all I've got is an area NOT to pursue: computer game development. Yes, this has piled on by
EA Spouse, but it's all deserved. Jobs in this field not only make less money than equivalent jobs in other fields, but the burnout rate is also extraordinarily high. Companies make a habit of abusing their employees' time, mostly by paying them a straight salary then requiring 60+ hours each week. If you don't want to sign all your waking hours over to The Company, there are hundreds of game testers and programmers waiting to take your place. Then after you've worked as long as three years on a project, it's on store shelves for a couple months until it disappears into the black hole of obsolete software. It's a disgusting business and I'm glad to be rid of it.
One last question: I see a lot of accounting jobs on craigslist. My dad was an accountant, and while it's always been the cliche of the boring job, he made a good living with it. I think it might be a good job for someone like me who is quiet and methodical and conscientious. If you've got an accounting job, is it a good job, or is it boring?
[On a side note: did anyone else see last week's West Wing? Where Jimmy Smits' character admitted he'd lay off a lot of teachers, but hey, he'd re-train them as computer programmers! I'm sure that was freaking hilarious to all the out-of-work computer programmers, or the programmers who are now working retail jobs at a tenth their previous pay! I know I laughed and laughed. The American jobs situation is killing me inside.]