When did you know a career was either the perfect or the worst match for your personality?

I'm trying to give someone advice on choosing a career that will suit them better than the one they're in and hate. I wanted to get together a list of good questions for them to ask themselves so they can use the answers to compare options like "do you prefer to work sitting or moving around," "do you want to not work weekends" etc.

disguy_ovahea ,

The minute it stops feeling like work.

sylver_dragon ,

I don't know about "perfect" but I've found a career (cybersecurity) that I can take some satisfaction from. Would I keep doing it, if I won the lottery tomorrow? Fuck no. I'd be out the door and sitting on a beach somewhere doing fuck all. But, I'm pretty good at it, don't mind doing the work 8 hours a day, and it pays well enough that I can occasionally go sit on a beach somewhere doing fuck all.

infinitevalence ,
@infinitevalence@discuss.online avatar

When I realized that what I want to do and enjoy in life has nothing to do with my career.

Work is work an and if you're lucky maybe you get a job with a good team for good company. Maybe your job is even social positive an the that's even better but it's still a job not a calling so perfect it's purely subjective.

AFKBRBChocolate ,

I end up having similar conversations with college folks (interns mostly). I usually say something along the lines of:

  • If there's something that you're so passionate about that you're going to do it regardless, it's worth taking a shot at making a living at it. Things like writing, acting, and music are really hard to to make it in, but if it's really a passion, you might as well give it a go. It's good to have a Plan B though.
  • If you aren't super passionate about something, or you don't have the starving artist mentality or whatever, next is to look at things you're good at that you don't hate, especially if there's room to grow in them. If you're good at math, for instance, you could consider being an accountant.
  • If you don't feel like you have any especially marketable skills, then you're looking for something that's more broadly available, like retail or whatever. Of you can find something that teaches a skill, that's a plus.

Broadly, there's a passion, there's a career, and there's a job. There's nothing wrong with any of those, but people tend to be happiest in that order. I personally wasn't super passionate about anything, but liked computers, got a CS degree, ended up as a software engineer at a rocket company, and now manage the software organization there. There were other things I enjoyed, but I figured programming was the most marketable, and that's worked out for me.

What people tend to like or hate the most about where they work are the people and/or the boss, and that can be good or bad pretty much anywhere. Good to watch out for red and green flags when you're looking.

Apytele OP ,

This is actually pretty solid. I'm firmly in the "passion" category, and while I've gotten better at it over the years, I often struggle to remember other people just have careers and jobs, and find true fulfillment elsewhere. Now that said, my passion pays somewhat poorly (but steadily!) and isn't even slightly competitive (I'm even considering leaving the field at this point) but it's something I care a lot about being done well.

AFKBRBChocolate ,

I should have mentioned what you just did: your passion doesn't have to be your job.

Tangentially, as I get closer to retirement, one of the things I hear from retirees is that they planned on doing a lot more of their hobby when they retired, but found that the hobby felt more like a job when they tried to do it all day. So sometimes it's better that you keep something you enjoy as something that you can just do when you want.

bamfic ,

Except for the confirmation bias and privilege. https://youtube.com/watch?v=W3I3kAg2J7w

sbv ,

I started programming as a teen. I didn't realize I could do that as a job (weird, I know), so I looked into lucrative careers I could do so I could afford to have lots of free time to program. Then I discovered that programming was also a job.

nik9000 ,

I had this one weekend when I was in tenth grade where I did nothing but write code on a fun project. Then I decided I didn't like writing code. I don't know why. Kids are weird.

I decided then I couldn't make it my job. I managed not to program for three years. It turns out I'm bad at everything else. Miserable.

That was 22 years ago. That's still all I'm good at.

KeenFlame ,

Same. It is fun but was not a good fit. Because I didn't want to code on my spare time as much. Now I am a game designer and it is exactly right. And it's more fun to code on my spare time.

davel ,
@davel@lemmy.ml avatar

Tangentially: In high school we took a comprehensive career aptitude test, which said I would excel at anything but “clerical work.” I was diagnosed with ADHD fifteen years later. Is programming clerical? Kind of, and it was considered so historically, which is why the first programming jobs were given to women.

BlueLineBae ,
@BlueLineBae@midwest.social avatar

I had known for a long time that I wanted to do something creative. Throughout highschool I was lucky enough to be able to take various classes that would allow me to try out different things. I ruled out music and was struggling to decide if I wanted to be an illustrator of some kind or an interior designer or maybe an architect? But then I took a class called "computer graphics" which was a stupid name for the class. It was actually a class about graphic design and it seemed to fit into everything I do well just perfectly. Looking back it was way more obvious that I should be a graphic designer as I used to do things for fun like doodle out magazine layouts and make weird computer art for icons and things back when that was how the Internet worked. Like what kind of kid does that for fun? A future graphic designer apparently.

xmunk ,

I went to university to study statistics, and I absolutely love statistics... but I was forced to learn SAS and, fucking hell, I hacked that program to shit... my presentations would have loads of pretty printing, multiple data ingest methods, proper error reporting...

So I switched into CS and liked it a lot... then I took a course on data modeling, which led to a course of Relational Algebra (essentially the abstract logical form of what you're typing in SQL to your RDBMS) then I went on to become a developer and, while I am multiskilled and able to build UIs and backends and even embedded systems... I absolutely adore data architecture and DB performance tuning.

I really can't understate how incredibly easy it is for me to look at a query over a system I understand and quickly identify likely bottlenecks and logical errors.

If you re-read my comment, you might notice there isn't a single "Eureka" moment but instead are a series of them - I think that's how most of come to be in careers we truly enjoy.

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