Do you know or friends have (or HAD) an unusual/cool job?

[Squisher]

I had a friend that worked for Brass Ring back in the 70's here in Detroit. He was a roadie/driver/drug procurer for bands that came to town back then. I don't know if roadie is the right word because he was more tied to the venues and coordinated with the band's roadies to help them set up their shows. As a driver he'd go to the airport and pick up band members that weren't traveling in the buses with the band. He met a ton of bands back then and got to see a ton of shows.

 

[skyking]

How can you be blamed for someone else's stamp? I thought engineers had the last say and their stamp is a legal binding for responsibility.

Does not matter; the reality is, the last guy to interpret and give out that data can screw it up. They will be the goat and as he said, the pay is not worth the responsibility.

 

[lxskllr]

How can you be blamed for someone else's stamp? I thought engineers had the last say and their stamp is a legal binding for responsibility.

There's different levels of responsibility. Insurance covers mistakes, but that's little consolation when you lose a client, and have your name dragged through the mud. Assigning blame also doesn't get the project done. When things get to court, I imagine there's a bit of money coming from a few people.

Architects are the worst. Their plans NEVER work, and if you built something explicitly by the blueprints, it would almost certainly not go together right. Being able to fix things without going to the source helps the client out, and they like that. If you approved everything through an engineer or architect first, nothing would get done. It takes forever to get changes made, and they fuck up other things in the process. Unfortunately, you also take responsibility when things go wrong. You have to know when to take something on yourself, and when to kick it back to the person who screwed it up in the first place.

 

[cronos]

Back in the late 90s, I was fresh out of college and unemployed and got this two weeks of contract job as a 'live translator' for a 'rope access' training for an oil company. For those of you who are not familiar: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rope_access

The trainer was a big british guy, while the trainees were local (this was in SE Asia), blue collar workers who have different skills. They were divers, welders, electrician, etc. who were really good at their jobs, but have no climbing skills, and speak no english whatsoever.

It's tough to explain it (and how funny it was at times) without writing a novel, but here we go. The way it works is the trainer speaks a few sentences, and then he looks at me and I translate everything he said in the local language.

Now, this works just smoothly in the first week when we were in a classroom and all it was is about the theory, introduction to the equipment, learning some knots, how to make them and what to use when, etc. The second week however the training relocated to the warehouse. The trainees had to actually put on the equipment, and use them to climb. This became interesting to me because as a translator I had to use similar expression and tone of voice of the trainer, otherwise it just wouldn't work (i.e. he barks and screams instructions). I basically had to include fake emotion in my translating, or it wouldn't be effective.

At one point the trainer was so pissed at one of the trainees, so he went on a very demeaning and demoralizing rant, screaming his lungs off toward this one trainee, complete with some curse words here and there, and his face all red. As soon as he's done he looked at me and said: "TRANSLATE EXACTLY WHAT I SAID". So what else can I do? I turned over to this particular trainee, did my best imitation of ANGRY in the language he can understand, all the while wanting to LOL at the inside

 

[EagleKeeper]

Mission Control at Johnson Space Center.

What did they have you doing out at Goddard?

Design of s/w for ground system control for the COBE, GRO and UARS birds on the mid 80s.
They wanted to use the same type of design as use for Hubble. Spent 3 months showing them that the design would fail on the equipment being planned on. Then demonstrated how to tie the systems together to save $10M and get need performance for what was already procurred.


10 years later, I read the the birds flew

 

[Slammy1]

As far as my current position, I once had a project to sequence a protein by mass spec. It was interesting work.

Overall, I worked in a video arcade at age 17. It was an instant karma effect.

 

[brianmanahan]

i programmed in COBOL during the Y2K conversion. that was cool, i guess

i hear they just came out with a new version of cobol

ADD 1 TO COBOL GIVING COBOL

 

[JulesMaximus]

My Bro-In-Law's best friend flies huge transport planes for the military. He flies all over the world in these things delivering people and goods.

 

[Kelvrick]

Best I got is my friend who goes to NYU dental school with Jeremy Lin's brother. Don't think he ever met Jeremy though. Other one is a friend of mine's job is being rich since his company went public and he quit his job.

 

[Braznor]

I used to be in politics earlier and was involved in an intermediate stage before I quit while I was ahead.

The work involved varied things such as fund raising, liaison between various people and so on.

I even had street fights when I was tasked to break up meetings of other parties. Got me into a lot of trouble, but looking back on it all, it was well worth it.

 

[rh71]

I just work in healthcare IT...

I know it really isn't interesting but do they pay better than other IT jobs usually?

I started at a pharma company doing IT but left really soon... (was only making starting wage anyway) - kind of regret it, seeing how the industry is always needed.

 

[arcenite]

defense industry IT... best part of my job is when I get to go support flight test off sites or acquisitions... the day to day stuff is certainly not bad either.

 

[Pia]

A friend was lead programmer on a small game that shipped on a current-gen console, and put me in the "thanks" section in the credits.

 

[QuantumPion]

high school friend is an FA/18 fighter pilot. :jealous:

 

[Aharami]

I know it really isn't interesting but do they pay better than other IT jobs usually?

I started at a pharma company doing IT but left really soon... (was only making starting wage anyway) - kind of regret it, seeing how the industry is always needed.

not really

 

[IronWing]

I used to work Superfund cleanup on NPL sites (the really nasty sites). Some of the damage people did to save a little time or money was numbing. "Screw it, just duct tape that leak". Thirty million dollars in clean up costs later...

I worked as a radio tech on forest fires. Land on remote peaks and set up radio equipment so the firefighters could communicate. Some of the scariest driving I've ever done was on logging roads in northern California trying to get to fire lookouts.

In school I had a job pulling water sampling bags off of springs. The springs were at the bottom of a lake.

I had a job finding and closing up old mine shafts and tunnels.

I worked at a car wash.

A friend from high school trained sled dogs.

 

[Skiddex]

i used to be a bouncer in college...fun days

one of my buddies is a project manager on one of the odyssey boats (treasure quest show on discovery). he'll spend 4-6 weeks at sea and then be back for 3-4 weeks. would think it'd be cool to be in marine salvage.

 

[Saint Nick]

I am a sound engineer/computer programmer

 

[ViviTheMage]

I used to be a grounds keeper at a cemetery, lasted about 1.5 years during college...

my friend flies air force one chopper for the president, which is pretty bad ass. He's always like, hey look..I am in that picture, he was co pilot at the time :

I also know a few state troopers who are pilots, and just hang around in the hanger playing cards..waiting for the call to fly.

Close friend from high school got signed to play for the MN Wild hockey team..that's pretty sweet!

 

[mattpegher]

Got called out of the ER last week to help with an emergency C-section. Havent been in one in twenty years. Wasnt sure till I got there that the OB/GYN had arrived, good thing she did, because if I was flying solo it would have been scary.

 

[ussfletcher]

I had an internship doing embedded systems development on the Mars Science Laboratory. My last internship/the job I will be starting when I graduate is extremely cool and awesome, but I can't talk about it.

 

[Stuxnet]

Lots of cool stories and jobs... JEALOUS.

 

[SamQuint]

I have a friend that is a drummer in a tribute/cover band.

 

[manimal]

One of the things that keeps me coming back to AT is the characters. Seeing back story like this is very cool!

 

[SagaLore]

I got some action with my 16 yo jr counselor too.

What kind of action? :hmm: