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What do you want to do in terms of your job or career? If you're already doing what you'd want to do, that's fine too.

For me, I think I'd like to do more of the kind of work that I'm already doing in Wintreath...building a community, a site, games, and even more. I really love feeling like I'm building things that people enjoy and get some kind of joy or satisfaction from. It makes me feel like I'm doing something that's meaningful to other people, something that matters in some small way. I have ideas for everything from games to productivity and journaling apps, it's just finding the time to do them along with everything else.

How about you guys?

(This topic was today's Icebreaker on the NationStates RMB, courtesy of yours truly)

I'm not sure, but I hope for my work to ultimately be meaningful, to be impactful, to help people. Goes a lot deeper than this but ultimately those are my thoughts.

I'm not sure, but I hope for my work to ultimately be meaningful, to be impactful, to help people. Goes a lot deeper than this but ultimately those are my thoughts.

No particular field or area that you've considered so far?

I'm not sure, but I hope for my work to ultimately be meaningful, to be impactful, to help people. Goes a lot deeper than this but ultimately those are my thoughts.

No particular field or area that you've considered so far?

Oh I work in software, with an interest in backend/infrastructure/systems sort of things, because I enjoy the problems in that area, but ultimately I think that's the less important aspect.

Currently a second year mechanical engineering student. Would like to work in the automotive sector after I graduate. Or NASA. I would totally work for NASA.

My dream continues to be a writer. I'm currently a pharmacy tech and I do like being in medicine or at least medicine adjacent but I really love writing.

Some interesting responses

Oh I work in software, with an interest in backend/infrastructure/systems sort of things, because I enjoy the problems in that area, but ultimately I think that's the less important aspect.

That's pretty cool, but I imagine you don't get much recognition and credit for the good that you do...most people don't give much thought to the backend of things unless it's not working right, and then that's the recognition you don't want to have. Are you satisfied with what you do beyond the problems, or have you thought of transitioning to something else?

Currently a second year mechanical engineering student. Would like to work in the automotive sector after I graduate. Or NASA. I would totally work for NASA.

As it happens, I just finished reading Gene Kranz's book "Failure is Not an Option", which was an awesome account of how demanding the roles of the people on the ground at NASA were through the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs. The controllers, designers, and engineers often had to solve complex problems and come to the right solution under a lot of pressure (particularly whether they needed to abort a mission), often as they were all trying still just trying to figure out how things should work to start with.

I'm curious, would you work for SpaceX? That seems to be where the action in manned spaceflight is these days. Or would you be more interested in the unmanned or scientific aspects?

My dream continues to be a writer. I'm currently a pharmacy tech and I do like being in medicine or at least medicine adjacent but I really love writing.

I'm sorry if you've answered this before somewhere and I either didn't notice or forget (I feel like you've mentioned writing before), but do you do any writing on the side?

Oh I work in software, with an interest in backend/infrastructure/systems sort of things, because I enjoy the problems in that area, but ultimately I think that's the less important aspect.

That's pretty cool, but I imagine you don't get much recognition and credit for the good that you do...most people don't give much thought to the backend of things unless it's not working right, and then that's the recognition you don't want to have. Are you satisfied with what you do beyond the problems, or have you thought of transitioning to something else?

I'm less concerned about the recognition/credit side of things and more about the actual impact of the work that I'd do.

I never thought I'd like modeling as much as I do, but honestly, if I could do it forever, I would. I love the travel, I love the people I work with, the free clothes is great, not to mention the pay.

I'll do this as long as I can, I dunno if it counts as a career

Currently a second year mechanical engineering student. Would like to work in the automotive sector after I graduate. Or NASA. I would totally work for NASA.
As it happens, I just finished reading Gene Kranz's book "Failure is Not an Option", which was an awesome account of how demanding the roles of the people on the ground at NASA were through the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs. The controllers, designers, and engineers often had to solve complex problems and come to the right solution under a lot of pressure (particularly whether they needed to abort a mission), often as they were all trying still just trying to figure out how things should work to start with.

I'm curious, would you work for SpaceX? That seems to be where the action in manned spaceflight is these days. Or would you be more interested in the unmanned or scientific aspects?

I mean I think any sector is freaking awesome. Automotive, Aerospace, etc., all of it, and I'd take a job in any of them and probably love it. I just have more of a passion for cars than anything else. The NASA name just carries a level of weight and respect that no company could ever come close to, not even SpaceX.

@Red Mones: I don't disagree...but I think that level of weight and respect is mostly from the past. Even Gene Kranz writes in the last chapter of his book:

Lacking a clear goal the team that placed an American on the Moon, NASA, has become just another federal bureaucracy beset by competing agendas and unable to establish discipline within its structure. Although NASA has an amazing array of technology and the most talented workforce in history, it lacks top-level vision. It began its retreat from the inherent risks of space exploration after the Challenger accident. During the last decade its retreat has turned into a rout.

This was written in 1999...he's still alive though, and I have wondered how he feels about the country ceding its space vision to Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. I think it's kind of sad, but in this day and age NASA is a symptom of a country that doesn't care about doing great things anymore.

But I am curious...why automotive? You've never struck me as a car person before.

I'm a controls specialist, basically all I do all day every day is program specialized controllers for industrial machinery and processes.

The days I like it, I really like it. Recently I had to devise the controls scheme of some cake cutting contraption as a proof of concept. Involved a bunch of matrix math to solve kinematics inside the controller and I really enjoyed it. I always always interested in programming but I didn't catch on to the "bits on a screen". It didn't satisfy my maker instinct the same way this does.

There are some days though...the thing is that in industrial settings it depends so much on the client. You have big plants full of people who know what they're doing and can troubleshoot and figure it out on their own given some training and a manual. Then you have "plants" that are basically straddling the line between artisanal and industrial production. Think how a small home brewer might start to invest in his home brewery and steadily get bigger. It's a bigger and sharper transition that you might expect and sometimes these people aren't ready for it, maybe aren't even able to navigate it. They need a lot more handholding and at this point the job is less about controls and more about being a weird industrial help desk.

So either I'm implementing vision systems, robots, continuous process controls or some other kind of interesting work, or I'm on the phone reading some guy his operation manual for the umpteenth time and trying to chew it into little pieces for him to understand, knowing he'll call back tomorrow for the next page. Thing is I'm not a good teacher, probably not patient enough. Definitely the part of the job I like less, though at least the gratitude makes it worth it a bit...when it's present.

I don't know if I'd trade. All in all it seems like a relatively benign thing. At least my clients don't cuss me out or mistreat me. They need my skills one way or another and not a lot of people have them. So I'd say I'm where I want to be.