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What do you do for a living?

Krabby

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I’m not sure if this thread will interest anyone, but I find peoples‘ careers and life’s professional journeys interesting. I’m not interested in your salary, corporate perks, bragging rights, or you simply trying to plug your own business, but what do you currently “do?” Or retired from? Or have done? I know @Stu_Barnes has lead an interesting life!

My Land Rover club is rather small but we’ve come from all different directions. We’ve helped one another out by sharing our various vocations and careers.

My path is a bit crooked. Made it through half an engineering degree but fell in love with journalism. Graduated with from Uni with a camera in hand and entered the newspaper and magazine business as a photojournalist. Shot for a few years, became an editor and department head and … burnt out by working too hard, for too little in a thankless, dying industry.

I managed to put all those math and engineering credits to use though, earning my teaching certificate and becoming a middle school (grades 6&7 so 12-13 YO) math teacher. I ultimately (and thankfully) escaped math and came full circle - I now teach photography and digital design to high school kids. I’m in my 20th year and can’t wait for summer!

So what about you?

Again, if you guys think this is lame, I’ll just can the thread. But we’re a true global community who’s diversity makes it great.
 
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MarksGrenadier

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I grew up in South Africa after the family moved from Brentwood in the UK for work opportunities. Spent a lot of time with Land Rovers growing up. My first 2 years of college were Civil Engineering where I interned with a construction company working in the gold mines near Johannesburg. I worked both above and underground doing survey and concrete structure work.

I had an opportunity to go to America through a relative so hopped on a plane and completed a BS in Civil Engineering in Southern California. I liked the construction side over the design side so have been in the Heavy Civil construction business for over 30 years. I currently am the VP of Bus Development and manage our private works and negotiated work division which specializes in large earthwork and site development projects for clients needing 1,000,000 SF buildings (Amazon and others) We move millions of CY of dirt every year, put miles of pipe in the ground and have an asphalt plant that paves it all at the end. I have always enjoyed the challenges of this job and have enjoyed working in this industry. Got about 5 years left so wanting a Grenadier to explore the area and nearby states where we have spectacular off-roading opportunities. I am planning my first roadtrip with the Grenadier to Moab UT in the Spring, should be a blast.

I am an avid motorcycle touring junkie, enjoy fast cars and love off-roading. As long as it has an engine and lots of HP, i'm in.
 
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IG_in_AZ

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Adult life, in reverse:
Retired Supervisory Patrol Agent / United States Border Patrol in Arizona - 20 years.
3 years City Police and County Sheriff / Court Deputy in Florida Panhandle
College AA Biology
United States Navy Hospital Corpsman / Aviation Medicine Technician - 6 years
 

revanthmatha

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Thanks! Plan to post much more once i place and order and receive delivery… still waiting on the price may 17th to know for sure.

I plan on using the grenadier somewhat for work as i need to travel a fair bit to remote sites that don’t have paved roads.

I’m a big smarthome person and I know this is somewhat opposite to the forums/grenadier culture but I plan to add a good amount of tech to my grenadier such as a heads up display, solar/rechargable battery packs, potential satellite antenna via spaced or aws.

I’m also very much interested in the pickup truck variant for my construction business but do not think the size of the bed will make it viable, we shall see.
 

trobex

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Currently half retired but continue my working hours in the Construction Management field (self employed). I started out in Engineering Design (structures) and Engineering Surveying. I then exited the field after a few near misses with a couple of brown snakes! I then went in to construction management for the last 18 odd years ranging from small projects to Desalination plants, Olympic sports precints etc (mostly commercial projects). Artery Covid and the sheer degradation of the industry (the people), I now do my own minor projects which best reflect my change to a better lifestyle for the family. The wife and I worked like pack mules in our early years but wet can now spend a lot of time with the little ones 👍
 

2wheelfish

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Just to continue a theme, worked in construction management for 35+ years mainly in water/wastewater infrastructure in large treatment facilities and pipelines. Live in SoCal and always loved getting out into the mountains and deserts in the southwest US, and with more time on my hands, the Gren should help with that.
 

PT70

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A great idea Krabby. I have wondered what the regular participants in the forum do for a living. My story: after graduating with a business degree, I left New Zealand and spent three years working and travelling around the US, Central America and Europe. Ended up in London where I decided it was time to get serious about life and joined the Royal Navy. The plan was to be a pilot but unfortunately it was not meant to be. Eventually ended back in NZ working for Ford Motor Company. After 5 years, I changed industries and went into building materials manufacturing and supply. 25 years later I run, and am part owner of, a distribution company that specialises in engineered timber products. I have a 1970 Series 2A Land Rover that I spend more time working on than actually driving, love climbing and hiking.
 
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emax

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OMG, that's a long story.

It took me a while to get my high school diploma because I had to sit out three times: I was a lazy bastard. I was only interested in motorcycles and girls. Mathematics and physics were really easy because I didn't have to learn it by heart but only understand it. There I belonged to the best. But Latin and ... English ... (🥳) broke my neck.

Nevertheless I made my Abitur and started to study mechanical engineering at the university in Darmstadt. There I learned a lot, but when they started to torture us with iron/carbon diagrams, I quit after three semesters.

So I changed to another study: geology. And that was really interesting, I was enthusiastic. But as life goes, my girlfriend got pregnant, overnight, so to say (she is my wife today). With four brothers and sisters my parents couldn't afford to support me financially. So I had to make some money and cancelled my studies and drove a cab in Darmstadt. During this time I met the boss of a software company, who appreciated me. I got a job there as an office clerk. I fed the printers with paper, sorted lists and took out the garbage.

After a while I helped a little bit in changing programs - after I was told exactly what I had to type and where. I learned quickly, and after a while I could write programs on my own. I enthusiastically worked 12, 14, 16 hours a day on systems /34, /36 and AS400 (aka i5) - on which I am still active today and became a specialist on IBM midrange computers.

After two and a half years I was the head of programming. That was exactly my thing!

Privately I extended my knowledge to Unix systems, I learned C and C++.

I stayed there for four years, but then I couldn't develop further. I started in a new company as a software developer, and almost doubled my income. But in the fourth year there, the boss decided to become a Sanjassin, and I thought "let's go!".

With the portfolio AS400 and Unix I could start my own business as a freelancer in 1993. The first customer went bankrupt and I lost 60'000 DM. After that I worked for Deutsche Bank (seven years), Deutsche Post AG, Danone, Fujifilm and especially for IBM in large software projects on AS400 and RS6000 (AIX) as well as Solaris.

When 9/11 came, Deutsche Bank terminated the contract of 4000 freelancers, I was unemployed. There were no projects, the market was flooded with freelancers. Money was getting tight, because I had to service my home loans and of course live. So I prepared to sell our beautiful house. That was quite a terrible, and really hard time full of hopelessness.

But then, four weeks before it got really serious, I got another project, it was salvation. I was overjoyed.

In the year and a half without a project I had privately started, out of curiosity, to develop a compiler that automatically converts AS400 programs from RPG to C++. In the AS400 forums I was laughed at "what took IBM 200 man-years, you want to redevelop at home on your living room table? Absolutely insane, ridiculous, impossible. Forget it!"

But I just did it. After two years I had a prototype as a proof of concept, and it worked, was modular and delivered excellent results.

But as it is with me, I wasn't interested in it anymore, because the problem was solved and then came exactly the part that wasn't called "playing" anymore, but was hard work. And the prototype was far from being complete as it only knew a handful of operators. So I published the whole thing as open source on the internet and turned to my new projects.

A few months later, because of my publication, I got a request if I could help a company in Czechia to develop a similar project with the target language Java. I accepted, it was only a few weeks. Again some time later I got a mail from Italy asking if I was developing software professionally. Then everything went fast: I flew to Italy, presented the concept of my compiler and was there for three days. Four weeks later I had to come again, and finally, shortly before Christmas, I had to fly there for the third time. I was told that they wanted me to lead a project to develop such a compiler to product maturity for the data center applications there.

But I declined: "Gentlemen, I am very honored. But I have a very interesting project on my doorstep at IBM. This is like an Italian car mechanic having to change from Ferrari to Volkswagen, so I ask for your understanding".

But they did not let go. Until my wise wife advised "Think about what conditions you would do it for and offer them that." Genius.

So I wrote down completely crazy conditions, hourly rate, expenses, flight home every weekend at the expense of the customer, hotel, crediting of travel time with 50%. I sent this off on Friday afternoon and thought to myself "now there is peace".

Monday morning the phone rang "Ciao Edgar, come stai? Va bene, accettiamo, quando iniziamo?"

I was speechless. To make a long story short: I accepted the project and remained the technical director of the project for 12 years. It was my design and my baby, the most beautiful job of my life. The company is a joint stock company that serves 20% of the Italian banking market with its data center applications. The AS400 serves 10'000 users simultaneously.

In total 32 million lines of code in RPG, 10000 lines of code in CL. The compiler was able to translate 99.9% of this code, as well as the CL programs. The result ran on Linux machines and was performant.

Unfortunately, in 2018 a bank had bought into the company with over 50%. They kicked out the CEO (who was very sympathetic to me) and put a Banker there. While the former CEO was a technician (he came from Intel) and saw our work, the new one saw only the costs - so the project was terminated. 🙃

It is still the only compiler in the world that can convert AS400 programs to C++ and thus makes them portable to Linux machines. But it is not used. 😭

And so my project in Italy ended on January 31st, 2019. It was a wonderful time with many ups and downs, and professionally the best time of my life.

This was followed by another year at the German Air Traffic Control (C++ development for the air traffic controller workstations). On July 1st, 2023 I will reach my retirement age. But I'll keep doing projects, only I definitely won't be flying to Italy or anywhere else every week anymore.

And that's the good part.
 
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Tinki

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OMG, that's a long story.

It took me a while to get my high school diploma because I had to sit out three times: I was a lazy bastard. I was only interested in motorcycles and girls. Mathematics and physics were really easy because I didn't have to learn it by heart but only understand it. There I belonged to the best. But Latin and ... English ... (🥳) broke my neck.

Nevertheless I made my Abitur and started a to study mechanical engineering at the university in Darmstadt. There I learned a lot, but when they started to torture us with iron/carbon diagrams, I quit after three semesters.

So I changed to another study: geology. And that was really interesting, I was enthusiastic. But as life goes, my girlfriend got pregnant, overnight, so to say (she is my wife today). With four brothers and sisters my parents couldn't afford to suport me financially. So I had to make some money and cancelled my studies and drove a cab in Darmstadt. During this time I met the boss of a software company, who appreciated me. I got a job there as an office clerk. I fed the printers with paper, sorted lists and took out the garbage.

After a while I helped a little bit in changing programs - after I was told exactly what I had to type and where. I learned quickly, and after a while I could write programs on my own. I enthusiastically worked 12, 14, 16 hours a day on systems /34, /36 and AS400 (aka i5) - on which I am still active today and became a specialist on IBM midrange computers.

After two and a half years I was the head of programming. That was exactly my thing!

Privately I extended my knowledge to Unix systems, I learned C and C++.

I stayed there for four years, but then I couldn't develop further. I started in a new company as a software developer, and almost doubled my income. But in the fourth year there, the boss decided to become a Sanjassin, and I thought "let's go!".

With the portfolio AS400 and Unix I could start my own business as a freelancer in 1993. The first customer went bankrupt and I lost 60'000 DM. After that I worked for Deutsche Bank (seven years), Deutsche Post AG, Danone, Fujifilm and especially for IBM in large software projects on AS400 and RS6000 (AIX) as well as Solaris.

When 9/11 came, Deutsche Bank terminated the contract of 4000 freelancers, I was unemployed. There were no projects, the market was flooded with freelancers. Money was getting tight, because I had to service my home loans and of course live. So I prepared to sell our beautiful house. That was quite a terrible, and really hard time full of hopelessness.

But then, four weeks before it got really serious, I got another project, it was salvation. I was overjoyed.

In the year and a half without a project I had privately started, out of curiosity, to develop a compiler that automatically converts AS400 programs from RPG to C++. In the AS400 forums I was laughed at "what took IBM 200 man-years, you want to redevelop at home on your living room table? Absolutely insane, ridiculous, impossible. Forget it!"

But I just did it. After two years I had a prototype as a proof of concept, and it worked, was modular and delivered excellent results.

But as it is with me, I wasn't interested in it anymore, because the problem was solved and then came exactly the part that wasn't called "playing" anymore, but was hard work. And the prototype was far from being complete as it only knew a handful of operators. So I published the whole thing as open source on the internet and turned to my new projects.

A few months later, because of my publication, I got a request if I could help a company in Czechia to develop a similar project with the target language Java. I accepted, it was only a few weeks. Again some time later I got a mail from Italy asking if I was developing software professionally. Then everything went fast: I flew to Italy, presented the concept of my compiler and was there for three days. Four weeks later I had to come again, and finally, shortly before Christmas, I had to fly there for the third time. I was told that they wanted me to lead a project to develop such a compiler to product maturity for the data center applications there.

But I declined: "Gentlemen, I am very honored. But I have a very interesting project on my doorstep at IBM. This is like an Italian car mechanic having to change from Ferrari to Volkswagen, so I ask for your understanding".

But they did not let go. Until my wise wife advised "Think about what conditions you would do it for and offer them that." Genius.

So I wrote down completely crazy conditions, hourly rate, expenses, flight home every weekend at the expense of the customer, hotel, crediting of travel time with 50%. I sent this off on Friday afternoon and thought to myself "now there is peace".

Monday morning the phone rang "Ciao Edgar, come stai? Bene, accettiamo, quando iniziamo?"

I was speechless. To make a long story short: I accepted the project and remained the technical director of the project for 12 years. It was my design and my baby, the most beautiful job of my life. The company is a joint stock company that serves 20% of the Italian banking market with its data center applications. The AS400 serves 10'000 users simultaneously.

In total 32 million lines of code in RPG, 10000 lines of code in CL. The compiler was able to translate 99.9% of this code, as well as the CL programs. The result ran on Linux machines and was performant.

Unfortunately, in 2018 a bank had bought into the company with over 50%. They kicked out the CEO (who was very sympathetic to me) and put a Banker there. While the former CEO was a technician (he came from Intel) and saw our work, the new one saw only the costs - so the project was terminated.

It is still the only compiler in the world that can convert AS400 programs to C++ and thus makes them portable to Linux machines. But it is not used.

And so my project in Italy ended on January 31st, 2019. It was a wonderful time with many ups and downs, and professionally the best time of my life.

This was followed by another year at the German Air Traffic Control (C++ development for the air traffic controller workstations). On July 1st, 2023 I will reach my retirement age. But I'll keep doing projects, only I definitely won't be flying to Italy or anywhere else every week anymore.

And that's the good part.
This takes the cake i think . Very very interesting . I think the grenadier club get togethers will have very cool stories being told hopefully with some grenabeers !!
 

Shaky

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OMG, that's a long story.

It took me a while to get my high school diploma because I had to sit out three times: I was a lazy bastard. I was only interested in motorcycles and girls. Mathematics and physics were really easy because I didn't have to learn it by heart but only understand it. There I belonged to the best. But Latin and ... English ... (🥳) broke my neck.

Nevertheless I made my Abitur and started a to study mechanical engineering at the university in Darmstadt. There I learned a lot, but when they started to torture us with iron/carbon diagrams, I quit after three semesters.

So I changed to another study: geology. And that was really interesting, I was enthusiastic. But as life goes, my girlfriend got pregnant, overnight, so to say (she is my wife today). With four brothers and sisters my parents couldn't afford to support me financially. So I had to make some money and cancelled my studies and drove a cab in Darmstadt. During this time I met the boss of a software company, who appreciated me. I got a job there as an office clerk. I fed the printers with paper, sorted lists and took out the garbage.

After a while I helped a little bit in changing programs - after I was told exactly what I had to type and where. I learned quickly, and after a while I could write programs on my own. I enthusiastically worked 12, 14, 16 hours a day on systems /34, /36 and AS400 (aka i5) - on which I am still active today and became a specialist on IBM midrange computers.

After two and a half years I was the head of programming. That was exactly my thing!

Privately I extended my knowledge to Unix systems, I learned C and C++.

I stayed there for four years, but then I couldn't develop further. I started in a new company as a software developer, and almost doubled my income. But in the fourth year there, the boss decided to become a Sanjassin, and I thought "let's go!".

With the portfolio AS400 and Unix I could start my own business as a freelancer in 1993. The first customer went bankrupt and I lost 60'000 DM. After that I worked for Deutsche Bank (seven years), Deutsche Post AG, Danone, Fujifilm and especially for IBM in large software projects on AS400 and RS6000 (AIX) as well as Solaris.

When 9/11 came, Deutsche Bank terminated the contract of 4000 freelancers, I was unemployed. There were no projects, the market was flooded with freelancers. Money was getting tight, because I had to service my home loans and of course live. So I prepared to sell our beautiful house. That was quite a terrible, and really hard time full of hopelessness.

But then, four weeks before it got really serious, I got another project, it was salvation. I was overjoyed.

In the year and a half without a project I had privately started, out of curiosity, to develop a compiler that automatically converts AS400 programs from RPG to C++. In the AS400 forums I was laughed at "what took IBM 200 man-years, you want to redevelop at home on your living room table? Absolutely insane, ridiculous, impossible. Forget it!"

But I just did it. After two years I had a prototype as a proof of concept, and it worked, was modular and delivered excellent results.

But as it is with me, I wasn't interested in it anymore, because the problem was solved and then came exactly the part that wasn't called "playing" anymore, but was hard work. And the prototype was far from being complete as it only knew a handful of operators. So I published the whole thing as open source on the internet and turned to my new projects.

A few months later, because of my publication, I got a request if I could help a company in Czechia to develop a similar project with the target language Java. I accepted, it was only a few weeks. Again some time later I got a mail from Italy asking if I was developing software professionally. Then everything went fast: I flew to Italy, presented the concept of my compiler and was there for three days. Four weeks later I had to come again, and finally, shortly before Christmas, I had to fly there for the third time. I was told that they wanted me to lead a project to develop such a compiler to product maturity for the data center applications there.

But I declined: "Gentlemen, I am very honored. But I have a very interesting project on my doorstep at IBM. This is like an Italian car mechanic having to change from Ferrari to Volkswagen, so I ask for your understanding".

But they did not let go. Until my wise wife advised "Think about what conditions you would do it for and offer them that." Genius.

So I wrote down completely crazy conditions, hourly rate, expenses, flight home every weekend at the expense of the customer, hotel, crediting of travel time with 50%. I sent this off on Friday afternoon and thought to myself "now there is peace".

Monday morning the phone rang "Ciao Edgar, come stai? Va bene, accettiamo, quando iniziamo?"

I was speechless. To make a long story short: I accepted the project and remained the technical director of the project for 12 years. It was my design and my baby, the most beautiful job of my life. The company is a joint stock company that serves 20% of the Italian banking market with its data center applications. The AS400 serves 10'000 users simultaneously.

In total 32 million lines of code in RPG, 10000 lines of code in CL. The compiler was able to translate 99.9% of this code, as well as the CL programs. The result ran on Linux machines and was performant.

Unfortunately, in 2018 a bank had bought into the company with over 50%. They kicked out the CEO (who was very sympathetic to me) and put a Banker there. While the former CEO was a technician (he came from Intel) and saw our work, the new one saw only the costs - so the project was terminated. 🙃

It is still the only compiler in the world that can convert AS400 programs to C++ and thus makes them portable to Linux machines. But it is not used. 😭

And so my project in Italy ended on January 31st, 2019. It was a wonderful time with many ups and downs, and professionally the best time of my life.

This was followed by another year at the German Air Traffic Control (C++ development for the air traffic controller workstations). On July 1st, 2023 I will reach my retirement age. But I'll keep doing projects, only I definitely won't be flying to Italy or anywhere else every week anymore.

And that's the good part.

I saw all of your post and thought oh god, I will skim it. Found myself soaking it all in me disappointed when it ended !!

So what you are saying Emax is you have had a fairly average working life and pretty hum drum. 😊
 

emax

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disappointed when it ended !!
Believe me, the project cancellation was like a death sentence to me.

But I'm a stand-up guy. It wasn't my fault, and life goes on.

No reason to be disappointed. On the contrary, not many people have the opportunity to have such a treasure trove of experiences.

I am grateful that I had a really great time there.
 

globalgregors

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For me it’s operations strategy across Natural Resources, Atomic Energy, Petrochemicals, Banking.

Focussed somewhat on control and decision automation in hyperscale capital projects, often in remote/insecure/offshore contexts including Africa & the Middle East. Periodically flipped between that and work in decision automation/risk strategy in Financial Services in Frankfurt and here in Oz.

Like many others on the Forum did more than my share of pfaffing around with business systems including SAP.

Academic background is Philosophy & Psychology but it’s been a life amongst engineers and bean counters.

Now mostly concentrated on Defence, specifically digital twins and associated distributed decision systems.
Grenadier will be used for getting out to various construction and operating locations in Northern Australia relevant to this work.

That is until we can bust away on our next long range expedition, which will span Ushuaia to Prudeau Bay.

edit: needless to say, shoot me a connect on LinkedIn if any of that sounds relevant to what you’re up to
 
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Jeremy996

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Territorial Army soldier whilst at university, Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers as a mechanic/diesel fitter
BSc Environmental Studies, Sunderland Polytechnic, now University of Sunderland. (Back then there were two courses in the UK, Southampton and Sunderland).
Lots of years in accountancy, from bought ledger clerk, through internal audit, to credit controller, payroll controller, financial controller to financial director, mostly in FTSE250 companies.
MD of a data and comms company, which ended badly.
FD/ compliance officer of a regional Independent Financial Adviser, (IFA)
Compliance officer/HR/Accounts of a SIPP provider
IFA; self-employed and more lifestyle than acquisitive

I have done a fair bit of voluntary work, Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, (until I got disillusioned), treasurer of an AIDs project from 1989-2002, treasurer of a prostitute project from 1991-2002, Amnesty International trainer, Adult Literacy mentor, Consumer Credit/debt adviser, Treasurer for Leicestershire & Rutland 4x4 Response, (current), Trustee, 4x4 Response UK, 2019-2022, Trustee, Clockwise Credit Union, (current).
 
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Tom D

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I did a biology degree at Edinburgh Uni and during that time realised that I didn’t want to be a biologist, I graduated and drifted from job to job for years. I worked on farms, and as an agricultural engineer for my dad. I learned to weld, though not to a great standard and also did some sales work selling crop sprayers. (Sorry Greta). I worked in the City of London for a while as an IT recruitment consultant, specialising in AS400 funnily enough given the post above! It was great money but I hated London, and the ‘City’ types. I left and moved back to Edinburgh. where I did another recruitment job. I got canned from that one and worked for my dad again, then I met my wife, I needed to be back in Edinburgh again to be with her so I left the countryside and moved back to Auld Reekie. Now I knew I needed a proper job and so I started in recruitment again. I hated it, I left and became a local handyman while I worked out what to do with myself.
I remembered sitting in my office in Edinburgh whilst watching a tree surgeon dismantle a tree on the riverbank outside, it looked like fun and I thought thats what I’ll do. So I did. I got a job with a local company and learned the ropes, literally. After 18 months I started out on my own. I’ve been doing it for 20 years now. I don’t climb any more which has taken some of the joy away from the job, but I still like it. We have 14 staff now and I make a decent living from it. My next project is the Kitcamper off road trailer that I mentioned in another thread. The day job still takes up a lot of time but I’ll get it off the ground this year.
Basically I need excuses to be outside. Now that I’m managing a bigger company I’m back in the office again, the Kitcamper project will get me outside having fun.

I will never go back to working for someone else. I love running my own business, although you end up working harder and doing more hours the rewards and freedoms are more than worth it.
 

DDG

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Twenty plus years as an anesthesiologist in a Level One (big university hospital) Trauma center. Writer, furniture builder, car collector, and investor. Trying my hand at timber frame (mortis and tenon style joinery) construction currently. Boring compared to many others.
 

emax

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I did a biology degree at Edinburgh Uni and during that time realised that I didn’t want to be a biologist, I graduated and drifted from job to job for years. I worked on farms, and as an agricultural engineer for my dad. I learned to weld, though not to a great standard and also did some sales work selling crop sprayers. (Sorry Greta). I worked in the City of London for a while as an IT recruitment consultant, specialising in AS400 funnily enough given the post above! It was great money but I hated London, and the ‘City’ types. I left and moved back to Edinburgh. where I did another recruitment job. I got canned from that one and worked for my dad again, then I met my wife, I needed to be back in Edinburgh again to be with her so I left the countryside and moved back to Auld Reekie. Now I knew I needed a proper job and so I started in recruitment again. I hated it, I left and became a local handyman while I worked out what to do with myself.
I remembered sitting in my office in Edinburgh whilst watching a tree surgeon dismantle a tree on the riverbank outside, it looked like fun and I thought thats what I’ll do. So I did. I got a job with a local company and learned the ropes, literally. After 18 months I started out on my own. I’ve been doing it for 20 years now. I don’t climb any more which has taken some of the joy away from the job, but I still like it. We have 14 staff now and I make a decent living from it. My next project is the Kitcamper off road trailer that I mentioned in another thread. The day job still takes up a lot of time but I’ll get it off the ground this year.
Basically I need excuses to be outside. Now that I’m managing a bigger company I’m back in the office again, the Kitcamper project will get me outside having fun.

I will never go back to working for someone else. I love running my own business, although you end up working harder and doing more hours the rewards and freedoms are more than worth it.
Hi Tom,
very nice read, well done! (y)

Another curvy carrier. It must have to do something with the AS400, I guess ... 🤔

When I was at school - around 17 years old - I worked in a locksmith shop on afternoons. I learned welding and welded steel beams for stairs and such things (they're still in use after almost 50 years ;)).

Treppen_Gestell_3.JPG

And during my school holidays and in the time before I started studying I was a gardener, a truck driver (18m trucks) and worked in a lab where I adjusted Lasers (Spectra Physics) for more performance. And many more other things, whatever was there to make money ...

But tree surgeon is another idea. Alas, at 65 years now perhaps not exactly the right job any more.
 
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