What Career Path Did You Choose That You Strongly Advise Against?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Any science job related to biomedical/pharmaceuticals/biology/medicine

TERRIBLE

Why? Several of us here would like to know why these fields are so terrible? They're terribly important. I have a kid heading into the workplace in a year in these fields.

Because it's massively oversaturated. Companies can push salaries low because there is so much supply of labor. Supply is inelastic because tons of people are naive. They have altruistic visions of doing science to cure cancer and any other disease and claim it isn't about the money. That's all good and dandy for a while until you get stuck with a low paying deadend biotech job or job loss. Job security in biotech is notoriously fickle, muchoreso than most industries. Job layoffs are constant. Companies are always abruptly cancelling projects and closing divisions, acquiring buyouts and laying off staff, or are just laying off people if they hit a snag with development. Then when you go out and try to find a new job you have to compete with all of the other 500 people applying for the same position because of huge labor oversupply in the industry.

I knowsny people in biotech. Their resumes are littered with job experience after job experience. My old boss, for example, had almost 6 jobs with all different companies over the course of only about a decade. All different parts of the country too. Can you imagine trying to start a family or settling down and buying a house when you have to consider you may need a new job every 2-4 years? It's extremely unstable. After a certain point, you get desperate and get hired as a temp or work for a shitty low paying CRO because you need work. So many biotech companies these days hire staff using temp agencies because scientists are a dime a dozen.

Stick with the business development or sales side of biotech if you're adamant staying in the industry. The research side is terrible. The only svitbce based part worth it is if you can get into the development and manufacturing side where you often need highly particular experience to manufacture complex biologic products. But you're not doing pure research. Manufacturing knowledge and skills are always in much more demand and are rarer.

Thanks for laying it out. Will share with my kid who already knows research side sucks.

[Anonymous]

Dentistry. Fees for the work have stayed fairly consistent over the last decade but the cost of education has sky rocketed. upwards of 450k+ for dental school. my kids are not gonna be dentists!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is this thread just for women? I'll assume it isn't. I'm a man and was a teacher before it made more sense to be a SAHD for a while.

Any time I meet someone who is thinking of becoming a teacher I encourage them to talk to at least a dozen current teachers.

Teaching in and of itself is great. Kids are usually great. But there are so many things about the job that are awful.

Can the awful thing be avoided mostly by being an assistant teacher?

No, depending on what you look like.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Corporate accounting. This department is considered a cost center that adds no value.

How?
You are the one repotting the cost.
Am I missing something?

Most companies look at accounting as a necessary evil to be done as cheaply as possible. You're not bringing in sales.

95% of employees are cost centers. The accounting and finance people in my business are pretty well valued, especially the tax, currency and transfer pricing specialists. Depends on the industry I suppose.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Any science job related to biomedical/pharmaceuticals/biology/medicine

TERRIBLE

Why? Several of us here would like to know why these fields are so terrible? They're terribly important. I have a kid heading into the workplace in a year in these fields.

Because it's massively oversaturated. Companies can push salaries low because there is so much supply of labor. Supply is inelastic because tons of people are naive. They have altruistic visions of doing science to cure cancer and any other disease and claim it isn't about the money. That's all good and dandy for a while until you get stuck with a low paying deadend biotech job or job loss. Job security in biotech is notoriously fickle, muchoreso than most industries. Job layoffs are constant. Companies are always abruptly cancelling projects and closing divisions, acquiring buyouts and laying off staff, or are just laying off people if they hit a snag with development. Then when you go out and try to find a new job you have to compete with all of the other 500 people applying for the same position because of huge labor oversupply in the industry.

I knowsny people in biotech. Their resumes are littered with job experience after job experience. My old boss, for example, had almost 6 jobs with all different companies over the course of only about a decade. All different parts of the country too. Can you imagine trying to start a family or settling down and buying a house when you have to consider you may need a new job every 2-4 years? It's extremely unstable. After a certain point, you get desperate and get hired as a temp or work for a shitty low paying CRO because you need work. So many biotech companies these days hire staff using temp agencies because scientists are a dime a dozen.

Stick with the business development or sales side of biotech if you're adamant staying in the industry. The research side is terrible. The only svitbce based part worth it is if you can get into the development and manufacturing side where you often need highly particular experience to manufacture complex biologic products. But you're not doing pure research. Manufacturing knowledge and skills are always in much more demand and are rarer.

Thanks for laying it out. Will share with my kid who already knows research side sucks.

It’s not everyone’s experience. My wife is a PhD in biology and does bio research and development for a large company. She loves it and makes good money. She also says they can’t hire people fast enough. I don’t know why her experience is so different than PP’s, but please talk to a few people before you report back to your kid about what sucks. If you have to research, biotech is a field where you can be surrounded by other people who also love research.

Academic life sciences research is the pits and I’m not going to argue any differently. Low paid, terrible environment. But industry is a very nice life indeed.

[Anonymous]

That should say “if you love research”.

[Anonymous]

I think there is something true about the PhD sciences-they don't all pay equally and some of the pay is down right terrible compared to the education requirement. I know someone with a PhD in plant science and he was making 45k a year as a researcher at a university. He makes more money working for himself after opening a lawn care company than working at the university using his PhD.

[Anonymous]

International development

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Librarian. I previously loved my job, but salaries have been flat for so long, it's not worth taking out loans to pay tuition, if your parents or trust isn't paying.

+1. Technology has really changed the job, too. It's not about books and finding answers for people anymore. It's all about data management. The expectations are high and the budgets are low. Also, the job market is lousy. My company used to have 10 professional librarians. Now, there are only 2.

If you're a public librarian, you also get to play social worker to the homeless, drug addicted and mentally ill populations.

I don't regret my career, but I do cringe whenever I hear someone say that they're pursuing an MLS because I think they'll be in for a rude awakening.

Yep, former librarian here. I was lucky enough to land a job right out of library school, but the pay is ridiculously low and the chance of advancement is just depressing. I cannot stress how much of my masters program (which I otherwise enjoyed!) was focusing on the crummy job market. People keep saying that there is going to be a massive retirement wave, but that hasn't happened. I really enjoyed the digital aspects of the job but was constantly finding that any training I wanted had to be done on my own time (and budget). And I got tired of justifying my job.

Also, the glass escalator effect is terrible, so if you are a woman looking to advance you have that working against you as well!

Oh, and why did I become a librarian? Simple...because both my parents were lawyers and they spent my entire childhood complaining, ha.

Library school?? Never heard of it. What would you learn by getting a librarian degree. Not trying to make fun but seriously interested in learning.

[Anonymous]

Federal procurement (1102 series). I just sort of fell into it during the 2008/2009 economic slump. Grateful for the opportunity, but I would absolutely not advise anyone to into this field. Too archaic and filled with a lot of unnecessary layers and processes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Women should ask themselves what the traditional male equivalent is of whatever they’re traditionally considering, and consider that instead, because it’s usually more lucrative.

Example, teacher versus tenured college professor.
Nurse versus doctor
Cosmetologist versus dermatologist
Art teacher versus engineer
Admin assistant vs program manager

Obviously these are all very different jobs, but I hope you get what I mean.

Also, women should not shy away from things or jobs with numbers in them. Data science, business analysis, finance, corporate real estate, etc. I wish as many women were interested in business school as they are law school.

Lastly, I wish more women would run for office

Truth be told, women know they are going to be mother's some day and want to have children. The days of being a happy stay at home mom are gone. You need to be independently wealthy or marry a rich jerk/idiot.
So women want careers that will give them the option/freedom to love who they wish.
Today's economy doesn't care about families. Someone will need flexibility to take the kids to Dr appointments and be able to leave work early enough to pick up the kids from daycare.
There are not that many professionals that will allow a woman to have the job flexibility, 40h work week, low stress, opportunity to work part time, or an opportunity to stay at home for a few years and return to the job. All this with a pay check decent enough to pay for your housing, children's day care expenses and and whatever else is needed for health and happiness

Perhaps pharmacy? IT is rewarding, but it is difficult to get into and returning to it after being absent would be challenging.
Worst for women are anything to do with social work, law enforcement, doctor, law.

If you are fortunate enough to have someone pay for your college education then you can do just about anything. For the rest prospects are dim you are just going to have to accept it that you will not get what you want and your talents are most likely going to be wasted

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Yep, former librarian here. I was lucky enough to land a job right out of library school, but the pay is ridiculously low and the chance of advancement is just depressing. I cannot stress how much of my masters program (which I otherwise enjoyed!) was focusing on the crummy job market. People keep saying that there is going to be a massive retirement wave, but that hasn't happened. I really enjoyed the digital aspects of the job but was constantly finding that any training I wanted had to be done on my own time (and budget). And I got tired of justifying my job.

Also, the glass escalator effect is terrible, so if you are a woman looking to advance you have that working against you as well!

Oh, and why did I become a librarian? Simple...because both my parents were lawyers and they spent my entire childhood complaining, ha.

Library school?? Never heard of it. What would you learn by getting a librarian degree. Not trying to make fun but seriously interested in learning.

Most professional librarians have Master's degrees. "Library school" is where they get these degrees. They study:
How to catalog books and materials so people can find them.
How to index materials for online databases so people can find them
How to create searches so that they can find answers to specific questions or create comprehensive literatures searches, all in the most time- and cost-efficient ways possible (You can easily rack up bills of $1,000s of dollars on a single question on WestLaw if you don't know what you're doing.)
How to teach people (whether children or adults) how to conduct their own searches
Learning to discern--and teaching other to discern--what are accurate and unbiased information sources
How to choose the books and other resources that meets the needs of their unique community.
How to budget and plan
For children's librarians, literacy and reading comprehension are topics. For law librarians, basic legal research. For public librarians, dealing with challenging populations like the homeless.

A lot of library school is practical, but there is quite a bit of theory and intellectual thought, particularly in areas like censorship, diversity and information bias.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'll bite. Teaching. And sadly after this year there will be many others that feel that way. I encourage women to find a different path if they are interested - physical therapist, occupational therapist, speech therapist, etc. You can still work with kids but get more respect, more career opportunities and be able to go part time with more ease if you want to.

Question for you about something I've been wondering. I'm an attorney and at one point in my career, I was job sharing with my partner working half the week and me working the other half. Do you think this is something that could be done in teaching to provide more flexibility?

It can be done! I know of a few that offered this when I lived in Colorado (not sure if they still do.) It was mainly used by teachers with young children. They were even able to share daycare providers that way. I’d love to do that here. I work as a part-time assistant because full-time teaching demands and hours don’t work for us right now.

I hope that the pandemic will cause us to think about ways that we can improve every profession to improve the professional services we deliver while improving the work-life balance of workers, and not just those with families. Job sharing requires a very good relationship between participants, but it can lead to less stressed and therefore more productive workers.

Health insurance for all unrelated to job would be a start — affordable good health insurance

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I left college to be a street performer, and then thought that I had "made it" when I get into clown college in the mid 90's. While the path brought a lot of learning and joy, it also made me feel flat and exposed me to a lot of sad people and bad situations I wish I had never encountered. I returned to "real" college in 2002, and appreciate my more normal life now. I love talking to kids who want to be performers, but I've pushed quite a few away from pursing it the way that I did.

I sure hope you save a photo in clown costume for your future descendants—Neat past!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Educated cop

I have a master degree, went into “law enforcement “ to make a difference.

Did child abuse/homicide most my career.

Started with a training officer who taught how to legally beat people if you are in a bad mood.

Spent evenings with extreme racists, short men with Napoleon complex, people with little understanding of the law or constitution.

Best part was making friends with 7-11 workers, Dunkin’ Donuts workers, gas station workers, etc.

Spent most my life with people going through the worst days of their life and thankful I had a masters in psychology.

Frustrated that I had a better understanding of law than most prosecutors, judges are the most ego driven group I have ever dealt with ... most lawyers and judges I dealt with had seriously unhealthy relationship with alcohol.

Watched “tiger teams” be formed ever time a white woman was killed, while I alone worked on the rest of the cases. Journalists would demonize my POC victims and paint white victims as heroes and white perps as “mentality ill” when they were just down right evil or selfish.


You get the idea.

Now you could write crime fiction.