Sometimes on Lemmy these seem like the only jobs that actually exist, but I’m sure there’s a lot of people here with different and unusual lines of work.
Wastewater-based epidemiology. Basically we track infectious diseases in wastewater, and the results guide public health decisions.
As someone who is doing disaster response consulting for healthcare and public health: I fucking love you guys. You make my job sooo much easier.
Seriously.
The surveillance you folks do is pretty much indisputable and far more incorruptible compared to everything else we do, in healthcare especially.
Very often you are my “discussion ending gun” when decision makers endlessly want me to prove their (flawed) point of view. A “nope, here are validated wastewater based numbers, you are wrong” is extremely satisfying sometimes.
Thanks folks!
Love to hear it! 2 years ago I had no idea that I’d be working with wastewater but here I am now!
Anyone out here reading this, write to your senator about increasing funding to public health!
Thanks for helping make sure I don’t shit myself to death. I assume you help with that.
Actually COVID is one of the most used tests they do, at least around here. But you can do things like drug use, cancer epidemiology (for some cancers), etc. as well - and that is incredibly helpful from a public health point of view.
Because it’s just like with Covid - we can’t get proper data from patient sided tests because we can’t test everyone. And even if we could,not everyone would.
But everybody poops/pees. And guys like OP interpolate from that.
I work in IT and I don’t like following rules
I’m insulted that you would even ask me that. We are no longer internet friends.
Engineer (p.s. don’t become an engineer, it’s not as great as they sold it to us)
Ain’t that how all professional service are nowadays.
Doctors is the last gig and it is getting gutted as we speak.
Facts. I was talking to my doctor who is moving to Denver for another job soon. He was telling me how bad it was getting.
The hospital+clinics are forcing them to spend less time with patients,overbooking their schedules, and ordering tests that aren’t medically necessary to get the most out of a patient.
He’s leaving for a private practice job that’ll allow him to have more say so, it’s sad those who have been with him for the last 10+ years won’t benefit from him being around anymore.
I disagree, I’m an engineer and I prefer it over not engineering positions. My only ragret is not keeping up with coding since it was my favorite subject in college
Do you feel like you could use coding in your daily business or is it just an interest you would like to pursue?
Not that guy, but also a (not-software) engineer. Coding is really great for a few things:
- Software stuff is in really vogue right now. Like there’s demand for all engineering disciplines in my area, but software guys are the hot position, with pay to match.
- Even if you’re not software, knowing a little is helpful for other stuff - e.g., whipping up some quick and dirty test interfaces, or interacting with older systems with non
- It also really, really helps for little things at home.
Unfortunately I cannot actually write code to save my life, but it’d be real useful if I could!
That’s why I went backwards from SE back to IT. I enjoy working with people directly and helping them. It’s also a hell of a lot easier in terms of hours and crunches (we have no crunches).
Basically, I had to decide whether I wanted the money and “glamour” of working on a well-known hot project or to be generally happy with my life. I’m a lot happier now.
I think it depends on your field of engineering and how much you enjoy the work. I find environmental engineering to be satisfying and a very dependable/lucrative income compared to many other non-engineering fields I might have been interested in.
Add to that most other fields that pay similarly or higher (doctor, lawyer, etc) require more/costlier schooling and it’s a pretty sweet deal to be able to go into the job market with only a bachelor’s or masters and making a decent wage right off the bat.
Of course the same enshittification/race to the bottom for prices affects us too but I don’t know if there’s any career that escapes that entirely.
I would also think maybe certain engineering fields are more stable than others. Mine is particularly recession-proof since we’re driven by regulation (and bipartisan-supported regulation at that), not the economy. Massive layoffs are not that common in many of the other more “physical” engineering fields like structural, electrical, or mechanical either and even if you are laid off there is usually another company hiring. The skills are pretty portable as well so if you want to change careers you have a pretty good chance at being successful.
Is it a field of rainbows and butterflies? No, but it’s a hell of a lot better than plenty of other jobs out there and it pays the bills.
I’m a Stonemason, and I work in conservation.
Nice! I’m a trim carpenter and I work in historic preservation. I’m a project manager now but I worked my way up from laborer.
OP clearly just wanted an excuse to show off their vast collection of response images…
