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!
How does one get into that line of work?
Great question! For the US, you will need a degree in Molecular Biology/Microbiology or a Medical (Laboratory) Technologist. You’ll then either need to live near the city where one of the few private companies that do wastewater testing ar e(my case), or live near a public health lab that does ww. Pretty much all state public health labs do it, but city/county level varies immensely. For the government route, look at APHL or NACCHO to find information on your local public health labs. There are a few universities that also do ww testing, for example I know University of Illinois, University of Missouri and Michigan State are all doing a bunch of wastewater work.
Feel free to DM me if you want more information.
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.
The government is stealing our poop!1!!1
As Philpo said, we mainly do covid, but we can do Norovirus, which is a common GI virus that can give you the shits.
Thank you for your service! One of the best things to come out of the pandemic IMO.
I work in IT and I don’t like following rules
But do you use Linux?
I’m insulted that you would even ask me that. We are no longer internet friends.
Clearly not an arch user
You shall lie soulless in the wake of Debian’s righteous slaughter
Ahh, there it is. Linux user confirmed. :D
(?<!MagnyusG)
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
My husband is an engineer. He loves his job most days.
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!
Maybe it’s my job, but I feel like I haven’t had a job in the last decade that I really enjoyed. I might just be getting older and jaded.
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.
Are you a software engineer or a real engineer?
Well, that seems like an insulting question. Not that it matters, but I’m an aerospace engineer.
Lol what did SE do to you?
Oh god I don’t even know where to start
Oh, I know.
OP clearly just wanted an excuse to show off their vast collection of response images…
Farmer!
What do you grow?
Mostly grass for our dairy cows
I do not envy you guys. Thanks for all the cheese though.
When people work with hazardous materials, they hire me to make sure they do it safely or legally. I mostly work in waste handling, soil remediations and laboratories.
It’s pretty fun and interesting, but it’s been very bad for my enjoyment of homegrown food, swimming outdoors or going downwind of any industrial sites.
Safely OR legally? Shouldn’t that be “and”?
Safely XOR Legally
“Either it’s safe and it doesn’t come up or it isn’t and we have ourselves legally covered.”
Ah, ideally yes.
Some places skirt by the law and dump it where hazardous waste doesn’t belong. This is done legally but is not at all safe.
Thank you for what you do though, it’s not glamorous work I’m sure but average person like me appreciates what you do
Welder. I make the sparky sparky hot and sticky with the metals.
Branch manager at a 3 trade business (HVAC, Plumbing, Electrical). Very much enjoy beating the competition and taking all of their great talent because they can’t treat them well. It’s not hard to actually give a damn about your people. Turns out, if you do that they like working for you and end up performing even more.
I do cosplay erotica for a living. I make awesome costumes, I take them off, and just post to Patreon. I suppose it’s kindof retail, as I’m giving the photos to people, as a reward for subscribing, but I set my own schedule and choose what goes out. The freedom is incredible
Trusts and estates for high net worth clients.
Did anyone else notice that every single one of those business cards had “acquisitions” spelled incorrectly?
And it doesn’t have a watermark, or most of the other stuff described. Bateman and everyone else at that table are a bunch of idiots who have no clue what they are talking about.
I run a business repairing consumer-grade 3D printers.
Hah! Did you paint that yourself? That’s pretty cool.
No but I should add Scruffy to a Stargrave team.
Sick. I have so many issues with my 3d printer printing petg. Such a pain in the ass.
PETG just is a pain in the ass sometimes. Really sensitive to moisture, and it loves to stick to hot metal. So it has a tendency to overextrude because of the steam, and bunch up on the nozzle, causing all sorts of havok.
The key to printing it is just keeping it dry – the latest batches I’ve held feel like they’re way softer than I remember, so I suspect mfgs are putting more glycol in it than before.
Also, do a sanity check and go back and print PLA from time to time. Sometimes you won’t realize something else is wrong and you’ll blame it on the filament, but something like the idler arm on the extruder is broken, etc.
You can print it on Textured PEI, or Glass - but I suggest putting a little glue stick down to act as a release agent on the PEI - PETG and PEI bond together too well in some instances (ESPECIALLY on smooth PEI)
I used to work at a place that made envelopes and printed forms.
Fascinating seeing 12 foot tall stacks of rolls of paper.
Used to work at a newspaper, can confirm. Giant rolls of paper are pretty cool.
Me too, right when the digital age was taking over. I was young so they had me help design display ads in illustrator. We’d print out the ads with the articles on a laser printer. Cut them and arrange on a page that was then photographed. It was the future back then lol.
Lawyer. Wouldn’t really recommend.
Nice try feds
I’m a therapist, and I train other therapists. And I supervise some therapists and I train other therapists to supervise other therapists. And I manage a team of therapists who train other therapists and who train other therapists to supervise other therapists.
Kind “in it” at this stage.
So, what do you do when you need therapy?
I find a therapist I don’t know!
There’s a few of them about!
Wow you’re pretty high up there. So that sounds like you are yourself a supervisor and supervisor educator and supervisor educators’ supervisor? Like some kind of a consulting group where my supervisors probably got trained? I don’t actually know who does the licensing for supervisor status - I’m guessing it’s just like the entry level where you have to get hours from anywhere that the state board vetted and stamped off on? It’s so interesting to me how state licensure has such a long relationship with private entities.
I’m in the UK so it’s a different structure than the US, and the role is different too, less overlap with the medical approach.
Most of what we so is training counsellors, the training of qualified counsellors in how to provide clinical supervision is a small part of it.
We’re a private training company, doing counselling, legal, medical and accounting. I work for the counselling part of course.
Very cool! Wish there were more of us on here. r/therapists is still one of the main reasons I use Reddit. Well, uh, I guess you and I could talk? But at that point, with you as a super-super and me as a first-year post-grad, it would just sound like shoddy anonymous online supervision!
I’m up for that!
I doubt I could get to know you the way a supervisor would, doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be worthwhile for both of us.
Talking with colleagues is always a joy. I’m leaving today for a long weekend, hanging out with a dozen counsellors for a person centred encounter group.
Hopefully very restful being in an environment saturated in the core conditions 😁
I love that idea too! We just gotta create a space for it, I guess. Boy do I have things to say… my facility’s CEO took his life this weekend and it’s been a mad scramble. Only in In-patient!
