Yes, we all have options in life. You just have to choose the route you want to take
Me too, Lauren wants to be a vet, has done forever and is smart enough to do it, but I’m really worried about the competition for places. But I suppose the study path she’s going to follow would work for being a doctor, and she’s comfortable with techy stuff too, so she’ll find something that fits.
Ellie I’m more worried about, she’s fairly clever but shit at converting schoolwork to exams, she has a vague idea that she’d like to join the RAF and do something engineeringy, but the only thing she shows any real interest in is stupid fucking American youtubers, crappy teen TV and the most fucking godawful boy bands. She actually reminds me a bit too much of me, albeit with shit taste in music, which doesn’t bode well.
I actually did the “If you’re not doing something worthwhile by the time you’re 18, you’re out of this house!” speech the other night 
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My niece wanted very much to be a vet & had to work extremely hard to get onto the degree course. Since qualifying she has worked in several vet practices and is utterly disenchanted by the actuality of working in the ‘industry’. So I’d strongly recommend that your daughter talks to some (preferably young) vets & finds out more about what it’s really like before committing to it as a career path.
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I remember being at school when some new fangled computerized career planning thing (jiig-cal) was introduced. It was a tick box questionnaire of sorts. I was excited to learn what the computerized oracle would suggest. jiig-cal indicated I had the aptitude to become a pig farmer! Remarkably specific but there it was, a life wallowing in shit surrounded by pigs. Ironically the prediction was rather accurate as I went into the music industry.
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It’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot of late with this likely career change from tech to cheffing.
Growing up the perceived wisdom seemed to be that it was a bad idea to make a hobby into a career because it would ruin the hobby. I’ve come to the conclusion that was shitty advice. I should add that I didn’t dislike doing computer related work, but a lot of the companies were complete arseholes to work for, which has become an increasingly important aspect for me.
It’s not clear cut but it does change the hobby - it becomes harder to ‘switch off’ from ‘work’.
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I lasted precisely one year in my original chosen career…teaching Craft, Design and Technology in secondary school. I loved my subject and was good at it - making stuff from wood, metal, wires…electronics etc…I made SS amps and other stuff. Whilst I was doing my degree i always worked part time in HiFi shops. My first job in a real nasty school in S. Leeds put me off teaching and children forever.
I was pondering a job in HiFi / technology when one of the research councils offered me money to retrain as a software engineer, turned out that despite not really realising it i was quite good at the hardware/electronics stuff and I was offered a PhD place…the rest is history, but I did end up teaching electronics and computing.
now I rarely teach (Undergraduates these days remind me of those kids back in that school in 1988), but I deal with people and politics - I miss making stuff, but if the plans fall into place I’ll be retired by 58, in 6 years time.
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I loved craftwork at school and wasn’t particularly gifted academically. When I had to make a choice between metalwork and woodwork aged about 14, I chose woodwork because metal was a lot more hard work with all of the filing, sawing, etc. Was a lazy cunt even back then 
Unlike a lot of others on here it seems, after serving my joinery apprenticeship, I couldn’t wait to get off the tools. Grabbed the very first opportunity that came along to go on the management ladder, in my late twenties.
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You mean just like the majority of us have ?
I’ve banged on about my job enough… 
However, most of the advice I got when I started was, that the trade had died and was never going to recover because people dressed differently “these days”. I didn’t really have a clue what else to do because I had grown up around my dad’s workshop and it was all I had ever known. I took the longest, hardest route possible by learning the making side before the cutting side and somewhere along the way I developed a passion for it. Now, I am one of only three people my age on the street who can cut (plenty younger and only one or two older) and I am the only one of those who can make a coat (anything with sleeves is a coat). Come to think of it, I am pretty much the only person on Savile Row actually working as a tailor, everyone else is either a cutter or a coat maker, trouser maker or whatever. I am lucky to have a job where I can join up everything I have learnt these days.
I will never retire, the trade is a huge part of my life honestly and now I am a bit more mature, I have a good balance between it and everything else. Besides, it’s only now that the feeling that I am an imposter is receding and that I can actually do it…
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I certainly have that imposter feeling with even the notion of applying to some of the kitchens round here as an apprentice! I think it’s probably not helped by the fact that my sense of smell is essentially non-existent, which may or may not turn out to be a serious issue.
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I thought so too, until my eldest daughter applied to BAE and was told there was nothing suitable, she has a PhD in IT and Science based subject, strange company. She now works for Helsinki Uni in research and the other opportunities were in France, USA and one in Nottingham (for half the money of Helsinki and having to spend 1/2 her time in Switzerland). It seems that in the UK we don’t actually want PhD students with technology qualifications and then wonder why we are falling behind.
As a kid I used to make computer games for my Spectrum and at one point nearly published one with Codemasters before changing my mind. Teachers said sack that off there no money in video games, they only knew how to churn out future Chartered Accountants, civil servants and lawyers 
.
I graduated with a degree in economics in the early 90’s when the jobs market for this shrank acutely, so on the insistence of my old man I got a job in the car industry. I worked and studied when I wasn’t working and got a degree in mech engineering and that plus an MBA later helped me get to Chief Engineer level. Apart from designing and building BIW car body shell factories and production lines, I spent most of my time in new product introduction and then chassis engineering, more management than design. My last proper job was chassis design and integration for BMW and ‘their new’ Mini. Still miss that to this day but had to move on.
I then spent time in telecoms trying to improve how they developed new products and save them millions by joining things up. Did a bit of contract work back in auto, and even in food manufacturing for M&S, before getting picked up by consulting and once I’d got to director level I fully realised how much I hated corporate consulting and left. I’ve worked with a partner for 4 years now and never been happier - lots of us say this for all kind of scenarios, but I wish I’d done it a lot sooner.
It’s possible I could retire at 55 but more likely I’ll step my days working down at that point and keep going for as long as I get a buzz from the challenge.
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I wanted to be a mechanical engineer, but was warned off that as there were loads out of work, in the UK we just don’t value engineers at all, in most countries it is a career seen in the same light as doctors or solicitors. Went in IT and have regretted it ever since, never mind retirement is but 4 years away.
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I was shit at arts and crafts and I have zero ‘people skills’ so it was always going to be a boring numbers job for me.
If I hadn’t fucked my knee up jumping a hurdle when I was 12 then, with the right back-up, I’m sure I could have been a champion triple jumper before anyone had heard of Jonathan Edwards.
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After I left university I fucked about for years, with a general loathing of corporate culture and the world generally. Ironically I would work hard in the jobs I had, but these were largely McJobs with no fulfillment of progression.
My girlfriend at the time bullied me into applying for Chartered Accountancy, which was quite fun while studying. However, it’s the most dull thing once you’re in steady state.
I got lucky finding a niche in financial modelling and then government procurement consulting, which was with a good team at a good company, and it was the best 8 years of my career. It all went south with both the downturn in government procurement and a takeover by an awful company, but then I got ill, and now I get money for nothing.
The only advice that I ever give to young people is that it’s real, they do need to think about this, and that they will be working for 50 years so it is up to them to make it something interesting and challenging. If they don’t think about it, they will end up underemployed or doing something they don’t like, and it’s a long time for that.
Personally I think that the state does far too little for adult development - there should be ongoing career advice and time off to try new things. It is a societal benefit if people are fully employed and engaged with their work, so the state should take a direct interest in this.
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The key message is it’s never too late to change, you can almost always find a way if you really want to do something. I gave up a well paid procurement job in my early thirties to retrain as an electrician, I thoroughly enjoyed it, but like Jim I prefer the management side to the actual tools. Dealing with jumped up cunts all day, brings a satisfaction that I have never found enjoyable until recently.
I hated working in a record shop because I just lost interest in playing stuff at home. I would never again mix hobby and work…drug dealing being the exception
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I originally bounced back and forward between Journalism (in those days I wasn’t a cunt so wasn’t suited), wanting to get into Electronic Engineering, being a Welder, studying Economics, dropping out, running my own business, professional muso, pub management and Taxi driver.
I wasn’t mature enough to “settle”.
Now I find myself planning for my retirement. Last year I decided it would be at 60 in 2020. Now, due to the fact that I am enjoying what I do now more than ever, it’s all less “set in stone”.
If things continue to go the way they are at the moment, then I can see myself maxing out my pension and not going until 2027.
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we most certainly do (do you mean PhD graduates or students?) - I have 4 vacancies (for PhD holders in a range of Computer Science disciplines) we are struggling to fill. Kings in London has 16 vacancies. But and here is the but, the REF (the research assessment framework - a government thing) has forced us to be very selective.
I worked in the old Myford building, sadly most of it demolished for a tram track now …
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