Jobs...do you work with computers in your day job?

[woah]

Stone mason, eh? What's that like as a job?

 

OT: Yep, spend too much time in front of them I'd reckon.

 

Well I'm fortunate to have a very good crew and "boss" (put in quotations because it genuinely feels very odd referring to her as that ... which should give you an idea of what type of person she is), but essentially my day will consist of listening to interesting audiocasts and joking around with my coworkers while doing relatively strenuous manual labor (but not back-breaking--there's a 60 year old woman that works with us too). You get to enjoy the weather for better or worse, but there are few days where I'd rather be cooped up in an office. I guess most important for me is that I'm able to come home with no stress on my mind and plentiful "mental energy" (which I then use to work on projects during the evenings and on the weekends)--something that my prior place of employment left me with virtually none of. And then I also don't have to deal with any corporate culture bullshit, that dreadful "I live my work" sort of feeling, that part of you that always lingers at the office even if you're not physically there, anxieties about the imminent workweek, etc. etc.

 

The downside is of course the compensation, which for me effectively means no family or expensive toys, a small house that's far from civilization, and I cut it pretty close from time to time (the fact that my country seems to be going out of its way to create some sort of first-world third-world hybrid doesn't help either). And in general you have to be OK with physical labor, getting filthy/sweaty, and getting injured once in a while.

 

But I can't stress how important it is to have a good crew to work with. If I was stuck with a bunch of closed-minded rednecks that listened to Howard Stern all day and had nothing interesting to talk about, I might be less positive.

Edited February 13, 2014 by woah

[PranQster]

I do nothing but work with computers in my day job. Been doing PC repair 6 days a week, solid, for the last 16 months. And about 5 years of IT work before that. Previous to that, I spent 21 years in kitchens.

My typical day is scattered with malware/virus cleaning, hardware diagnostics, hdd upgrades/cloning, data recovery/migration, performance tuning, physical cleaning*, laptop repair (a lot), password removal, user account repair (fix temp account login), some Mac service here and there (I fucking hate the Mac UI and also hate their overpriced hardware). I once replaced the front glass on one MacbookPro and one iPad... never again...that job totally sucks. I will also clear paper jams and fix ink cartridge issues, but otherwise I refuse to repair printers too.

 

* have cleaned: food, wine, beer, milk, dried tomato soup, dried puke, snot, blood (both dry & wet), dried saliva, dried 'unnamed-human-bodily-fluid A'♂, dried 'unnamed-human-bodily-fluid B'♀ (so far no human bodily 'solids'), hair (cat mostly, but human & dog too), fur, mouse shit, mouse nesting, spider webs, dust bound with cigarette smoke, dust bound with cannabis resin (smells far worse than it aught to), regular dust, irregular dust, lol the list goes on.

Edited February 21, 2014 by PranQster

[Xarg]

Of all the horrible things I've seen inside computers, nothing has come even remotely close to half the stuff you listed there. That is disgusting... hope you got paid well for some of those jobs.

[ObservingEye]

I'm a veterinary technician. We do use comps to enter in patient data and any services rendered for a clients pet while done at the clinic. Yes... The computers are horrendously slow.

[Sonic]

I've been working in the music biz since I was a teen and have been a sound designer for games since 2004...I'm still fortunate to be doing it.

[Deadlove]

I've been working in the music biz since I was a teen and have been a sound designer for games since 2004...I'm still fortunate to be doing it.

 

Engineering? Tracking, mixing, mastering? Good to see another sound guy!

 

What kinds of music? My primary learning was audio engineering for music, not sound design for games, but I'm getting to exercise some audio chops doing new things with games, especially with TDM.

 

What games have you helped doing sound on?

[Sonic]

I started out hanging out with my uncle in his studio when I was a kid back in the 70's. When I got a bit older I started traveling around Canada and the States engineering and producing records. I've done over 200 projects, no one famous. Got into doing everything, did post for film,TV, live sound...you name it. Audio for games was the last challenge.

 

In 2006 I got a gig at Bioware where I did sound design for Mass Effect 1&2 and was Lead on the DLC's for Mass 1. Worked on Dragon Age, A Sonic game for the DS and worked on Star Wars:The Old Republic. Got tired of the corporate bs and left to do my own thing. Now I travel around recording aircraft and sound designing audio add ons for Microsoft's Flight Simulator X.

[sparhawk]

Seems with the amount of knowledge here that many of us here would have a computer related income.

 

Well, I started out as a programmer, but my work has now shifted to project management (trying to get back to programming because I don't really like that so much). So my workday is only about computers. In fact, with our new office since last year I don't even have officially a desk anymore. Just a laptop...

[Timmy777]

I'm an unemployed bum, was doing 1st, 2nd level IT support for about 12 months until I finally had enought of the travel and the sitting on a phone all day. Now I've been working on Andriod Games trying to build a dream and only making a few dollars a day from ad's. I'm looking for a Programming role but all I know is C++, they expect you to know SQL, Java, C# etc, etc.

[At0mic]

I'm a computer engineer and work on various projects using with FPGAs (http://en.wikipedia....able_gate_array). I'm either developed designs or components to run on said FPGAs, or writing software to interface with them on computers (C/C++ being my preferred language for such purposes). It's a neat job, even if it drives me insane sometimes.

[sparhawk]

I'm looking for a Programming role but all I know is C++, they expect you to know SQL, Java, C# etc, etc.

 

If you already know C++, Java is not a big deal to learn. And the C++ skills can benefit using Java because it is really object oriented.

[7upMan]

If you already know C++, Java is not a big deal to learn. And the C++ skills can benefit using Java because it is really object oriented.

 

Well, learning how to spell right is much more difficult. To quote from another thread:

 

Thief 4 was disaster, people though the voice actor was the disaster, but the entire game was a disaster. I think it all started off in the wrong direction, then someone put it back in right direction, but it was just too late, the damage had been done, there was no time to change anything, it was just cross your fingers and wish for a mircle. They should of taken blue print of Thief 2, create it on the level of thief2 no dumbing down, then just add aids for console gamers, that can be turned on or off. Stuff like map markers where you are. It would of been a great game. Instead they created a totally new blue print, got thing speeds wrong, level design wrong.

 

This article by iFixit founder Kyle Wiens might help you with getting a better job. I sincerely hope it will help you.