what is your job

[Master fettler]

Past 20 years working in a well know brake pad manufacturers setting up dies in machines as a team leader. Been a general builder and also many moons ago got a city and guilds in panel beating and commercial body building. Can pretty much turn my hand to most things mainly self taught. 3 grown up kids so you learn to fix a lot over the years

 

[MattF]

Mine consists of keeping a lot of women content. Impossible job or what?

 

[doubleboost]

Vehicle mechanic / MOT tester
Motorsport background
Messes about with machines welding sets & video cameras

 

[GW8IZR]

Vehicle mechanic / MOT tester
Motorsport background
Messes about with machines welding sets & video cameras

And have staff parking permit at local A&E

:-)

 

[bigfellayork]

Break down and recovery industry for me.
Father was an engineer and gladly this gift was passed to me.
Suffer from bit of OCD as far as keeping my truck clean and workshop reasonable.
Like to learn and never to proud to ask “how’s this work”.

 

[Bob Rivers]

Relationship Specialist (no joke) one divorce, one ex fiancée and single suggest I'm anything but
But this is a good thing as it means I can "afford" to keep my Series 3 swb ragtop.....

 

[MattF]

Relationship Specialist (no joke) one divorce, one ex fiancée and single suggest I'm anything but
But this is a good thing as it means I can "afford" to keep my Series 3 swb ragtop.....

Classic case of: "Do as I say, not as I do".

 

[brightspark]

[

Relationship Specialist (no joke) one divorce, one ex fiancée and single suggest I'm anything but
But this is a good thing as it means I can "afford" to keep my Series 3 swb ragtop.....

plenty of experience then [/QUOTE]

 

[bigegg]

Degree in pure maths.
15 years as a technical manager for a printing ink company.
Then 10 years self-employed selling second hand books.
Sold that, and retired on the proceeds
Now (at 46), I keep myself busy making stuff, and studying for a second degree in business management/accounting/law

 

[indy4x]

Last 18 years I have worked in IT for a large Welsh NHS Health Board (14000 staff). Started off as a junior engineer and worked up but last 6 years have been the ICT Operations Manager. Would love to get back into the technical stuff tho, really miss it

Prior to that did property maintenance for a few years and before that worked for a guy restoring old Triumphs from the 60's and 70's

1st job after leaving college was at Tower Collery, working for Fairport Engineering in the washery they designed and built for the NCB, got involved with buying for the plant, planned maintenance and breakdowns, not on the tools but scheduing the maintenance and sourcing stuff when things went wrong

Inbetween the above have had various short term jobs at agencies and stuff to fill in the time between jobs, everything from office cleaning, fork lift driving, labouring etc

Always loved messing with things electrical and mechanical, did Engineering Drawing and Engineering Workshop Practice at O level in school and been getting oily and dirty since early teens

 

[Olderisbetter]

I have had so many jobs just to learn and earn, But now i am just a professional lay about.

 

[Nomad]

^ pretty much the reverse of indy4x above

I started tinkering with mechanical stuff when I was a kid (fixing the alternator on my Honda 50 when I was about 8 etc) and still enjoy fixing random stuff. Have always loved mechanical stuff and anything with an engine.

20+ years as an IT specialist (lots of companies from small independents to multi-nationals) before a total career change.
Set up as a self-employed as Handyman / Plasterer a few years ago (after many years doing work on my own houses and helping family / friends etc).
Now looking forward to Easter as I'm moving house - but not sure which part of the country I want to move to yet. Fun times ahead

 

[Rocketman]

Did my apprenticeship for structural steel design originally and was studying on day release Civil engineering..... until the early 90s crash and the company went bust.

So there wasn't a lot around in structural steel design at the time as the building industry was hit hard, still had a year to go on the apprenticeship which didn't help.

Then I got offered a new apprenticeship in engineering design for power station work. Had to bin the civil engineering and started mechanical engineering on day release along with a totally new apprenticeship . Within a year and half that company went bust

So this time I carried on and finished the HNC in mechanical engineering while doing odd jobs to cover living.

After that I bagged a job in mould tool design & plastic part design.

Now days I'm self employed still doing mould tool & plastic part design. Occasionally I do general engineering design jobs like at the moment I'm working on convey scrapers.

 

[Crater Creator]

Been in oil industry since leaving school 30+ years ago, worked up to offshore installation manager for the last few years but just got laid off due to a change of owners - that's why I've been so quiet on here.
Currently working on finding a new job... there are a few on the horizon though. Fingers crossed.
Did welding and maching at college many years ago and it just kinda stuck, I've had a thing for it ever since, but only managed to start doing it properly at home a year or two back.

 

[DennisCA]

General IT stuff at a small company out in the sticks.

I do a bit of everything, developing the website, internal management systems, help desk for coworkers. I make traditional newspaper ads, work on product manuals, take product photos, record and edit videos, develop and make brochures, planning for fairs were we sell a lot of products, handling our social media aspect (mostly just a facebook page). Right now I'm doing work with GTM (google tag manager) and adding enhanched ecommerce logging to our site, involves a lot of javascript work right now, more familiar with c# and asp.net, and we still run legacy classic ASP systems too.

 

[MCKDAVID]

Time served apprentice M&E on building services, we did a bit of everything on plant maintenance, steam, heavy oil boilers, heating, refrigeration and ventilation etc.. pretty diverse apprenticeship. The boss was pretty switched on, and shifted the apprentices around all the trades for the first few years, so go a really good opportunity to learn. Fix it not change it as someone said.. in my own time I did night classes on welding / fabrication for pipework and ducting. All good training. I went offshore as soon as my time was out. I landed on my feet, I was put working on commissioning with a really old school engineer. He convinced me to go back to school and get the paperwork for mechanical design. Did that 4 years on block release while working back to back offshore - not an easy time, but no regrets - it stood me well.
I was on the tools offshore for the same company while I was studying, managed to talk them into putting me in their engineering office when I qualified. Spent the next 20 odd years, design, construction & commissioning of HVAC systems offshore O&G, in the North sea and international. Always away from home though. Company was looking for voluntary redundancy, weighed it all up, and decided.. I've set myself up light fabrication / general M&E repair at the home workshop basically everything I've done for the last 30 odd years but for myself this time. Been doing it when at home for a good few years so already have a few lines of enquires, contacts and well known in the local market, either way make or break, I'm looking forward to a new experience, being home every night...

 

[rcx132]

Go into any business and deploy them a system that makes their business run better. And anything business I.T related.

 

[daleyd]

I left school and joined the navy at 17, did an apprenticeship in weapons engineering and specialised in ordnance and control.

When I left I worked for about 18 months in the electronics industry as a service engineer installing and maintaining equipment for the SMT electronics industry. That all took a turn for the worse when the dot com bubble burst in early 2000’s so I took redundancy and went to work as a shift electrical tech for Pilkington.

Lasted about 2 years there and then got the hump because they didn’t give me a project engineers job so went around the world as a service engineer for magazine/newspaper printing equipment machinery which lasted 9 years.

When my daughter came along 5 years ago I’d decided I had enough of being away so much so now I work mainly with PLC/PAC systems, scada and data recording along with drives and pretty much any other sort of industrial automation stuff - my work has taken me from being almost purely mechanical with a bit of electrical stuff thrown in right through to now where I rarely do any mechanical work and most of my job is programming.

 

[rtcosic]

Retired Chemical engineer. Diamond, Gold and Uranium mining in South Africa, Then oil refining.
Refinery Manager of one of the now closed refineries in Pembrokeshire. Last gig was back to South Africa to manage company share of 2 refineries, lube oil blending plant and HSEQ for all of downstream.

 

[Gwil]

Fascinating mix of experience on this forum.

I used to be Head of Children & families Social Services for a county. Bailed out, couldn't stand the politics. Spent a while doing independent inquiries into deaths of children in local authority care. Enough was enough....Sailed away over 20 years back in a boat we built in the back garden!

Since then I've been a rigger/boatbuilder, qualified as a Yacht & Commercial Surveyor, finally retired, and spend my time fixing stuff for the locals here who don't have the tools, expertise or often just the money to pay to get their trucks, water pumps, tractors etc. back in working order. In return we get hay for the donkey, buckets of vegetables and some great friends.

Complete change of life best thing I ever did.