Careers: Money vs. happiness?

[shootingstar]

Just because you can handle it intellectually, doesn't mean that engineering job is right. You HAVE TO HAVE THE RIGHT PERSONALITY. If you don't, you'll hate it... Well come to think about it, any job, you have to have the right personality.

Well, true. Or if one's natural skills are abit different than chosen career, a person does have make a very conscious effort and allow themselves to fall into a personae on the job. Then off the job, the person is something abit different.

I can appreciate GLC's desire to get out of pure engineering technical aspects. My dearie pulled himself out of it after being in pure engineering work for first 5 years of his career..he moved into analyst, then management and contract negotations. (He loves the latter and is quite skilled at it.) He found technical engineering work too narrow. He liked jobs which dealt more with people and organizational strategy. He spent 7 yrs., yes 7 yrs. of part-time evening courses (in addition to full-time job) to complete his MBA which the degree did serve him so well in the remainder of his career. I couldn't have done evening classes for so long.

And even in cycling related work. Right now, he's negotiating some sponsorship deals for cycling conference. He's led some visioning exercises for some organizations as a volunteer because usually in small non-profit organizations people are highly impassioned by their mandate but may need some sharpening to plan and manage their organizations and staff well.

For myself, all of my jobs always included client interface/service work in addition to planning and technical aspects. I know that my personality is best motivated and rewarded in seeing directly the effort/impact of my service/work....for the clients. Even if clients have similar problems, I don't see it as boring/tedious to hear it once more again. Each person expresses their problems differently.

But it helps to work in an dept./organization where the vibe is not toxic or kept at a minimum.

Local university here has an extensive outdoor sports and fitness program for faculty, students and general public. They have a cadre of permanent staff who led the rides, treks, hikes, etc. with their inventory of rental gear. That type of set-up would be cool to start off as a taste. They seem to have a sophisticated operation with e-commerce registration, evening talks, etc.

OR start up something like with some other people in partnership! Or begin at least by offering /partnering to do a workshop...on cycling for newbies or something.