Is anyone in a career that they, and everyone they know in it, enjoy?

[CarrierbagsAndPJs]

Is anyone in a career where they, and everyone they know in that career path, would say this is a great job and career path to be in, and you would encourage others into it? Decent pay, job satisfaction, non-toxic etc?

This is on the back of weekly threads about not wanting children to go into various different roles such as medicine, nursing, teaching, where others will always disagree and go on to say how awful it is but they love it…

What are the jobs that are actually good?

I’m a civil servant of 25yrs and love my job. Hardly anyone leaves my dept, so must say something.

I've changed career path fairly recently and now work in insurance. Lots of colleagues have been in the same industry (even the same company) for their entire career.

It's much more interesting than I was expecting (phew!) and can be very well paid, depending on what you do. I've come to it later in life, but hope to increase my earnings as I gain additional industry-specific qualifications.

And what dept is that? Sounds great.

I work in the heritage sector and have done since leaving uni almost 20 years ago. I love it, and have always loved it. A lot of the people I work/ed with in this sector really love what they do and have a real passion for it. I think, to some extent, you do have to enjoy it because the pay for entry level and intermediate positions can be bad. I'm now working for a heritage based government body and the pay is OK, but they give you more in terms of annual leave, enhanced maternity benefits, looking after the wellbeing of their staff - and that stuff helps a lot.

I'm not the poster you are quoting but thought I'd answer your question. It's reasonably common for midwives (and nurses, allied health professionals etc) to specialise and develop specific knowledge/skills in one area. It's useful for career progression/to get paid more as well of course as being fulfilling and interesting to develop expertise in a chosen area. A specialist midwife wouldn't usually focus so much on conditions that babies have (as after birth the baby will be looked after by neonatal/paediatric clinicians - neonatal specialist nurses and dieticians, physio etc are very much a thing though as well of course as doctors).

Common specialisms for midwives are multiple pregnancies (twins/triplets etc), breech births, perinatal mental health (so looking after women with serious mental health conditions during pregnancy and around their birth), bereavement (looking after women whose baby sadly dies before or shortly after birth) or safeguarding.

I'm an epidemiologist - I design and carry out healthcare research studies.
I think it's pretty great and I think that's a common view - I find it generally low stress (except for occasional tight deadlines), I'm paid well, I mostly WFH and its reasonably flexible, I feel like I'm doing good in the world. I've never experienced any workplace bullying or toxic behaviour or sexism, generally everyone I work with is always polite, respectful and hard-working.

I’d say mine
As an Architect
I don’t know however how admin and architectural technicians view it but
all Architects I know and have worked with are very passionate about their jobs and work.

When your passion and your hobby become your job, whats not to love.
Its what I told my kids when they were thinking about what to do in life

Cyber security/IT, but does depend on the workplace culture as with anything!
However, I would recommend it to anyone (just steer away from 'trend' sub industries like AI unless your risk appetite is big)
I see arguments on threads sometimes about how nurses/doctors are paid a good wage so why are they striking etc, and it makes me wonder if people would still say that if they knew what kind of salary you could make in tech without being responsible for life and death, without getting abused every day, without the years of training, awful shift patterns, without the stress.... we 100% dont pay medical staff nearly enough!

I'm a paediatric physio and all my team and I love our jobs. Of course there are hard days, when we lose a child we have known for many years (some of our children are life limited) or when a parent has a go at us (of course we can empathise they only want the best but it's hard to be shouted at when trying to do our best). But it's a privilege to look after these amazing children and get to know their families. I have done it for over 20 years and couldn't imagine doing anything else. Of course there are frustrations, when the nhs can't provide enough, or when families don't engage, but at it's core it's a great job, with reasonable pay and flexibility to make it work with my own families needs.

Paediatric nurse. We have a really happy team and everyone enjoys their job.

I work in a university library. It’s challenging and not particularly well paid but I work with wonderful, dedicated, innovative people and I love it. Every day is different.
Having said that I’d advise anyone to think very carefully before going into working in HE as the financial situation is so precarious at the moment, and the future is very uncertain.

Gardener here and have never met a gardener who wasn't happy and passionate about the job. Gardeners seem to be decent people, generous, kind, peaceful sorts and are great to work with.

You have to love gardening and working outside all year round but if you do then there are lots of career paths including the option to just have a quiet, healthy, outdoorsy sort of life. Pay varies from great to pretty poor.

I worked in a public library and then ran an academic library, I unfortunately became very ill so left. I haven’t worked in libraries for years now but it was a lovely job. It has however changed and my two good friends who still work in both types of library say it’s changed beyond recognition for the worst.

Me music and DH tech. Not everyone in those fields love it though, obviously.

Maybe a bereavement midwife

Work in a hospital (admin role) and love my job and colleagues. Although not amazing pay, never worry about having a job, good pension, full pay for 6 months, then half-pay for 6 months if I was ever to get a serious illness (I barely ever take a day sick but it’s good to know just in case anything awful came along). Everyone in my team gives everything to the job and supports each other.

Several of my friends have been made redundant from private companies over the last decade, so the job security/working school hours through primary school is worth the slightly lower admin pay for me.

Medicine BUT that’s because we’ve weeded out everyone who wasn’t completely devoted to being a doctor, in the first few years of training. The only people who make it to consultant are those who really really love being a doctor.

I’m an Occupational Therapist and I don’t know any unhappy ones.
if you don’t much like your chosen speciality there are plenty more to try.

I’m a hospice nurse and I love my job, but it’s very workplace specific. I’ve disliked other roles I’ve done immensely.

I think these things are very culture driven, the team I work in are absolutely passionate about what we do, we work so well together with a common aim. Management is visable and hands on, we are included in service design, we (usually) have excellent staffing. All of these things add up, yes the pay isn’t as good as the NHS but I’m fine with that as we have enough to get by.

My DH is also an IT architect - he's been in the same role for nearly 20 years. ND accepting, a solid group of steady workers. They are mostly not customer-facing (project managers are a PITA, but otherwise solid work) its seems to be a good balance of socially unsocial, good money and attracts a very particular type of person who seems to jell well together. (most of the department are plus 10 years)

Like several others on this thread I work in a pretty niche area (Medical Regulation) and while in some ways it meets OP's criteria in that I and nearly all my colleagues like it (I wouldn't say unreservedly love as like all jobs it has its stresses and challenges and trivial annoyances and boring bits) - it's reasonably paid without being staggering, is satisfying it in own way, has a good mix of intellectual challenge with people related things, good work life balance. But I wouldn't 'recommend' it to a young person as a career aspiration as such, firstly it would be very odd to recommend something so niche and secondly I think there's some chicken and egg with these kind of jobs that people who like the work and it suits stay and progress in that career and those who don't either don't start in the first place or move on swiftly to something else.

If I was asked for careers advice, and being a bit contrary to popular opinion, I'd advise the young person to get as high quality and broad an education as they can, focussing on their interests and skills but without unnecessarily narrowing their options and certainly without feeling it's important to choose a vocation at 16, 18 or even 21. I know our education system does encourage focussing more and more as you progress, but as a general rule the people I know who are most happy in their work/career (and within this group there's a huge range of jobs they do) are the ones who have been able to pivot and follow opportunities that interest them rather than relentlessly following a preset path (excluding of course those who have known since preschool they definitely want to be a doctor/teacher/fireman and achieved that, but I assume those people aren't in need of my advice!). On the other hand those who are most unhappy are either those who because of parental or school or just general social pressure chose a fixed pathway too soon and it ended up not working great for them but they then felt trapped, or conversely where they've just drifted in general jobs and not ever been able to find that one thing that really suits. In either scenario I think it would have helped for people to understand that it's not necessarily wrong to not know what you want to do particularly when you're still at school as you lack knowledge of all the many jobs out there and that it can be absolutely fine while you have the choice to either follow an academic or skill based interest without a defined onward pathway, and/or to experiment a bit before choosing something more long term...

I worked in large corporate banking roles and absolutely hated it. Most people I worked with didn't seem to like it much either.

I'm an accountant now, the training years are a slog. But most accountants I know are pretty happy with being an accountant.

I feel at lot of it is about who you work with. I work in events and generally love it, but there have been teams I’ve worked with that have really made me question my life choices and have wanted to walk away entirely.

I’m a warehouse supervisor in the returns and customer service department. I love my job.
I have just received an 11% pay rise.
My 18 year old granddaughter also works here in the warehouse and also loves it.
We are a small company so progression is very limited, but all the staff are lovely and it’s rare you hear anyone complaining about their job.

Occupational Therapy. You make a real difference to people's lives and everyday is different.