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?

As another professional novelist I would add - it's not a guaranteed earner and royalties can vary HUGELY, so you need another back up income to run a house and family, particularly when starting out.

I also think (and again being quite contrarian here) one of the best pieces of advice a young person can have is take all careers advice with a firm pinch of salt and a good dose of critical analysis, wherever it come from. It's not that you can or shouldn't trust adults around you or your schools career advice service or whatever but this advice can only ever be quite general and not tailored to you as a unique individual. And people do really enjoy a moan, if they're British they do anyway and listing all the bad things about their job doesn't mean it's not actually a good job.

As I say I'm quite happy with how it all worked out for me but I got some really bad advice from what should have been trusted sources when I was choosing my pathway. One notable example was my godfather who was a fairly successful barrister, but a bit of a bitter/grumpy kind of character albeit with a good heart. I think I would have been suited to the law as a career and in fact by a circuitous route have ended up in a quasi-legal role (and the legal bits of my job are the bits I like best). So I approached him for some general advice on law degrees etc when I was 17/18 and in one conversation he absolutely turned me off all branches of the law as a career, solicitors, barristers, paralegals, criminal corporate and civil law, everything. He convinced me every single legal job was badly paid, pointless and boring. In hindsight he was definitely speaking purely from his own probably quite negative experiences rather than objective truth or any particular consideration of what would work for me (he was very well off by any rational standards and I would be delighted to have as a good a salary as him but in saying the law is badly paid he was comparing himself to contemporaries at university who were hedge fund managers or investment bankers for instance). If I'd thought properly about what he was saying I would have realised that of all the hundreds of different jobs in legal they couldn't possibly all be awful and a dreadful idea for me to pursue but at that age I never even dreamt that maybe he hadn't really thought through what he was saying or had anything other than my interests at heart!

Private maths tutor. Work from my house (well classroom, I converted the office). Love my job, it’s all the good bits of teaching without the horrible parts. My students are wonderful and I care deeply about all of them. I know it must suck for some of them having to do maths on a Saturday so I do really try to make it as fun as possible which in turn makes it fun for me.

Im a veterinary nurse and most of my colleagues both vets and nurses all love their job. Of course it can be stressful but they could have their time again they’d still do it

@FlorenceBlack This is useful thank you. It is exactly the route my son is currently interested in.

Support work. Not great pay but immense feel good factor, fun, and no-one ever leaves!

Yes I support families where the baby has a condition or anomaly diagnosed antenatally.

Specialist midwives can work in screening, risk, public health, diabetes, pelvic floor health, fetal medicine, infant feeding etc. I had to work as a midwife on delivery suite, postnatal and antenatal wards as well as midwife led unit then the opportunity came for me to specialise in this field.

I’m a nurse and most of my colleagues have fallen out of love with the profession

Agree 100% I wonder if it's because it's a lot of work and all the out of hours studying to get to that stage so if you don't love it you just don't get there.

Me too. Best Job Ever!

I'm a dental nurse and I love my job.

So are there three people on this thread who have ‘professional novelist’ as their day job? That’s impressive, from everything I’ve heard it’s really hard to make a go of it as a livable career. What genres of novels do you write? Romance, sci fi, literary fiction? Do some pay better than others? Can you actually live (and raise a family?) off your earnings as a novelist, or is your income supplemented by a partner/inheritance/other?

I’m so jealous of all these people who love their jobs! I really don’t like mine at all anymore. Plus I’m in constant pain doing it. I’m desperately looking for a way into a new career.

As others have said, I can’t say everyone who’s in my sort of job role “loves” it, but I definitely adore it, and the rest of my team do too. I’m a senior marketing and comms manager for a very large health and pharmaceutical company. The pay and benefits are good, I get to work fully remote, and it’s so flexible around childcare/pick up drop off. I feel like I learn something new every day, my team and the wider teams are so supportive, and we get loads of exposure to different departments.

I work in a similar role and love it, but that is partly because my current employer is so good. Full time at home, loads of training and development, great team and the work is challenging and interesting

i didn’t like the same role nearly as much in my last company

I am passionate about my job and I'm good at it; I qualified almost 20 years ago now and it's all I've ever wanted to do. However, it is often stressful and emotionally and physically draining. Dealing with the animals is great, dealing with people is increasingly awful. Would I recommend it? Only if you can't imagine doing anything else and you are both mentally and physically resilient.

What an unrealistic OP. A “nice” job that everyone loves at all time with no stress and lots of money too. Yeah right. That’s just facile. Life is not stress free why would anything else be stress-free either? You’d be better off thinking about which jobs will be overtaken by AI, that would at least be useful.

The happiest people I meet through work are pharmacists, OTs, art therapists and advocates.

No lawyers yet? I think by and large practising lawyers don't like their jobs because of the stress and client pressure. But it is generally intellectually stimulating.

I am an inhouse lawyer doing risk and compliance and happy as a clam. It is well paid, flexible, can mostly be done from home. I have an operational team that report to me but that is not a plus because I am not keen on management. Otherwise, I get to use my full skillset (legal, intellectual, managerial, mentoring/training, IT/systems, partner/regulator wrangling, diplomacy whilst saying no). One of the best things is the ability to host paid internships for interns with a disability and give them work experience in my team, my way of paying forward. As the work is so varied, I can find things they can do to develop their interests and skills. My job also involves anti-money laundering hence combatting financial crime.

The job is stressful to the extent things keep changing, you have to constantly keep on top of developments and internal and external demands and the personal responsibility is huge. But the training as a practising lawyer put me in good stead for that. It is not a quiet life.

@DeluluTaylor what are advocates?

@blueshoesmental health advocates (IMHAs) or mental capacity advocates (IMCAs)

I used to but then had a boss who was hell on earth so I retired early

I’m in Finance and I would say 80-90% actively hate it and the remainder tolerate it.

Pays well because it has to - no one would do this shit otherwise.

This is such an odd response I am not actually sure you read the op at all! I never said a ‘nice’ job, so no idea what you are quoting there! I also never said stress free, as stress points in a job is a standard. How much control you have over those stress points and if they are manageable is key. I also never said that everyone loves it all the time. I said you and your colleagues enjoy the job. And I never said lots of money. Decent pay, job satisfaction, non-toxic and you and your colleagues would agree it is a good job was the criteria. You cannot just entirely make up your own post to argue against 😂

My daughter really enjoys her maths tutor sessions too. It is also the best bits of learning for students without putting up with the noise, drama and distractions of a normal classroom.