The specific thing you spend the most time doing instead of the actual job you're being paid to do is your new profession. What's your new job title?

TheLameSauce@lemmy.world to Asklemmy@lemmy.ml – 132 points –

I'm now a pro magic the gathering player! Never thought I'd ascend to such heights, I'm terrible at magic lol

105

weirdly I'm still a Linux administrator but with way more fun services to maintain.

Can I ask how you got a job as a Linux administrator?

Easy, you mention you want to use BSD and the other IT guys give you that look.

I'm not a Linux admin, but I think there are certifications you can get and exams you can take to show you understand stuff about shell scripting and related topics, if that's what you're interested in.

I think they have questions like "Make it so a welcome message and the time display when someone logs into your Linux server", among other, harder things.

I don't know a huge amount about the job market, but just saying you have those kinds of skills on your CV along with a bit of experience in some other tech/coding/data stuff might even be enough.

Been using Linux for 25 years so i don't know if it's comparable to today but ironically it was setting up game servers for fun. Then i applied for a game sever hosting provider. i think they have mostly died out now. Then just kinda jumped over to web hosting this was before cloud was a thing. Then kinda moved into internal IT running corporate IT. The nice thing being 100% Linux admin i don't have to mess with AD and FSMO. Even though I know how to i keep quiet about that.

Huh, I now get paid to waste time staring at the internet. Neat, I guess?

'office/M365 tutor for geriatrics'

Compared to actual title

"Director of Information Systems"

Every day makes me understand Marvin from HHGTTG more and more.

I feel that in my soul. I'm a sysadmin, however it's mostly password resets 🥲

Same, but was a library clerk that was for "everything even vaguely computer-tasky for geriatrics and people 20+ who never touched a computer and don't even know how their $3000 phone works."

Yeah I had a plan when I quit: Quitting was the plan. Instant relief of so many mental symptoms I could name and some I probably couldn't lol. Don't care what happens now. Anything is better than that.

Greeeeat, now I'm jerking off someone for money.

Jokes aside, writing is the predominant single activity I engage in that's in the spirit of the question, and I've made some money doing it here and there. But it was never my job.

Director of building Magic the Gathering commander decks but not actually playing them

Professional slanderer of programming languages.

I've spent more time than I care to admit

As an Uber driver, I do everything I can to put people at ease. I end up in many deep, heartfelt conversations with my passengers. I introduce people to new music, and spread information about homeless assistance programs and other resources around the Denver area.

Uber is the platform from which I do my work as a community supporter.

I do Uber my own way, according to my vision. I am an Uber Mensch.

You guys have time for other things? I do my job and can fill my day with that. I sometimes have to stand my ground to make other people understand that no, I cannot do this additional tasks everyday, I don't have the time for that.

95% of the time it is busy. The other 5% I use to catch up with the stuff I have no time for when it is busy.

If I didn't make time to do anything besides work and sleep like that I would literally go insane after about 2 weeks

Well that is when I am at work. My work times are clearly defined and when the time is over, I go home. So I am limited to about 8 hours in a day, with a very rare exception of 15 minutes longer.

After work and in the weekends I still have time to chill, but at work I have no downtime except for breaks. Luckily my boss also knows how busy we are and doesn't complain if I cannot get everything finished, he just tells me what is a priority and what not.

That is really helpful for the stress levels, but it is still a pretty stressful job.

What kind of job you work? I hear people talk about having downtime to do nothing all the time on Reddit, but it seems like it's industry dependent. Ex: in healthcare there often isn't much in the way of downtime, but many office workers (obviously position dependent...can't think of specifics now) seem to say they do nothing all day

I work in a warehouse of a company that sells a pretty huge variation of products. I drive fork lifts on a regular basis, but my work is about 50% computer work too. But not in the office, my computer is in the warehouse.

I used to be a computer programmer, but being in the office all day drives me nuts. I need to be a little bit more active and I also like to change my view every now and then.

We have basically no downtime, there is always something to do, we are understaffed, the new hires don't have a clue so all the work comes to the experiences workers. We are also trying to change some processes but we barely have the time.

So for me, the question was just really weird, I cannot imagine having nothing to do. I don't even know what I would do if I have nothing to do. Probably take the day off or something...

Professional YouTube Watcher or Professional Hobbyist Language Learner.

Professional manual analysis of herbal terpinoid content (ignition-form expert).

Guitarist/cross stitcher, with a side job as a professional TV watcher lol

There was this Russian developer who got jailed for something a couple years back. I've looked up his website and it was a giant field of mines. Up to the challenge, I've proceeded for weeks to try to clear it during work hours. Finally managed and all I got was something akin to a laugh.wav as a reward.

Guess I'm a minesweeper.

I am so curious. Tell me more about this? Can you share a link? What are the mines like- I’ve seen devs do escape room style challenges where you’re solving a progressive puzzle using dev tools, is it like that?

Professional sleeper.

That should pretty much be the answer for anyone with a full-time job.

Might have misunderstood the wording - unless you do a lot of sleeping during working hours?

Oh, you mean something you do at your job that isn't actually your job. In that case eating launch? Though that's technically break time.

I get the spirit here but not sure I agree that it MUST be true mathematically.

A full time job is 32+ hours a week. Even if I use the American 40, that's still only 23% of the week not counting vacation or holiday.

Most people don't get more then 8 hours off sleep a night. That's 1/3 the day. 43% of the week for everything else.

That's enough time for you to do something more than sleep or work. Then count in time for vacation and holiday and if you don't sleep eight hours every night. And if you do stuff at work that isn't necessarily in your job title.

Due to my meds I can only sleep 4-5 hours a night.

My reasoning was that you sleep some amount of time every single day (let's say 6h). I doubt that many people will spend 6h on one specific activity/hobby every single day.

I really don't want to play Arma professionally I misunderstood the question

I basically do farming at the level of a second job, so I suppose it would be that even though I don't do it commercially (yet).

How is this going, where do you live, and what do you grow? I hobby-garden, have more space to plant and wouldn't mind selling some of it but afraid of growing too much of one thing and throwing everything out of whack.

I live in a rural area in northern Japan.

We just started a few months ago (we were supposed to get the house last year but, due to various factors, we couldn't take possession and get moved in until just before April). We're definitely learning a lot about farming and what works for our land and environment but, because of the time we got the house, we've been super rushed. I think we'll do better next year.

My goal is to position myself to deal with a lot of products foreigners living in Japan want and have trouble getting. That's a lot of peppers, different types of beans, etc.

Opposite climate here in Florida, it's okra season now & not much else wants to grow except the basil and mint but in the fall, winter and spring we can grow a lot of different things. We did get a couple of watermelons to harvest too, that was nice. Apparently they don't mind the 35C temps everyday, but once the rains start in earnest it's just okra time.

Fennel isn't fussy, that might be good too for you.

Nice! I hadn't really thought of fennel.

Cucumbers and okra have been our two most successful things so far. Most of my herbs are doing OK as well, I suppose. We've hit 35 a couple times this year. The forecast has us mostly in the upper 20s and low 30s for the next few weeks. I just got second planting potatoes in, so we'll see how that goes. I planted a bunch of daikon radish, it came up nicely, then died a couple of days later. I'm not sure if it's the intense sun and heat or if I needed to get water to them again sooner. I've still got more seeds, so I might try planting them again later in the season.

Linux Sysadmin. Funnily enough, that's the career I'm in after procrastinating a lot during my ecology studies.

Being a tech savvy person in a science field is a one way trip to becoming sysadmin accidentally.

Current Job title: programmer

Effective job title: Sysadmin.

One thing I spend some time on is building out my Lego city.

I always wondered if people still make quirky Lego cities like the old days

Lego makes a lot of sets designed to be a city. The problem is that you need a full room to build out a city.

I've built a mini city on the scale that they released the mini modular set as. It is on the scale that this guy made his sets: https://legominimodularguy.blogspot.com

I think my city is better, though.

Coffee taster..

Second this, other than Starbucks, coffee is pretty crappy. Any places worth checking out will be highly appreciated

I live in a medium sized US city, and even here, StarBucks is pretty much the bottom of the barrel. Where do you live that StarBucks is the best?

Edit: Not throwing shade, genuinely curious. I had this situation in my hometown. But India is a tea-centric culture, so it's understandable.

Costa, or any places' (UK) local cafe's, you could go into the middle of nowhere and still find a cafe or freehouse

I drink homemade mixes, Starbucks it's good also, check out YouTube for different kinds of homemade mixes there are some which taste pretty good made with instant coffee.

Christ on a bike I wouldn't take coffee advice from either of yous two loons

If bikes existed in that era, you best believe he would have rode one

And he still wouldn't have cycled to Starbucks 🤢

I don't get it. Why do people like Starbucks? To me it's bitter and granular. Compared to a Nero which is smooth and sweet.

Yet, many avid coffee drinkers I know love the taste of Starbucks. Is it a genetic thing?

Is it a genetic thing?

Probably more of a cultural one. Like how even Americans with Scandinavian ancestry consider black liquorice taste bud poison but us Scandinavians IN Scandinavia generally can't get enough of it 😁

i’m from melbourne, australia which is one of the best places in the world for coffee… when i go to the US i try to find good coffee but our version of good tends to be VERY different

US good is a dark roast - which i find very bitter… australian coffee (and melbourne in particular) is quite a light roast, which is more acidic but less bitter

i find most good coffee in the US to be pretty undrinkable (this probably comes down to choice of preparations: black drip is pretty weak; espresso starts out strong), but a starbucks blonde is… inoffensive (note with relation to your comment: a light roast is probably what you’re talking about; especially a light double ristretto… a ristretto is a half shot, twice… the bitterness from coffee comes at the end of the shot, so nero is perhaps a light roast double ristretto… you also tend to get most of the caffeine in the first half i think? so it’s more caffeine if that worries you)

so when i’m in a rush and really just want to not hate what im putting in me, ill find a starbucks not because its good, but because its fucking hard work to find a good coffee that’s also my taste - my usual cues for a cafe just don’t work in the US, and there’s no a fantastic cafe on literally every corner so the choice is even harder

Most of the time I just get a standard coffee and they taste the same between all cafes and coffee shops, and with standard drinks Starbucks is cheaper than Nero, but at custamizing drinks level price doesn't matter

1 more...
1 more...
1 more...

Without looking too far my prediction is to see 2 varations of replies mostly:

1.) I do something completely unrelated and enjoyable because my job is chill, or I'm good at it, and so on...

2.) I actually do my boss's job and maybe even their bosses' jobs,, because I actually do the work that gets done, but am still paid at peon-level.

Professional Kingdom of Loathing player, I guess! I may spend more time on other things, but other than biological necessities, KoL is the only thing I do every day no matter where I am 😁

I gave up in my second month of grinding for rare vertebrae for the Bone Dragon. Glad to know more patient people have fun with KoL. GLHF

Using KolMafia for configurable automation and tons of other helpful scripts and the wiki to look stuff up helps tremendously! If I had to go without either, I'd probably burn out pretty fast too lol

Professional flight simulator pilot. I can fly a Boeing 737, 747, 777, 787, Airbus A300, A310, A320, McDonnell Douglas MD-11, and BAe 146, as long as there are no system failures and I can access my Navigraph charts.

Time compression would be great for those long haul flights as well. NYC to Tokyo in a few hours at 4x time would be sweet.

I'm a pro TTRPG think-abouter... Or a pro Pathfinder prepper.

Professional Guinea pig Petter

Please refer to me as Total War XMunk in the future. I shall reign terror upon this land.

Well, either that or I'm now a professional pilgrim... gosh, I wish you could get paid for just walking a lot.

Is this specifically things we do during work hours more than our actual job? Or what we choose to do with our free time?

Cause if it's slacking off at work, sadly, I am probably now a professional Solitaire player. If it's in my free time... Well, my ADHD keeps me hopping from activity to activity so often let's just call it "Special Projects Manager"...

Tracing shapes & cutting them out.

It's like 20% sewing, the other 80% being planning, geometry, resource management, tracing, and cutting.

And I often discover that I'm still bad at math! Pain. 🫠

I really hope everyone’s answer is professional sleeper, otherwise we have some very unhealthy people.

You misread the prompt, it's during work hours, not the whole day. Unless we'd expect people to sleep during work hours instead of the rest of the day to be healthy.

I watch anime professionally? I guess I'm writing anime reviews now, or something?

Looks like I'm a professional sleeper...

Time for some OT! 😴