What surprised you most about your job?

anonymous@lemmy.world to Asklemmy@lemmy.ml – 60 points –
35

Nobody really knows anything. It's a mystery to me how the company hasn't crashed and burned yet. It's gonna happen eventually, there's no backup, no redundancy.

Are you working for the government?

I think The government has too much redundancy, but then again, it would depend on which government you are talking about

It's gonna happen eventually, there's no backup, no redundancy.

The government will bail out any sufficiently large enough corporation. That's why they don't have backups or redundancy.

I actually really like repetitive assembly work! I figured I'd lose my mind from boredom doing simple repetitive tasks (grab part from bin, load into welder, activate press, inspect weld, repack into finished bin), but actually, the job is so mindless that it frees me up to daydream all night about dumb shit.

Don't need to talk to anyone, don't need to disrupt my work to go do other things, and I don't need to pay attention to what anyone else is doing. I can just do my thing for eight hours, work through the plot of "hmm what would the next ten years be like if the city got nuked", and go clock out.

I think a guy sued his job for being too boring once. No reliable source, though. I think it was the repetitive job that did something to his hand. And according to my memory, he won.

Well if it hurt his hand then he sued for a workplace injury - an yeah, as much as I like assembly work they don't treat us right on the production line. Things could be so much better

As a software engineer: the degree to which poorly-conceived product requirements can make my work life a living hell.

How many times I have to repeat the same thing to the same people on a daily basis.

Just because it's a new unit/ work order doesn't mean the process changed on how we do it Rhonda. I still need the same things sent to me/ filled out. Just like last time.

That despite feeling like I have no idea what I'm doing most days, actually showing up on time and not drunk makes me "one of the better techs." Seems like a pretty low bar... Job security while I flounder my way along I guess?

Maybe you are pretty good at your job but you have imposter syndrom?

I work in Cybersecurity. Things do not feel as secure as they should be.

I work in cloud. The amount of people who have the ability to destroy the entire internet with one command is too damned high!

From someone in IT but not cybersec it seems like a lot of people in cybersec don't know much and are mindlessly following best practice guides or something without understanding why they do/don't need to implement it.

I regularly see in my own life people freaking out over things that don't apply to us or buying a million different software services. We are so many layers deep in cyber sec products but it would take 40+ days to restore from our backups..

Am I completely off base with this perception? Maybe I am putting to much weight on red team knowledge for a blue team job role.

If you want to feel secure, you should unlearn everything you know about security. That's the only way.

I was a truck driver, went back to school and now I work in an office. The most shocking was how nice and relaxed everyone was and how my manager actually cares about my wellbeing and about my development. It took me a good year to get used to that.

I work in a Latin fusion restaurant. The owner is Palestinian and cannot eat a significant portion of the menu.

I work as a children's illustrator and I was surprised that I had to change my art style to fit the market. I guess I should've learned sooner

In what way did you have to change it?

One of the easiest examples I can think of is that I had to draw five fingers instead of four.

The boss said anthro cat girls HAD to wear clothes 🙄

In a previous life, I was in the Navy as a Reacto Operator in the engine room of a ship. Nothing was done in the operation of that power plant without having a very large book in front of you with a step-by-step detailed procedure to follow. For most things, there would be a person reading the procedure while you did what they said, and there would be a supervisor there watching. Going off script was punished.

My current job is ...not like that. We are lucky if there is something written down, even if it is known to be incorrect.

Before my first job, I was expecting people raging and yelling at me (like Steve Jobs/Linus Torvalds or that insurance boss from The Incredibles movie) but I was welcomed by very friendly and curious people.

How much college did not prepare me for it! I learned more in my first six months than I did my whole college education.

The post-secondary education system in my country is primarily an immigration pathway first, and an institute of higher learning second.