Rate your job: the thread

Rate your current/latest and past jobs (based on the experience of the job itself, try to leave pay levels out of it) on a scale of 1-10, 10 being "I feel incredibly lucky to not only do this but get paid for it", 5.5 being neutral/ambivalent, and 1 being "I nearly hit send on the resignation letter in my draft emails every day and sometimes the train tracks seem like a fine place to end my morning commute."

I would rate the three full-time jobs I've had at 5, 3 and 2. 1st was government, 2nd was a small company, 3rd was a megacorp.

Edit: Other people are giving details so I might as well expand:

1st full-time job, government agency, started doing fairly basic stuff like data entry and database maintenance and expanded into sysadmin & development (mostly full-stack web dev) and multimedia editing, occasionally very interesting work but mostly terribly boring, generally low-stress at least and usually a rather chill pace except in the spring and early summer which was the busy season. Good people at the job, don't remember ever being treated unfairly there. Being government work, everything was mummified in the red tape of rigid policies and procedures, although that's not all downsides, it makes the workplace very...deterministic. Sometimes totally different government departments would contact me for help with hard problems. One big downside: when political parties changed, dumb E36 M3 would usually be foisted on us from above, sometimes along with a consultant who would turn out to be a conman essentially laundering some grift. Got a few interesting stories from that job. Left essentially due to low pay but some dumb E36 M3 from above at the last minute was threatening to make the job worse as well, they were really sad to see me go. Likely would've stayed longer if the pay were more competitive, but I'd also recently come to the realization I'd taken the last half-decent IT job in the small island economy and that anyone else who had one either didn't get it on their own merit or started their careers in an economic boom period when random people could get the kinds of jobs that were normally only handed out to cronies of whoever was in charge, so there was nowhere to go but emigrate. 5/10

2nd: Small IT shop, started out assembling and configuring PCs in parallel at high speed which wasn't too bad in itself (felt like tending a zen garden compared to my next job), but the boss was hard to work with (another coworker wasn't the easiest either). His management style was half drill sergeant, half gang leader, all intensity. The place was really struggling to keep up with the amount of work they were taking on. Turned out the last guy in my position ghosted them after less than a week. I worked hard to keep a good relationship with the boss but it was clear we weren't meshing, he was a person who struggled to have a calm and cordial disagreement even on work-related technical issues, and he was super hard on his workers while I'm already hard on myself. He canned me after about a month, I told the boss that the place was running on the ragged edge of disaster in the exit interview, and I keep going back and forth on whether that was too harsh or a harsh truth that needed to be said. On my last phone call I was talking with the sales guy and he was joking about how crazy the workload was there. 3/10

3rd: Healthcare megacorp, worked in the software department doing support for medical records software. The software was stupendously complex and the amount of learning required up-front was immense, it quickly became apparent that if I could trade in 90% of my tech skills for specific knowledge of the application I was supporting I would be much better at the job. Mostly super-boring work, and the volume of it and the pace required was generally nuts. People were good but the job was very demanding. The best part was probably doing outage response, to me it was straightforward work I could do with little risk of an open-ended quagmire and made me feel like my tech skills were still good for something, plus a guarantee of no interruptions with incoming support calls while it was happening. I was good at that, kept their outage response times very low, pulled off some super creative fixes for weird problems, and improved their outage handling/diagnosis processes as well. They didn't really want me doing that though, and my work on improving diagnostic processes contributed to the software becoming more reliable so there were less outages to fix. Over time I was getting pushed away from that onto rote miserable support drudgery and more time taking calls which I hated. Caught on to people sharing creative ways to sneak in overtime to keep up with their workload so I knew I wasn't the only one struggling. I was getting burnt out, told them I was unhappy with it and tried to transfer to a different department, didn't work out and they let me go with a severance package. 2/10

Hmmm...  I would say:

Current:    9.5   (large private company, remote now, maybe an 8 before that)

Pervious:   6    (large public biotech, frustrating to work at, but workload was low and very close to home)

Before that:  7  (smallish public startup, bought by large international public company)

Post-college jobs ranked on the GameboyRMH scale;

1st job aka Aircraft Co. #1 - 5.5  <-- got laid off and wandered into the wasteland in search of something ASAP.  Job did get me a start in an industry that at least pays pretty well.  Also pretty esoteric stuff and hard to get into a different adjacent field so that's a mixed bag.

2nd job aka Helicopter Co. #1 - 1 <-- apparently the wasteland is Philadelphia.  Quit at less than 3 months.

3rd job aka Defense Contractor #1 - 2  <-- Denver.  I do not miss Denver.  Or a defense contractor wanting to pretend they're just as capable as anyone you've heard of but they're really not.

4th job aka Aircraft Co. #1, pt. 2 - 5 <-- worse the second time around, stayed too long, but did like the idea of stability (that it kind of lacked)

5th job aka Helicopter Co. #2 - 6  <-- in this chapter our hero finds himself on the golden shores of the Long Island Sound.  Left due to family thing that I've not really talked about much.  Probably my favorite job.  Wish I had worked this situation differently but also happy I was brave enough to do what I thought I should do.

6th job aka Aircraft Supplier #1 - 2  <-- living near home spending every weekend with family trying to help with hard situation.  Job was whatever, only took it to be near home.

7th job aka Defense Contractor #2 - 2  <-- in which I ignore every warning sign in the world during my interview because the hard situation had changed and I could leave so I went to a very new location and hated the job.  And Covid hit in the early days of this so everything kind of stunk.  I did in some ways enjoy the alone-ness of it so I could deal with my own issues.

8th job aka Aircraft Co. #3 - 2 <-- Decided to go back to where Aircraft Co. #1 is located because it felt the most like home.  Took a job with a budding engineering & aircraft mod organization that was forming with state aid.  Very weird place to work.  

9th job aka Aircraft Co. #1 - 3 <-- So I'm back where I started, for the third time, and they're right when they say you can't go home again.  At the same time I don't hate it most days, just once in a while, like one day a month has me really seriously wondering what else I should be doing with my life.  Or maybe two or three.  But not four.  Career progression seems kind of not available to me here and I was lied to during my interview about a major aspect of what this will turn into for me so I've got a chip on my shoulder.  But... okay there's not a lot that's awesome about it.

• Job 1: Went from 7/10 to 3/10 because of management changes  
• Job 2: 8/10 the entire time. Left because of boredom and pay. 
• Job 3: 2/10. Shouldn't have taken it. Was lied to in interview process.
• Job 4: 9/10 for the first 2.5-3 years. 6/10 for the last 2-2.5 years. Management changes were terrible. Bad decisions at the C-Suite. Halted merit and bonuses while handing out gigantic golden parachutes to the idiots that made the bad decisions. Complete culture change, for the worse. Still a decent place to work, but it sure felt like our efforts went ignored for those last 2 years. 
• Job 5: Too soon to tell. I really like it so far and everyone seems to have mostly good things to say about the company, not in a brown-nosing blowing smoke way either. 

Seems to me this may have a lot to do with our attitudes about work, rather than the quality of the job...

Ive had a lot of jobs. There were difficult times at all of them. But I like my work... I'd rate most of them 7-9.

The toughest job I've ever had was when I was working for a guy called SVreX. 

My current job is a solid company, and a great fit for me. I'd give it a 9/10.

However, I'm pretty sure most people would hate it, and rate the job less than a 3/10.

My attitude has recently changed as I approach retirement. I'm ready to retire. So, the job hasn't changed, but my enjoyment of it has. I'm down to about a 4/10, but that's not the job's fault.  It's mine. 

... I did work for one guy who was a criminal. That job was awful. But I didn't stay too long. 

I'm a licensed Millwright and Machinist

Job 1: R&D division of a fiber and composites company. I worked with engineering to make crazy ideas come true, developing products and processes, and building prototype machinery. It really was a dream job, but the money was limited and I was stuck at that wage probably forever. I left after 13yrs to become a number at a large manufacturer, making a lot more money. It was the best decision I've ever made. 8/10

Job 2a: Automotive parts manufacturer. I started off in the dirtiest, filthiest part of the plant, working 12hr night shift, making enough money that I could finally take care of my family the way I wanted to. I loved working there, worked my way up to running a shift of 30 maintenance guys, and had the respect of everybody in the plant of 1100 people. We were bought by a certain rubber and hose company from Colorado that decided to close that particular facility. 9/10

Job 2b: After 11 years at 2a I transferred to a different plant. It was poorly run, and they treated the manufacturing employees like E36 M3. It was the worst case of elitism I've ever seen. I stuck it out for 10 years because it was close and easy, and left without giving any notice. Not my style, but they got back what they had been giving me for 10 years. 2/10

Job 3: Only two jobs in the previous 34 years, it wasn't easy for me to move on but I'd had enough. Packaging plant in the city I grew up in. Interesting and very easy job, with exceptional pay. I sometimes would help out in production, mostly driving forklift, because there was so little for me to do. It was an odd place that reminded me of what factories were like in the 70's with the way people acted. The whole place seemed like it was in some kind of weird time warp. Union shop, and the relationship was not good. On top of that there were rats in production that would go straight to management with any little thing. The animosity wore on me and in my second year I broke my arm at home, stayed off for two months on the insurance they provided, and decided I wasn't going back. 4/10

Job 4: Heavy equipment manufacturer, I've been here 2 1/2 years now. I work 3 days a week, with the intention that I reduce that to two and retire shortly after. They treat me very well, and while there's some BS in the department, I never see any of it, and almost everybody's good with me. I have an apprentice who's like a carbon copy of me at his age, and the money is good - especially for what I do. When we were having the discussion about reducing my hours, I told my boss I'd actually like to take certain days off so I could attend some racing and club events. His response? You tell us what you need, and we'll find a way to accommodate it.  You can't beat that. 10/10

Current job is a 9. I have been a stay at home parent for 17 years, but am almost at retirement. Soon I will be working on crapcans full time.

Dealer parts counterperson:  7

Insurance auto damage field appraiser:  8

Insurance auto damage desk reviewer:  5

Body shop estimator:  1

Body shop manager-without-the-title-of-manager:  5

Carpenter and drywall finisher:  3

And that pretty much covers my 40+ years of gainful employment.

I've had a few since graduating college at the end of 2005. My first TW job helping propel my career in this field. 

The current job, pay is meh, but the other benefits make up for it. I've got a great boss. The only real complaint I have is, I'd like my pay to be more inline with others in companies with my level of experience (my friend that helped me get this gig, has moved on, as a manager at different company and he was a manager her as well, thinks I'm underpaid by $20-30k per year). But I get a lot of other concessions, like my being able to have my fiance on my insurance to take care of her stuff. 


I will say, I'm glad my first job out of college was a claim rep for State Farm, a lot of people don't really understand insurance, so I'm glad I got the chance to really understand it. 

Pretty good and the people I work with and for are awesome

Job 1: Dropped/failed out of college after three semesters to join the circus, or in this case a Nascar North team on a very tight budget.  I'd rate it a solid 8/10.  Pros were I wanted to work on a Nascar team since I could walk.  After a year of volunteering they could pay me $150 a week to work part time, and my parents let me stay home to see if I could make this work and go somewhere with it.  They also picked up pretty much all my travel expenses, a lot of food at the shop, and some guys that liked to hang around a race car would also bring us food and such so my dollar or so per hour went pretty far.  It was the most fun I had at a job, we raced in the Busch race at Daytona, met all kinds of people I'd never meet otherwise, and have some great friends still.  Cons if you can call them that were some unhealthy habits, learned I didn't have the skill or desire to follow my dreams south.

Job 2: Local auto parts store, rate it 3/10.  Sponsorship drying up and the crew chief/car builder/transport driver/mentor moving south required some changes and moving too far for me to stay on.  I went to work at a local auto parts store.  It was a failing store, and I don't now enough about business but it seems like the owner bought to lose money from his other stores and had something going on where I was constantly shuffling inventory around.  i didn't ask many questions having learned from a high school towing job that when something seems off, knowing nothing is an asset should the Feds come to visit, which they eventually did, this time from the IRS.  Pros included little to do, often less that 25 customers a day, very little to pack out, an old guy that would answer my questions and teach me a bit of the parts business, surprising amount of time driving the store pickup around moving parts between his three stores. Cons were it was short lived, boring as all berkeley, low pay, and the boss was an inflexible lunatic.  Oh and some questioning from said Feds.

Job 3: towing/body shop.  5.5/10. Pretty much our only steady customer at the store was the body shop two doors down.  It was a small father and son shop, four bays and three trucks.  Dad ran the shop, son drove a tow truck and was the painter.  I was hired to learn to help the shop and take over the towing.  Pros, They taught me everything I wanted to learn. I could paint, deal with insurance adjusters and suppliers, and was left to myself on the towing side as long as money was coming in and their customers were happy.  They treated everyone there like family, time off was never an issue, they paid us and really didn't keep track of how much we took as long as it didn't seem like too many, if times were good there was extra money for everyone. The Cons, my hourly daytime pay was a bit low and I had to work nights and weekends on commission to make decent money, no health insurance, and the father didn't believe in hiring anything out so we dug the pit and built the downdraft spray booth, built an extension on the building, and numerous other projects after hours.

Job 4: City bus operator 6/10. Pros, it was the first job I had that paid real livable money.  I had health insurance, even a mediocre dental plan. After 30 years I can collect a pension.  Cons were relative, most demanding job I've had as far as there is no free time.  Bathroom breaks, meals, etc have to be squeezed into schedules, every minute is tracked, and some parts of management are miserable to deal with.  I worked almost every holiday, and family event over my first five years and after 23 years still work most holidays and at least one day a weekend. 

Job 5: promoted to line dispatcher 7.5/10. Biggest pro is freedom.  The job involves either standing at a fixed point on a bus route making service adjustments, and assisting bus operators and customers, or working out of a car monitoring routes and responding to incidents.  Once you reported to work you were pretty much on your own as long as you did your job well.  Management occasionally stopped by, and I was free to people watch, and most days were pretty good.  Cons.  Still stuck working a lot of nights, weekends, stuck working and missing a lot of special occasions like weddings, funerals etc.

Job 6: Manager, 5.5/10.  I had no desire to get promoted, but overtime had dried up and it looked like Jodi was not going to be working much longer. The bump in pay would be about enough to keep life pretty much the same without her paycheck.  Pros are a 10% bump in base pay. Cons are I don't pick my shifts or work locations like hourly workers do, I can go anywhere with no notice.  No overtime, i regularly work ten hours, a few times a year get called in on days off. Being salary i get nothing for the extra hours, a comp day if I work a full day.  Comp days are approved sparingly most of the time so they often only exist on a computer until they expire.  Even though were salaried, we punch in and out.  Any day less than 8 hours we have to use comp time even if we are well over 40 hours for the week.  I have the same health plant did as a dispatcher but being out of their union it costs me 7X as much per check.  That almost makes the raise a wash.  On call 24/7, they give me a phone and expect I am always reachable.  I'm trying to stay seven more years to collect a pension but keep edging closer to walking away and starting somewhere else.  Mentally it's the most exhausting place I've ever worked.              

Interesting couple "work related" threads lately....

Here's "mine".

1st job post college: Cad jockey for an engineering firm. Learned some baseline skills. Laughed a lot. 10 minute commute. 7/10

Wife graduated PT school and got offered 3x my pay so we moved. Found a job and worked there only until a prior interview called me back, maybe six weeks. No score. 

Got hired by a boutique firm ~10 employees. Got to work on "cost no object" waterfront homes and private clubs. Terrific chance to learn on the fly with good mentors. 10/10

Moved and got hired by my current [huge international] firm. Totally different. High rise condos, casino, office buildings.. now airports. Avoided many layoff rounds during recession; half the firm not so lucky. Endless resources but "slow played" on advancement and salary. 7/10

Left to try consulting. 20% bump in pay. Roofing. Waterproofing. Enjoyed it but hated it. Learned more in the lunch room in 18 months that I had in prior twenty years. Didn't have the mental bandwidth to juggle 60 projects. 6/10

Returned to previous firm, negotiated a promotion with another 10% bump in pay. Then got another promotion a few years after - now part of office leadership although my jam is technical not staffing so I do my best to dodge all that because I can take complicated projects and finish them successfully with great client relationships. Figured out how to balance most of the stress and mentor. 9/10

---------------------------

It's not easy to balance supporting a family (emotionally and financially). Thanks to the Suddards and GRM I enjoy a daily dose of pleasure. 

Reminder for those in a crappy job: you were looking for a job when you found that job. It's not the end!

In reply to Wally (Forum Supporter) :

Could you got back to line dispatcher? Take a demotion?

In reply to SV reX :

I think if people had the power and flexibility to treat their jobs like their jobs treat them then they'd have a different attitude about their work. Until that dynamic is possible or the norm then I think folks complaints and general unhappiness about work is valid and their truth. 

I just finished typing up a long post then the power went out, so here is the short version:

Goodyear engineering products (coop/Mechanical design engineer):  5

Broadcast vehicle/command center upfitter (mechanical design engineer): 7

Defense contract/direct govt. support (warm body):  1

Defense contract drone company (mechanical design engineer):  6

Aerospace galley inserts company (mechanical design engineer): 4

Aerospace interiors -> megacorp (mechanical design engineer/manager):  8

For context, this all takes place in a couple of small cities on the west coast.

Motorcycle parts: I think this was my first full-time job. Ran out of money going to JC and had to work, so I took a job at an aftermarket H-D style shop. The work was interesting and the clientele colorful, but the owner was a swaggering, womanizing sleazeball. I eventually spat in his face. 3/10.

Restaurant delivery: not quite a full-time job - technically, we weren't even employees - but a pretty good way to earn a living for a sometimes student, and I spent more years doing it than I'd like to admit. We were paid in cash daily and didn't stay in one place too long, but it wasn't the kind of thing that impressed the ladies or that would ever become a career. Still, 6/10 at the time.

Car sales: Lacking better prospects, I took a job selling Toyotas and stayed about a year. I believed in the product and enjoyed the work for the most part. The sales environment and culture was not for me. 5/10.

Mechanic gig #1: I worked in an old-fashioned family-owned service station that still did repair work. The owner turned wrenches alongside his employees. There wasn't much money in it and it was physically unpleasant (mostly due to the hot climate in that area) but the people were good and I learned a lot. 6/10.

Dealership parts department: This should have been a slam dunk for me, and in some ways it was, at least for the first few years. I eventually brought in hundreds of thousands of dollars in sales through active involvement on an enthusiast forum. They thanked me with salary caps and frozen wages. Eventually I took it all too personally  and they showed me the door. That was a blessing in disguise that probably saved my life. 3/10 on a good day and 1/10 on most of the others.

Mechanic gig #2: A local sports car specialist hired me to take some of the pressure off him. I built shop equipment, did a lot of brake and chassis work, took care of all the carbureted stuff that he didn't understand. Business management was haphazard and he paid me so poorly that it took news of a minimum wage increase for him to mention the possibility of a raise. I went back to school instead. 4/10.

Consulting engineering: After I enrolled in some CAD classes, an internship opportunity at a consulting engineering firm garnered an offer for full-time employment. At that point I was past 40 and ready to lock that in. The work is rewarding, there is ample opportunity for growth even without an engineering degree, and the outfit treats their employees like people rather than machines. Even even a blind pig finds an acorn every once in a while. 8.5/10 and climbing.

In reply to OHSCrifle :

Not really, we have a year to go back which has long passed. I could screw up badly enough to be demoted, or I could try and make a case that this is a hardship but either way the depot I came out of has closed down so I couldn't stay in Manhattan and would end up in another location. That would add two or more hours to my commute every day.  

Job # 1- was a 3. I was a freshly graduated Airframe & Powerplant mechanic and I got a job in a local FBO working on corporate jets. That was pretty cool to me at the time. I like fast, pointy airplanes. But the boss was about 80 years old and a very abusive alcoholic. He's get loaded at lunch and you could tell by his red face and nose. Then he'd start yelling at people for made up reasons. I had a real crush on Sandra who was the office secretary. I could look through the glass windows into the office each day and see him yelling at her all afternoon. At least once per week she would be in tears and would leave early. Somehow he always got her to come back to work the next day. 

Job # 2- was about a 6. I worked as a fleet mechanic for the Postal Service. I was the guy that fixed the LLVs. I was very good at the job and eventually spent much of my time in a service truck out on the road fixing mail trucks in the streets and parking lots of Fort Worth Texas. Not a bad deal at all. But, the shop was poorly run and they were always threatening to shut the shop down and sell the work out into the private market. In the end I quit and went on to a career change and job number 3.

Job # 3- started out as a 5, went up to an 8, then slipped down to a 3. I became a firefighter/paramedic at a medium sized city here in Fort Worth area. It started off lower because my job position was paramedic on an ambulance most days. I did not care for that at all. So I promoted to Engineer, which put me driving the fire truck full time and never on an ambulance. I still did EMS stuff but I was on a fire crew so it was just first-on-scene and assist the ambulance crew when they arrived and needed additional help. That was a pretty good way to spend the years. As time progressed, the job started to slide in my mind and eventually ended up about a 3. My city went broke and quit buying stuff like uniforms and replacement tools and equipment. We went 8 years with no pay raises at all. My fire truck would be in the shop every week as they tried to patch it up with no money. I remember one time they replaced one tire per month on my fire truck because they couldn't afford to buy them all at once. All my uniforms had holes in them. The air conditioner in the station was always broken. Even my bunker gear was legally out of date and had holes in it. Then they started mandating overtime constantly. The department was falling apart and people were quitting left and right and we couldn't find anyone to replace them. So I wound up working a lot of 72-96 hour shifts. Plus my brain got pretty full of some PTSD stuff from being on the busiest truck and running a metric ton of calls over my career. I turned in my papers.

Job # 4- its a 5 thus far. I'm 50 and retired. It's so-so. My retirement comes in like clockwork every month but I suffer from some guilt because my wife keeps working and I spend all day riding my bicycles or working on hobby projects. It's not as glorious as I thought it would be. I'm likely going to go back to work in some form or the other. It will be self employed in some manner. I'm too old and stubborn to answer to a new boss ever again.

yupididit said:

In reply to SV reX :

I think if people had the power and flexibility to treat their jobs like their jobs treat them then they'd have a different attitude about their work. Until that dynamic is possible or the norm then I think folks complaints and general unhappiness about work is valid and their truth. 

Until more people stop trying to live beyond their means - I suspect the dynamic will remain mostly the same.

I am pretty impressed with Gen Z. Some of them have clearly seen the misery and appear determined to avoid living the same way as their parents. 

First job: 4 years. high voltage switch manufacturing engineer. Coworkers were great, work was fun. 9 out of 10. 
 

switch design engineer (same company as before).  6 years. It was ok, pay was better, but coworkers and work environment was meh. 6 out of 10.

design engineer, commercial van equipment. 2 years mStarted off awesome, loved the coworkers and the environment. Then a new vp replaced my boss with a friend of his. The man literally used a calculator to add numbers in excel, but saw me as a threat so tried to push me down any way he could. 1 out of 10.

design engineer, cannabis cultivation. I loved this job. I built the department like I wanted, promoted to manager and had the best time working. I seriously loved this job, putting extra hours in wasn't work to me. The best office dynamic. But the company was run by morons and weed money dried out so I was layed off 22 months in. 10/10.

railroad equipment design engineer. My boss is awesome, but he was also my third boss in 5 months at this company. 2nd boss I was ready to quit shortly after arriving. I'm payed really well, I have a huge private office in a swanky shared office building, but I have zero interaction with anyone all day. I really hate it, and miss my old job. 2-10.
 

In reply to OHSCrifle :

Yeah and when genZ'ers said they didnt want a car, to pay for college, get married in their 20, have kids, or buy a house etc etc they get called lazy and unmotivated. I agree that the previous generations were taught that those things are what success looks like. We have to change that outlook for future Americans. 

I've complained before about how my industry, civil engineering consulting, has gone down the absolute tubes in my 15 years of employment. People are leaving in droves. Turnover is 100%, pay is lower than ever thanks to inflation, and clients have had so much control over the years that now everything is due with low budgets and extremely quick deadlines continuing the cycle.

I don't think I've had a job over a 5 or 6. I can't leave this industry fast enough. 

In reply to yupididit :

Yeah and the boomers can't understand why someone would want to work in absolute misery to live up to the Boomer's impossible standards. "In my day I worked for 38 cents an hour in a coal mine and hated my existence, so you should too" seems to be the attitude towards gen Z. No, they don't have to do that and they won't. Good for gen Z.