Machining is nice. I was in IT for little less than 20 years, programming and sysadmin. Then I started hand engraving and got good at it. Now I am fulltime machinist with my own company and quite a few machines. Currently I'm also in uni studying mechanical engineering. Seems like I learn new things every day - metallurgy, metrology, machining etc etc. A wondrous rabbithole of learning, it is.
Can you give some exaples of a typical popular profile targeted at your demographic? My Insta feed is currently filled with only machining and related topics, but I also don't check the "what's hot" or things like that.
Well, disclaimer -- I'm gay so that's a bit of a confound. The object of desire is also who you want to be. Some studies suggest we are particularly susceptible to this kind of image-relational problem, and maybe for that reason. (I can believe it.)
Anyway in the name of research, I pulled some Instagram URLs from a Telegram chat with some friends. To their credit they mostly seem to post memes and jokes from Instagram, not Instagram models. But the first non-meme account I pulled up is a good example, actually: https://www.instagram.com/benjaminbenz/ (somewhat NSFW?)
Exotic vacations, mountain-top kisses, ATVs, cute dogs, fast cars, jet-setting, gym gains, beautiful mansions, fishing trips, big muscles, sports, a too-sexy boyfriend, and a good dose of almost-tasteful butts and some sexual suggestiveness. No cares. All happy. In love. Damn, I want all that. Why isn't my life like that? Sure, it's mostly fake. But good luck convincing my amygdala of that.
Yes, indeed! I'm from the "cold non-smiling" country as well and going first time to Atlanta was very weird experience with random people on the street "how are you?"ing you.
I don't see a reason why any time is too late to get out. I was in software development and sysadmin field for about 15 years. Then started hand engraving (got quite good at it) and now I'm a full time CNC machine shop and growing steadily. Loving (almost) every day of it. Also went to college to study mechanical engineering. Of course being your own boss usually doesn't let you switch off at the end of the day, but that was just the choice I made for myself.
I believe I could get back to IT if I really wanted to, or needed to. Would need few months of getting up to date with all latest developments and living in the "land of the unicorns" I don't think getting well paying job would be a problem.
Book called Numismatic Forgery is absolutely brilliant. Talks about how different coins can be forged depending on era, how making technique should match the original coin (ancient coin dies were hand engraved, so should the modern forgery). Some coin forgeries are made from remelted coins of same era but of lesser value, so that metal would match etc.
Thanks, if that's what was referenced above, it certainly isn't a study to see if women were underpaid - but to see if anyone was underpaid.
And reading the brief content:
> There are a couple of reasons that the pay equity analysis required more adjustments in 2018, compared to 2017. First, the 2018 analysis flagged one particularly large job code (Level 4 Software Engineer) for adjustments. Within this job code, men were flagged for adjustments because they received less discretionary funds than women. Secondly, this year we undertook a new hire analysis to look for any discrepancies in offers to new employees—this accounted for 49 percent of the total dollars spent on adjustments.
I suppose a natural question would be if an overpaid se4 is an underpromoted se5, or if an underpaid se4 is an overpromoted sr3.
I understand the try to correct for "similar roles" - but that doesn't mean the promtion/roles are accurate.
My route has been opposite, from white to blue collar. I was software developer and sysadmin for 16 years, straight out of school. For past 3 years I've been full time hand engraver and CNC machinist at my own company. I get to do very cool actual physical objects, starting from design with customer all the way to the finished product. Not a single regret so far, even though the office job was cozy and paid very well.
You are not a blue collar worker. You are a business owner. Being a business owner sometimes entails working blue collar like work but it doesn't mean you are a blue collar worker.
This is something I see a lot. When people say "my plumber makes $200k/year" what they mean is the guy who owns a plumbing business they use makes that much money. Very few blue collar workers that aren't also small business owners make over $100k/year and it can be pretty hard to get the gigs that do (usually require having many years of experience and being in the union in a particular area like NYC, or having a very rare specialty). The only "easy" way to break $100k/year as a blue collar worker is to work lots of overtime, which isn't exactly an apples-to-apples comparison with white collar jobs
