Well paid jobs that require you to be physically active?
In the past one two years however, my motivation has been on a steady decline. I have largely lost my interest in IT, partly because it no longer feels challenging, but also because I feel inactive.
I would love to do something else, optimally something that requires my being physically active. I am more athletic than 99% of my peers, doing at least 12 hours of sports every week, and I would love to expand on that.
However, throwing away all that I know feels wrong, it is the capital that I have built on, and I don't want to take a large cut on my salary. Perhaps more importantly, I need the prospect of advancing my career.
Any idea for jobs that are both well paid and require a lot of physical work? Of course, the right mix of physical work and science would be perfect, but I am guessing that such a thing does not exist?
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[ 49.8 ms ] story [ 173 ms ] threadIn personal training, one-on-one in a gym, you need absolutely no training, certification, or even knowledge to get started. It's a bad situation from the consumer's point of view, which I imagine means a bad situation from the point of view of competent, knowledgeable trainers:
http://www.stumptuous.com/how-to-choose-a-personal-trainer
Many trainers are fly-by-night, students trying to make an extra buck, people filling time till they get a “real” job. There’s nothing wrong with working part time as a trainer but often it results in people with minimal hands-on experience. If possible, find someone who has experience working with various types of people, and if you get really lucky, someone who has powerlifting or Olympic lifting experience.
The trainer I use now works at a small gym (where I pay $10 per month), charges $25 per hour, and gives me competent coaching on all the lifts I want to do, including powerlifting and Olympic lifts. He has a sports training degree and experience both as a high-level high school athlete at a school with a very sophisticated training program and also as an assistant trainer with a Division I college sports program. That gives him no economic advantage over the Brad-Pitt-in-Burn-After-Reading type trainers. If you go to a fancy gym and hire a no-nothing bimbo or himbo to train you, odds are they'll charge a lot more. Knowledge and enthusiasm for the job are cheap. If you want to make money in personal training, you have to sell yourself on the other factors: looks, rapport, motivational skill, etc.
P.S. Make sure you check out the sample job listing at the end of the post I linked above.
why are you implying that personal training has to be weight lifting? I personally find weight lifting stupid, useless and boring, not to mention that it's not the right way to work on the body I have and for the body I want to have. Just my 2 cents.
But I actually think that there might be a middle ground that involves sports and engineering. Perhaps a product or service and a reason to jump on the startup train.
Besides the immediate risks of drowning and dismemberment, a lot of experienced commercial divers end up with chronic damage from repeated decompression and being in the water all the time. And in the long run it looks like human divers are increasingly being replaced by ROVs.
roughneck (drilling): "A low-ranking member of the drilling crew. The roughneck usually performs semiskilled and unskilled manual labor that requires continual hard work in difficult conditions for many hours. After roughnecks understand how the rig operates and demonstrates their work ethic, they may be promoted to other positions in the crew."
"This might actually refer to roughneck duties, or to one of the other crew positions, such as lead tong operator, motorman, derrickman, assistant driller or even driller."
http://www.glossary.oilfield.slb.com/Display.cfm?Term=roughn...
Do you have experience with this? Likes/dislikes of the job?
The reason everyone doesn't roughneck is that it's extremely physical, dangerous work that requires long hours and often living in company dorms away from friends and family in the literal middle of nowhere.
The pay is high (my friends earned about 12k/month) but it is dirty, dangerous work. You are isolated for weeks or months at a time. Drug use is extremely common, and your safety and even life often depends on the clear thinking and detail-orientation of someone who is hungover or high or both. There will be no internet access, although there is probably a communal television with satellite access. Many workers lose much of their money gambling: you can not participant and be isolated, or participate and lose, or participate and win and risk physical interventions.
My mom wouldn't let me go. :)
It doesn't have to be overly taxing physical work (requiring a lot of strength), but it is usually a very active physical work (requiring constant movement).
Getting well paid while doing it might be tough. It is not a well paid job by default. However, with some imagination you might be able to use your scientific/math/engineering background to make products that have decent margin.
I've always been way too optimistic with technology :-(
How about going on a long walk every lunch break and maybe a short walk in the afternoon too?
That or UFC.
There's also big pros and cons to working a non-9-to-5 schedule. 4 days on, 4 days off, etc.
My brother spent about ten years trying to become a firefighter. He went to firefighting school, got his B.Sc., and worked as a private firefighter on a military base - didn't help. I don't think a single person from his graduating class in firefighting school actually became a firefighter.
And don't get me started on people double dipping...
Great work if you can get it, though, most places work 8-10 days per month and you get to sleep on the job (unless a call comes in). IT people will definitely have a hard time with this work, though, the field does not attract a lot of intellectuals.
Typical salary can be found here: http://www.superyacht-crew-academy.com/salaries_superyacht_c...
I work on a 78ft yacht in the Med, (http://www.camperandnicholsons.com/sales/search/-/page/sales...), PM me if you want more details about this kind of work.
I'm looking forward to any questions you might have.
Lawrence: Fuckin' A, man!
Here's what I've found. Starting on a new career path is a crappy proposition. Most of the trades that have been suggested do either require extensive training and preparation, or some degree of paying your dues (as with any industry). However, what really killed it for me is that basically I would be doing contract work (we all know how that goes - ebbs and flows) for about 150% less than I do now.
Here's my current solution to this issue. Change of working environment and the addition of a second job. Boy am I busy NOW!
To change environments I decided to go solo contractor, get my 3g tethering setup on my iphone, get my laptop, and now I go as far out into the wilderness as possible while still getting 3g signal, and I work from the shade of a tree in nature. I try to do that for at least 50%-60% of my work. It has helped tremendously!
I've also spent a great deal of my extra sports time brushing up on skills that I had thought would never be an actual part of my life - shooting. This is something that doesn't require formalized instruction or training - although there is plenty of that available. The additional benefit is that I can now instruct others how to properly, safely, and boldly handle a firearm - and to use it effectively. This not only solidifies the knowledge I already have (teaching others is by FAR the best way to get something deeeeply rooted into you), but gives me an opportunity to be outside doing something physical, make money, and give back in an area where there is a DESPERATE need for quality instruction without ego (there is sooooo much ego in the shooting work it's sickening).
This particular path has actually relieved a tremendous amount of stress in my life and opened up opportunities and connections with people and communities that I never expected. It's quickly becoming a secondary career path. My new mission is to find a way to bring both worlds together - find a need in the market that fits a shooting developer ;) and fill it.
I'm currently a certified instructor of the C.A.R. System by SabreTactical http://www.sabretactical.com and the civilian variant IPD Systems.
PM me - you're in my head. lol get outta my head get outta my head!!!
Wouldn't that mean, instead of getting paid, you were paying them 50% of your current rate?
Somewhat wishing I had made a more vocational career choice such as plumber or electrician. I have an interest in both and have done a significant amount on my own, but they both require training and apprenticeship to be officially certified in my state.
Unfortunately it's a little late in life to make a career change like that work economically, so I'm thinking about getting a Treadmill desk and requesting more time working from home.
Has anyone tried a treadmill desk? Something like the TrekDesk: http://www.trekdesk.com/ How did it work? Was it awkward or difficult to do actual work?
Or try what I'm about to try next week (once my solor pack comes in), hike out with a kickass beach/lawn chair (cupholder a must, also recommend the ones that have a leg rest built in so you can put your feet up) and just setup somewhere... Of course the pre-requisite would be a good tethering situation (3g or better - edge is a bit rough)
Downsides: you need to be near LA, NY, London or some other international city to get regular work. It's psychologically as well as physically demanding, with many extreme personalities. Upsides: if you have talent or brains you can rise fast; film is an extremely meritocratic results-based environment. Arty types are mostly technophobic and will worship you like a god as long as you don't screw up.
That said, the camera operators at the top of their game get paid really well. Its a total racket too, if you're good and in whatever guild controls the camera operators you can command ridiculous amounts of money.
One day I asked him why he was doing this and he told me he was a kernel programmer working on some piece of gear that needed to live in the lab, sometimes the kernel panics and he has to go bounce the box.
I was about to ask him why he doesn't set up some kind of a watchdog to bounce the box for him, but then I realized he was probably the fittest guy in the building.
So just become a kernel hacker, and keep your test boxen a few hundred feet away.
For example, my formal background is in computer science and a large part of my job involves applied math, physics, algorithm design, and writing code but I am now also involved in electronics design and mechanical design (picked these things up on the job). Further, I spend many days outside working with vehicles, powered wheelchairs, and other mechatronic devices: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fPgIPgzIfc I happen to work in an industry building assistive devices for people with limited physical abilities but depending on the application area you can be outside doing numerous physical things, for example, look at iRobot's involvement with the gulf oil crisis: http://www.irobot.com/gi/more_information/gulf_oil_spill_res... Heck, the guys at Willow Garage recently went on a dev sprint to have the PR2 (one of their robots) fetch them beers: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3Cq0sy4TBs
There is a somewhat steep learning curve to becoming a "guru" in the field due to how broad the required skill set is yet at the same time, due to the breadth of skills needed to build useful systems, if you have depth in a particular area (e.g. writing code) there is definitely room for you to fit in on a team and you can pick up the stuff you don't know over time as you get more exposure to it.
http://www.bnrobotics.com/ http://www.resquared.com/ http://www.aethon.com/ http://www.redzone.com/ http://www.seegrid.com/ http://www.bostondynamics.com/ http://www.irobot.com/ http://www.cyphyworks.com/ <-- started by some of the original iRobot folks http://www.mobilerobots.com/ http://www.willowgarage.com/ http://www.evolution.com/ http://www.sensiblemachines.com/ http://astrobotictechnology.com/ ... etc ...
NOTE: Some of the companies are further along than others but all of them (to the best of my knowledge) started as startups and/or university spin-outs (which is a subset of startups). You can normally find startup robotics companies near/around the schools with the best robotics programs (i.e. CMU, UPenn, Stanford, MIT, etc.)
I'll suggest an alternative that doesn't require you throwing away your 10-years of experience: you just need to find the right place to work.
I'm an engineer for a company located in a fantastic location with lots of opportunities for outdoor recreation of all kinds. We really do support a better life/work balance than any startup I've worked for.
And we do interesting work with modern tools and methods (Rails, agile, etc.) And we're growing and hiring.
I'm not gonna spam this post with a job posting. But if you're interested it's not too hard to figure out how to contact me or find out who I work for.