Seems like some of y’all are pretty techy, so it made me wonder who else worked in some form of tech. I was in tech support, server administration, and finally an sql engineer for school districts for many years. I actually went to school for education, but I ended up getting into finance server administration (AS400, cause I’m old af) along the way for a curriculum publisher and it kind of turned into a rabbit hole for about 20 years. I probably never should have gone to college, lol. Anyways, I don’t work now, but my family still makes me fix their computers when I come visit.
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I’m an ex-psychologist / cognitive scientist (specialized in neural networks and human computer interaction) that went from multimedia /game developer to product/project manager for IPTV, VOD, multi-screen and hospitality etc. … with some very very stupid stuff inbetween that does not show up on my CV and cannot be discussed EVER 
Does that count?
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I’m one of the few female electronic technicians but I did a BSc in environmental engineering and work in mobility planning now. I really miss the hands on crafty problem solving work I had to as a service technician and overall working on something that already exists. 
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Hell yeah it does, that sounds very interesting. Was the video stuff a lot of hardware?
Hahah, the other half of my CV is all cooking and/or baking stuff. I held down two jobs mostw of my adult life because I get bored easy. I kinda regret it now, I should’ve spent more time at home.
Ooh, that sounds interesting! Is it a lot of math?
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Have been working in tech since the '90s. My career primarily has been in the realm of Unix, data storage, and virtualization. At first on the customer side, then later made the switch to the vendor side with companies like Sun Microsystems, NetApp, Pure Storage, HPE.
Today I’m a product manager for a virtualization product - which feels like the least technical role I’ve ever had, LOL.
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Yeah - needed to spec headend hardware & STBs. But understanding technology for me is only a prerequisite to create great products. You need to understand limitations and potential of the devices you target…
I wish it were like that! I would never get any jobs, if head hunters knew everything about me…
Though, I started telling girls I met on partys that I was a baker, cause as soon as they understood that I am a psychologist, they wanted to tell me about their issues. Which is not a great foreplay, I can tell you
Fortunately a friend of mine was a very passionate baker, he could only talk about that. So I just repeated what he told me. Problem solved. Bakers are very sexy, apparently
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Science and mechanical work here, rather than electronic. Grew up wrenching on cars and airplanes. Now brewing and distilling at a small company where I am the production and maintenance department.
Brewing school was highly scientific and technical. Engineering, process controls, microbiology, chemical/technical lab analysis.
I’m very much a mechanical/scientific jack-of-all-trades and master-of-none.
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Unfortunately yes. Not complicated maths compared to stuff friends from uni do in their jobs but for me it’s annoyingly much. A lot of messing around with norms and municipal regulations (that often are not reasonable) but I’m lucky and can often delegate that to colleagues and do their text parts instead. 
But it can’t be worse than working on finance servers, that sounds horrible to me 
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Hah, dudes always lit up thinking I was a gamer when I told I was an electronician. The thing is I actually chose that profession because (depending on which field you choose) you actually don’t work that much sitting in front of a computer and I love soldering 
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Oooooh …. female gamers are the WORST
I was once totally and absolutely humiliated by a 16 year old - in my favourite game, where I thought to be THE BOSS (Wipeout). Now I don’t play videogames anymore, especially with girls!!! I hate girls
Yeah, soldering is great. I am not good at it - but I do enjoy it, so I can understand you.
The cool thing is, soldering is a great skill when you start modding your bass…
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Says the guy with EMG pickups 
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Hahaha - yeah, I wanted to make a remark about that too. It’s like Lego for little boys 
But … I soldered my DiMarzio pickups, before I replaced them with something MUCH better … EMG, that is!
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Nice! I don’t know what product manager feels like, but I have been a software project manager and I SUCKED at it lol.
I never did get my certification, I fear
You really are the beer baron! I am so unmechanical it’s an embarrassment. I’m lucky I can put gas in a car.
I’m not super familiar with mobility planning, but I did take Linear Algebra at university. I loved the class (or rather the idea of it, lol), but I would be a terrible civil engineer. Finance servers weren’t so bad, although keeping people compliant with all of the payment/credit card requirements could get nuts. Trying to make sales managers care about compliance is like herding cats.
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Electrical engineer by training, mostly do management type stuff now, but try to keep technical. Still have some soldering skills, as long as surface mount isn’t involved (if you know, then you know).
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You mean you didn’t have to solder smd parts under the microscope in the apprenticeship because they didn’t plan in rejects by the pcb assembly machine?
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I switched from marketing to engineering at UW-Madison after the first semester of my junior year. Took be 7 years total to graduate. The first two years out of school I was the assistant crew chief on the neutrino beam line at Fermilab (particle accelerator).
The next 10 years, I worked for an in-house SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) solar-powered product group at Amoco Oil, first in manufacturing, then in hardware and software design (CMOS and assembler) wire-wrapping prototypes, then in systems engineering designing systems and coding master station control software in C and assembler.
The next 15 years I worked for Motorola, first as a systems engineering manager in their SCADA product group, then as a Six Sigma consultant in the Motorola University consulting team for the last 8 years. I started with the U.S. and Canada, then I was given Asia and finally Europe on top of Asia. Twice a month around the world. 200+ nights sleeping in hotels and 30+ nights sleeping on airplanes per year.
When the original Motorola started collapsing in 2004, I got called back from France, where I was in the middle of an engagement. I was the first exec offered a package. I was 53 and I took it. That was 21 years ago, so I’ve been retired for 21 years.
Once I finally parted ways with my 3rd and final ex-wife 13 years ago, I got back to playing the bass and piano. I’m MUCH happier. 
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Working in IT since the '01s first as Linux/MS OS Administrator and virtualization (VMWare).After that I moved on backup solution like Veritas Netbackup and Commvault.
Today I’m delivery manager for a gaming company and use tools like Ansible, Docker and K8s.
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I’ve been in tech since the 90s. I started out working on satcom and maintaining the ships mainframe. My first job after tech school was handling the late night mag reel backups on the system. I leaned more into the satcom stuff but being a small shop, we took care of desktop support also. Continued doing all of that in the early ‘00s working on a 4 star staff in Italy. After that, I worked as the maintenance chief in a datacenter. My last duty station in the military was working as a Windows server and desktop admin for a joint command, deploying out to warzones. Since then, I’ve worked for USGS as a Windows and Linux admin, then another agency with DOI as a Server admin. Couple of years ago, I set us up in Azure and moved all of our physical servers into the cloud. Since then, I’ve managed the team of Azure engineers that keep our systems running. I get very little hands on time anymore other than getting our workstations and laptops all switched out this fall with Intune machines. The only techy part of what I do now is that I’m our primary person managing and maintaining Intune packages and updates.
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I did electronics at University in the mid seventies then dropped out for a few years and in the beginning of the eighties I got into microprocessor engineering in the oil hydrographic survey business where I had to write software as well do the hardware. But it was the software that eventually became my career. Since then I have alternated between writing and teaching software (commercially). I’m now 69 and fed up with trying to stay up to date and am trying to organise some sort of retirement!
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Form a band for your retirement.
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