TQ: Jobs

Here are my answers to this week's TQ from Mark.

1. What was your first real job; part of full time? Cutting the grass on weekends doesn't count unless you worked for someone other then yourself.

If it has to be working for someone other than myself, then I guess I still don't have a “real job,” and probably won't for a long while. Nevertheless, the self-employed (and/or “freelance”) person that I am, the first memorable money producing job was probably doing some Perl development in 1998 or getting my first sell of advertising (to Microsoft, incidentally) on a site I was producing in 1997.

2. What was your worse job ever? How long did you last? What made it so bad?
Taking job to be project, since I've never really changed jobs: I'd say producing an auction metasearch a few years back. The pay was very good (I kept raising the price because I wanted out of the project, but the client was willing to pay even my escalated pricing), but it was just a miserable, mindnumbing project of combing HTML pages for traits I could use to figure out where key data was at auction site after auction site. It lasted a few months, ending after the site launched and no one seemed to care to use it.

3. If money were not an issue, and you could change careers right now, what would you start doing?

What I hope to be doing in 5-6 years. Teaching theology and religious studies at a college (four year, perhaps liberal arts, not Bible college) or university. My primary focus would be in the philosophy of religion. In an ideal world, I'd also be able to dabble in my other academic interests, particularly literature and economics. Money isn't the issue, credentials are — I need to get through at least a masters, if not a Ph.D. before this is going to happen.

4. My mother has said countless times that she would rather work for a man boss then a women boss? What is your opinion on the subject of male vs female bosses?

I have never taken well to bosses, I'll admit, hence why I've found being my own boss a much more ideal situation (though, in reality, doing my job means every client is my boss). I'd have to say it depends much more on the individual than the gender — I've worked with and under both men and women; both can be hard at times.

5. What do you think the ultimate job (for anyone) would be?

To me, I think the ultimate job would be an academic job. What could be better than exploring your favorite subject, doing research and writing on it, and teaching it to the next generation of those interested in your field? Of course, I realize I find academia much more appealing than many people do. I tend to think there is no one ultimate job, to be honest.

Note: The questions on this page written by Mark are governed by the Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 2.5 license. I believe my responses are allowed under fair use and therefore are not licensed under the Creative Commons license (I don't want people messing with adapting my personal opinions, thank you very much).