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I have searched for the job you describe for years. I refer to it as the 'holy grail' job: that job which you rarely have to put in 40 hours, earn a good consistent income, is relatively stress-free and offers consistent employment demand and pay in case you ever get laid off or need to quit/move. That last one is really important.
Now. There are lots of jobs where you work 40 hours which are not stressful, but most of them don't pay well. MY definition of 'well' is ~ 70-80K mid career or higher. You could get lucky and find a job that pays real well where it is easy, but then if you lose it, you might get knocked back down salary wise.
Teacher and CAD operator are jobs I would group among those. The pay ain't great.
The perfect job you describe is what I would consider pharmacist/optometrist. Pull in six figures for working in retail in a largely routine job. Rarely ever more than 40 hrs.
That requires several additional years from Pharmacy school which is highly competitive to get into.
I think some engineering and IT jobs fit this bill too, but others might not.
Physician assistant in a clinic maybe.
Most of the jobs that fall in this category would require higher education.
I think some engineering and IT jobs fit this bill too, but others might not.
Very mixed bag. There are many engineering and IT jobs (and ironically as a poster earlier said, generally the ones in gov't) that are that way, but there are equally many others (especially in IT more than engineering) where you're often working 60, even 80 hour weeks or are totally "on call" all the time.
I don't think the engineers here where I work would agree with you on this one. One of them does 2-3 hours of work at home pretty much every night, and the other one walks around here looking like his head is about to explode.
In the news lately in the Los Angeles area, City Water Department employees have been drinking on the job, visiting lap dance places, and what ever else. Other cities have has similar issues. The city of Bell, Ca had most people taking home a paycheck and many of them very large without doing much. Several years ago their was a story of a county employee that was never given an assignment. His supervisor even gave him great reviews each year. He was paid over $80,000 a year and did not work a day on the job. In a 5 year span he did write 2 books though. Not sure if they were on how to get a job in the public sector and do nothing though. Maybe they were. LOL
Those are complete anomalies as far as professional jobs in local government go. If you are an exempt professional/management employee in local government, you will work more than 40 hours most weeks. The reason is not so much because of deadlines and high work load but because local government public meetings invariably take place after normal working hours so that citizens can participate.
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Originally Posted by duster1979
I don't think the engineers here where I work would agree with you on this one. One of them does 2-3 hours of work at home pretty much every night, and the other one walks around here looking like his head is about to explode.
That's my dad, who is a process safety engineer for a major oil firm. He is in meetings all day and has to find other time to do his work.
The engineering positions in the big companies do tend to have better hours than the contracting engineering firms though.
Last edited by War Beagle; 02-26-2013 at 09:06 AM..
I am a civil engineer, and I will never recommend this field to anyone. The pay is low compared to the sacrifices we are expected to make and the education and licensure that we need. There is not much work/life balance (the attitude in this field is that if you have time for a life, you're not working enough). There is zero job security. And, most engineering firms offer lousy benefits, and have no problem telling their employees that if you want benefits, you went into the wrong field.
I don't think the engineers here where I work would agree with you on this one. One of them does 2-3 hours of work at home pretty much every night, and the other one walks around here looking like his head is about to explode.
I'm Software Engineer. most of the days, i work less than 7 hours a day. Of course, sometime you have to work after hour and maybe 10 hours. But that's not normal, it doesn't happen all the time. IF there is nothing wrong, you may have nothing to do, but just meeting, meeting, and more meeting.
Alot of time, I have to work at night because of the meetings. it's like 5 hours of meeting and only 2-3 of design and development all the time. Sometimes, i just have to do my work during the meeting.
I think engineers' main responsibility is meeting.
Government job man, I did a 1.5 year stint as civil service "gs15" (over 100k a year) and I can tell you I most worked 25 hours the entire time and I was among the harder workers. This was in illinois. Most of the other employees just came in slept, went to lunch, fix their cars then went home. I'm talking about all 100 people in our dept did this.
When I first got there I tried to make a change by reporting those people. (I felt our tax dollars was being wasted) But my boss kept telling me to stop rocking the boat. So heck, I just joined them. I spent the year running a side consulting business and upgrading my skills.
I tell everyone, if you are not a go getter, get a govt job!!! You will thank me for it!
This is about spot on. I worked for the govt. as a contractor for 6 months and was bored out of my mind the entire time. There were people that worked in my office that had worked there for over 10 years and people had no idea what they actually did. It was beyond ridiculous. I realized I would probably shoot myself out of boredom if I kept that job.
If you are an engineer, your work/life balance is very closely tied to the company culture. For every great company there are 5 bad ones that will work you 60+ hours per week with subpar salary.
Other than teaching, are there still any jobs out there where you can clock out at 6 and not take work home with you? Or is working 45-60 hours per week a must in EVERY job in order to be successful?
Teachers do take work home, as was previously mentioned, not only to correct papers but to prepare classes. Lesson prep times varies by subject, pupil age and level, obviously. Rule of thumb where I come from: 1/1 ratio, for every hour of class time, figure an hour of prep time.
In answer to your low stress, work/home life balanced jobs: County, state, federal government employees.
Last edited by asimegusta; 03-03-2013 at 07:29 AM..
Reason: double quotes
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