OT: What's your job/career??

[Gandalf Parker]

Makinus said:
hey, cool, 3 lawyers already! what about we make a lawyer/advocate shipset? with special weapons like "civil lawsuit", intelligencce projects like "habeas data" that give all information on an enemy empire and special engines like "habeas corpus" that allow free movement? (just kidding)

Not hardware but it might be fun to add it to intelligence projects. Legal actions to take when they put a colony into your claimed system, or when they destroy a population transport full of your people, or they get caught stealing your technology.

[Slick]

Nuclear Test Engineer. I work with US Navy crews to operate/maintain/repair/test reactor plants on navy submarines. (That's about as much detail as I can give.) I am a middle-level supervisor which requires anywhere from 30 minutes per day up to 100% of my time to be spent on board the ships - depending on what we are doing. Although my job doesn't actually require me to go to sea with them, I have been invited to ride the submarines several time for training, sea trials, etc. I am responsible for operating the reactor plant safely under all conditions during the maintenance period. This is important because much of the complex maintenance is beyond what the the ship's crew is trained to do. We "qualify" under a rigorous training program to be as proficient and knowledgeable as the Navy operators with special emphasis on performing maintenance (as opposed to the crew which specializes on operating the ship at sea). We operate the plants to set up safe conditions for work/maintenance/repairs, allow the various shops do complete the work, then test and certify their work when complete. Currently I am 8 months into a 26 month project to refuel one of them during an overhaul. The 8 months doesn't cover about a year spent doing planning.

Slick.

[bearclaw]

Not too long ago, I was a full-time Realtor and a full-time cab driver, while in my spare time I did computer repair.

whew!

Now I travel throughout the largest real estate board in the world (geographicly speaking) teaching technology seminars to realtors.

But according to my kids, I'm really a superhero. They claim I'm a Jedi and I travel all over the place saving people from the bad guys. (I watch Star Wars a lot with my kids).

[mac5732]

4yrs military Police, 33 yrs as a Police officer, did most of the major investigations as well as worked the road, Last 11 yrs I was the Chief of Police,( Retired from Police Dept over 1yr ago) also during this time, worked 24 yrs part time in retail security (currently still there part time) also yrs ago was part owner of PI company gave it up as the Police Dept. & investigations took all my time, currently looking into possible consulting work.....

PS. I'm the only cop here with all these Lawyers !!! UGH... at least there is at least l paramedic

PSS. GT is also a lawyer

[atari_eric]

Previously a Video Game Programmer, laid off. Getting a degree and hopefully getting back into the Industry...until then, I'm a clerk at an electronic parts store.

[tesco samoa]

dark ant that would be mechanical engineer
Systems engineer would be good but not for that line of work.

if You really wanna do some cool stuff with robots I suggest you start looking at the big manufacturing companies. especially the automotive industry if you wish to do cool stuff with robots.

And learn lots of PLC , fluids and electrical.

I also suggest a minor in chemistry or biology to round off your education.

If you get into GM or any large company like that ... After a few years inform them that you wish for them to pay for your MBA. And round off your education that way.

Professional Degrees are very important and will help you later on in life when you need a change of pace from the world of manufacturing.

But you will learn more about robots there than anywhere else.

[Will]

Actually, Comp Engineering is a field you can go in for robotics... as long as you're only doing research. Right now, the "real" jobs in robotics are in manufacturing, like tesco said, companies like GM, Toyota, Honda... car makers, pretty much. There are a few others, but I don't remember them at the moment. Basically, they make robots for assembly line manufacturing processes. But these are mostly Mech Engineers, who have gotten a little extra training in computers, basically MEs who took CS courses for tech electives at university.

As I said, Comp Engineers going into robotics are usually doing research, and there are only a few places in the private sector where this is currently done (mainly in Japan, with companies like Honda and Sony), a few places in government (NASA/AMES, ESA), and... academia. Unless you're really stellar or become the protege of someone, you'll most likely either end up in academia, or decide you want to do something else. Academia means four years at least for the BS, plus one if the university offers a 5-year master's program, plus 1 and a half to 2 if the university doesn't or you go somewhere else for grad work. Then there is usually about 5 more years doing PhD work, then about 7 years in a rush to get tenure somewhere. So, conservatively, you're looking at 18 more years of "school" after high school. Although some people have done it in about 10. YMMV.

For now, most of the "cool" stuff with robots is happening in Japan, and at universities. Japan has Asimo (Honda), and Aibo and its ilk (Sony). Universities mainly have government defense grants, for things like little black helicopters to look in windows, distributed "bug bots" for mapping a building (before storming it), and a bunch of projects focused on active vision (processing visual data in real time and acting on it, rather than recording for human operators) happening at my school specifically.

Academia could be the best place to go -- if there is an explosion in the robotics industry, where all of a sudden someone comes up with the working killer app for robotics (such as Asimo becoming feasible to care for the elderly, both in performance and in cost). If/when that happens, there will be lots of companies grabbing to get anyone from university robotics departments that they can, and paying very well for them to do... well, basically the same stuff they were doing in academia, only applied a bit more to a specific product.

[Thermodyne]

I�m a network specialist with a state government agency. I work with almost nothing that I covered in school. Its 90 percent picked up on the fly as you bump into the hardware/software. Right now it�s a state wide domain migration, but nothing close to what was covered in any of my courses. After that it�s IP security cameras and building access control. Then we move to IP trunking (all of which we are testing as we now). Then toss in 300K worth of new desktop systems for December and another 50K for January along with an Exchange Server upgrade and an Office 2003 deployment just to make sure we stay busy. Also toss in a couple of new office setups just to make sure that no one makes all of their deadlines.

If you want to break into this line of work, study WAN IP data systems. Frame Rely and PVC know how will get your foot into a lot of doors. VOIP or IP trunking skill will some times get you hired on the spot. If you want to work server side, then being able to develop scripts is becoming a must have skill. Not to mention that a few good scripts can turn an 80 man hour project into a few hours of easy work. And if you are in school, stay there and get your Masters. Do an internship some where, anywhere, even if it�s unpaid. It�s getting imposable to break into this line of work. A company I work with advertised a 28K a year Helpdesk trainee position and got 1500 apps with about 20 percent of them being people with master�s degrees. And incase you don�t already know, first tier helpdesk sucks big ones! In this line of work everyone has to do some of it, but it is not something that most people will want to do 40 hours a week.

[Alneyan]

On an almost, but not quite, related topic: is university the best education you can get after high school? (In Canada or in the United States for example)

University is actually seen as the worst in France (with the exception of a few courses, like medecine, and where university is simply the only way), and has a pretty poor reputation, so I was wondering at the differences with other countries. I would expect the situation to be quite different, since that's a common criticism against France, but I would prefer first-hand opinions.

[TerranC]

Best as in the most preferred way or best as in the best form of tertiary education that one can get?

I believe both ways apply, but then again that might only be me.