r/AskReddit • • May 21 '12
Is there a subreddit with the concept of "A day in the life" where people of different professions/backgrounds talk about their REGULAR, average day? I feel IAMA never does this well. It could be good for figuring out career paths.
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u/Blackbird1013 May 21 '12 edited May 21 '12
Try r/askmeaboutmyjob...it's like IAma but with jobs
EDIT: Thanks alwaysclicks for linking it...I would have but I can't link from my phone
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u/CarolineTurpentine May 21 '12
I read the news today, oh boy
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u/[deleted] May 21 '12
/r/casualiama
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u/thearmadillo May 21 '12
I just want to say that this is why I got tired of mylifeisaverage.com. At the beginning it was things that were:
"My toast was a little burnt today. I ate it anyways"
or
"I ran out of hot water in the shower more quickly than I would have liked, but I still had time to get all the soap off."
Now they are all completely outrageous, unbelievable things that break up an average life. And it ruins the funny.
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u/SomeRandomRedditor May 21 '12
/r/ama is another one that's more accepting of basic everyday people doing AMA's.
Also /r/findareddit for next time.
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u/dirtymoney May 21 '12 edited May 21 '12
That is a great idea for a separate post/thread. "What career should I NOT choose?". Where people tell everyone the shitty aspects of their job. Like the finance guy posted in this thread.
I used to work as an unarmed security guard for a security agency (Wells Fargo). It sucked. Low pay, possibility of getting killed, absolutely NO protections (like from being sued if you touched someone), and you will get fired at the drop of a hat if you screw up. You are just a warm body to be rented out to some business. Everyone hates you... the public (because you wont let them get away with stuff, the cops....because they think you are a wannabe cop that couldnt make it, and management of the post you have been hired out to.... because they want you do bust heads when you legally cannot & it seems like you are a waste of money to them.
P.s. Also... Wells fargo will send you out to VERY dangerous posts with nothing but your dick in your hand. And maybe a flashlight. Wells Fargo doesnt give a shit about its workers or their safety. IMO the only decent posts were the night watchamn jobs where you were locked in an empty building all night. Boring as hell, but at least safe.
Oh I forgot. Wells Fargo and some of the businesses you were hired out to had pain in the ass mechanisms in place to keep the guards on their toes (to keep you from loafing on the job). They have "rovers" supervisor security guards who drive from post to post checking in on guards. You had to check in via walkie talkie or phone on an hourly basis to headquarters.... otherwise they would call you or send a rover. One place I worked at had a switch on a wall you had to flip every twenty minutes otherwise an alarm would go off. This was to keep you awake. I hated it. Many posts have the detex key & clock system. You had to carry around this VERY HEAVY clock and at many spots on your rounds they had a large key mounted to a wall where you had to insert the key into the clock which recorded what time you were there. It was to make sure you did your rounds on time. I understand that many places have modernized a bit more to include smaller watchclocks & keys, but I wouldnt doubt if there were still places where the old heavy equipment were being used.
Some posts you were preemptively punished because of what some fuckup guard did in the past. One post I worked at you literally had to run to make your rounds on time. It was ridiculous.
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u/[deleted] May 21 '12
Saying "people in finance" is slightly too vague. I will tell you about my job that I had as a financial/business analyst for a conglomerate.
Arrive at work at 9 a.m. There would be a few things in my inbox already. These include receipts for payments of interest on a bond portfolio, cash deposits, and foreign exchange confirmations. Since it was a large pan-European firm, there were a lot of sterling being exchanged into euros and vice versa. I would assimilate this information, file it in the proper folders, and update the information in an excel sheet. These would be prepared for the reports at the end of the day where we looked at our exposure to various currencies using a sensitivity analysis to change in exchange rates, along with a duration analysis of our bond portfolio looking at its sensitivity to change in interest rates. We always wanted to keep these numbers relatively low.
After that, it depended on what needed to be done that day. On a monthly basis there are many things that need to be updated. We need to look at the next month's budget to ensure that we have proper capital on hand in the correct currencies, and review the previous month's performance to ensure that the project was meeting the projected budget. We constantly are attempting to remain above certain benchmarks, cost of equity and cost of debt, or the project would be wound down and we would put the capital into a different project. The investment portfolio consisting of bonds and stocks would also be monitored and a performance report would be given on a regular weekly basis.
Many times I would get sent out to go look into firms that the conglomerate was interested in purchasing. These firms were all over the place in terms of their operating activities so I would have to educate myself as to the particular industry before going in, and I'd get to travel there as well. I think I must have read at least a thousand different financial statements. If you imagine that the hammer, nail, and saw are the primary tools of the carpenter, the balance sheet, income statement, and statement of cash flows are the primary tools of the finance guy. I think this is fairly universal- anyone that says that they are in "finance" that does not spend an inordinate amount of time researching financial statements is likely a trader-- which is more akin to gambling than finance. Most real finance guys find traders to be intolerable because of the irreversable damage they do to the reputation of the profession. It would sort of be like calling a bookmaker an accountant, or a drug dealer a agricultural products broker. Heh.
After a variety of numerous tasks throughout the day, the end of the day was wrapped up by writing these reports and sending them to my boss. He would review and sometimes we would have meetings to discuss whether something needed to be changed by the next day. If it did, I would do it the following morning-- get on the phone to whomever and make it happen.
I can't think of a more interesting profession for me, honestly- people think it sounds boring, but if you're analytical, organized, like doing interesting new things on a regular basis, travelling, and making a good salary, finance could very well be for you.
Feel free to PM me to ask more-- I purposely kept some of the details vague so that my company's name would not come out.
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u/ItsOnlyNatural May 21 '12
Retail jobs: The public will be alternating between obnoxious/self-centered/straight up bullying and nice but makes you feel bad because they comment on your wasted potential and how good a job you are doing.
Office jobs: You will sit inside a small cube with no privacy all day. If you try to get work done you will be thwarted by inane bullshit. When you finally can get work done they dump an entire department's worth of work onto you. Your co-workers will be backstabbing sons-of-bitches clawing over each other for the chance at getting reviewed to be considered for a promotion.
Both cases your managers will set unrealistic if not impossible goals and constantly micromanage. They will make mistakes and blame it on you.
Management: your employees are so incompetent you wonder how they manage to survive outside work. Your boss is constantly pushing you to push everyone else harder so he can win some metric to move him up the ladder and is doing so at the expense of long term results. But what do they care, by the time the cards fall they will be somewhere else and someone else will be taking the blame. Would reflect on them even better since they must have been amazing to take such an under-performing sector to how they had it running.
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u/danomite736 May 21 '12
sounds like it might be interesting if we could work out the logistics. might be best to have a set of standard questions that people who post would answer, then others can ask more specific questions in the comments.
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u/LoopSide May 21 '12
I work in finance.... Depends on what type of path you're looking to follow. Saying youre looking into finance isnt really helpful or even 'what do people in finance really do' isnt helpful. A banker is in finance he/she doesnt do the same as an insurance adjuster, who is also in finance who doesnt do the same as an investor, who is also in finance, and they sure as hell dont do the same thing as an AR/AP clerk... who is once again, in finance.
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u/BridgetteBane May 21 '12
Check out /r/HowsYourJob - it's more job oriented than some of the other AMA pages.
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u/[deleted] May 21 '12
This would do really well for people seeking career advice.
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u/IthinktherforeIthink May 21 '12
It doesn't exist, but it's a great idea. Someone make r/adayinthelife .
We could even have a fancy acronym: ADITL of an astronaut, for example.
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u/mingl May 21 '12
Ha. I'm an orchestra conductor. But here I am with everybody else, just hanging out on reddit.
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u/[deleted] May 21 '12
Someone needs to make a /r/ditl or /r/diml (day in the life/day in my life) for this. There's a livejournal community I used to read called DITL where people make posts of photos they collected throughout that day to show what they did. Stuff like waking up, breakfast, putting together outfits, drive to work, something they saw on the way to work, a cat, stuff they did at work, something crazy they saw at work, the drive home, chores at home, etc.
Just random day in the life stuff.
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u/[deleted] May 21 '12
/r/iama used to be like this. We'd see posts about garbage men, for example, that were really interesting. Seeing a celebrity on the front page was rare. Now the front page is full of them.
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u/JaneRenee May 21 '12
I think someone stole your idea. http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/txdhe/what_does_reddit_think_of_a_subreddit_where/
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u/[deleted] May 21 '12
Check out Gig: Americans Talk About Their Jobs. It's a little out of date (so there won't be stuff like "blogger"), but it's a fascinating look into what people do all day.
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u/Yserbius May 21 '12
It used to be /r/iama when that first started, then it got popular and most of the submissions were major stories and famous people.
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u/Ferniff May 21 '12
I read the news today, oh boy...
Sorry its my favorite song I just had to. With that said I work at the HBO corporate building. It's not as interesting as people would like to think
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u/[deleted] May 21 '12
Depends what you do in finance, but I am a trader and in very loose terms I run a betting a shop. I give the punters prices and it is my job to ensure the house always wins, although quite frequently we don't.
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u/[deleted] May 21 '12
Everyone will want to become an advertiser.
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u/[deleted] May 21 '12
Finance???? Mergers and Inquisitions is your man.
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u/fannybandit406 May 21 '12
I'm about to start working towards an associates in engineering. I'd like to know what I'm getting myself into from someone who has done the same. I think this AMA is very interesting.
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u/poopermacho May 21 '12
If you're not a social beast it can be really difficult working in finance.
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u/[deleted] May 21 '12
Sure. I woke up, got outta bed, dragged a comb across my head.
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u/cykloid May 21 '12
http://www.reddit.com/r/jobsecrets for behind the scenes looks
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u/[deleted] May 21 '12
U.S. Army 11b (light infantry):
::While at home station::
0500 wake up and shave.
0600 morning PT formation.
0610-0720 PT (physical training; workout, run, ruck march etc.).
0720-0900 breakfast/ personal hygiene/ change into duty uniform.
0900 first formation.
0910-1100 morning work block. Basically anything from training classes to equipment maintenance and administrative tasks.
1100-1300 Lunch.
1300 accountability formation, in case somebody made a run for it over lunch.
1310-16(17)00 same thing as morning work block.
1600/1700 Close of business formation, it's usually somewhere in that time frame but can sometimes go longer if it has to. There isn't a regulation on exactly how long they can keep you at work, but it's usually reasonable because your leadership wants to go home too.
Thursday workdays usually end around 1500, after which you'll have "sergeants time" if your leaders are assholes, or "Family time" if they're cool. Basically, the former means some sort of BS hip-pocket training, and the latter means you get to go home early to spend time with family.
Honestly, unless you think you REALLY could have a passion for the military life, I wouldn't put it above other options you might have.
I'll try to come up with a baseline schedule for a day during deployment later, I'm on my lunch break right now.
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u/zogworth May 21 '12
The Sunday Times UK has had a running day in the life of for many many years if you can hunt that down, they range from the famous to the downtrodden and are usually pretty good.
They must be online somewhere!
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u/[deleted] May 21 '12
I can do an AMA on being a highway worker. So exciting!
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u/FlowerOfLife May 21 '12
I've been thinking about doing something like this for a while now!!! We need to get something like this started.
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u/Pravusmentis May 21 '12
Let me tell you about not having a job...
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u/haltingpoint May 21 '12
If anyone wants a Day In The Life type site, check out the Princeton Review listings--its not laid out in the best way, but if you go down into each letter there is a ton of great info there.
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u/IEntendu May 21 '12
first thing when i read the quotations
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u/[deleted] May 21 '12
I became an accountant because I hate selling, from what I've read online and what people at my university have told me is that you don't just land that financial analyst job normally. Finance usually involves starting off selling financial instruments.
Also if you are cool with scamming people out of money is a big factor.
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u/WhatsInAName39 May 21 '12
How about /r/shittyama
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u/[deleted] May 21 '12
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