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Do What you Wanna Do!

In the several years I have been teaching I have observed a few students who are trying to come up with some sort of formula job for making money.  Which field pays the best, how do I qualify, how much will it pay me?  The problem is that they are equating this with job satisfaction, a huge mistake. Putting pills in a bottle all day long as a pharmacist  indeed may bring a high starting salary, but frankly it does not sound like much fun to me.  Besides, how long before voice recognition, bar codes, and a sort of computerized warehouse of drugs have machines filling the bottles instead of people?  Think about it, the machines don’t get tired standing up or worry about the kids at home.

Richard Watson   addresses some of these issues in an innovative column.  And he points out what I have been saying, repetitive jobs will be replaced by machines, creative jobs are in design.  And as I have also suggested the MBA is becoming old hat, there is an oversupply and like anything else, when we all have a cabbage patch doll, the novelty wears off.

I ran across this at the http://www.fastcompany.com site, I suggest you bookmark that one, great stuff about our changing world.

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2 responses to “Do What you Wanna Do!”

  1. Margaret W Avatar
    Margaret W

    Richard Watson’s article was interesting because I just read today on Yahoo news that manufacturing firms in the U.S. have a severe shortage of skilled workers for their plants (electricians, welders, etc.) The shortage is so bad that one company had to turn down a contract with Kraft Foods because he did not have enough welders to do the job, and this contract would have increased his business by 10%! The reason for the shortage was mainly due to the negative image that people seem to have of blue-collar workers, where everyone here is encouraged to go to college vice learning a trade. The article went on to say that the U.S. will lose its place as a viable manufacturing country if things don’t change.

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  2. Dennis Elam Avatar
    Dennis Elam

    Actually there are plenty of blue collar jobs that either pay more or can lead to much better jobs than frankly ‘dead end’ desk jobs shuffling paper in a govt office, frankly most of these jobs stem from someone getting a liberal arts degree and then wondering where the pay went,
    My neighbor here in Lancaster owns apparently a pretty good sized plumbing company, instead of playing golf at the public course next door, literally, he plays at the country club
    Other examples are owning a heating air conditioning company, they guy that takes care of our swim pool seems to be doing pretty well too, of course, all these folks need to understand accounting to make money!
    I have always thought there was a much better chance of making money if you were doing what you liked, but that is just another benefit of being happy.
    DLE

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