I work in a male dominated industry (tech) in the US and for reasons including misogyny and corporate bullshit, I am reconsidering my career. Does anybody here actually like their job or industry of work? If so, what do you do? Do you face sexist bullshit? Does all work suck?
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I love my job. I’m a Nutritionist.
I am a public defender, and I love my job. Even when I hate it, I love it.
Since our whole job is helping people out of shitty situations, whether of their own making or unfairly, my coworkers are remarkably compassionate, open minded, and completely unflappable.
We get exposed to plenty of racism and sexism and classism in the form of the State. Inside the office, we’re a diverse group of misfits who like each other.
I also work in tech and yes there is misogyny though the kind I usually get is men being overly nice and underestimating my skills and trying to help me. It’s still sexism nevertheless. I’m not sure if you can ever escape it and at this point, I just ignore because the pay and benefits are worth it and I do love my job.
Yes and no.
I’m a social worker and a mental health counselor at a community mental health clinic. I work with all ages, but my speciality is kids and teens. I do a lot of mental health/substance use evaluations for mandated clients as well as see voluntary clients for therapy. It’s hard. It’s emotionally draining and frustrating often.
That said, I like the people I work with, I like my clients, and I’m endlessly nosey, so learning about new people I’d never know otherwise is interesting to me. The hard stuff is confronting someone on a positive drug test or having to talk to an irate parent who doesn’t understand or having to call CPS because a kid told you they were beaten. The best parts are kids feeling understood by a safe adult, helping someone calm down from sobbing, and getting someone to go “ah ha, you’re right, I’ve never thought about it that way…”
I don’t know if I want this job to be my forever, but I do find it interesting and it has a lot of problem solving. It makes me feel like my brain is working when I do my job. I like knowing why people do things and I like having making people feel comfortable. I do sometimes go home worried about clients and despite being a few years in, I haven’t been able to figure out how to shut that off yet.
I’m a medical device engineer. Definitely male dominated. Had issues with my first company. Rampant sexism, misogyny, and harassment. Almost left the industry but I switched companies. Used my interviews to suss out culture from then on which seemed to help
I do fundraising. I really love it. I dont really face sexism in most of my interactions but my team is also great. Ive had sexist director but Ive also just told them they were and to go away lol
I love my job. I’m in tech but I work for a school district in special education. Everything from sys admin to assistive technology.
Other than the federally-induced anxiety right now… It’s amazing.
I like my job as much as you could like a job. I don’t like being forced to go onsite though, especially when I can do everything on a laptop. QA for pharma
I’m in sales with a software company. I love it. I’ve been there for 15 years, have work/life balance and not experienced or witnessed misogyny.
I’m in R and D in pharma as a project manager on drug projects until they go into the clinic. It’s taken me a long time (almost 20 years?) between grad school and now to find a job I am almost completely satisfied with but I am there now! Dealt with a lot of sexism along the way in academia, learned a lot of lessons. I think the truth of it is when you’re young unfortunately you often have to deal with a lot of shitty situations while you’re learning the ropes. You don’t have much leverage to negotiate and you’re also learning what you want from a job and an employer. This job I have now was the first time I felt in a position to negotiate and I also sat down and thought long and hard about what I wanted and asked questions in the interview accordingly.
But now I am in my 40s and have 20 plus years of working life left and I’m making a ton of money and feeling like what I do matters. And my talents are valued. So it can happen! As a woman you just have to learn how to advocate for your own advancement and fuck politeness.
I like my job. I don’t think I could love any job though. I’m in finance which is also a male dominated industry and I’ve had jobs I’ve hated and faced terrible sexism but my current company has a much better culture and I’ve been much happier there than prior companies. If you’re experiencing that I’d explore other companies.
I love my job, I work in a startup biotech company. With small companies, you really get to dip your toes into a lot of roles and have a lot of opportunities to make yourself shine. If I do the same thing for too long I get bored, and then I don’t perform as well, so the variety really helps! Plus, I get the opportunity to do optimization projects that I’m really excited about since we’re growing.
I am a zookeeper. I love my job so much, but it is quite physical and I notice that the aches and pains after a day of work are getting more pronounced as I age (I’m almost 38). So I have started looking for ways to transition into other possible roles within the field that would be less labor intensive.
Overall the job is amazing. The animals I work with are like family (I spend almost every holiday and weekend with them), most of the people I get to talk to are interested in our conservation messages and I love bringing joy to their day by talking with them about their favorite animals. The negatives are the (very) low salary and the compassion fatigue that creeps in somewhat regularly.