

What People Don't Get About My Job: From A(rmy Soldier) to Z(ookeeper) - waxymonkeyfrog
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/09/what-people-dont-get-about-my-job-from-a-rmy-soldier-to-z-ookeeper/244231/

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jinushaun
_"E is for Engineer I wish children could understand how much fun I have. ...
My wife actually gets irritated that I never mind going to work. She does not
feel exactly the same about her job."_

I'm in the same boat. Programming is so much fun that I do it all the time. My
girlfriend hates it.

 _"T is for Telecommuter. Working from home means I never leave the office."_

Story of my life...

------
aspir
_V is for Video Producer "Video is not film. Video is not easy. Video is not
fast. Video is slooooooooooow."_

This is so incredibly true. My day job includes working with our video
production unit, and through technology has sped up the process, video is
still incredibly hard to do well, and very time consuming.

I've been to a few too many code conferences where the video was obviously
done by a local volunteer, poorly produced, and, though released for free, is
crap. If I can't see the video to read the code, or hear the speaker clearly,
it's worthless.

Also, if you're negotiating firm that promises a release time of less than 2
weeks, request to see footage from at least 3 previous events. Short
turnaround post-production can be done (we had a client request 48 hours once
-- it was rough), but make sure they're good. It's easy to sacrifice quality
for speed.

------
gallerytungsten
My favorite bit so far, in the section on graphic designers:

"It's a complicated industry with its own ecology made up of incredibly hard
work individuals that is routinely undermined by its own customers."

Routinely undermined - so true!

------
powrtoch
I wish the Xenobiologist had written more. I went in having never heard the
term, and came out with no more information than "this fellow speculates about
possible aliens". I'm open to the possibility that this is a legitimate and
worthwhile field, but the blurb didn't exactly convince me.

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reemrevnivek
> E is for Engineer

> "I wish children could understand how much fun I have."

> I am an engineer. Most people are scientifically and mathematically
> illiterate. Consequently, most people cannot fathom how much pleasure and
> delight I derive from my work. Of course I am also lucky to have a great job
> with great coworkers. But the pleasure of analyzing, say, the overall
> efficiency of a combined heat and power facility is hard to describe.

> Well, this is partially true. My wife actually gets irritated that I never
> mind going to work. She does not feel exactly the same about her job.

> I also wish children could understand how much fun I have. Because we need
> more engineers in this country for sure if we hope to remain globally
> competitive.

~~~
cwe
E was definitely awesome. Made the article

~~~
bignoggins
Not surprised E resonates with the HN crowd =)

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13rules
The R is for Referee part is spot on. Have refereed basketball up to and
including Men's NCAA Division I. We don't care who wins - simple as that.

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run4yourlives
As an infantry vet myself, "Army Soldier" is bang on. There are some
tremendously bright and resourceful people in most western armies, and they
are light years ahead in terms of adapting to changing environments (or
recognizing the need to make a change) than the average civilian.

I'm actually really surprised to see such a viewpoint put forward by somebody
outside of the military circle.

------
Alex3917
"Some of the most free-thinking people in the United States are in the US
Army."

This statement brought to you by the 20+ billion dollars the military spends
each year on propaganda and PR.

~~~
sspencer
Anecdotal rebuttal:

The soldiers I've met and interacted with are among the most varied group of
people I can imagine that all do the same basic job. They show more inherent
variance than any other profession I've ever seen. I concur completely with
the Atlantic's letter, and sincerely doubt it was a PR plant.

Just my .02.

~~~
Alex3917
"I concur completely with the Atlantic's letter, and sincerely doubt it was a
PR plant."

It might be, but there's no way to tell. But even if it is 'authentic', it's
still coming from someone who was likely influenced by the propaganda machine.

When someone is willing to spend literally billions of dollars per year to
create a one-truth world, the only safe thing is to treat basically everything
you hear from/about them as bullshit. Consider the following:

"Sometimes we are [portrayed by the media as] plagued by PTSD and associated
terrors. [...] The reality is very different."

Except according to statistics, roughly 50% of the soldiers coming back from
overseas are on disability. And even that is an undercount because the
military often denies people medical care for their injuries, lies about how
people got hurt, etc.

~~~
ygk8
My family is from Iraq. You people who know absolutely nothing about the US's
role in Iraq or elsewhere, while calling US soldiers baby killers or
propagandists, are an absolute disgrace.

Our country is actually functioning with a credible economy, people aren't
dying anymore due to a reckless dictator, and we have access to clean water
and a rapidly improving infrastructure with the US's help. The US soldiers are
helping us keep the streets safe, so we can build businesses and be productive
members of society without having to look over our shoulders.

It's such a shame that people like you, with zero knowledge of the situation,
can spew such hateful and ignorant rhetoric.

~~~
logjam
It would be interesting to know whether the 655,000 people now dead as a
result of the invasion (widely acknowledged to have been predicated on false
justification) would agree with your own slanted rhetoric.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancet_surveys_of_Iraq_War_casu...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancet_surveys_of_Iraq_War_casualties)

We'll never know, will we? It certainly _is_ a shame.

~~~
ygk8
What's funny is that you cite one survey when there are many surveys, with
estimates wildly different from each other, while calling my rhetoric slanted.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War>

The two highest estimates, if you read their Wikipedia entries, are heavily
criticized by peer reviewers.

The actual death rates according to the CIA World Factbook, just to give you a
comparison:

USA:
[http://www.indexmundi.com/g/g.aspx?c=us&v=26](http://www.indexmundi.com/g/g.aspx?c=us&v=26)

Iraq:
[http://www.indexmundi.com/g/g.aspx?c=iz&v=26](http://www.indexmundi.com/g/g.aspx?c=iz&v=26)

Iraq isn't a war zone as many of you who have never visited might think.

~~~
Alex3917
This is exactly the kind of shit I'm talking about. What exactly is the
methodology behind the CIA's death rates? Oh wait, they don't give one. I
wonder why. Perhaps because many/most of their statistics are complete
bullshit. Here is the comment I wrote about their 'literacy statistics' just a
couple days ago:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2961076>

~~~
ygk8
The same death rate figures are cited by UNICEF:

<http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/usa_statistics.html#78>

<http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/iraq_statistics.html#78>

The World Bank lists the same figures too:

<http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.CDRT.IN>

Wikipedia also has the same death rate numbers:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_United_States#D...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_United_States#Death_rate)

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Iraq#Death_rate>

~~~
Alex3917
And not a single one of the links you've just given are actually sources.
Those figures come from the UN, but again no methodology is given. Are these
figures actually independent and unbiased? We don't know. But we do know is
that just last week the US ambassador to the UN said that the UN can't even
issue so much as a press statement with the US agreement.

[http://turtlebay.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/08/16/susan_ri...](http://turtlebay.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/08/16/susan_rice_defends_the_un_on_colbert_report)

<http://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/Excel-Data/mortality.htm>

~~~
ahlatimer
It took a bit of digging, but here's a document on how the UN estimates
mortality:
[http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/adultmort/Comp...](http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/adultmort/Complete.pdf)

You're sort of taking the quote from the US ambassador to the UN out of
context. The US ambassador to the UN said that the UN _Security Council_ can't
even issue so much as a press release without US agreement. Never mind that
this may just have been hyperbole, but it would make sense that the UN
Security Council may have trouble doing things without the backing of the
world's most powerful military. It says nothing, really, about what the UN as
a whole, or the body who forms the mortality statistics specifically, is
capable of doing or not doing without US backing.

~~~
Alex3917
Fair point about the UN, but I think that isn't actually the methodology
behind the mortality estimates. That's just an overview of different ways the
UN gives for estimating mortality, but it doesn't actually provide any
information on which of these (if any) the UN is using for each of the actual
mortality statistics they list.

