I grew up as the son of a construction project manager for Fluor who primarily built marine loading terminals and petrochemical plants. After living in Puerto Rico, California, Alaska, Saudi Arabia, Texas, Louisiana, Saudi Arabia again and then Texas, I had traveled to about 25 countries on 5 continents by age 15. I like to see new places and meet new people.

The guy talking about working in Toledo earlier hit one nail on the head. When you're traveling for work, the employer gets to choose where you go, NOT you. So... I've been to many places I never intended to go to and many places that I was lucky to go to. I've always tried to make the most of every opportunity to learn as much as I can about why people there do what they do. Two decisions my dad made which worked out well for us were to go to Saudi Arabia instead of Venezuela, and to go to Saudi Arabia instead of South Africa.

But... back to those early career decisions.

1 & 2 - I attended Texas A&M on an Army ROTC Scholarship and then the Soviet Union went out of business. I used that opportunity to get an Engineering Degree and wound up serving in the National Guard.

My experience as an Armor Officer leading men in an M1 Abrams Tank Platoon, 10 HMMWV Battalion Scout Platoon and serving as an M1A1 Abrams Tank Company Executive Officer has been invaluable. I wouldn't have gotten half as far as I have without that.

3 - I found a job as an Environmental Engineer in Austin. This is important because this is what I studied in school. In 1994, the job market was terrible and I felt lucky to land this job. As I've posted on this board before, I had attended the orientation for the Austin Fire Department (after placing 108 out of 1800 on the test) and was scheduled to attend the Fire Academy. Working as an Engineer is what I went to school for and it's what I wanted to do. I felt like I had made it. However...

Working for the TNRCC (now TCEQ) in the mid-1990s was a bit of a mess as Texas went back and forth with the EPA about the implementation of Title V of the Federal Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990. During this time, I did approximately 3 months of "Engineering" and then because I showed aptitude with computer systems, I got stuck managing our data which ultimately led to a large initiative to manage our information on this new thing called the World Wide Web.

After doing Web development for about 18 months and zero Environmental Engineering, I took the opportunity to take over the Administration and development of the Internet presence for the Agency.

4 - Making that move from Environmental Engineering to Information Technology was seriously one of the most difficult decisions I've ever had to make. Giving up my hard-walled office for a cube wasn't a big deal to me. At least they weren't asking me to sleep on the back deck of an Abrams Tank.

Knowing that I had spent 5 years at A&M pursuing the dream of being an "Engineer" and now after 2 years on the job, I was chucking that career out the window and moving into the uncertain waters of Information Technology, it was a bit overwhelming. And what if somebody found out that everything I know was essentially self-taught? I didn't have a degree in Computer Science or anything.

But, I did have some very good mentors early on. The guy who mentored me the most and pointed me in the right direction the most times now works for the EPA as an Air Pollution Engineer in San Francisco. I really looked up to that guy and would not be where I am today if it were not for his encouragement and in some ways his demands and challenges. When I left Environmental Engineering for Information Technology, his role changed from peer to customer as mine changed from peer to service provider.

I've officially been in IT for 21 years now and some of the smartest people I worked with were in Austin, Texas from about 1994-1999. That initial trial by fire education set me on the course which has taken me to where I am today.

5 - To go back a bit retrospective in this timeline but this part is not without noting. As a kid, I was Senior Patrol Leader in my Boy Scout Troop. I was the leader of my Philmont Trek 802x in 1987. I was in the Corps of Cadets, Army ROTC, etc. But it wasn't until I went through the Armor School at Fort Knox that I became a leader. And in fact, I can remember the event where it happened vividly. The guy talking about "sloppy work", this was a similar situation.

The way it worked was we had an E6 who was responsible for teaching a crew of 4x 2LTs how to be Tankers. Like the missions we had run in ROTC which were Infantry based, this 4 month long school culminated with a capstone exercise they called the "10 Day War" (because we did field maneuvers for 10 Days).

Of the 36 or so 2LTs in my class, I undoubtedly had the worst luck. The first mission where I was the leader was in super thick fog where visibility was seriously less than 50 meters. Due to the fog and the fact that I wasn't fully a leader yet, my mission was successful but it was a basket case. So, near the end of the 10 Day War, I got picked to run a 2nd mission. Essentially a retry because of the Fog on the first mission.

Well, 2nd mission day comes and it snows about 2-3 inches overnight. We entered our battle positions from the rear and paused to get ready for our movement to contact. I was in charge but was expecting some help from my peers. All of those guys were kind of playing dumb. And that's when the E6 who was responsible for our tank crew got my attention and said these words I'll never forget - "Sir, They're waiting for you". Like getting hit by a bolt of lightning, that was the moment that I became a leader. I realized that I was in charge and it was me who was going to make this mission happen. And that's exactly what took place. That was 23 years ago and I've never looked back. All the training and preparation didn't click until SSG Underwood said those words which flipped the leadership switch in me.

6 - Making the move from Government to the Private Sector. As it turned out, I had a peer in the National Guard who worked for one of the big computer companies in Austin. He would tell me about how I needed to come to work with him and I'd tell him that I was quite happy working for the State of Texas because I got 3 weeks of Military Leave in addition to my Vacation. I really wanted to make a career in the Guard at that point.

After a year of badgering, I finally gave him my resume and literally 3 weeks later, I was working in Round Rock for a good 20% more than what I was making with the State of Texas.

Earlier some folks talked about - How much effort does the company spend developing their people?

Well, I got lucky to wind up working for a company that put a lot of effort into development and I had a manager who was fantastic. I was a little bit apprehensive about working for a woman because the lady who ran our Environmental Engineering organization was a nutcase but, my new manager in the private sector was amazing. Her philosophy was to find out what I needed to do my job and get it for me. That didn't matter if it was software, training, consulting expertise, etc. If she needed money, she found it. If she needed executive buy-in, she got it. She challenged me but also built on my strengths and improved my weaknesses. I was very fortunate to work for her during that time period.

A subtle nuance if you're not in IT but, during this time, I changed roles from Application Development and service to backend infrastructure. And the rest is history.

7 - Reaching burnout and Bonfire. In this new role, I ate it up. I got to travel a little bit to the Bay Area and to the new factory in Tennessee. There was so much opportunity that I would never be able to finish it all. I loved it. But, the job was consuming all of my time.

And then as I reached burnout, I was encouraged by one internal person (my Director) and one external person (my software sales rep) to pursue job opportunities outside the company. I hit send on my resume at 2:37 am on November 18th, 1999. I took one last look at the Bonfire Webcam on Wisenbaker Engineering Center and I shut down my computer and went to bed. My mom called me at 6 am to tell me that the Bonfire had collapsed and 4 students had been killed. The events of that day and the following week forged my decision about what to do next. And the "what to do" was to move on to a role that would allow me to travel more, spend more time at home and get paid more.

I wound up taking a job in Denver, Colorado doing Professional Services and flying around the USA. In four years, I traveled to 26 States for work. I saw all kinds of different ways of doing business and learned a ton.

So that's the summary on my "early career" decisions.
Mid-career decisions is a whole 'nother deal.

Made some awesome and serendipitous connections while in college; lead to my first job out of grad school.

The first day on that job, a day I wasn't even supposed to field work, I met the president of the company I'd go to work for next. That job jump started my career.

I'm in a field that I'm 1000% (not a typo) comfortable with and excell at because I am able to take technical scientific details and retell then to lay persons and make them understand it. I also understand how the "real" world works and that helps me greatly in my job as most folks in my field/position can't separate their feelings or personal beliefs from the business (what's legal and not necessarily what's moral).

One of my last jobs at this company, was focused on a small item that we didn't have the resources or experience to actually do, but it was put on my desk and I knew I'd get t done. So I made some calls back to A&M and got the right folks for the job, hired them as Subs and did the work in a new way that hadn't been done before.

I've since then moved to another company and love it. Doing the same job, getting paid a hell of a lot more and getting WAY more experience in the field overall. Then I get a call from the client from the above project asking me to give a presentation at a national meeting covering that project. I did it and that had lead to a flood of additional work for myself and my company.

got a contract gig in O&G industry via a broker...they told me with 100% certainty that their clients don't hire the contractors so I acted accordingly (interviewing, etc). Turns out the company I was contracted to, hired almost every other contractor that started with and after me. They are all in upper level positions now and I ended up doing contracting for many years after before finding a permanent gig. Still beat myself up about it but I know things will work out the way they are supposed to.

Yikes... I think every work related decision I've ever made has been wrong, and I regret most of them every day.

The biggest mistake I made was not having any real direction in school and not having internships during the summers. I graduated and started looking instead of having something lined up. I then went to work at a small university, went to get an MBA (again didnt have an internship or anything lined up upon graduation though on this front I tried very hard it just didnt happen for me), and after graduating from my MBA took a job with a nonprofit doing something I dont really enjoy.

Now as I've turned 30 I know myself better than I did when I was 22 and I know what I enjoy and what could make a great career, but I'm pretty sure its too late. I'd have truly loved to be an district attorney and eventually a judge. Or something more hands on and project management. The list of "coulda shoulda woulda" seems endless at times.

I recently started teaching as an adjunct professor and really love it. I'm giving a ton of thought to PHD programs and becoming a fulltime professor hopefully by 35.

I wish I had some better advice at a younger age about internships and work experience. I wish I had better advice about finding a field that has growth potential and great salaries. Instead I was told "you are personable and outgoing you should be in marketing" so away I went looking for marketing jobs. I had no idea how hard it would be to switch fields or industries once you had the ball rolling a little bit.

More mistakes than not, and here I am.

I started college with not much of an idea of what I wanted to do as a career. I grew up in logging, knew there wasn't much a future in it, and I've always loved flying and wanted to work in ag. I met a guy my first semester who helped get me a job on the Extension research farm, and I worked my way through college thinking my future would be in cotton research. I had a great internship with a major ag company, and shook on an agreement to return to the location I was at and work full time after graduating that December. The company started to give me the run-around that fall, and after exploring options I ended up accepting a sales job with a farmers coop. I had never considered sales and had only been to that region of the state twice before moving there, but I picked up quick and paid my dues, making a good living and learned to fly along the way.

2.5 years into that job, our division was sold in an unprecedented move that caught everyone off guard. I was not happy at all with my management concerning other matters, nor did I like the company that bought us out, and knew I didn't want to stay there. Within 48 hours of the buyout being made public, I accepted a lucrative job with our old supplier, essentially as a hired gun. Five of us started up a new sales office, and brought 95% of our business with us. I'm still in awe of what we did with the odds stacked against us and the risk involved, but that decision proved to be the turning point of my career.

About a year into that job, it was obvious that the arrangement wasn't going to work long term. We were the only location in this national company selling directly to farmers, and the logistics were killing us. We were doing our part, but the company couldn't adapt to the structure and they realized it. After 1.5 years they sold our location to a sales company they were part owners of, I accepted a job with them, again a good pay raise and better bonus structure. Although I loved the job with the freedom and pay, flying was nagging at me, I wanted it to be more than a hobby. I started talking seriously with local ag pilots, trying to figure out how I could break into the crop dusting industry. I made the decision to jump in feet first, buying an ag plane and having a few mentors train me and crack my skull when needed. I spent this last year spraying part time and working my sales job, very little downtime, but learned a lot along the way. I quit the sales job in December and now running my own spray business full time. I had a great first season, and next season looks like it will be even better.

Bottom line, trust your gut on what's right for you, taking a calculated risk instead of the easy/secure road can pay dividends in the short and long run. I could have stuck with research, and probably be laid off or desperately looking for a job by now. I could have stayed with the business from the first buyout, which is now a shell of what it was just a few years ago and the employees are miserable. I could have also accepted several offers I got along the way for more money, but none of those felt like the right thing. I took a fairly roundabout way to get into a career I love, but the experience I got along the way is invaluable, and the pay from those jobs allowed me to start a business with less than a quarter of the debt many of my friends incurred upon startup.

Ulrich said:

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At this rate I'm probably going to be retired before I figure out what I want to do when i grow up.

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Same here. I ponder each and every day what it is that I want to do when I grow up. Still haven't figured it out yet.

Funny thing about work - you can take the thing you love most in the world and think you'd love doing for a living, but the second you take it from the "fun" category to the "work" category - it becomes less and less fun and you end up enjoying that activity less and less.

The Milkman said:

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Yikes... I think every work related decision I've ever made has been wrong, and I regret most of them every day.

The biggest mistake I made was not having any real direction in school and not having internships during the summers. I graduated and started looking instead of having something lined up. I then went to work at a small university, went to get an MBA (again didnt have an internship or anything lined up upon graduation though on this front I tried very hard it just didnt happen for me), and after graduating from my MBA took a job with a nonprofit doing something I dont really enjoy.

Now as I've turned 30 I know myself better than I did when I was 22 and I know what I enjoy and what could make a great career, but I'm pretty sure its too late. I'd have truly loved to be an district attorney and eventually a judge. Or something more hands on and project management. The list of "coulda shoulda woulda" seems endless at times.

I recently started teaching as an adjunct professor and really love it. I'm giving a ton of thought to PHD programs and becoming a fulltime professor hopefully by 35.

I wish I had some better advice at a younger age about internships and work experience. I wish I had better advice about finding a field that has growth potential and great salaries. Instead I was told "you are personable and outgoing you should be in marketing" so away I went looking for marketing jobs. I had no idea how hard it would be to switch fields or industries once you had the ball rolling a little bit.

More mistakes than not, and here I am.

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If you're willing to give a PhD a try at 30, why not give law school a try? PhD's are wrought with uncertainty more so than law school. Law school is three years. A PhD is as long as it takes for you to make significant contributions to your field (probably 4 or 5).

If you're going to work until 65, you've still got 35 years to work. That is a long time to sit around 'If only I had done more in my twenties.' I have a friend who was a police officer for 18 years before he decided to go do law school.

Teaching is a ton of fun, but its hard to make it pay the bills. Also, talking to professors about becoming a professor is ripe with survivors bias. They probably struggled more than they let on to get that job.

I hope you find your way, don't beat yourself up too hard.

Zman91 said:

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In the early 90s I attended a meeting at work about something called a 401K, the HR rep put up a chart that showed 2 employees - both worked for same company for 20 years and contributed the same amount of money to the 401K for a period of 10 years. The 1st person contributed all the money in the 1st ten years and the 2nd person contributed all the money the 2nd ten years. The 1st person ended up with more than twice as much money as the 2nd - that is all I needed to hear . The decision I made was to begin contributing as much as I could immediately and the impact was I now have a bunch of money saved up for retirement and still have about 12 years left before I plan to retire. I have worked for the same company for almost 28 years and plan on retiring when I get to 40 years.

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Bravo.

one MEEN Ag said:

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The Milkman said:

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Yikes... I think every work related decision I've ever made has been wrong, and I regret most of them every day.

The biggest mistake I made was not having any real direction in school and not having internships during the summers. I graduated and started looking instead of having something lined up. I then went to work at a small university, went to get an MBA (again didnt have an internship or anything lined up upon graduation though on this front I tried very hard it just didnt happen for me), and after graduating from my MBA took a job with a nonprofit doing something I dont really enjoy.

Now as I've turned 30 I know myself better than I did when I was 22 and I know what I enjoy and what could make a great career, but I'm pretty sure its too late. I'd have truly loved to be an district attorney and eventually a judge. Or something more hands on and project management. The list of "coulda shoulda woulda" seems endless at times.

I recently started teaching as an adjunct professor and really love it. I'm giving a ton of thought to PHD programs and becoming a fulltime professor hopefully by 35.

I wish I had some better advice at a younger age about internships and work experience. I wish I had better advice about finding a field that has growth potential and great salaries. Instead I was told "you are personable and outgoing you should be in marketing" so away I went looking for marketing jobs. I had no idea how hard it would be to switch fields or industries once you had the ball rolling a little bit.

More mistakes than not, and here I am.

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If you're willing to give a PhD a try at 30, why not give law school a try? PhD's are wrought with uncertainty more so than law school. Law school is three years. A PhD is as long as it takes for you to make significant contributions to your field (probably 4 or 5).

If you're going to work until 65, you've still got 35 years to work. That is a long time to sit around 'If only I had done more in my twenties.' I have a friend who was a police officer for 18 years before he decided to go do law school.

Teaching is a ton of fun, but its hard to make it pay the bills. Also, talking to professors about becoming a professor is ripe with survivors bias. They probably struggled more than they let on to get that job.

I hope you find your way, don't beat yourself up too hard.

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They hire district attorneys from the "cheap" law schools too, so it isn't really that lofty of a goal.

The Milkman said:

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Yikes... I think every work related decision I've ever made has been wrong, and I regret most of them every day.

The biggest mistake I made was not having any real direction in school and not having internships during the summers. I graduated and started looking instead of having something lined up. I then went to work at a small university, went to get an MBA (again didnt have an internship or anything lined up upon graduation though on this front I tried very hard it just didnt happen for me), and after graduating from my MBA took a job with a nonprofit doing something I dont really enjoy.

Now as I've turned 30 I know myself better than I did when I was 22 and I know what I enjoy and what could make a great career, but I'm pretty sure its too late. I'd have truly loved to be an district attorney and eventually a judge. Or something more hands on and project management. The list of "coulda shoulda woulda" seems endless at times.

I recently started teaching as an adjunct professor and really love it. I'm giving a ton of thought to PHD programs and becoming a fulltime professor hopefully by 35.

I wish I had some better advice at a younger age about internships and work experience. I wish I had better advice about finding a field that has growth potential and great salaries. Instead I was told "you are personable and outgoing you should be in marketing" so away I went looking for marketing jobs. I had no idea how hard it would be to switch fields or industries once you had the ball rolling a little bit.

More mistakes than not, and here I am.

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30 to professor at 35? Doesn't the PhD take at least 4-5 years? If you are looking for a field that has growth potential and great salaries, academia ain't it unless you've been tenured forever and pull in big grants.

Remember, your job doesn't have to be something you love, it just needs to be something you don't hate so you can fund the things you enjoy doing.

Bob_Ag said:

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The Milkman said:

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Yikes... I think every work related decision I've ever made has been wrong, and I regret most of them every day.

The biggest mistake I made was not having any real direction in school and not having internships during the summers. I graduated and started looking instead of having something lined up. I then went to work at a small university, went to get an MBA (again didnt have an internship or anything lined up upon graduation though on this front I tried very hard it just didnt happen for me), and after graduating from my MBA took a job with a nonprofit doing something I dont really enjoy.

Now as I've turned 30 I know myself better than I did when I was 22 and I know what I enjoy and what could make a great career, but I'm pretty sure its too late. I'd have truly loved to be an district attorney and eventually a judge. Or something more hands on and project management. The list of "coulda shoulda woulda" seems endless at times.

I recently started teaching as an adjunct professor and really love it. I'm giving a ton of thought to PHD programs and becoming a fulltime professor hopefully by 35.

I wish I had some better advice at a younger age about internships and work experience. I wish I had better advice about finding a field that has growth potential and great salaries. Instead I was told "you are personable and outgoing you should be in marketing" so away I went looking for marketing jobs. I had no idea how hard it would be to switch fields or industries once you had the ball rolling a little bit.

More mistakes than not, and here I am.

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30 to professor at 35? Doesn't the PhD take at least 4-5 years? If you are looking for a field that has growth potential and great salaries, academia ain't it unless you've been tenured forever and pull in big grants.

Remember, your job doesn't have to be something you love, it just needs to be something you don't hate so you can fund the things you enjoy doing.

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Seen academia up close and personal. Five years to PhD and then getting to immediately be a professor is incredibly quick. That requires an amazing adviser doing groundbreaking research that the world is already watching, then pumping out tons of publications from your first year on (while still taking classes). Then when applying for jobs you get to fend off post-docs who have already done all of these things and more. For the rest of us who didn't go to Stanford or the like, it is doable, but be prepared to add a year or two onto your expected time line and expect the interest of directional schools after a long stint of adjuncting.

Some interesting reads here, cool to hear all the different stories.

I went to school for architecture, during that time Toy Story was released and I knew I wanted to do something in animation. Refocused my last few years of school on more general design and taught myself HTML, graduated, and went to work in Houston for a small dot-com doing web design.

Was there for a bit and got let go for reasons still not entirely clear (family run business and the son was apparently my supervisor, which I learned on my last day). Learned like crazy in my spare time to actually become a competent designer, worked for a few different design and consulting firms and freelanced over the course of a few years, landed a job at a commercial real estate marketing firm and started taking online animation classes, stayed at the job far too long because it required minimal effort and allowed me to focus on class.

Got married in that same stretch and decided restarting my career at the bottom of the ladder in animation wasn't the best plan. Wife and I decided we needed a change, by that point I was pretty indispensible to my job and told my boss I was moving to Austin and would be working remotely for a bit.

Found a job in Austin at a small firm that let me go when they lost their biggest client, then landed at an awesome tech company (#5 place to work in Austin at last check) where I'm a senior designer doing primarily video editing and motion graphics. And I'm directing an animated short with a team of about 20 people on the side.

Biggest mistake? Not doing what I wanted earlier (getting into animation), it's tough to start over when you've got bills and responsibilities. Second was staying too long at a job where I wasn't growing at all because it was easy, which also hindered my career growth a bit.

I probably should be making more and certainly could be if I'd gone into middle management or something I'd hate, but I really enjoy what I do and get to work on fun stuff while making enough to be more than comfortable.

So do what you want to do, if you're a smart ambitious person you'll figure out how to make it work. There will be ups and down, just roll with them and adapt and you'll be fine.

If you don't mind me asking are you still working in that industry of construction? (Industrial, petrochemical, O&G refineries, etc)