I think the key is to start in a job that can lead into lots of other jobs, and then you can work your way into being an expert at your favourite part of the job. I am a terrible adult and just worked in call centres because I didn't know how to find a proper job, plus any proper job always demands that you already know how to do it so you can't just fall into those. I eventually made IT support my career, and it was great for a bit because I was doing some of absolutely everything. However, we're quite a small company so just doing nothing but DNS changes or server migrations all day doesn't exist as an option at my work. But it probably exists somewhere, and it would certainly qualify for your list. Besides, while my dream job might be radio DJ, there is no way I would get up at 3am to do the breakfast show. That wouldn't be a dream job at all. I'd rather do this.

There's a lot you can expand on here if you want to get really philosophical about things.

I've had similar thoughts as you, that it's mental just how specific jobs and industries can get; I've worked in a few different fields in my life (I had lots of false starts you might say) and the most interesting thing in most of them were the trade magazines you'd get. Full of adverts for hyper-specific machines for hyper specific tasks. Articles written by people like Alan Bumcheeks, the logistics co-ordinator for HoseTec, the country's leading supplier of that little hose that connects your dishwasher to the sink. I'd wonder- How big is the circulation of this magazine? How many people does it reach when you put your ad in this magazine? How many units of your ultra-specific rubber hose kinking machine do you need to sell to turn a profit? How big is the market for rubber hose manufacturing tools? And what about the trade magazine for companies who manufacture and supply the components for the rubber hose manufacturing industry to make their machines out of?

It's all pretty wild, but that's just because our economy has become so advanced. It's so advanced no single person can possibly understand or comprehend the complexity within it. It is my belief this is the true and honest reason behind most of society's failings- Everyone who claims to know how to solve a social problem is talking out of their arse, because we basically live in a cargo cult. People like Adam Smith or Karl Marx knew some of what they were talking about, and could write a comprehensive analysis of the economy of their time, as they saw it, but since then it has become so much more complicated nobody who claims to know what's going on is telling the truth. Some of the highest level economists are consumed by a religious fervour for quasi-scientific game theory bullshit that honestly reminds me of the tech-priests in Warhammer, because the reality of their field is simply too unfathomably complicated to work out with anything but some voodoo magic and a bit of faith.

The other thing is it demonstrates just how much in life depends on pure blind chance. People don't like to believe it but it's absolutely true. People tell themselves comforting fairytales that they put themselves where they are through their own good decision making, but it simply isn't true. It was good fortune that put them in the position to make those decisions. That's not to say success in life doesn't require hard work, or that they are undeserving of their success- But all their hard work and determination would have amounted to nothing if their circumstances had just been ever so slightly different. Factors outside your control are constantly weaving their way into your life and interfering with your destiny. Just imagine if there had been a car crash that made you late to that interview when you were 23, and you didn't get the job as a result. Your life might have come out totally differently. And that's how it is for everyone, all the time- Alan Bumcheeks might be stacking shelves at Aldi because he bought a different newspaper, and never saw that ad for the rubber hose manufacturing company that changed his life.

Neil Peart, the drummer from Rush was a big Ayn Rand fan. Their album, 2112, is all about objectivism and man seizing his destiny and so on. He would have no doubt attributed the band's success, and therefore wealth, to their hard work and their unique talents- The combination of his intellectual lyrical themes, Geddy Lee's unimitable vocals, Alex Lifeson's unmistakable guitar solos. But the thing is, he would never have joined that band, and they would likely have never achieved their biggest successes, if the original drummer hadn't decided to leave. That was a moment of fortune the rest of their career rested upon. Likewise, I'm sure he was willing to embrace the concept of blind misfortune when his daughter was killed in a road accident in 1997, and his wife died of cancer just a year later.

So yeah. The world is a complicated place, is what I'm saying.

>>14574

>Articles written by people like Alan Bumcheeks, the logistics co-ordinator for HoseTec, the country's leading supplier of that little hose that connects your dishwasher to the sink.

I absolutely love all this stuff. There's so much knowledge and experience tied up in the most mundane of objects.

I've been working on a scale model of Stephenson's Rocket recently. Of the many weird things about that locomotive, the one that's stuck with me is the fact that it was built 12 years before Joseph Whitworth devised the first standardised screw thread. The nuts and bolts on early locomotives aren't interchangeable with anything, even the other nuts and bolts on the same loco. They were all hand made by a bloke with a three-square file and a lot of patience. Buying nuts and bolts and knowing that they'll fit together is totally mundane, but at one point it was a revolutionary technology.

There's a wholesale market in Yiwu, China that's basically the centre of the trade universe. It's rammed with thousands of tiny booths, each showing samples of what a particular factory can make. The market is more than four miles long. This video can't really give a sense of the scale, but there's a telling moment when the host stops to chat with a shopper at the market. He flew from Dubai to China to visit the world's biggest market and he just wants door handles. Nothing else, just door handles.

A lot of these job titles are just overly descriptive and specific in a bad and needless way. I think they're an attempt to suggest significance in a world where an individual employee's importance is increasingly negligible. And by making something sound fancy, they're pulling the wool over your eyes so you won't realise that all they're really looking for is another tiny little wheel in their corporate system to replace another tiny little wheel.

Back when I was at uni in the late 90s and increasingly had to make up my mind what path I wanted to take after my degree, you had decidedly fewer of these overblown job titles in job ads. And the job titles that did exist read far more simple. Companies simply advertised their openings as being for "marketing assistants", "junior sales representatives", "strategy consultants", or what-have-you. One of my mates was studying to be a civil engineer, and at his first job, he was simply a "junior engineer" for a company dedicated to the planning and the construction of bridges, and then at some point was simply promoted to "senior engineer".

I know we probably can't and won't go back to anything like that, but it also made it a bit more simple to figure out what you actually wanted to be. Nobody I knew at uni had their mind set on becoming a Performance Reporting Manager or a Compliance Adviser. But now with a whole plethora of highly differentiated job descriptions, I'm sure a lot of young people will just be left very confused.