What do you do for work?

[davislane1]

My dad's one of the last remaining floor traders. As far as I know his is the last futures pit where they still trade via open outcry.

Is he a CME floor trader? I believe that's the last exhange with physical pits. Actually had a couple instructors who started their careers there.

I'm an IT analyst/developer for a large institutional investor, so I work on the systems that do accounting, taxes, and reporting for their managed investments (stocks, bonds, derivs, other fixed income etc). So when @davislane1 decides to short a pile of futures, the tax dept will use the system I designed to make sure those futures are properly hedged against some long treasury or corporate bonds so the auditors don't fine us into the next century.

So far I count in this thread...

1 trader, 1 financial analyst, 1 IT analyst/dev with substantial financial industry experince.

We're a lawyer short of being able to start a hedge fund.

 

[Julio Franco]

Technology used to be my hobby, so I started TechSpot almost two decades ago. Now it's what I do full time, managing the ins and outs of the business, overseeing our editorial team, content direction and strategy. I have a formal background in IT as well, I'm an MIS graduate which took place during my tenure running TechSpot. I'd say the work is a mix of tech and publishing, though the latter is also heavily influenced by technology these days.

As some friends recently told me (I was being questioned about the latest VR releases), I have the perfect job (or excuse) to buy and be surrounded by the latest tech gadgets so that's a nice position to be in for someone who really loves tech.

 

[AdmiralUnibrow]

Is he a CME floor trader? I believe that's the last exchange with physical pits. Actually had a couple instructors who started their careers there.

Yep, sure is. He's worked in the S&P index futures since the early 80s. He told me last week that the CME shuttered its trading floor in New York, so now it's just the options pits in Chicago and one futures pit: his. Who knows how long that'll last. I've actually been trying to talk him into letting me build him a spiffy new trading PC with a nice LG ultra widescreen to go with it. For when he inevitably has to start working from home.

 

[Evernessince]

I teach English, Portuguese and Japanese in a language school. Everyone there is learning one of those languages as a second language. I have a passion for teaching and I've never had any other occupation. The demand for any language other than English is very low, so I teach English (which is also my favorite language) 99% of my time. I love it so much, I'd do it for free, but those steam games are not going to just appear in my library.

I'm learning Japanese right now and it's great. I don't know why more people don't pursue a 2nd language.

 

[CortyDK]

For the past 17 years I have been working in a major Danish telecom provider. Started in callcenter, have tried many different jobs within the company, and have since late 2013 been busy correcting errors in broadband connection orders so our system can handle them and we can get our customers online.

 

[TitoBXNY]

I am a Master Control Operator at NBC Sports. Just worked the game were Golden State broke Chicago's most games won in a season. On Thursday I worked the San Francisco Giants game were they allowed the most runs in one inning in franchise history. I also work on radio shows such as Toucher & Rich, Chuck Powell and The Fan. Also work on usa network, chiller, sprout and a dozen other networks.

 

[dnnyvngs]

Now I own a hotel and a restaurant but I love technology!!!

 

[ArdvarkMaster]

Maintain flight simulators for the military. Big giant video games.

 

[sarif82]

I design chips; I started my career designing a part of Sun's UltraSPARC CPUs, and am currently designing PCIe/ USB/ SATA PHY IP. This site helps provide a context for the daily routine.

 

[StrikerRocket]

I'm French and I'm a teacher. I teach English in French junior high schools, to pupils aged 11 to 16. That's what I've been trained to do. But my heart has always been with technology, since my early teens. I began toying with computers when my dad built a copy of an Apple ][+ back in the early 80's. I learned BASIC, some assembly language (6502), a little pascal, and studied DOS and disc access/layout as a hobby when I was just 12 y/o, if you know what "C600G" means, or D5AA96 for example, you know what I mean. Now, I just build computers for my family and myself (just finished building a dual xeon like the one described in the Techspot review that gave me the idea to do it!), I fix computers also, when things go wrong. It became serious when my dad bought a 386DX-40 (AMD) in the early 90's, then a pentium 100! After that, I bought my first PC, an Pentium /// (1 Ghz), and went on to a Northwood P4 3Ghz (my mom's still running this one on my original ASUS P4P800), a Core2 Duo, a Q8300, then a Q9650. Then I got an i7-3770K and now, I still have the i7 and I use the Dual Xeon as my main machine to render videos and do other tasks. I'm also a HAM, so yeah, I guess you could say technology is pretty important for me... ;-)

 

[Raduke]

Radiologist. And tech nerd.

 

[Alpha Gamer]

I'm learning Japanese right now and it's great.

I hope you're having less trouble than I did.

I don't know why more people don't pursue a 2nd language.

To be honest, if English was my native language, I would never even consider learning something else. I only started because I wanted to understand the story of the games I played. To me, learning English was effortless and the decision to teach it was just a consequence. On the other hand, learning Japanese was pretty hard and that's the kind of work most people are not willing to have. And if, for some reason, you're not very attracted to the culture related to the language you're studying (people who learn foreign languages for business purposes), the time and effort put into it will feel very unproductive. As if you were farming for years that rare item that never dropped.

 

[SNGX1275]

I'm learning Japanese right now and it's great. I don't know why more people don't pursue a 2nd language.

Perhaps because it takes a ton of time commitment and is going to be little if ever used for most people

 

[Razer]

Information broker and strategic analyst (government, politics and law)

 

[Denso]

I do corporate taxes as a CPA, computer building has always been a hobby

 

[Spykezxp]

Manager of Operations and Security / On-site IT for a major retail store; Co-owner / Co-operator of a small Bakery business and also freelance Snow Plow/Removal Service (obviously only during certain times of the year). I also repair and build computers for friends, family and friends of family.
My older brother got me into technology in the mid 1980's and have been into it ever since.

 

[alexnode]

3d designer and running a rendering farm, love fast processors with gazillion cores. 32 years of tech madness...

 

[tonylukac]

I teach English, Portuguese and Japanese in a language school. Everyone there is learning one of those languages as a second language. I have a passion for teaching and I've never had any other occupation. The demand for any language other than English is very low, so I teach English (which is also my favorite language) 99% of my time. I love it so much, I'd do it for free, but those steam games are not going to just appear in my library.

I'm learning Japanese right now and it's great. I don't know why more people don't pursue a 2nd language.

Pursue a computer language, like java for android or swift for iphone.

 

[Stupido]

I'm 'model-based control design engineer' a mouthful for embedded control software engineer...
apart from daily messing with AUTOSAR components and Simulink (though not for automotive industry), I also used to mess with my PC - overclocking and gaming.
Actually overclocking started some years ago (my first 'good' overclock was on Q6600) just to get some more juice out of my rig for the games (why buy more expensive gear when you can squeeze some extra power and of course for fun too

also have at home some embedded boards so I can experiment... for example, not long ago I have discovered Rust (programming language from Mozilla) and now I want to run it on my ARM cortex boards again, for fun...

so I guess that makes me a bit tech junkie?

 

[Greg S]

I am an electrical design engineer. I mostly do custom pcb design for industrial automation and automotive companies.

 

[Puiu]

Currently working as a web developer and I've been programming since a very young age. I've also studied economics alongside IT.
I'm also working on a very big esports related project together with my brother. (unrelated to my normal day job)

 

[treetops]

I work for a tech support call center from home, I train new agents 1/3 of the time and take calls the rest. I've been contracted out to two companies so far. I can't go into details of which companies, basically when your internet goes down were the ones you talk too.

I really wanted to work in a PC repair shop out of college, but there were only 2 shops where I used to live and they weren't hiring. I plan to move up where I'm at, learn programming or go somewhere were I'm off the fin phones.

 

[Evernessince]

I hope you're having less trouble than I did.

To be honest, if English was my native language, I would never even consider learning something else. I only started because I wanted to understand the story of the games I played. To me, learning English was effortless and the decision to teach it was just a consequence. On the other hand, learning Japanese was pretty hard and that's the kind of work most people are not willing to have. And if, for some reason, you're not very attracted to the culture related to the language you're studying (people who learn foreign languages for business purposes), the time and effort put into it will feel very unproductive. As if you were farming for years that rare item that never dropped.

That's probably why I like it so much. I love drawing the kanji!

 

[Evernessince]

Perhaps because it takes a ton of time commitment and is going to be little if ever used for most people

Everything seems like a big challenge. You've got to break it down and take it piece by piece. Your 2nd statement is a chicken or egg situation. People who don't know a second language aren't going to be looking for opportunities to speak in another language nor watching foreign media.

 

[Evernessince]

Pursue a computer language, like java for android or swift for iphone.

I already know a few computer languages. HTML, JAVA, C#, HTML (I know, markup language), CSS, PHP, and a few proprietary ones like papyrus using in Skyrim.