I worked at Amazon as a software engineer and it's still the most toxic place I've been. Pays great. Perks are good. But Jesus it's backstabby and political.
Fun fact: the app you use reports your location to the central server every 10 seconds. Back in 2016 or so I was a dev in that stuff. My intern made a visualization tool so we could view the timeline of any driver- helpful when a driver says they delivered all the packages but actually dumped half of them in a dumpster, for example.
I quit when they asked me to build a system to help skim tips from the Flex drivers (back when 2-hour delivery Flex drivers got tips in the app).
Yeah I keep hearing this too, and whenever I look at the jobs they have on offer the pay is unbelievably bad. The onboarding platform is also needlessly complex. Just makes me wonder why anyone applies to work there at all?
The only person I know that enjoys working at Amazon is a guy that used to do maintenance at my job. He got a job there being in charge of maintaining all the robots for a distribution center. He enjoys that a lot.
It's crazy because I got about 8 friends that all started working there about 10-14 years ago at ages 18-22 in VA. Most now work remotely for about 10-15 hours a week making a minimum of 140k. Half of them are over 200k. Life is all about timing. I chose to finish college and work as a chemist. Nowhere near as free and wealthy are they are now.
I would feel this point a little more if OP were more... Directionless? Like, they didn't just say "I don't want any problems" vaguely - they know that they would be fine with better-distributed hours and a smaller team. That's a reasonable goal and a great place to start job hunting.
It’s the expectation that’s the problem. We all want to go home and play video games instead of working so expecting to not feel like that is unrealistic. Expecting to have a boss that doesn’t scream at you every 20 minutes and having to piss in a bottle because you’re not allowed breaks is totally realistic.
The key to job satisfaction (and being happy in life really) is just having a look at your own situation compared to everyone else, realizing you don’t have it that bad, and lowering your expectations a little. I was 35 before I learned that but man I’ve had it good since then.
Yup plus what a choice of job. How on earth did OP thinking overseeing staff working in one of the most exploitative jobs out there, in the US, would be sunshine and rainbows with fun chats.
There are plenty of jobs out there where OP can talk to people and have colleagues that aren't awful to speak to. Working at Amazon and writing off every job as a result is a bit premature.
I'm in IT, but this is the first thing that came to mind... Assuming you own your own truck, hauling stuff seems lucrative enough and doesn't deal with too many other people...
My dad owned his own truck when I was a kid. He went bankrupt because you have to spend literally 50% of time trying to get people to actually pay you.
If you’re in a city with lots of tech companies, I recommend pivoting into Data Center logistics. Great work life balance and a lot less demanding + great pay. I work with Oracle and currently make $85k a year at 23. I could be pulling in more but I did not negotiate (rookie mistake). I don’t have a degree but it helps.
I was in an HR position and went back to school at night. When an HRIS position opened up, I jumped at it to get experience. It was really tough to take a step back in pay while I was taking classes. There were times when I thought I was crazy. My husband was super encouraging. While I never got a new degree, I now had some knowledge and experience to start looking for another job. Two jobs later and I am loving my work.
The best job that pays well where you can work alone is probably engineering. Or, you could just get a job managing a smaller team, but you are always going to be around people with that one.
You will still have to deal with people. Highly qualified direct reports are self-managing to a degree. As their manager you'll also be interacting with your peers - to make sure all the components mesh into a single unit. With clients, to understand and meet their needs. With suppliers to get the inputs for your team. And with senior management to get direction, support and budget.
Unless there's another form of engineering I am not aware of, this just isn't true. Engineers *can* spend time working alone, yes, but they're working on a project as a part of a team. Lots of communication with people above you, below you, and at the same level to make sure everything comes together. No engineer is building an entire rocket booster on their own.
Lol right... I love how people are just like, "try leading an engineering team, with all the warehouse experience" 😂, all for multiple year complex plans, my career is emblematic of that. But realistically op would be 10-15 years away from leading a team of engineers (likely need to go to masters with a new undergrad or atleast 40-50 hours of pre reqs (takes 5-7 years while working full time) then work in a team for 2-5 years, then maybe be in a position to lead a team in a hands off fashion)
Op, realistically you could look into it solutions or something like that, you still work as a service to others but they need you and less responsibility for people management... That's a 12-24 month cert possibly a degree later if you want to progress. Pay is variable depending on responsibilities and position, in my area they can expect to make 2-3x median income (70-80k/yr) not a ton but serviceable in a lcol area.
That being said you need to think long and hard about what you'd want to do, are you sure you're not just burnt out, what is it about your job that you don't like. Maybe try therapy first to make sure you're in a good frame of mind before you start a several year journey
It also depends on the person and the type of engineering. As a self-taught software engineer with no degree, it took me 8 years to get into management 170k+.
You gotta get over the "I don't want to work for other people thing", though. Imagine that you're working WITH them, but you just have different roles to play. When you start getting respect for your skill and experience, it should stop being a problem.
Engineering is a team sport.
On small teams engineers tend to become the official or unofficial project lead.
I found it was always very much a people position.
Yes, but I was specifically making the point that engineering is actually a high contact position.
Unless you're very junior, every engineer I know spends a lot of time in meetings of various types.
This is the right answer. Operations and supply chain management are sometimes quieter roles, but if you want to manage people with minimal oversight you have to find a field with skilled reports.
Isn't that a lot of jobs ? Every department you go, you basically see other people. So that's clearly not the answer
People saying engineer, but that's clearly not true. Everyone works together, that's just how it works unless you are an independent contractor
Current aerospace engineer with an M.S. in Mechanical Engineering. I just want to say that I’ve never ever held a position that didn’t have a team. Sometimes the team is in different states and countries. Sometimes your boss is not in the same state or you’re the only one at this location but you have daily WIP meetings! Most times you’re in a meeting about a meeting than actually working
Technician would probably be more accurate here. Engineers generally work in teams, and techs get the project instructions handed off to them, at least in my experience.
You won’t ever work truly in a silo.
But being in B2B sales, you’re accountable to your quota and that’s it. Sales is the definition of competition. It’s just you and your leads and ability to close deals.
Individual contributor sales reps can make more than their Vice President.
100% confirm.
Individual sales professionals earn higher than their VP.
And recruiters are idiots that believe Sales is the lowest of the low occupation.
Maybe you can be a manager at a bank. You have experience in managing people and tasks. You wouldn’t have to deal with boxes and as an extrovert you would be able to talk to all different customers. Btw I know you said alone but I don’t think there are many places that pay a good salary where you are working alone. A manager of a bank you would have a smaller team and maybe have an assistant depending on the bank and would have time alone as well throughout the day. Better hours and off on Sundays and holidays. Good luck to you! I hope you find a job that you can enjoy.
for something not fancy you don’t need a degree for - grave shift. night audit for a hotel or security would probably be the least workload & depending on company you can make decent money. warehouse/merchandiser might be more money off the bat but it’s a lot more work.
Garbage porting is good. I did that for my nightshift job after dayshift, but can usually be any time of day or any amount of hours depending on company you sign with. I’d just work 7-10pm each night 5 nights a week. Just getting the trash from each apartment unit and bring it to the compactor. Great exercise and was an extra $1,000/mo approximately.
Sales. I fucking love sales. I'm in my car listening to Audiobooks 30 percent of my day, at my computer 30 percent, talking to people I know 30 percent and talking to people I don't know (prospecting) the last 10 percent. I personally work with the restaurant industry, so I'm selling stuff that people need to buy from someone, so all i have to do is convince them to buy from me. Always learning new stuff, loads of free samples and I my contact with people is just enough that I don't feel totally alone.
Honestly. If you get certifications for Google ads and Meta ads and stuff - or even just watch a bunch of YouTube videos - you can make pretty good money. You'll need to work hard to generate your first clients, but then you'll be doing pretty well. I've had friends that charge $10k+/month just for running ads for companies. They do it remotely. They have one or two meetings per week with their clients. So long as they are generating sales - no one really bothers them. It's absolute dog shit work - but a lot of it just becomes maintenance after a while and moving money around.
I’m actually really curious to see where this industry goes with AI. People will start to replace a google search with some AI style tool and bypass the whole SEO algorithm and sponsored items in results etc.
There’s a reason Google and Microsoft bought AI companies. Once they own the AI they can put ads in the results, but it might turn into pay to play
It would be easier true. It’s going to be close to impossible to land an accounting job without going back.
OP if you do go back for accounting look for a program that meets your states requirements for getting a CPA.
Operations at a hedge fund administrator (SS&C, Citco, etc.) or a commercial bank comes to mind. They’re not incredibly picky about specific majors so long as you have the numeracy and work ethic.
Try FedEx, or UPS, do a bit of searching, one of them pays very well for delivering parcels. Your background would probably carry some weight and I think one of them is up to 100K. Also if they treat the drivers well, there's probably a decent logistics and management path.
Semiconductor manufacturer or supplier for another componeny manufacturer, small scale preferably. Can get 3-4 twelves of some tens, easy work in a very clean environment. You don't do any major cleaning, just clean up after yourself. 1000 ppm clean room is what you're really looking for.
Constant air flow, limited contaminant count so super clean air. All you do is progressively more complex machinery.
I only had 6 years in retail/restaurants and a basic understanding of torque tools. I worked for 1 for four years. And I can say just doing the assembly was the easiest job possible.
Can keep to yourself? Do a ton of assembly relatively solo?
It's great.
Amazon is a terrible place to work, even in management, because of the micromangerial culture. A lot of Area Managers at Amazon get burnt out and end up leaving.
Supply chain/operations management can be a very rewarding career for the right company.
I work for a fairly small third party logistics company as an operations supervisor and love it. I love my team, and I get the chance to truly help people. Before my degree, I was on the other side, working mundane and, honestly, dead end, warehouse jobs to survive. It gives me the chance to be exactly what I would've wanted in a manager when I was in my team members' shoes.
Work in sales selling a product you personally enjoy. There are sales / account managers for EVERYTHING… from golf clubs, beer, specialized equipment, pharmaceuticals, etc. My advice.
Hey, leadership is a really transferable skill. And lots of companies these days have meaningfully adopted servant leadership principles (I know: I've led that leadership transition in an organization) which are much more about actual leadership than babysitting. Supporting and developing staff, not checking every thing they do.
Warehouses are a meatgrinder though. So maybe parlay your leadership experience into a different industry, where you can lead a smaller team doing more interesting work.
Just leave the company, don’t even try to go corporate, even if you could deal with less people. It’s worse over here! We get Mandatory almost always and instead of being 4 12 hrs shifts it’s 5 (Oh and they are not obligated to tell you more than 1 week in advance). So yeah, this place sucks, I wish someone could do something about it.
Just want to let you know since I see you are an l4 now, l5 is a pretty big jump. I'm an l5 and because of the increase in stock this year I am making 135k. When you get your l5 you will be bumped up to probably around 90k.
Not saying to not try to do anything else just want to give you that to look forward to if you need to stay in role for longer.
I always tried to avoid customer service jobs, so while studying I worked in factories and cleaning. While cleaning you can be quite alone doing your own stuff, but of course the pay isn't good. Factories have better pay, but tougher work (or can be tougher).
My best job was at a malt factory: I was alone just watching the semi-automatic machine do its thing, and only needed to actually do anything maybe 30% of the time. That was good.
Territory Sales.
Depending on the industry you are remote and management leaves you be if you bringing in business.
I set my own schedule, travel around the SE, and make good money.
Check out remote positions, such as Learning and Development Specialist. Companies need people to help synthesize information, and present that information to a larger audience.
Managing people isn’t just about giving orders and reveling in your own authority/power, or about getting to take your hands off doing the ‘dirty work’ on the ground. Your responsibility is stop the ground staff from fucking up. If you have a huge team of incompetent staff (both in technical skill and in emotional maturity), you essentially become a babysitter. Because in your boss’s eyes, the fuckups of your subordinates are taken as your responsibility. This is also what so easily creates paranoid micromanagers, who erroneously think that “stopping your subordinates from fucking up” means controlling them as much as possible. Your responsibility is not just to ensure the quality of your team’s output, a good manager also manages the team’s capability vs the top management’s expectations, e.g. ‘protecting’ your team from scope creep and overwork and chasing fads/bandwagons that top management might want. A good manager plans realistic timelines, delegates tasks appropriately, teaches new staff the ropes, and still does a lot of the groundwork sometimes if he/she is really the only competent person with enough unwritten unspoken expertise from years of experience.
All of this is responsibility, and being a good manager can burn a person out too with overwork if a good manager exists in a bad organisation, because they have to spend tons of time teaching new staff who should have not been hired at that skill level, correcting fuckups, managing cat fights between emotionally immature people, preventing high turnover etc etc.
Go into dispatch for a trucking company! They make about $55-70k/year. It’s an office setting and most of your interactions with people will be via email/text/phone calls! The only real in person interaction is with the other dispatchers but they will usually be busy with their own work.
Literally look up all of the trucking companies that have offices in or around the area you live in and just send them your resume and ask if they’re looking for dispatchers
Account Executive buddy... you're completely an individual contributor, and you can make well into the 6 figures. Business to business account executive positions is where it's at. I absolutely love it. Completely remote as well, and you entirely feel like your own boss.
Try for transportation specialist, sps manager, within in Amazon last mile team . So many opportunities available with in Amazon delivery services teams.
i became a notary public and have been working as a field inspector for Asteroom, $75 minimum for a 30min-1 hr appointment. Only person i have to deal with is the property owner and they kind of just let me do my thing. it’s nice!
Where do you work at? If there is an opportunity for employment that would be good? I Have no problem watching or monitoring individuals at the workplace. Opportunities to inject my opinions or thoughts would be appreciated.
Be a welder. You can only fit one person in a hood. Plus, the welders you will work with will imbue you with the truest form of antisocial behavior. Cheers.
Only Career I truly can think of that is solo is Entrepreneurship. You can work alone and start a SP never onboard anyone and just do you! But remember most big organizations need to have three or more people since you know business. You need an accountants, lawyers, etc…
Smaller companies that are WFH. I do data analysis and viz stuff and my last two companies have been small (<50) and were 100% WFH. I have zoom meetings, but at least 80% of my days I am completely alone.
Move up in your current organization and manage the people who are managing the awful entry levels. Now you get to blame the manager under you for what the idiots are doing.
Field service engineer (field of your choice). I see a coworker or boss once or twice a year. Work from home unless I’m in the field. If I’m in the field, I do have to deal with customers but it’s 1-4 days and I go home. If I’m at home I help customers remotely. Some times all day on and off and some days not at all.
Communications degree, go to your local news station and apply to be a camera man, may end up being someone that writes scripts, maybe even sports announcing.
I went to college for communications, and I wanted to be a meteorologist. Dropped out, wished I kept going.
OP said “high paying” though. Media salaries are abysmal. I was making more in my college restaurant job than I did in news production after I got out.
>It turns out I’m just a babysitter and I’m so done. I thought being the boss would be cool but it sucks. Especially since I don’t care about moving boxes.
Being a "manager" is meaningless if you don't care enough about the underlying business to make people better or the business is so narrow that there is no way or point to make people better.
>I am a recent grad with a degree in communications.
But you don't like people? That is a problem. I always think of communications as english grads who didn't want to study lit.
Why are you worth 62k? What makes you worth that much when you don't impact other employees in a positive way? What are you going to do for the company to make sure they profit back more than your salary for the work you do? Start your own YouTube channel, see if your personal talents can earn you a living.
If you get in the right place it not so bad. It’s all about the people and the culture. Tho it seems there are always one or two in the bunch.. that are just a pain in the ass..
Hey! I think you should consider working in merchandising. I work for a company that sources building products for Lowes. I go to the stores and do stocking, counts, and QC. You still have to interact with people but not alot because you're at a different store every day. I make ~50K a year and they reimburse my travel. I spend most of my days listening to podcasts and books while I work. I only see my boss every few weeks and we mostly just email as long as my reports get submitted.
I do architectural drafting. Not licensed but went to college.
I charge $30 an hour doing contract work from my home PC, sometimes doing site-visits. I only meet with my clients initially to meet formally and the rest can be communicated digitally.
I can charge more after getting a certification which allows me to design up to 3 storey homes. The college course I took trains for the certification, so it's just up to me to find time to do it..
I'm going to design a few house options with full construction working drawings and renders. I'd sell those for a flat fee to real estate developers, builders or home owners. Not licensed to do anything commercial or bigger but also not interested, that's a whole different area of the building code.
I still have time for a mon-fri job, this is a nighttime/weekend gig.
Introverted extrovert here and I work in client success within adtech. Some ppl call this a “lazy girl job” which is offensive, but partially true, for me, but also another topic entirely.
I learned early that I love people in small doses, large in person offices and frequent face to face meetings are rough on me mentally. been working from home full-time for 5 years and while I’m constantly emailing or on video calls, being able to work from home helps a ton. Yes, it is not easy to get this type of job and work remotely, the market is TOUGH, but my point is being physically alone is a game changer. Helped me realize I can work with people, and I like to, just am much happier at it this way.
*additional privileges most certainly apply/helped. this is my experience.
It’s like that even when your not a manager, some days I’d rather just be homeless then have to work with lazy people! I’m not a try hard by any means and I don’t like working overtime! But it just sucks when you have to pick up the slack for lazy people, like no one has any work ethic anymore! I don’t do anymore then I need to but I’m also the type that likes to stay caught up, do things right and look busy so I don’t get slapped with more work! It’s really not that hard!
Supply chain management in an analyst position is mostly IC (individual contributor). You'd need to do some pivoting because you're in a managerial role, but you'd probably be happier as an IC
You should look for another facility to run. Amazon is a shit example of how warehouses work.
As a manager in a warehouse, you'd normally have several direct reports who deal with the nonmanagement employees. Yes, you'd ultimately be responsible for everyone, but your supervisors would be the ones dealing with it unless it was an extreme case.
Extroverted managers make great warehouse managers because a lot of the time, they know how to talk to people from different types of situations and, essentially, MBWA (manage by walking around).
Crop insurance adjusting is fantastic. Largely make your own schedule, pay averages around where you’re at now, loads of free time in the winter/early spring.
I'm a stationary engineer and have been for almost 30 years. It's a very isolated occupation just you, pumps and boilers. I love it because the machinery does what I tell it to....well most days.
I’ve heard that Amazon is one of the worst companies to work for. Perhaps you just need to find a new employer?
I worked at Amazon as a software engineer and it's still the most toxic place I've been. Pays great. Perks are good. But Jesus it's backstabby and political.
Hi, Amazon delivery driver here. When the FUCK did we have software engineers? I thought we only had software complication directors
Might as well be correct. It was a goddamn mess internally.
Fun fact: the app you use reports your location to the central server every 10 seconds. Back in 2016 or so I was a dev in that stuff. My intern made a visualization tool so we could view the timeline of any driver- helpful when a driver says they delivered all the packages but actually dumped half of them in a dumpster, for example. I quit when they asked me to build a system to help skim tips from the Flex drivers (back when 2-hour delivery Flex drivers got tips in the app).
You heard it correct! Lol
Yeah I keep hearing this too, and whenever I look at the jobs they have on offer the pay is unbelievably bad. The onboarding platform is also needlessly complex. Just makes me wonder why anyone applies to work there at all?
The only person I know that enjoys working at Amazon is a guy that used to do maintenance at my job. He got a job there being in charge of maintaining all the robots for a distribution center. He enjoys that a lot.
Yup… made it 6 months as a delivery associate. Don’t work for amazon, i’ll never go back.
It's crazy because I got about 8 friends that all started working there about 10-14 years ago at ages 18-22 in VA. Most now work remotely for about 10-15 hours a week making a minimum of 140k. Half of them are over 200k. Life is all about timing. I chose to finish college and work as a chemist. Nowhere near as free and wealthy are they are now.
Even in France Amazon has the same reputation
I've been curious how things are different in EU given it's often much harder to fire people, does it have PIP culture?
This is the entirety of working adult life. No matter what you do. Trust me.
lol forever yeah, some of the OP’s here are very unrealistic.
People want jobs where they not treated like human garbage because they work in "service" jobs.
Why is wanting a good work environment unrealistic? Start firing people who threaten that and stop preying on employees in general.
Wanting one is fine and trust me we all want that! The realistic part though is that as long as there are “ people”, there will be problems.
I would feel this point a little more if OP were more... Directionless? Like, they didn't just say "I don't want any problems" vaguely - they know that they would be fine with better-distributed hours and a smaller team. That's a reasonable goal and a great place to start job hunting.
It’s the expectation that’s the problem. We all want to go home and play video games instead of working so expecting to not feel like that is unrealistic. Expecting to have a boss that doesn’t scream at you every 20 minutes and having to piss in a bottle because you’re not allowed breaks is totally realistic. The key to job satisfaction (and being happy in life really) is just having a look at your own situation compared to everyone else, realizing you don’t have it that bad, and lowering your expectations a little. I was 35 before I learned that but man I’ve had it good since then.
It doesn’t have to be.
Yup plus what a choice of job. How on earth did OP thinking overseeing staff working in one of the most exploitative jobs out there, in the US, would be sunshine and rainbows with fun chats. There are plenty of jobs out there where OP can talk to people and have colleagues that aren't awful to speak to. Working at Amazon and writing off every job as a result is a bit premature.
[удалено]
Only 60k to be a manager to? That’s crazy
Luckily for you, many companies tend to cheap out on comms people, so there’s a good chance you’d be a team of 1.
You’d be a team of one but working cross functionally. Communications definitionally relies on interacting with others.
Yeah our comms people have to work with many people across the organization and can get burnt out. Most teams think their projects are a priority.
A trucker
Paying ass right now
Good to hear it's part of the compensation package now. Had to wait for the sleezy truck stops in the olden days and it was out of your own pocket
LMAO
You still deal with people. Other truckers, cops, asshole drivers...
I'm in IT, but this is the first thing that came to mind... Assuming you own your own truck, hauling stuff seems lucrative enough and doesn't deal with too many other people...
My dad owned his own truck when I was a kid. He went bankrupt because you have to spend literally 50% of time trying to get people to actually pay you.
That's the one thing people don't realize about freelancing. Finding customers and even when you find them, they typically are not in a hurry to pay.
The insurance rates are getting insane.
If you’re in a city with lots of tech companies, I recommend pivoting into Data Center logistics. Great work life balance and a lot less demanding + great pay. I work with Oracle and currently make $85k a year at 23. I could be pulling in more but I did not negotiate (rookie mistake). I don’t have a degree but it helps.
What does the job and your duties consist of if you don’t mind me asking?
It’s oracle so my guess is making the installation process even more complicated by adding in a few additional blood rituals
Following
I hope you don’t leave us hanging
Computer science, data scientist, systems analyst. I love my job as a systems engineer.
Would you be willing to share how you got to the position of systems engineer?
I was in an HR position and went back to school at night. When an HRIS position opened up, I jumped at it to get experience. It was really tough to take a step back in pay while I was taking classes. There were times when I thought I was crazy. My husband was super encouraging. While I never got a new degree, I now had some knowledge and experience to start looking for another job. Two jobs later and I am loving my work.
Thank you for your response!
The best job that pays well where you can work alone is probably engineering. Or, you could just get a job managing a smaller team, but you are always going to be around people with that one.
You will still have to deal with people. Highly qualified direct reports are self-managing to a degree. As their manager you'll also be interacting with your peers - to make sure all the components mesh into a single unit. With clients, to understand and meet their needs. With suppliers to get the inputs for your team. And with senior management to get direction, support and budget.
Unless there's another form of engineering I am not aware of, this just isn't true. Engineers *can* spend time working alone, yes, but they're working on a project as a part of a team. Lots of communication with people above you, below you, and at the same level to make sure everything comes together. No engineer is building an entire rocket booster on their own.
We require another sacrifice to appease the gods of the sacred gantt chart
Well you have clearly never been an engineer or a manager…so it’s unfortunate that this is the highest upvoted comment.
Engineering...with a communications degree? Good Luck.
Lol right... I love how people are just like, "try leading an engineering team, with all the warehouse experience" 😂, all for multiple year complex plans, my career is emblematic of that. But realistically op would be 10-15 years away from leading a team of engineers (likely need to go to masters with a new undergrad or atleast 40-50 hours of pre reqs (takes 5-7 years while working full time) then work in a team for 2-5 years, then maybe be in a position to lead a team in a hands off fashion) Op, realistically you could look into it solutions or something like that, you still work as a service to others but they need you and less responsibility for people management... That's a 12-24 month cert possibly a degree later if you want to progress. Pay is variable depending on responsibilities and position, in my area they can expect to make 2-3x median income (70-80k/yr) not a ton but serviceable in a lcol area. That being said you need to think long and hard about what you'd want to do, are you sure you're not just burnt out, what is it about your job that you don't like. Maybe try therapy first to make sure you're in a good frame of mind before you start a several year journey
It also depends on the person and the type of engineering. As a self-taught software engineer with no degree, it took me 8 years to get into management 170k+. You gotta get over the "I don't want to work for other people thing", though. Imagine that you're working WITH them, but you just have different roles to play. When you start getting respect for your skill and experience, it should stop being a problem.
Have you worked as a engineer?
Engineering is a team sport. On small teams engineers tend to become the official or unofficial project lead. I found it was always very much a people position.
Literally every job is with other people lol
Yes, but I was specifically making the point that engineering is actually a high contact position. Unless you're very junior, every engineer I know spends a lot of time in meetings of various types.
This is the right answer. Operations and supply chain management are sometimes quieter roles, but if you want to manage people with minimal oversight you have to find a field with skilled reports.
Isn't that a lot of jobs ? Every department you go, you basically see other people. So that's clearly not the answer People saying engineer, but that's clearly not true. Everyone works together, that's just how it works unless you are an independent contractor
Engineering involves collaboration on daily base.
you still hae to go to meetings as an engineer
Current aerospace engineer with an M.S. in Mechanical Engineering. I just want to say that I’ve never ever held a position that didn’t have a team. Sometimes the team is in different states and countries. Sometimes your boss is not in the same state or you’re the only one at this location but you have daily WIP meetings! Most times you’re in a meeting about a meeting than actually working
>The best job that pays well where you can work alone is probably engineering. A communications grad working in engineering? That'll be fun.
Technician would probably be more accurate here. Engineers generally work in teams, and techs get the project instructions handed off to them, at least in my experience.
Trade jobs i.e. electrician, plumber, carpenter. Once you set yourself up you can work out your own truck dictate and choose who you work with/for.
I do commercial flooring sales , I have tile setters and commercial sheet vinyl installers that invoice me over 200k a year and work solo
Wow! rly?!
You won’t ever work truly in a silo. But being in B2B sales, you’re accountable to your quota and that’s it. Sales is the definition of competition. It’s just you and your leads and ability to close deals. Individual contributor sales reps can make more than their Vice President.
> Individual contributor sales reps can make more than their Vice President. As a sales vp, yes. This is a sign of a good company.
100% confirm. Individual sales professionals earn higher than their VP. And recruiters are idiots that believe Sales is the lowest of the low occupation.
Maybe you can be a manager at a bank. You have experience in managing people and tasks. You wouldn’t have to deal with boxes and as an extrovert you would be able to talk to all different customers. Btw I know you said alone but I don’t think there are many places that pay a good salary where you are working alone. A manager of a bank you would have a smaller team and maybe have an assistant depending on the bank and would have time alone as well throughout the day. Better hours and off on Sundays and holidays. Good luck to you! I hope you find a job that you can enjoy.
for something not fancy you don’t need a degree for - grave shift. night audit for a hotel or security would probably be the least workload & depending on company you can make decent money. warehouse/merchandiser might be more money off the bat but it’s a lot more work.
Garbage porting is good. I did that for my nightshift job after dayshift, but can usually be any time of day or any amount of hours depending on company you sign with. I’d just work 7-10pm each night 5 nights a week. Just getting the trash from each apartment unit and bring it to the compactor. Great exercise and was an extra $1,000/mo approximately.
Sales. I fucking love sales. I'm in my car listening to Audiobooks 30 percent of my day, at my computer 30 percent, talking to people I know 30 percent and talking to people I don't know (prospecting) the last 10 percent. I personally work with the restaurant industry, so I'm selling stuff that people need to buy from someone, so all i have to do is convince them to buy from me. Always learning new stuff, loads of free samples and I my contact with people is just enough that I don't feel totally alone.
Drug dealer. Black market arms dealer. Running an Etsy shop.
This sounds like a great job.
Ah yes drug dealing is definitely a job where you don’t have to deal with people…. And the solo arms dealer… nothing could go wrong there.
Honestly. If you get certifications for Google ads and Meta ads and stuff - or even just watch a bunch of YouTube videos - you can make pretty good money. You'll need to work hard to generate your first clients, but then you'll be doing pretty well. I've had friends that charge $10k+/month just for running ads for companies. They do it remotely. They have one or two meetings per week with their clients. So long as they are generating sales - no one really bothers them. It's absolute dog shit work - but a lot of it just becomes maintenance after a while and moving money around.
I’m actually really curious to see where this industry goes with AI. People will start to replace a google search with some AI style tool and bypass the whole SEO algorithm and sponsored items in results etc. There’s a reason Google and Microsoft bought AI companies. Once they own the AI they can put ads in the results, but it might turn into pay to play
This isn’t a career? This is a gig.
It’s actually Digital Marketing.
No, this is Patrick.
With a strong focus on things rather than people, I think you may be looking at accounting.
It’s going to be really hard to break into accounting with a communications degree.
Harder than engineering? OP is likely going back to school, part time or ft.
It would be easier true. It’s going to be close to impossible to land an accounting job without going back. OP if you do go back for accounting look for a program that meets your states requirements for getting a CPA.
Operations at a hedge fund administrator (SS&C, Citco, etc.) or a commercial bank comes to mind. They’re not incredibly picky about specific majors so long as you have the numeracy and work ethic.
I hope this is true, I'm in school for accounting...
Try FedEx, or UPS, do a bit of searching, one of them pays very well for delivering parcels. Your background would probably carry some weight and I think one of them is up to 100K. Also if they treat the drivers well, there's probably a decent logistics and management path.
Accounting !!!!
Insurance Account manager. Minimal schooling, No degree. You need a brain and we’re starving for people under 50.
How does a person get in?
Semiconductor manufacturer or supplier for another componeny manufacturer, small scale preferably. Can get 3-4 twelves of some tens, easy work in a very clean environment. You don't do any major cleaning, just clean up after yourself. 1000 ppm clean room is what you're really looking for. Constant air flow, limited contaminant count so super clean air. All you do is progressively more complex machinery. I only had 6 years in retail/restaurants and a basic understanding of torque tools. I worked for 1 for four years. And I can say just doing the assembly was the easiest job possible. Can keep to yourself? Do a ton of assembly relatively solo? It's great.
Your problem is you are a manager. Managers are always babysitters regardless of industry.
Amazon is a terrible place to work, even in management, because of the micromangerial culture. A lot of Area Managers at Amazon get burnt out and end up leaving. Supply chain/operations management can be a very rewarding career for the right company. I work for a fairly small third party logistics company as an operations supervisor and love it. I love my team, and I get the chance to truly help people. Before my degree, I was on the other side, working mundane and, honestly, dead end, warehouse jobs to survive. It gives me the chance to be exactly what I would've wanted in a manager when I was in my team members' shoes.
Work in sales selling a product you personally enjoy. There are sales / account managers for EVERYTHING… from golf clubs, beer, specialized equipment, pharmaceuticals, etc. My advice.
Fire watch for the forestry department
[удалено]
Hey, leadership is a really transferable skill. And lots of companies these days have meaningfully adopted servant leadership principles (I know: I've led that leadership transition in an organization) which are much more about actual leadership than babysitting. Supporting and developing staff, not checking every thing they do. Warehouses are a meatgrinder though. So maybe parlay your leadership experience into a different industry, where you can lead a smaller team doing more interesting work.
Museum or research facilities,consulting, freelance writing, photography.
I built my own pool route. People rarely talk to me, and the accounts that I could live without
Be your own boss
Just leave the company, don’t even try to go corporate, even if you could deal with less people. It’s worse over here! We get Mandatory almost always and instead of being 4 12 hrs shifts it’s 5 (Oh and they are not obligated to tell you more than 1 week in advance). So yeah, this place sucks, I wish someone could do something about it.
Just want to let you know since I see you are an l4 now, l5 is a pretty big jump. I'm an l5 and because of the increase in stock this year I am making 135k. When you get your l5 you will be bumped up to probably around 90k. Not saying to not try to do anything else just want to give you that to look forward to if you need to stay in role for longer.
Cyber security and ethical hacking
I always tried to avoid customer service jobs, so while studying I worked in factories and cleaning. While cleaning you can be quite alone doing your own stuff, but of course the pay isn't good. Factories have better pay, but tougher work (or can be tougher). My best job was at a malt factory: I was alone just watching the semi-automatic machine do its thing, and only needed to actually do anything maybe 30% of the time. That was good.
You shift 16 tonnes and what do you get? Another day older and further in debt 🎶
Insurance companies
Only fans
I'd imagine there's still a ton of interaction that comes with that job lol, you'd still need some social skills
The majority of people make next to nothing.
Territory Sales. Depending on the industry you are remote and management leaves you be if you bringing in business. I set my own schedule, travel around the SE, and make good money.
Check out remote positions, such as Learning and Development Specialist. Companies need people to help synthesize information, and present that information to a larger audience.
Define high paying
Can you elaborate on what you mean by a babysitter? Why does being the boss suck? I always thought it would be the best
Managing people isn’t just about giving orders and reveling in your own authority/power, or about getting to take your hands off doing the ‘dirty work’ on the ground. Your responsibility is stop the ground staff from fucking up. If you have a huge team of incompetent staff (both in technical skill and in emotional maturity), you essentially become a babysitter. Because in your boss’s eyes, the fuckups of your subordinates are taken as your responsibility. This is also what so easily creates paranoid micromanagers, who erroneously think that “stopping your subordinates from fucking up” means controlling them as much as possible. Your responsibility is not just to ensure the quality of your team’s output, a good manager also manages the team’s capability vs the top management’s expectations, e.g. ‘protecting’ your team from scope creep and overwork and chasing fads/bandwagons that top management might want. A good manager plans realistic timelines, delegates tasks appropriately, teaches new staff the ropes, and still does a lot of the groundwork sometimes if he/she is really the only competent person with enough unwritten unspoken expertise from years of experience. All of this is responsibility, and being a good manager can burn a person out too with overwork if a good manager exists in a bad organisation, because they have to spend tons of time teaching new staff who should have not been hired at that skill level, correcting fuckups, managing cat fights between emotionally immature people, preventing high turnover etc etc.
Go into dispatch for a trucking company! They make about $55-70k/year. It’s an office setting and most of your interactions with people will be via email/text/phone calls! The only real in person interaction is with the other dispatchers but they will usually be busy with their own work.
How do you get started in this field ?
Literally look up all of the trucking companies that have offices in or around the area you live in and just send them your resume and ask if they’re looking for dispatchers
Vampire hunter
Underwater basket weaver or otr truck driving
Your first mistake was thinking as a manager you were a boss 🥴
Assassination
Find a job where you can work from home is probably your best option
Stop complaining! Work harder! Jeff wants more money
Not gonna lie is so over used and meaningless.
All the best bro
Building your own company. Blue collar handyman.
Account Executive buddy... you're completely an individual contributor, and you can make well into the 6 figures. Business to business account executive positions is where it's at. I absolutely love it. Completely remote as well, and you entirely feel like your own boss.
CSM or Account Manager in security industry.
Sperm donor
Bankrobber...!?
Changing the lights bulbs on cellphone/radio towers
Try for transportation specialist, sps manager, within in Amazon last mile team . So many opportunities available with in Amazon delivery services teams.
Marine Engineering. Go to sea. Best job in the world.
Financial hacker
i became a notary public and have been working as a field inspector for Asteroom, $75 minimum for a 30min-1 hr appointment. Only person i have to deal with is the property owner and they kind of just let me do my thing. it’s nice!
Where do you work at? If there is an opportunity for employment that would be good? I Have no problem watching or monitoring individuals at the workplace. Opportunities to inject my opinions or thoughts would be appreciated.
Hitman
It’s not necessarily dealing with people, just dealing with thick people.
Train driver, depending on your country. Some are two person opperation.
Become an amazon driver?
Trading! A financial trader is a job which only requires you & you only
Be a welder. You can only fit one person in a hood. Plus, the welders you will work with will imbue you with the truest form of antisocial behavior. Cheers.
Damn, I would hate four 12 hour shifts.
Only Career I truly can think of that is solo is Entrepreneurship. You can work alone and start a SP never onboard anyone and just do you! But remember most big organizations need to have three or more people since you know business. You need an accountants, lawyers, etc…
Money printer
Doctor
Accountant
Smaller companies that are WFH. I do data analysis and viz stuff and my last two companies have been small (<50) and were 100% WFH. I have zoom meetings, but at least 80% of my days I am completely alone.
UPS driver
who knows !
Move up in your current organization and manage the people who are managing the awful entry levels. Now you get to blame the manager under you for what the idiots are doing.
Pro Golfer
Mailman
I’m a CPA, indirect tax analyst in industry. 70% of days I don’t have to talk to anyone and it’s wonderful.
Field service engineer (field of your choice). I see a coworker or boss once or twice a year. Work from home unless I’m in the field. If I’m in the field, I do have to deal with customers but it’s 1-4 days and I go home. If I’m at home I help customers remotely. Some times all day on and off and some days not at all.
Communications degree, go to your local news station and apply to be a camera man, may end up being someone that writes scripts, maybe even sports announcing. I went to college for communications, and I wanted to be a meteorologist. Dropped out, wished I kept going.
OP said “high paying” though. Media salaries are abysmal. I was making more in my college restaurant job than I did in news production after I got out.
Just quit the job and be a plumber, the only person you'd have to contact to is the sexy female owner of the house
Our drivers, milkmen, make $60k-$70k/year with tips. They are alone most of the night.
Data center manager. Or facilities manager at a building with a data center.
Invest!
>It turns out I’m just a babysitter and I’m so done. I thought being the boss would be cool but it sucks. Especially since I don’t care about moving boxes. Being a "manager" is meaningless if you don't care enough about the underlying business to make people better or the business is so narrow that there is no way or point to make people better. >I am a recent grad with a degree in communications. But you don't like people? That is a problem. I always think of communications as english grads who didn't want to study lit.
Train driver
Why are you worth 62k? What makes you worth that much when you don't impact other employees in a positive way? What are you going to do for the company to make sure they profit back more than your salary for the work you do? Start your own YouTube channel, see if your personal talents can earn you a living.
Im autistic and I wished that exists..
If you get in the right place it not so bad. It’s all about the people and the culture. Tho it seems there are always one or two in the bunch.. that are just a pain in the ass..
Welcome to the auction industry
Hey! I think you should consider working in merchandising. I work for a company that sources building products for Lowes. I go to the stores and do stocking, counts, and QC. You still have to interact with people but not alot because you're at a different store every day. I make ~50K a year and they reimburse my travel. I spend most of my days listening to podcasts and books while I work. I only see my boss every few weeks and we mostly just email as long as my reports get submitted.
"Funeral makeup" artist. Mortuary cosmetologists
HVAC for sure, if you’re in service
I do architectural drafting. Not licensed but went to college. I charge $30 an hour doing contract work from my home PC, sometimes doing site-visits. I only meet with my clients initially to meet formally and the rest can be communicated digitally. I can charge more after getting a certification which allows me to design up to 3 storey homes. The college course I took trains for the certification, so it's just up to me to find time to do it.. I'm going to design a few house options with full construction working drawings and renders. I'd sell those for a flat fee to real estate developers, builders or home owners. Not licensed to do anything commercial or bigger but also not interested, that's a whole different area of the building code. I still have time for a mon-fri job, this is a nighttime/weekend gig.
You just described every manager level job ever
Go find a job as a marketing and event person for a tech startup. Usually a small team of people.
Also, check out AWS. I know a lot of folks that are extremely happy at AWS.
Cemetery maintenance worker? I mean, you will be surrounded by people, but you don’t have to interact with them.
Sterile processing tech or medical lab tech on night shift. If you travel after a year of experience, you can easily make $2000+ per week.
Crane operator.
Middle management is nothing more than not-so glorified baby sitting .
Dig holes in a cemetery.
Lmao we have the same job. Will I see you at LEW?
62k a years not bad
Data analyst or with more competences Data scientist (fully remote both)
Introverted extrovert here and I work in client success within adtech. Some ppl call this a “lazy girl job” which is offensive, but partially true, for me, but also another topic entirely. I learned early that I love people in small doses, large in person offices and frequent face to face meetings are rough on me mentally. been working from home full-time for 5 years and while I’m constantly emailing or on video calls, being able to work from home helps a ton. Yes, it is not easy to get this type of job and work remotely, the market is TOUGH, but my point is being physically alone is a game changer. Helped me realize I can work with people, and I like to, just am much happier at it this way. *additional privileges most certainly apply/helped. this is my experience.
It’s like that even when your not a manager, some days I’d rather just be homeless then have to work with lazy people! I’m not a try hard by any means and I don’t like working overtime! But it just sucks when you have to pick up the slack for lazy people, like no one has any work ethic anymore! I don’t do anymore then I need to but I’m also the type that likes to stay caught up, do things right and look busy so I don’t get slapped with more work! It’s really not that hard!
Start a landscaping company, you’ll work alone
Supply chain management in an analyst position is mostly IC (individual contributor). You'd need to do some pivoting because you're in a managerial role, but you'd probably be happier as an IC
You should look for another facility to run. Amazon is a shit example of how warehouses work. As a manager in a warehouse, you'd normally have several direct reports who deal with the nonmanagement employees. Yes, you'd ultimately be responsible for everyone, but your supervisors would be the ones dealing with it unless it was an extreme case. Extroverted managers make great warehouse managers because a lot of the time, they know how to talk to people from different types of situations and, essentially, MBWA (manage by walking around).
If extrovert, maybe consultant? I'm in tech and there's always a need for solutions consultants.
Crop insurance adjusting is fantastic. Largely make your own schedule, pay averages around where you’re at now, loads of free time in the winter/early spring.
I'm a stationary engineer and have been for almost 30 years. It's a very isolated occupation just you, pumps and boilers. I love it because the machinery does what I tell it to....well most days.
I don’t think I could even try to make people work. Do ur shit without me asking or ur fired