Comments on: Good jobs, bad jobs

By: Sidney

Sidney — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 20:47:05 +0000

But…

I’m a lumberjack and I’m okay. I sleep all night and I work all day. I like to press wild flowers. I put on women’s clothing and hang around in bars.

By: markm

markm — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 23:21:41 +0000

People have preferred levels of stress and perceived danger, which vary greatly between persons. If the job doesn’t meet those needs, they’ll find a way to arrange their lives to meet them – which accounts for bungee jumping and a whole lot of stupidity. Lumberjacking truly is too dangerous for most peoples’ nerves, but most of the other “dangerous” jobs are really less dangerous than regularly eating fast food. And the people who are really good at high-stress jobs love them.

Nor is it sensible to give top “working environment” points to the jobs with no exercise and no fresh air. There still are a few jobs that involve more physical exertion than really is healthy, but not many of them.

By: Michael Kovach

Michael Kovach — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 01:24:15 +0000

Good job….Bad job…..who the heck cares, I’m just happy to have a job.
…..did they incorporate that variable into the study?

By: david foster

david foster — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 22:30:49 +0000

A fairly silly analysis, which seems to implicitly assume that “low stress” is a value that everyone shares. In reality, as several comments here have pointed out, individual preferences vary.

Linda Niemann, after getting a PhD in English, took a job as a brakeman (very physical and sometimes dangerous work) with the Southern Pacific Railroad. In her memoir, she wrote:

“We moved stuff people used to build their houses, get from place to place, and to put on their table. I felt a part of it all, whatever ‘it all’ was–something I had never felt before.”

By: meep

meep — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 21:35:35 +0000

Of course, it doesn’t matter how desirable the job is if you won’t be able to get said job. They played up the positive aspects of those top jobs, but didn’t mention how difficult it is to get the required credentials, and the level of intellectual work you have to do. To many people, having to do math would be torture.

I’m an actuary, and the actuarial career often makes these “top” lists. But they don’t note that there are very few actuaries (credentialled, that is) because you have to pass a series of around 10 very difficult tests (pass ratios go from about 20% – 50% per test) to get those credentials. You can get a relatively high salary for relatively reasonable hours, but most people are not interested in taking a series of exams on math, finance, and insurance.

By: Dawn

Dawn — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 21:10:35 +0000

Definite bias. My husband left a desk job to work a very physical job on the railway. He’s been a different person and ven on the most miserable days when he’s been shoveling for hours and numb from the cold he’s still happier then when he was in management.

Physical labour may involve some more risks but it can also have rewards that website seems not to have accounted for.

As a side note, I found cleaning restrooms fun. It’s satisfying to start with a bunch of crap and in 15 minutes have it all cleaned up. Different from say, management where you are NEVER free from crap.

By: Betty

Betty — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 20:32:21 +0000

I think that cleaning public restrooms would be the worst job for me. The danger involved in being a lumberjack would be scary for me since I seem to be accident prone. Luckily, people do have different personalities and like to do different things. I recently took one of those personality tests and found that I also have a personality.:)

By: Eric J

Eric J — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 20:15:40 +0000

Personality tests, at least those derived from the MMPI are purely statistically based. At some point a sample of individuals with defined characteristics were interviewed with the questions on the test, and their answers were analyzed looking for correlations to specific personality traits. So, for example, perhaps it was found that 80% of people who had been previously determined to be “hard working” answered “Yes” to the question “I would rather be a lion tamer than a snake handler.”

The MMPI was, IIRC originally developed to look for psychotics and seriously disturbed behaviors, and the “normal” baseline was established by interviewing Minnesota State Troopers. These test were never intended to look at subtle personality characteristics and are pretty worthless, in my opinion.

Note: The Meyers-Briggs is a different animal, and does look at the content of the questions. It’s worth is a different discussion. (Me, I’m an Enneagram guy, but I don’t think the multiple-choice tests do a good job of typing. It requires self-reflection and one-on-one interaction with a trained expert.)

By: ricki

ricki — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 19:51:00 +0000

Like any of these lists, I think the outcomes are to be taken with a grain of salt. What might seem a “best job” to some might be a “worst job” for others. I have read a (possibly apocryphal) story of a man who scored immensely high on an IQ test, but chose to work as a grade-school janitor, because he felt any of the jobs he would be “expected” to do with such a high IQ would amount to exploitation.

And every job has good parts and bad parts. The challenge lies in finding a job where the good parts outweigh the bad ones for you.

As for the personality tests: the last year my parents taught, the state where they taught mandated an on-line ethics test, apparently to weed out the unethical people. My question was, if someone’s unethical, don’t they usually KNOW what the “ethical” position is on questions, and also have no compunction about lying on a test? (Ironically this was a test for employees of the State of Illinois. Apparently that same test is not administered to the politicians, or else they’ve figured out how to cheat on it…)

By: Mark Roulo

Mark Roulo — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 18:07:06 +0000

Lumberjack as *least* desirable???

But … lumberjacking is …

Leaping from tree to tree as they float down the mighty rivers of British Columbia! The Fir! The Larch! The Redwood! The mighty Scots Pine! The plucky little Aspen! The great limping rude tree of Nigeria! The smell of fresh-cut timber! The crash of mighty trees!

*This* is the least desirable job?

My, my, my …

-Mark Roulo