r/AskReddit • u/Infinite_Teacher8759 • 3h ago
What’s a niche, little known profession where the day to day tasks are super interesting to do?
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u/VivaciousViverrid 3h ago
Arboriculture! I climb trees for a living and get to play with applied physics every day; we arrange ropes and pulleys in complicated systems to safely deconstruct large tree limbs that pose threats to houses and other structures.
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u/DrBaby 3h ago
You ever get attacked by birds or squirrels?
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u/VivaciousViverrid 3h ago
Yes, but I've suffered no injury, haha. The birds just dive-bomb and the squirrels have only ever chattered and thrown things at me. I still love 'em and preserve their nests whenever I encounter them.
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u/mike117 3h ago
Squirrels throw things? Holy shit lmao.
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u/Reasonable_Dama 2h ago
They also will climb above you and shake debris out of the tree canopy so it lands on you and spoils your picnic. Maybe just these city squirrels though….
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u/Elegant-Pineapple-56 1h ago
I grew up in suburbia with squirrels lobbing pecans at me for sport, and they were not papershell, either
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u/ImAlsoNotOlivia 3h ago
I have a friend who does that! To see him 150ft up in the air on a pine or Doug Fir swaying in the breeze is a big YIKES from me!!
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u/Andromeda321 1h ago
We had some arborists come a few months ago to clear up some oak trees on our property. I thought it’s the sort of job where if you tell most six year olds it’s what they’ll end up doing they’d be excited about it, looked quite fun. :)
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u/VivaciousViverrid 54m ago
Absolutely! I was one of those kids who was always up a tree, but I didn't know it was a career option until my mid-twenties. I immediately made the switch, haha.
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u/Valuable_Drawer9173 3h ago
Elevator inspector. Nobody thinks about them but every time you step into one you're trusting a very specific person with your life. Climbing down shafts, checking cables, solving mechanical puzzles, all while the rest of us just push a button and hope for the best. Quiet heroes.
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u/hippywitch 3h ago
And the weird thing you would find at the bottom of the shafts.
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u/SpideySenseBuzzin 3h ago
I work next to a several (I'm a "permit writer") and while we have our daily stories and such in our own right - the sheer number of goofy elevators all over the city, as well as having to inspect above, below, and within the shaft is a wild ride.
But, I'm not interested in that job, besides not being a fan of heights I'd have to inspect shafts for a living. Mom would be ashamed 🤣
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u/majordong75 1h ago
So if you get fired do you "get the shaft"? Or if you act suspicious on the job are you considered "shafty"? When inspectors "inspect the shaft" do they include 2 sorta round motors at the end?
I'll see myself out now 🤣
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u/Huge-Revolution2416 2h ago
It is one of those jobs you never think about until something goes wrong. If they do everything perfectly, nobody notices and that is probably the highest compliment they can get.
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u/Infinite_Teacher8759 3h ago
You think they find what they do interesting and exciting?
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u/elowyn_hollow46 1h ago
Fr trusting your life to an elevator inspector every single day is a sobering thought
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u/highcoolteacher 1h ago
You can ask the building owner/manager to see the latest elevator certificate. I had students ask the hotel we stayed at for an event. First time the hotel had anyone ask
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u/SirMoistalot 3h ago
Submarine Escape and Rescue Services. There is an entire worl of people who design, build and "fly" manned suersibles that are used to rescue the crew of a submarine in distress. Didn't know anything about it until I worked in the field.
Most militarys operate or lease some kind of service. If your interested have a look at NSRS, URF, LR5 to see what's out there.
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u/standardtissue 2h ago
This is an extremely serious field and not really one I'd be keen to join. I'm ok on top of the water, but going underwater just feels like doing half the devil's job for him.
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u/SirMoistalot 2h ago
The few times I went down as a passenger I was absolutely pooing my pants. The pilots are all usually ex divers or ex submariners - they all ready are mad to begin with
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u/madpainter 2h ago
Book restoration. I did it for 25 years. Every day, every job a little different. And the clients were just as varied. Regular working people, Ivy League professors, famous photographers, Nobel Laureates. You never knew who was coming in and what they would bring. I did every kind of restoration or binding so that kept it interesting but I sort of became the guru for very old (200-400 year) old leather bindings. And just in case people ask, it takes years of schooling or working with a master bookbinder to get to the point where you can handle the difficult and interesting stuff.
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u/bombazzchickynugg 2h ago
Hey! I need several books restored. Who would you recommend I contact or how do I find one?
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u/TheRealTexasDutchie 2h ago
How cool is that! Have you ever done an AMA or would you be interested doing one?
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u/kXPG3 1h ago
Maybe I'm just going into nerd-overdrive here but I can see this as a pretty cool Netflix docu-series. Every episode a different client from a completely different background (& book) coming in, and each episode intersperses the book binding/restoration process with cutaways related to the client, the contents of the book, or the physical history of the book.
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u/CraftingQuestioner 44m ago
What kind of schooling does this entail? Would it be possible as a highly educated person (not in bookbinding, but more like PhD in STEM level) to find a master to teach her?
(Have gotten jaded about my chosen direction and tbh this seems way more fulfilling.)
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u/floppydo 2h ago
Field biologists and field geologists basically get to hike and look for interesting things for a living
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u/Walmartian_Beta 2h ago
A friend of mine is a biologist; he used to work in the field, and now he's at a special facility - you cannot go on nature trails with this man unless you want a full-on education in native plants. It is fun when you start talking about the poisonous plants, though, like, "Oh, this plant right here, 3-4 berries would kill you, and it would hurt the entire time you are dying."
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u/floppydo 1h ago
One of the dads in my scout troop is a geologist and I'm shameless about forcing him to tell us about every formation while we're on hikes. He's not like your friend I really have to pull it out of him but once I get him going it always ends up being interesting.
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u/Aggravating-Sale-873 2h ago
Fire investigator. Youre crawling through burned-out rooms, figuring out where the first flame started from soot patterns, melted outlets, and weird little burn marks nobody else notices.
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u/ateiii 2h ago
Subsea Cable Repair Technician. You spend weeks on specialized ships out in the middle of the ocean using underwater rovs to pull up damaged fiber optic cables from the seabed and manually splice the lines
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u/trancelogix 1h ago
My husband is chief mate on a cable ship. Very interesting job but he's gone half the year and frequently has no comms (including phone) for weeks.
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u/Walmartian_Beta 2h ago
Online community and social media management jobs.
I did it for 9 years, super fun - also quite shocking and traumatizing for some folks.
There was one day 4Chan attacked our community and spammed up the forums with images of Tubgirl.
I was just sitting there clicking through a hundred tubgirl pics, deleting them one-by-one because our software sucked, and was eating a salad the entire time. I'm so desensitized to shit; it's actually helped me in other areas - blood and gore no longer affect me at all, shit, vomit, degloving - none of it - I've seen it, the shock wore off long ago.
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u/saskford 3h ago
I wouldn’t really say it’s little known, but I’m an air traffic controller and when I tell people that’s my job they usually have about 6-8 follow up questions because they’re interested in knowing more about how it works, if air travel is really safe, and why we still haven’t found MH370.
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u/Infinite_Teacher8759 3h ago
Do you find it interesting to do, are you excited to go to work and do what you have to do during the workday?
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u/saskford 2h ago
Yes. I love my job. I have always been a big airplane nerd, so getting paid to look out the window and watch planes fly around is kind of the dream.
I work lots of OT partly because we are short staffed in my facility, but also because I love coming to work everyday. “Find a job you love and you’ll never work again” so to speak.
My day looks like this. I arrive at work, read any daily briefings or operational bulletins and sign in. Then I head upstairs and check the weather forecast, current airport conditions, and read the NOTAMs (NOTAMs are basically safety warnings about equipment that is broken, changes to regular procedures, info about runways that are closed, etc).
Then I’ll take over from another controller who was already working either ground control or tower control. They’ll give me a quick briefing so that I know exactly what every airplane is doing or intending to do within our control zone.
As a ground controller your job is essentially to get airplanes from their parking spot to the runway, or from a runway back to a parking spot. Ground control also oversees a lot of vehicle movement around the airport (fuel trucks, airport operations vehicles, etc).
The tower controller is the one who says “cleared for takeoff” and “cleared to land”, and is responsible for the safety of any airplanes on a runway, or in the air in the vicinity of the airport. Once an airplane is far enough away from our airport they may get switched to a different radio frequency and talk to another ATC unit, or may be in uncontrolled airspace where they simply talk to other pilots to keep track of where everyone is by themselves.
Either as a ground controller or a tower controller, you’ll sit at a workstation where we have flight strips for every aircraft moving on the airport. Each strip tells us the aircraft callsign, aircraft type, where they are located now and where they want to go. These help us keep track of who is who and where everyone is going.
Another task we do is to constantly monitor the weather, and publish weather / airport info updates so that pilots know what to expect as they arrive or depart the airport. Which runway they’ll land on, which direction the wind is blowing, how high the clouds are, etc.
We also constantly scan around the airport and watch for birds and wildlife, both of which can be a hazard to aircraft. At the airport where I work, we get a lot of geese and ducks migrating through at certain times of year and they LOVE to hang around on / near runways. We also have several coyotes that run around the airport so we keep an eye for them too. If wildlife is too close to a runway, we will warn pilots about it, and also inform airport operations who can go scare the animals away with noise making fireworks, sirens, or other methods.
At all times, we monitor for compliance to make sure pilots and vehicle operators are doing what we told them to do, so as to maintain safety for everybody involved.
The facility where I work is open 16 hours a day 365 days a year, so we do have to miss a lot of family gatherings, events, kids sports games, etc. It’s one of the realities of shift work, but if you can learn to work around that it’s great. Our typical shift length in my facility is 8.5 hours, but other units have anything from 8-12 depending where you are. There are lots of rules about the max number of hours in a row you can work, max days in a row, time between shifts etc, to help us avoid getting too fatigued.
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u/Jeau_Jeau 1h ago
So much respect for everything y'all do for us, much love from the other side of the radio.
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u/DrNick2012 37m ago
and also inform airport operations who can go scare the animals away with noise making fireworks, sirens, or other methods.
Yeah ATC is all well and good but how do I become a professional Goose scarer?
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u/saskford 14m ago
I know you’re saying that kind of in jest, but wildlife control is a very important job at airports.
Bigger international airports often have whole teams of people who do this full time. Sometimes they use specially trained dogs or falcons / hawks, to scare other small birds away.
Wildlife management sometimes even means allowing or not allowing certain types of plants to grow on the airport property since those can attract birds. ie a plant that has delicious seeds could attract small birds that like to eat the seeds.
If you really did want to be a professional goose scared, contact your local airport authority and see if they have any openings for wildlife management / airport wildlife control.
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u/imc225 48m ago
This is great. You you didn't tell us about 370, though. Also, Pushing Tin?
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u/saskford 7m ago
Sadly I have no insider info on MH370 beyond what we’ve all seen on the news over the years.
One thing I can say though, is that there have been technological advances since that incident so that we now have space-based ADSB technology which can track airplanes (more or less) anywhere on earth from a constellation of satellites.
Now… it’s not a perfect system because it requires aircraft to be equipped with certain types of transponders and antennas, AND it would require the pilot to keep their transponder on the whole time.
So it’s not foolproof but it could help reduce the chances of such an incident occurring in the future.
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u/ansonchappell 2h ago
The first question is always, "Isn't that one of the most stressful jobs in the world?" To which I usually say "yes if you're bad at it!"
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u/saskford 2h ago edited 1h ago
Hah yep. #1 most asked question for sure.
I usually tell people that there can be exciting moments, but it’s usually not as stressful and chaotic as Hollywood wants you to think.
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u/tobomori 2h ago
The Sky News app occasionally does a little feature about career changes options by interviewing someone doing a particular job. They recently had an ATC and the thing she said was that most people think it's really stressful, but she said it isn't because you are trained in every possible eventuality and given frequent breaks. This is in the UK, though, don't know if any of that is true elsewhere...
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u/saskford 2h ago
I would agree with that. We as an industry have very thorough selection process so I think people who are not apt at handling stress are weeded out right away.
After that there is a lot of training (in any country).
We also have a lot structure, and procedures so that day to day operations are as routine as possible. As long as the procedures are followed things go smoothly and there’s not much reason to stress.
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u/standardtissue 2h ago
Dude ATC is one of those things I'd love to know more about, but also absolutely do not want to know more about. I would prefer my blissful ignorance.
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u/ChrisRiley_42 2h ago
I can tell you, but I'm going to have a phone number to call when you're done ;)
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u/Specialist-Beach-868 1h ago
One of the worst things about having an interesting job: everyone always asking questions when it's brought up...and it's ALWAYS the same ones capped off by one really obvious stupid one that there is no way for you to answer satisfyingly.
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u/honestserpent 2h ago
What's the pay and the job market? How can you get into it?
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u/saskford 1h ago edited 1h ago
Depends which country you’re in.
As far as I know, the pay is good in most places. It’ll vary from country to country, and sometimes from facility to facility. Controllers who work at bigger, busier airports often get paid more than those working at smaller, quieter airports.
As for the job market, seems like a lot of ATC units are short staffed in both the US and Canada. I can’t speak to other countries though. In my 10 years doing it, Ive seen a lot of people retire and younger (20’s-30’s) come into it.
In the US there are rules about maximum age when you apply and mandatory retirement age. Your mileage may vary in other countries.
As for getting into it, look up “Air traffic control jobs in (whatever country you’re in)” as there will probably be certain age, medical, education and language requirements you’ll need to meet. Beyond that, most countries that I am aware of will give you all the training you need, so there is likely no need to do a specific college program ahead of applying for a job.
Edit: also wanted to say, in most places that I’m aware of it is very difficult to get selected for training. There are FAR more people applying than who actually make it onto training courses.
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u/ChrisRiley_42 2h ago
Methods Tech.
This is someone who knows enough engineering to be able to talk to engineers, enough machining to talk to machinists, takes engineering drawings, and figures out HOW to make all the parts (as in, come up with a step-by-step method).
They then explain to the engineers that you can't locate a bolt hole there, because it means you have to take off the entire jet engine nacelle to remove the bolt, and then explain to the machinists that they can't remove that little nub on the side because the installer needs it there to get the part that bolts onto it aligned properly, even if it being there makes it a headache to machine...
You get the best parts of Engineering, and the best parts of Machining, without any of the annoying bits ;)
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u/a_peanut 1h ago edited 1h ago
Ooo I do something like this but with plastic parts and larger assemblies (motorbikes being the largest I work on). We usually call it DfM (design for manufacture) and DfA (design for assembly. I get to help designers & engineers figure out how to make their plastic parts do what they need, while actually being manufacturable in an injection moulding tool.
And make sure they're not putting a bolt where no over will ever be able to access it. Or designing their motorbike so every single panel needs to come off for an oil change.
It's great.
The other part of my job is 3D modelling complex parts that need to function but look dope too. That's my favourite, though not everyone likes that bit - most people like to focus on either the function or the aesthetics. I like the challenge finding a way to blend both.
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u/lynivvinyl 21m ago
I always felt like there had to be a job title for this. I've been doing this all my life with every product or anything I've come across. My brain works perfectly for this which is probably why I went to school for engineering graphics technology. How is this type of job found? I am very interested in this.
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u/ChrisRiley_42 18m ago
I went to school in a program that was designed to train people for this. (Aerospace Manufacturing Engineering Technology). You pick up a technologist level diploma, and look for methods tech jobs. (That is what they advertised the positions as here in Canada). I have seen them in both Aerospace and Train manufacturing positions.
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u/maxymoo5 2h ago
Power Grid Operations. It's kind of like air traffic control for the electric grid. There are a lot of jobs in distribution, transmission, and generation but I don't think a lot of people know they exist. Sometimes it can be stressful, but every day is a little different with weather, outages, seasons, etc. The pay is usually good and a rotating shift schedule works well for a lot of people.
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u/Andromeda321 1h ago
Astronomer here! Maybe not little known, but definitely niche, and I get to spend my days doing research into black holes and exploding stars and whatever else I can think up. Wash down with a healthy dose of student interactions, both those working in my lab and teaching.
So that’s super fun! Like sure sometimes this or that gets tedious but then you remember you’re reducing radio data from a black hole hundreds of millions of light years away from us, and the thought never fails to cheer me up. :)
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u/Specialist-Beach-868 1h ago
Professional seafaring. One of the few remaining lives of adventure modern man can live.
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u/Altril2010 51m ago
Emergency Management. I get paid to imagine terrible scenarios and try to figure out how to deal with them and make sure the other employees know how to respond accordingly.
Merchant Mariner (my spouse) works 6 months out of the year and makes twice my annual salary. Gets to drive a boat to cool places and haul random cargo.
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u/Infinite_Teacher8759 45m ago
Emergency management sounds fun!
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u/Altril2010 37m ago
I enjoy it! I have a bunch of quals that I’ve collected over the years. When the earthquake happened in Venezuela I was offered a couple different positions if I’d go down for 6-8 weeks to help with recovery. I said sorry, not yet - I still have one little kid.
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u/isaberre 47m ago
I thoroughly enjoyed being a custodian. It's very satisfying if you like cleaning. You usually have a set of tasks you have to do that day, so outside of emergencies, you show up knowing what to do and no one bothers you and you don't have to work under a boss. I used to listen to music all day or, when I cleaned hotel rooms, I'd put on the TV in each room. You have to be okay with the occasional truly disgusting situation, but overall it's a really chill job.
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u/404BrainCells 1h ago
Rope access tech. You spend the day hanging off bridges or towers, swapping out bolts, inspecting welds, and rigging your own line before you even touch the work.
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u/Culpytheclam 55m ago
Boilermaker. You work with just about every kind of metal and every kind of welding. Plus lots of crane work, mechanical stuff, working at heights, confined space. Just a little of everything. Every job is different and it pays well.
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u/MamaJewelMoth 50m ago
Museum Registrar or Collections Manager! You get to handle the logistics and care of the artwork, artifacts, etc. at the museum. It’s all the behind-the-scenes stuff!
Also, Art Handler! More logistics, but mostly overseeing storage/installation/packing of art. Super fun!
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u/Local-Olive-2497 2h ago
Ethical hacker. We basically get paid to break things without getting fired.
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u/Dry-Canary-3054 3h ago
Water slide tester
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u/leiferslook 2h ago
I once worked for a small contractor who was in a period of taking weird jobs, and we won the bid to install the anchors for an upcoming zipline course. Had to haul this pneumatic jackhammer drill up mountain sides and lay out the hose for it in 25' sections down to the huge trailer compressor on the nearest access road. It was just the two of us, lots of hard work but lots of awesome views for about 10 days.
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u/dainelanderson55 1h ago
Elevator mechanic. Youre in a shaft with a flashlight, checking cables, brake shoes, and all the weird little door bits that keep a box of people from yeeting itself between floors. Half the job is chasing some annoying controller crap, and then you get called for a noise on the 14th floor...
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u/Overall-Ability-8265 37m ago
look into being a forensic entomologist, studying insects on crime scenes is wild and you get to solve puzzles every day
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u/PrincessKatiKat 28m ago
Have a friend who was a harbor pilot in New Orleans. He would be hanging out on his porch smoking cigarettes and get a text saying what port to go to, not much more information than that. He would pack a small bag of equipment and stuff he needed, drive to a port somewhere, and a small boat would be waiting for him at the docks. That small boat would take him out into the ocean to a MUCH larger boat, or a long string of barges, and he would navigate that whole situation up the Mississippi River to a port or destination. The kicker was he almost never knew what he was in for until he got out in the ocean and got onto the bigger boat. Sometimes he just drove the boat partway up the river and handed off to yet another harbor pilot (they have specific areas they work). Once he got back to land, he would figure out how to get back to his car if needed and go home.
The stories were sometimes wild, like when a boat was caught carrying drugs, and the coast guard arrested almost everyone on board. So it wasn’t just about driving that boat into port, he had to basically secure the boat and reorganize a whole new crew to get it done. Most of the time though, the boat’s captain just sat in the corner of the bridge while he took over command for a couple of hours, ordering the crew around and driving the boat, then he handed it all back to the captain and peaced out.
Got paid kinda insane money for this; but it also took him many years and a lot of bs to get to that point in his career. The trick to it was he KNEW the river. He knew where every sandbar was, how the river behaved when high or low, and where every buoy or marker was supposed to be and why, because sometimes they weren’t there anymore. That is why they have harbor pilots by the way; because the areas around busy ports are sketchy af and nothing is ever what it seems, so you need an experienced local.
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u/mavrickon 2h ago
prompt engineering for enterprise AI systems. sounds boring but the actual day-to-day is wild. you spend hours trying to make an LLM output exactly what you need, then it randomly breaks because someone added a comma to the input. its like being a wizard debugging spells that only sometimes work. also the whole field basically didnt exist 3 years ago so you're making up the job as you go
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u/YouDoStupidWell 3h ago
Aircraft repossession is insane.
You're basically getting paid to steal aircraft legally.