Why did you choose your career path and what truly drove that choice?

Question

What made you choose your career path? Why did you choose the career that you did?

Was there an ideal behind it? Was it the opportunity? Was it the availability of the positions? Was it a family expectation (a family business, everyone else did that same thing)? Was it a need in that industry or field? Did you have a genuine passion or talent that you were able to live off of?

Why did you choose to do what you do?

Why did you choose your career path and what truly drove that choice?

OneViewpoint · Accepted Answer

LOL, there was no plan. At least it wasn't my plan. I was the first person in my family to graduate from University. There was no family business. There was no one to guide me.

And I attended a military university. So I ended up with a 3 year commitment to the US Army that turned into a 15 year career as an Army officer. What a group of us were unaware of was that starting in our junior year we were tested and psych evaluated and selected for a career path. When we went through OBC (officer basic course) at Fort Bragg after our junior year, we were "offered" the chance to go from OBS straight to Airborne training while everyone else went home. We were having a blast. We all said yes. While going through Airborne training some of us were offered the chance to go through Ranger school straight out of OBC and Airborne school. Again, we were clueless and having a blast. We said yes. The Army intervened with our individual universities to let us come back late for fall semester. We made it through Ranger school and went back to school eventually, still clueless that what we had just done was not "normal" and that we were being fast tracked to a career path that had been chosen for us. The we graduated and received our commissions as officers, the bill came due for all the good times, and we gradually learned what was expected of us and who we actually worked for.

After the Army it was another sorta arranged career path in cooperation with the US military laying the groundwork. Fortune 100 loved us for some reason. So I ended up in a Fortune 100 company that fast tracked me through all of their elite internal training for a Corporate Finance role all the way from "New Manager Development Course" to "Advanced Financial Management", Six Sigma Black Belt certification, and 4 industrial businesses in rapid succession cycling through every aspect of finance in a business changing jobs every 6-12 months.

I left to become the CFO of a heavy industrial business that was a greenfield startup from bare earth. The first career choice that was truly my own. That was successful but I left to take a career offer with a Manhattan based private equity firm that was staffed with former associates from Fortune 100. My second career choice where I was free to choose.

I eventually became financially independent and left private equity to consult for investment banks, private equity, hedge funds, and manufacturing businesses.

It's all connected but I wasn't really the architect of my own career. At least not entirely. And not at the beginning.

InknKink · Accepted Answer

Luck and Opportunity.

At 22 I found myself working an entry level assembly line position.

Within a year they promoted me to a machining line. Then promoted to lead hand. Then promoted me to operational technician and made me responsible for starting and recovering lines.

Five years into my career with the company, I randomly got pulled into a meeting with my companies GM, the head of our engineering department, and an HR staff member.

I though I was getting shit canned. Instead they asked me if I was happy with my career and if I'd be interested in going back to school.

That was 10 years ago and now. Rest is history.

Jessica405 · Accepted Answer

When we were kids, my brother and I were given an 8-bit Atari 800 and 800XL. There was an enormous amount of documentation, including source code for the Basic cartridge, the operating system and the Atari Assembler cartridge

We set about learning everything about these machines as possible. Hiow to make it do things that were never intended. How to increase the number of lines on the screen for example. We became proficient in writing routines in 6502 assembler, including self modifying code..

A far cry from modern machines!

Beckybooboo · Accepted Answer

I spent a day with my aunt, she was a clinical RN in the cardiology department. Prior to that, I wanted to be a teacher, like my mom. Yes, my mother was disappointed lol

Billlewis · Answer

After attending close to 15 different schools k-12, including four years of high school in three states, I was sick of school long before I graduated, and I was determined to do absolutely anything else, other than go to college. Because I was a gifted student, my relatives were doing everything in their power to try and shove college up my ass. They kicked me out of the house, tried to block inheritance money that was directed to me, etc. I moved to Chicago and although I didn't make it in music, I did make it in sales.

Lliam · Answer

Mine was purely by chance and I wound up loving it.

A friend's mom was friends with a VP of a small auto insurance company that was starting a trainee program for motor vehicle damage field adjusters/appraisers.

I just had a high school education and some college at the time, but the VP's recommendation got me hired. They trained me.

The salary was excellent and the benefits were amazing. The company grew tremendously over the years. I wound up staying with them for 30 years and retiring with a pension and a lot of money in a 401(k).

exitseven · Answer

I worked for a small company and in the 80s we purchased a computer to run our collectables. It was very successful and I expanded it's capability to keep track of our inventory as well. I thought that if I had it to do over again I would go into IT. Fast forward a couple of years and the company lost it's two biggest accounts. It was the early 90s and the economy was bad and I knew that I needed to think about the future. I went back to school and got a Masters degree in Computer Science and changed careers just before I turned 40. I chose Computers because I was good at it and it was in demand and paid enoiugh to support a family/.

sage2021 · Answer

Besides being a Mom, I wanted to work inside of an office working as asecretary/admin. assistant. I did that for 30 years and never wanted to do anything else.

NathanDavis · Answer

my choice was not, to pursue a career... and to go into business instead main reason being flexibility, and being able to work on my own terms

AngryCarl3 · Answer

My education was interrupted by ill health, and rather than plan a career I fell into a succession of jobs. As a colleague once told me, "If you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there."

thegreenyogi · Answer

Circumstance. My father was diagnosed with brain cancer so I stepped in and took over the buisness while help nurse him until his final hour.

worldscolide · Answer

Because it's the only field of work that doesn't feel like work

Godihateyou · Answer

Money. I needed to make as much as I could for as long as I could to have a family that I worked too much to ever see. The same as all Americans

Anonymous · Answer

I choose Economics, because it seems not too difficult.

Agape93 · Answer

Decent pay and flexibility

slatyb · Answer

It was easy and paid well.

Jen_oic · Answer

@BCRanger10  Wasn’t really my choice

Why did you choose your career path and what truly drove that choice?

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