Choosing a vocation
There is a famous saying, "Find something you love to do and you will never have to work a day in your life." Your work is an important part of your life and is an endeavor that you'll spend many hours each week on. It is important to choose carefully and keep in mind both your goals, your passions, and then weight that against the demand in the world for those skill sets and with the opportunities that come your way. A job is something that can provide meaning and fulfillment, meet social needs and provide a way to meet people and build community, and it is a means of supporting yourself financial. Every person will assign different levels of importance to those three basic needs and so will initiate paths and evaluate opportunities that work for them. The nice thing about not being stuck in the frum mindset is that you now have so many more opportunities and paths that you can choose from. You don't have to choose between being a rebbe or working in B&H, between being a teacher or a secretary. This is great because you can find what works for you individually and create an empowered and satisfying life for yourself.. This is also hard because the choices are many and so it's overwhelming.
Let's try to break it down. I will start this and I welcome others to contribute using their experience. I will try to list several careers that I'm familiar with and list the pros/cons/attributes of that career and some links to additional information.
Computer Science/Programming/Technology
Computer Science is a great career for people who like to work with computers or who like to figure out how things work, like to problem solve, and be creative. It includes a wide-range of sub-fields such as database developer, app developer, networking, systems administration, and others. Some of the pros of this field:
- There is high demand for technology experts
- The pay is generous. For example, I did a search on indeed and here is what I found for average NYC salaries: Average This is of course just a rough estimate and different specialties and different experience levels will cause the salary to vary. I had a classmate in college who had a $12 per hour internship for two years while he was as student and then he found a full time job and his salary jumped to over 80,000. I know another classmate who did some volunteer internships for two years, then started a full time job with a salary of 50,000, and two years later jumped to 80,000 too. These are of course just two examples and some people will earn more or less than these figures.
- The work life is manageable. As a website programmer in a NYC office, in my experience, you usually are scheduled to work about 45 hours each week and then sometimes stay later when it's close to a deadline. I have never worked in a very demanding startup, though.
- It is possible to freelance, branch out on your own, or even start your own business and therefore be more independent.
Some other things to note about this field:
- You lead a sedentary lifestyle at work
- You may not get to socialize at work a lot because you spend many hours working with computers
- You need to be able to sustain working in front of a computer for many hours each day
- Pros and Cons
Teaching
