Do you have a job or do you have a career?

[JSnuffy]

Use your own definitions....

Do you think that most people would agree with you?

[FarPoint]

1. I have a career.

Medical professional.

[mucifer]

2. I have a career. I'm lucky. I think most would agree.

I love my work. Sometimes I work in the middle of the night. I'm a pediatric hospice nurse. It often feels like it's much bigger than me.

(I'm not sure that made sense. But, it does to me.)

[ZombieHorde]

3. Neither. nt

[MNBrewer]

12. Also neither, at the moment

[Warpy]

4. I always thought the interviewer question

Last edited Wed Feb 15, 2012, 11:09 PM - Edit history (1)

"Where do you want to be in five years?" was particularly insane applied to me because my best answer was always "alive." I had absolutely no ambition toward moving into management. I'd done management, thanks, and hated every minute of it. I adored what I did, which was working in multiple units of a hospital, wherever I was needed.

I had a career, health care professional. Within that career I had a job. The "career ladder" with the carrot of management at the top of it simply never appealed to me. I had found my niche and had no interest in leaving it to pursue some sort of "onward and upward" path preferred by managerial types.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with finding a job and working to excel at it. There is nothing that made me want to get on the treadmill and hope for a management job.

Management types seemed to find the concept of staying within a job one found challenging instead of leaving it for one that one found stifling foreign to them. They would probably say I had a job. I'd say I had a career.

[Lochloosa]

18. LOL...i hate that question...my first response is "is this company going to be here in 5 years"

of course...i never get that job.

[Initech]

5. I have a part time job.

It's treated me incredibly horribly in the last 2 - 3 years and I've been seeking a way out of it. I badly want a real career with real responsibilities and I'm going back to school for that now. I hope to ditch the job and be full time in school by the fall.

[brewens]

6. Career. I'm kind of considered "the blood drive guy" in my area. I'm really just the driver/

registrar at the drives, but I'm the one everyone always sees and talks to. I'm angling for a recruiters job. Then I'd go around a set up the drives. I can also see moving back into the actual blood banking as a hospital services tech.

I like working for this type of not-for-profit. Nothing wrong with being in a strictly commercial business but I like this better. It's a job I can do until I'm pretty old.

[RebelOne]

7. I had a career. I was a copy editor for outdoors magazines

throughout the upper 48 states. But I was laid off in 2010.

[fujiyama]

8. You could say I have a career

though I've been working several different jobs over the years. I contract at the moment. No complaints about the pay, but contracting means I have to pay for health insurance and I have little stability.

Considering how difficult many have found the last few years, I have been relatively lucky. I was out of work for about a year and a half, during which I spent some time back in grad school for a degree I never completed. Oh well. Maybe at some point.

The recession has meant moving around more than I would have expected, but it's led to some pretty interesting life experiences and meeting a lot of great people along the way. I'm fairly young and mobile. If I had a family and a house, then it would have been a considerably different situation.

[Curmudgeoness]

9. I have a job.

Some people could consider accounting as a career, but to me, it is just a way of getting the money to survive. That is my definition of a job.

I expected most people to feel the same way, but most of the posters so far are proving me wrong.

[JSnuffy]

24. I thought the split would be more even as well...

... but it may be that a career is considered "better" and is skewing the response ratio.

[Curmudgeoness]

29. Yes, having a career feels better

and probably makes us feel better about ourselves, so we really don't want to admit it is a job we have.

Since I go to the office, do what has to be done, and can't wait to get out of there every day, it is a job. I am there for the paycheck and would not be there is I didn't need the pay. That sounds like a job to me.

[Generic Brad]

10. I have a specialized career

Only a handful of people in the U.S. do the kind of work I do. The type of job I have did not even exist when I got out of college. I have a passion for it and feel singularly lucky to do work that is unique, essential, and cutting edge.

I went into it as a job and somewhere along the way it morphed into a career.

[seeviewonder]

11. I've worked at several "jobs" before

but I think I am able to say that I now have a career. I am in management in the science portion of the biofuel industry. I am lucky to say that I love where I am as far as my career goes.

[arthritisR_US]

13. I have a job. n/t

[femmocrat]

14. Career.

And a profession: Teacher.

[oldhippie]

16. Career. Electrical Engineer ....

Worked for one employer my entire 40 years.

[Enrique]

15. i have a job

and i feel extremely fortunate to have one.

[tammywammy]

17. Job, but on my way to start the career

I graduate with my bachelor's in May and start my Master's in the fall. Waiting until after I start the Master's program before I make my move, I'd like to know what kind of studying, etc I'm up against.

edited to add: I'll move within the same company I already work for.

[MrSlayer]

19. I sort of have a career.

I'm a union electrician.

[Honeycombe8]

20. Hmm. Some might say it's a career. But it's dead-end, so I would say it's more like a job.

I'm a trial paralegal specializing in large cases, working in big city at large firm. Is that a career? I don't know. I like it, for the most part, though. But it's pretty much a dead-end job, like nursing and teaching. Doesn't a career have a "career path," meaning upward mobility?

[fencesitter]

21. Career: starving artist

always and forever it seems. Wouldn't have it any other way.

[Marrah_G]

23. I have 2 jobs

I would love to have a career someday

[Fumesucker]

25. I have a calling..

My muse or muses is more in control of what I do than my rational brain quite often, the creative drive takes over and hours or even days later I kind of come back to full consciousness and realize I'm exhausted and starving, it's not uncommon for me to be in the shop at three am.

When the creative drive is right and in tune with making money I have done very well sometimes, but that creative part of me doesn't really care about money and will drop even profitable projects to hare off on something that has no obvious connection to money or even sanity occasionally.

I might be going to hell in a bucket, but at least I'm enjoying the ride.

[meaculpa2011]

26. I left my last job in 1981...

I was on the fast track at an exceptional Fortune 500 company. I loved it. It was challenging and fun, but I felt like a caged animal.

Then I went out on my own as a freelance speechwiter/speaker coach/event consultant--the elements of my job that I enjoyed the most, without the administrative drudgery.

I've loved every minute of it. There have been years when I made plenty of money, and some lean years. Even the uncertainty is energizing.

And I've been able to support a home and a couple of kids. Back in the 90s, when the kids arrived, my wife took nine years off from her career and I moved my office into our spare room. Both of us being home was a great luxury that I could not have swung if I stayed in Fortune 500 Land.

My wife retired last year, but my retirement plan is to keep working until they shovel dirt in my face.

[tanyev]

27. I have a job that I enjoy, but my focus is on the things I do when I'm not at work.

I don't really want a career.

[hobbit709]

28. I have both, they're not the same thing.