How stressful is your field?

[random_soldier]

I'm in nuclear engineering and things seem fairly laid back. Everyone comes of as a bit of a party animal and faculty don't seem to be in any particular rush to get things done.

 

[jbriggs444]

Speaking from where I sit, the stress is pretty managable (network engineer, late in career, pretty well burned out).

The primary stressor is:

Network is down. I'm the only guy who knows enough to get it back up. It's late friday, I'm not sure what's going on yet and the phone is ringing with folks asking for status updates, suggesting quick fixes or asking that I disprove theories that I'd already discarded half an hour ago.

The stress is manageable because 1. I'm not in the on-call rotation any more. 2. I can almost always solve their little problems. 3. Tricky problems with well-defined symptoms are a blast to solve. 4. I am well respected in my little community.

 

[berkeman]

I'm in nuclear engineering and things seem fairly laid back. Everyone comes of as a bit of a party animal and faculty don't seem to be in any particular rush to get things done.

 

[Klystron]

Job stress like beauty 'lies in the eye of the beholder'.

I was approached by a senior NASA manager after a particularly grueling series of wind tunnel tests. "How do you war veterans stay so calm during operations? Working with models must be much less stressful compared to real aircraft?" I agreed but actually had not experienced much stress, confident in our well tested code and team members. I enjoyed the challenges of capturing data in narrow windows.

Later in my career designing data centers I found that anticipating problems left me quite calm during stressful real-time operations such as switching clients to a new data center. Again, strong experienced crew members and adherence to standards increase peace-of-mind.

 

[random_soldier]

Job stress like beauty 'lies in the eye of the beholder'.

True. Though perhaps workload would have been a better term? Again, in my field, it seems like workload is limited, so people can afford to party or whatever.

Again, strong experienced crew members and adherence to standards increase peace-of-mind.

Agreed.

 

[Mondayman]

Unemployed student life, with rent and food paid for through savings, line of credit, etc., is probably the most carefree, low stress life one could ask for. I'll never have so much time on my hand and so few bill's as now, so I'm trying to fill my time by volunteering with the RCMP and learning a second language.