I graduated from a good school in Mechanical Engineering, had dreams of being an engineer designing infrastructure or solar systems or whatever. I ended up never getting an actual engineering job, I never got the opportunity to start a career as an engineer or scientist. I hopped from job to job in related fields, as a construction technician or literally working for small engineering companies for free just to gain experience (never gaining any tangible skills in the process. I simply never got a junior position anywhere, in anything. I never really had a specific field I was interested in, in which I desired to hone my skills, because, well, I never got an in, I never got the first decent paying job that taught me the skills of the trade. I still feel to this day that success in Engineering not related to CS, like most professions, is entirely dependent on networking and who you know. If I had just gotten that first, if I had networked a bit harder, if I had a non immigrant family that knew some people, I might have gotten a prestigious job doing something of worth.
I just moved to Texas from the place I grew up in (because that place has been abandoned by any friends I ever had and there is no future there for me), trying to find a job after I got fired from the previous tangentially related engineering job I held. I turned 30 today and I have, like, 1 friend here.
I’ve let go of any hope of having a profession in which I did something that mattered to people or gaining useful skills in society. My grades aren’t good enough to get into grad school, and I just want to have a house and friends and do nothing all day.
I’ve been broke for way too long and I might have just gotten the opportunity to earn a shit ton of money by becoming a salesman of solar panels. How…anti-praxis is that? Is this entirely giving up on everything I stand for and becoming a literal capitalist?
One piece of advice I'll give is just generally to beware the sales pitch of a salesman selling you a sales job
get the bread homie. that's not license to go become Chief Murder Officer at raytheon or anything but at the end of the day you need to support yourself before you can help others. Put your own oxygen mask on first.
Also, as far as sales jobs go solar panels is one of the least bad things to convince people to buy in terms of effect on the world
Meanwhile in South Africa it's probably one of the easier industries to make money in, if you are competent. Sure there's lots of competition, but a ton of them are incompetent and demand for solar has never been higher. Every single homeowner or rich person wants their own personal solar + battery +inverter combo to become unaffected by rolling electricity blackouts, industry wants it so they don't have to pay the ridiculous industrial electricity prices and can operate unaffected by the electricity blackouts so their output is better, richer universities and schools want it so they can use stuff like computers and specialised hardware uninterrupted.
comrade, i can't really give you advice because i just finished a STEM degree and am applying to jobs and staring down the same shitty situation, but unless you own the factories that make what you're selling you are not a capitalist. you're not exploiting anyone's labour anymore than a cashier is, the stuff you're selling just has a higher price tag.
Selling stuff is still labor. It's not like you own the factories and the mines.
nothing particularly unethical about being a salesman, unless you're doing high-pressure strongarm shit, or knowingly selling a defective or useless product
you're selling solar panels that presumably work
Maybe don't engineer weapons, but other than that, I think we all have to learn to live within the contradictions of our time. We don't have to accept them, but we do have to learn to live with them. I have a job that I feel trapped in, but I am in six figures of student loan debt and it's my best option for paying it off before I could even consider doing anything else.
I'd say that's a sensible decision. The thing about "do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life" is complete horseshit, at least with the way work is designed under capitalism. Do what you love, and the 9-5 grind will kill any passion you ever had for it. Let the burning hatred you feel about your job be the fuel for a better future.
Do what you love, and the 9-5 grind will kill any passion you ever had for it.
So much this, and not least because employers at jobs that people "love" tend to assume that they can get away with paying people substantially less than they're worth.
Coming from the perspective of someone who went to music school with the niaeve dream of being a professional music producer, you gotta pay fuckin' rent, mate. If you can find a job that pays the bills and gives you some financial stability then take it!
That being said, I recall reading a comment on hexbear dot net recently of a guy who was describing how difficult it is being a solar panel salesperson because small business owners can't take their heads out of their own asses for five god damned minutes because it takes three years for the solar panels to pay themselves off and all they care about is quarterly profits. So be wary of the claim of making a "shit load of money".
plenty of engineering jobs in the public sector. you could protect wetlands and design parks.
Ever thought about the trades? Happy birthday, btw. Electricians, Plumbers, Boilermakers, etc. Or, municipalities need Construction Inspectors, you could take some classes and get prepped up on that. way easier than working construction, by comparison.
I worked my "dream career" out of college for about a decade, burned out, and switched to a completely unrelated career path as a paperwork monkey in Transportation. the job is easier, the pay is less but not much less, the union bennies are amazing, the work-life balance is great, the coworkers are, uh, i guess not the worst.
How would you be a capitalist? Taking commission doesn’t mean you own the solar panels or have an ownership of the company.
I'm a software developer in a crypto-adjacent company that's basically a vanity project for some bored rich people.
On one hand it's decent money and basically zero stress (we're not playing with anybody's money, it's all just experiments and proof-of-concepts) on the other hand I contribute more to society by sweeping the stairs of my apartment building than with anything I ever did at work. That sometimes bothers me and sometimes it doesn't, I decided I'll roll with it for now tho, at least I get to play with new technologies and learn new things, maybe one day I'll get to put my skills to good use.
Basically what I'm saying is don't worry about it too much unless the job directly makes the world shittier.
I have a friend who was in a similar situation, engineering graduate looking for a job, who worked in solar sales for a bit. It was alright but there were some things the company wasn't upfront with, I assume about pay and all that
but yeah selling solar panels seem like a good thing to be selling, They work!
Selling solar panels is bullshit dude, they churn through people and if you don't make quota you're gone. It's a rough job and not a career and the money is never as good as they say it is.
i can't tell you whether it's a good idea or anything, i guess it depends on what kind of job it is, but being a salesperson doesn't make you a capitalist. you're still a worker unless you're making money off your capital instead of your labor
