What do you make and what do you do?

[shilsen]

I'm a graduate student in English Literature working on my Ph.D. (and fourth degree). I pay the bills - and buy a few gaming books - by teaching undergrad courses in the same department, either freshman comp or literature (mostly drama, such as Shakespeare or Intro to Drama, but sometimes also survey courses). Unsurprisingly, I fall in category 1 on the survey above.

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

I make category 2.

I sit by a phone and watch cameras. When someone calls and tells me that their SO is abusing her or him I arrange for civil standby, drive over, pick up the client and kids, and then hide them.

It's sub-social worker, but it's all right. I also do a lot of the grant reporting for the organization.

Currently I'm working on a PhD in Technical Communication and Rhetoric.

 

[Orryn Emrys]

I'm in radio. Anyone who says they do that for the money is lying.

That being said, I've done better than many in my line of work, as I've spent the better part of the last decade in middle management. Since I've been running operations, which is programming and production, I've still spent a lot of hours on the air and in the studio... which is always a good time.

Incidentally, I recently stepped down from my position and moved to a bigger town, which hasn't offered the same opportunities. So now I'm just an on-air guy again. More fun, but less money. It's hard to strike a balance some times. Fortunately, my wife makes more money than I do. She's a D&D player too... and is a bookkeeper for privately-owned theatrical supply business.

 

[francisca]

My wife has a question I couldn't answer, what do adult D&D players do for a living and how much do they make? We've been discussing the pros and cons of D&D as a hobby for our children and wanted to know how successful players ended up being.

I really don't think playing D&D or any other hobby has much to do with career success, unless you go on to work in the industry which supports said hobby.

I'm an IT guy. I herd Linux and Solaris machines for a large, conservative, midwestern state university, as featured in Penthouse Forum. I never thought it would happen to me.

At my table (10 of us including me), we all have a college degree, most in an engineering field, one guy has a PHD, and two of the other are PHD candidates.

 

[Wednesday Boy]

I'm an ecologist and the rest of my groups consist of a computer programmer, an IT guy, a correctional officer, an intern (I'm not really sure what he does), an HR guy, an elementary school teacher and a business management type guy (I don't quite know what he does either).

 

[Tetsubo]

I work in a manufacturing plant. I run an injection press that makes auto gaskets.

 

[Philotomy Jurament]

My current gaming circle (which spans more than one group) includes:

1 IT engineer
2 IT managers
2 housewives
1 custodian
1 civil service employee
1 medical transcriptionist
4 students

 

[Hairy Minotaur]

I work in Health Insurance supervising an internal call center. The rest of my group are a structural engineer, a computer analyst, a disabled veteren, a hotel clerk, and a Wolfram Research tech that advises for the TV show Numbers (he makes the real money in the group)

 

[Nellisir]

I have a BA in creative writing, and have spent the past 12 years in residential construction as a project manager/carpenter/jack(of all trades). The money was pretty good, but I was still underpaid and while I like the job, I don't like the business. So I quit. Have been accepted at Cornell to get my Masters in Landscape Architecture (focusing on urban design).

I notice that while the pay scale has a nice curve, the jobs are nearly all white collar or service/retail. Very few blue collar/manufacturing.

 

[Cerebral Paladin]

I'm a lawyer, although I'm planning on changing that in the next couple of years to "I'm a law professor."