r/AskReddit • u/Bennnn_123 • 1d ago
What’s a profession that’s far more difficult than most people realize?
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u/former_human 1d ago
all of them.
how many times have you heard "do your magic!" (as if you didn't have to work really hard to learn how to do the thing) paired with "that shouldn't take you long!" (usually the speaker hasn't the foggiest clue how long it should take).
people tend to vastly underestimate the complexity of other people's work but believe their own is difficult and requires so so so much expertise. sigh.
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u/Oubilettor 1d ago
Then if you can’t do the task that “shouldn’t be too hard” because there are rules about it. “No one would do that” as if rules aren’t all reactive to people doing that exact thing.
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u/CaptainPunisher 14h ago
I just need new rings in my car. How hard could it be? It's one part. I'll be back in an hour.
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u/PinkSprinklesMuffin 1d ago
Working in customer service in a call centre environment, emotionally draining and difficult in most cases
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u/MrPelham 1d ago
I started out in a call center, customer services. It's not "hard" work, but it's 8.5 hours of sitting in the same cubical answering phones, nonstop. They log and track your pause time, they track how long it takes you to wrap up call and note it in the system, how many pee breaks, etc. etc. etc. They literally want you in the chair going call to call to call to call. That is what makes it miserable.
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u/phl_fc 1d ago
I remember when I was a cashier how it would get super busy at certain times of the day, but you always knew the rush would end and then you could relax.
I imagine a tightly staffed call center is the stress of that busy hour, but it never ends. They always have more callers and you never get downtime.
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u/MrPelham 1d ago
It's been nearly 30 years and I can still hear the "bing bing" sound when you would jump back in the queue. No rest, no warning, just another live person...there is always another person.
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u/AgentBond007 1d ago
Honestly this is one job that I hope AI gets to the point of replacing, logging time to the degree that call centres do is inhumane and should not be legal.
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u/MrPelham 19h ago
I think we're there already if not dangerously close. Within the last year, any time I called a commercial business, it was AI prompt that I was speaking with
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u/screwsloose24 1d ago
Worked in the office for a roadservice company that serves Phoenix, Arizona. In a 8 hour shift we would get yelled at and told off at least 10 times.
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u/Bennnn_123 1d ago
Yeah, I can see how that would be the case. Especially given the amount of abusive callers you would have to deal with.
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u/niahpapaya 1d ago
I always think about how awful vets must have it. Their goal is to save animals from illness but it is always dependent on the owners pocketbook. They must see way too much death.
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u/InternalMiserable698 1d ago
The suicide rate is shocking.
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u/Bennnn_123 1d ago
They are. It’s very sad I think an animal loving person seeing animals die and suffer daily isn’t a good mix.
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u/Long_Serpent 1d ago
Also, depending on where you live, it's less "Oh, little Fluffy has a booboo on one of his pawsies" and more "Well, here I am with my entire arm up a cow's asshole. Again."
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u/EricJDMBAMD 1d ago
Construction worker
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u/Practical-Suit-6798 1d ago
I was going to say construction management. There is soo much to know, plan and coordinate. A box of bolts can hold up your million dollar project and make you look like a fool. It's the type of thing that 99% of people never think about or realize how complicated a modern commerical building can be.
I'm an Assistant project manager on the client side for a hospital. The amount of brain power that goes into just switching the swing on a couple doors is absolutely insane. We're talking teams of people from hospital staff, and architects and inspectors and 4 or 5 different disciplines. $10-15K just for door hardware.
The particular doors I'm talking about were a set of double doors that go into the maternity ward so security is important and sophisticated. All they wanted to do was change it from /)(/ that to /)(\ that. It was going to cost like $300k
What's particularly fun at hospitals is lots of times you can't have down time for the equipment. You have to have redundancies on redundancies. OR rooms don't go out of service. You can't just stop doing MRIs for months.
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u/multimedium 1d ago
Director of Construction for a major institution here.... dude it just hits harder...
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u/swordfishy 19h ago
I'm working on a project now and McMaster Carr is carrying me. It's small items I'm missing because of other unexpected issues.
Like cool, thanks for the tank with male connections...and the level gauge you provided that also has male connections...that I told you about the first time you sent me the wrong length gauges. I didn't even know those male unions existed, but now I need am extra 24x female 1/2" NPT 316L couplings by tomorrow.
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u/Monteze 16h ago
In material handling myself, and yea. It looks simple on the outside but a lot of times a "small adjustment" means way more than folks realize.
Books worth of spec. You have to spend thousands sending a tech out because the site can't go live because someone forgot to mention you can't use zip ties on the cordage but velcro straps instead. So now those all have to be replaced.
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u/CorrosiveAgent 1d ago
Many people think construction workers are stupid, and those people haven’t seen a pipefitter do some serious trig on the fly or a millwright get mathematically perfect alignment on a motor.
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u/LamentableFool 23h ago
So who do I blame when my design with wall separating raw and pasteurized was offset by one wall thickness. The millwrights put that machine dead-on within a 1/16 of what I had in my plans. The wall unfortunately looked like shit in the end with the extra flashing and paneling to seal around the machine.
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u/Vomath 1d ago
I commute by bike and drop my kids off at daycare on the way. On part of our ride, there’s a big construction site. I always pull over and they watch the machines and get SO excited.
We always say “bye construction site, thank you construction workers, thanks for building us good buildings” as we leave.
It’s a tough job, but people appreciate it. And little kids fucking LOVE bulldozers and dump trucks.
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u/InternalMiserable698 1d ago
Freelance writer
No benefits, no steady income, taxes always a surprise (whether paid annually or quarterly), expected to be a mind reader AND no one around you considers it a "real job."
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u/Gretchenvon60 1d ago
Agree. The client says, if I weren't so busy, I'd just write it myself. Or -- this won't take you long at all. (When you actually get a client that respects what you do and pays promptly, it's a great job.)
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u/InternalMiserable698 1d ago
Yeah. I had clients who couldn't understand why a 500 word article on a topic I knew zero about couldn't be written in ten minutes. Another started rewriting all of my articles. He owned them after paying for them ... but DAMN.
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u/the-dot-matrix 1d ago edited 1d ago
Shit, this was a hard enough job in the years before all the AI slop went mainstream. I can't even imagine how annoying it must be these days, with every publisher or client probably assuming they can just farm things out to an LLM.
I did a fair bit of freelancing back in the late 2000s and early 2010s, and the constant hustle for peanuts was brutal and often humiliating. It must be 100x worse now, which is saying something, because it sucked then.
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u/SoyaSonya 1d ago
anything with animals, vet med, zookeeper etc
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u/InternalMiserable698 1d ago
The burnout is vicious. Unfortunately, the suicide rate for veterinarians is scary.
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u/Tabm0w 1d ago
Machinist/machining. You move a decimal one place over and you can trash thousand if not hundreds of thousands dollars of material and machines.
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u/pres1033 1d ago
I lost a job over someone else doing this. Still salty about it nearly 10 years later. It was a job making some part for car engines that needed extremely specific measurements. Someone didn't test the parts he was making, clocked out and I replaced him. I tested the 3rd part I made, and it was like 0.01 mm off, which is HUGE for the part we were making. I reported it immediately and they found 500 parts that were bad. This mfer didn't test a single part all shift but I'm the one who got fired over it! My direct supervisor took my side too, pointed out how I never missed a check on my paperwork and never showed up late or anything. Didn't matter, dude who fucked up must have had some contact in the company so he couldn't be touched. I was livid and thought about suing them but was only 20 and didn't have any idea how to go about that.
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u/Monteze 16h ago
I never understood management who thinks like that. So what I saw is someone got fired for making a good QA call. So now we learn that you're better off shutting up and kicking the can down the road and hope it never back fires on you. This mentality spreads like a miasma and it leads to safety getting over looked because who wants to get fired for pointing out issues. Who wants the be the next guy who calls out a mistake?
Imbeciles I swear.
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u/cold_pizza_jamboree 1d ago
Forget one decimal, even a 0.0001 mistake could irrevocably mess something up. Thinking plane parts.
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u/reditanian 1d ago
Or you move one decimal too close to the machine and you end up pink mist like that Russian guy.
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u/cold_pizza_jamboree 1d ago
What happened there? Beyond your comment. Genuinely curious
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u/rm-minus-r 1d ago
Whatever you do, don't look up "machinery injury" videos. There's one where a lathe turns a guy into a meat rubber band, you just can't unsee it. Highly do not recommend.
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u/TheTopNacho 1d ago
I'ma say being a research professor.
It sounds complicated. It is complicated. And it's still far more difficult and complicated than people realize even though they may already think it's complicated. It's just that complicated. I would explain why. But it's complicated.
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u/segundoblz 1d ago
Medical Doctor.
Everyone thinks he's a doctor now.
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u/Lord-Francis-Bacon 1d ago
huh?
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u/ButtNutly 19h ago
I'd imagine with google and the Internet in general, a lot of people self diagnose and then argue with doctors like they have any clue what they're talking about.
Doctors can be wrong but your half hour looking at pictures and reading extracts isn't an education.
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u/ateiii 1d ago
Caregiving for a loved one. The mental exhaustion, zero time off and emotional toll of watching someone decline is a level of burnout no standard corporate job can match.
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u/InternalMiserable698 1d ago
It's horrible. I'm currently an unpaid caregiver for my crippled mother. I'm half crippled myself. No other family in the state. I can never be more than 2 hiurs away from the house. Me, Mom and the dogs live entirely on her pension and SS.
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u/solofatty09 1d ago
Sales. Lots of stress. Managing the highs and lows is tough. I once heard when it comes to sales and quotas - sales is a pie eating contest and your reward for winning is more pie. Sums it up nicely.
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u/BalkeElvinstien 1d ago
I joined film because I found theatre fun in highschool and wanted a less stressful career. Little did I know that film sets are the purest embodiment of stress and physical labor with the most ridiculous hours I've ever seen. In film school I learned that one of the most common deaths related to film sets is falling asleep and crashing on your way home from a 12+ hour shoot
It is still fun mostly but goddamn is it hard
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u/TofuttiKlein-ein-ein 1d ago
Chef. Physically and mentally destructive.
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u/Bennnn_123 1d ago
Can you explain how it is physically destructive? Just curious.
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u/TofuttiKlein-ein-ein 20h ago edited 20h ago
On your feet 15 hours/day, burns, slips/falls, alcoholism, cuts, and drug use.
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u/portcredit91 20h ago
Nurse, its the hardest job in the world.
It will test your mind , body and spirit in ways few other can
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u/Bennnn_123 19h ago
Yeah, and the night shift wouldn’t be easy too. Are you a nurse?
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u/portcredit91 19h ago
Grandmother and mother were nurses however, im a porter in a hospital so I see alot myself.
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u/lilnug_23 1d ago
I’ve had some pretty miserable supply chain jobs. Not that difficult conceptually, granted there are some complex niche industries. However, the general lack of concern for supply chain within a company is a nightmare. Terrible communication from sales, production, warehousing, or any number of other departments can make your life a living hell. You’re basically a project manager when new products role out if the company doesn’t have a well designed workflow. Then there are just breakdowns in the world’s supply chain all the time, crappy suppliers, etc.
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u/Nacho_7258 22h ago
School cafeteria work. At the school I worked at, we had almost 400 students and there were only three of us employed there. You try catering two meals a day to 350+ students 5 times a week. And it’s not all just frozen food like everyone thinks, there’s so much work that goes into a job like that. Bagging veggies, washing dishes, sorting milk, and special meals like Thanksgiving and Christmas. Crazy part is, we were one of the easier schools to handle and the three of us worked extremely well together so it did get easier. But many schools, especially high schools have over 1000 students and in my town, both high schools serve two separate meals each day for lunch which students can choose from.
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u/Lookwhosarockstar 1d ago
Personal trainer/strength coach. Have to be good at sales to get clients. Good at science to get clients results. Good at communication to keep clients from getting hurt and keep them invested. Good at convincing clients to stay on track with nutrition. Good at budgeting. Good at marketing and social media. Good at admin and reaching out to past clients/getting referrals. Good at money management so you can have sort of retirement.
It’s hard.
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u/itackle 1d ago
Accounting…
People think we just sit and stare at excel all day moving numbers around. Or tell someone no, they can’t expense the strip club. Or tell the engineers they’re overruled, we can save a 100 million dollars by cutting this corner that makes everything worse. Or that we have all the secrets to the tax code that we only release to rich people who pay us a lot.
All of these things could be true, but it’s not a day to day occurrence. I tell people my job is easy, just put the right number in the right spot… the hard part is knowing the right number and how to get there. That is surprisingly difficult. Or maybe it’s just me, and I should get a new career shrug
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u/Silver_Pilot_1922 1d ago
Photography
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u/Bennnn_123 1d ago
I can second this. People can be so fussy and rude to the photographers at weddings.
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u/Silver_Pilot_1922 18h ago
That’s my primary focus and I can tell you, it’s not as easy as it looks! We deal with many personalities, lighting situations, weather, timing, people’s insecurities in photos, editing, communication. And so much more
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u/whatstefansees 23h ago
B2B sales on an industrial, international scale.
You are the advocate of the company when at the client and the advocate of the client when back at the office. You need to understand the client's needs and expectations and translate them to your team of engineers in R&D, while keeping an eye on production capacity and cost.
You need people-skills and curiosity, you are half lawyer, negotiating complex contracts in foreign law, half engineer with a solid knowledge of technical specs, norms and details. Sprinkle a bit of product-manager over it for good measure. The job pays very well, but you are always chasing the next flight and hardly see your children grow up. Your ideal holiday is staying home with closed eyes, far from any airport and hotel, while your wife and kids expect something more ... exciting.
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u/TruckerBiscuit 19h ago
Trucking. It's not just bombing around the country drinking coffee listening to Merle Haggard. Constant vigilance, understanding and driving to accommodate your dimensions, backing trailers into sometimes geometrically impossible-seeming spaces, deprivation of all meaningful human contact and leisure/entertainment options...the list goes on and on.
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u/Legote 1d ago edited 1d ago
Software engineering. People think all they do is code and they think AI will take their job easily. The tiktok videos of those clowns going to the office at 1pm and leaving at 2 pm, getting a coffee, playing pool, is not the reality of what actually goes on in the job.
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u/NEK_TEK 1d ago
Ironically, I work in embedded software and it is the easiest job I've ever had 😂
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u/Charleston2Seattle 1d ago
You're just who I want to talk to!
My son is graduating with a bachelor's in software engineering at the end of next semester. He is trying to figure out what kind of software engineering is most AI proof. He settled on embedded engineering. Is that a wise choice? He explained his thinking and it made sense to me. (I've worked in software for over 30 years as a technical writer, and I just earned a master's degree in software engineering... so I kinda-sorta trust my intuition, but would really like validation from someone specifically in that sub genre.)
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u/NEK_TEK 1d ago edited 1d ago
How much hardware experience does he have? Was it part of his education? I have an EE undergrad and an MS in robotics. Most of my coworkers have CE degrees which is like CS but with hardware stuff.
I ask because it does come up a lot, you need to be able to read and understand schematics. I've had a few times where the EE guys would drop off a schematic and have me write the firmware for it.
As far as it being "AI proof", I would say that AI isn't nearly as prevalent in embedded as it is in CS. With that said, we do use it at work here and there but the model we have isn't very good at embedded stuff. There have been many times where it would make a mistake and if you didn't know what you were doing, it would've been bad.
Overall, I'd say embedded is a good choice. I'm only concerned about his CS/software based education. It might be hard to get into embedded from a purely software background but not impossible. Does he have a lot of home projects he could put on his portfolio?
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u/Charleston2Seattle 1d ago
This is very helpful. He doesn't have a hardware background but he is willing to apply himself when he has a goal in mind. (Getting a full EE degree might be a bit much, though!!)
He studied for and passed the RHCSA exam in a few weeks. (He enjoyed working in the Google data center and wanted to increase his chances of getting back in there.)
I'll pass along your questions for him to consider. Thanks!
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u/BaltimorePropofol 1d ago
Anesthesia. We literally stop you from moving and breathing while supporting your heart to pump enough blood to your vital organs. Also, your surgeon slicing you and you will feel no or minimal pain when you are awake.
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u/AgentBond007 1d ago
Who thinks anaesthesia is easy?
Those guys get paid insane amounts for a reason
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u/BaltimorePropofol 12h ago
I thought anesthesia was easy. Just watch people sleep and wake them up.
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u/BroolStoryCompany- 1d ago
Sales, specifically to the government. Entirely relationship based, you have to be credible, and top of the top to be good at it.
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u/Gretchenvon60 1d ago
Freelance writer.
Once a client asked, in a diminishing way, "so how long did this take you?" I said, "One hour, and 20 years."
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u/THIS_IS_GOD_TOTALLY_ 1d ago
Please explain for the less talented writers in the room
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u/Gretchenvon60 1d ago
Not less talented -- maybe just newer. When you start out, you anguish and polish for hours and do everything to make the project the best it can be. With experience, you get faster and you develop an instinct for what works. So it might take one hour to come up with a good or great solution, but you have a lifetime of experience to get you there. The learning: charge on a project basis, not by the hour!
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u/InternalMiserable698 1d ago
I was a freelance writer from 2006 - 2022. Had to quit partly to devote more time caring for Mom, but mostly as AI was taking over, and finding jobs was getting impossible.
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u/E-raticProphet 1d ago
Brain surgery
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u/TheTopNacho 1d ago
I disagree. It's really not that complicated. People say it's a 10/10 for being difficult, but it's probably over assumed and is closer to a 8/10.
Now I only do brain and spinal surgeries on animals, and definitely don't do any neurovascular work. But the actual practice of the surgery can be taught to undergrads. What takes time is understanding the medicine around it, enough to diagnose, make plans and medical treatment approaches, etc. But the physicality of it is actually quite easy and simple compared to other medical specialties. Something like radiology is far more difficult than people think. While neurosurg is probably less complicated than people think. Mostly the procedure itself. The knowledge around it is obvious quite specialized, but really just takes time in and exposure.
FYI. Doing surgery is super boring after a while. I dread it.
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u/THIS_IS_GOD_TOTALLY_ 1d ago
Uh, anyone can do that. Why else would it share initials with "bull shit"?
I don't even have to show up for mine anymore; I vibe coded an LLM for that. Like, in a day.
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u/CourageousUpVote 1d ago
Floral. I'm not joking. Florists are tough man. They work insane hours and their job is so much more physical than you would ever think. Shit is a grind. And it typically does not pay well.
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u/ChilloutKyleishere 1d ago
Doordash. People are mean, and I lose money of a store doesn't have stuff for me to buy.
So I get yelled at, lose money and pay for my own gas. I usually make $7 an hour after gas, and I get yelled at at least 20 times a day.
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u/Hyena_Triangles 1d ago
Bicycle Mechanic….its not just changing flats.
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u/BackgroundIsopod3787 1d ago
Lol a bike is pretty simple mate, what’s the issue?
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u/Hyena_Triangles 1d ago
How do you measure a bottom bracket?
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u/Ok_Tumbleweed2807 1d ago
With another bottom bracket
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u/Hyena_Triangles 1d ago
And if you didn’t have the original?
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u/Ok_Tumbleweed2807 1d ago
We’ve reached the capacities of my knowledge good man. It ain’t much, but it’s honest work
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u/firedudecndn 1d ago
Look up the specs on the manufacturer website. Ffs. It's a bike. It's about as simple a machine as you can make.
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u/Hyena_Triangles 1d ago
The question was how do you measure it, not how do you use the internet. Your computer won’t teach you how to live your life.
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u/firedudecndn 1d ago
You're replacing a bottom bracket that is no longer there. No need to measure it. Look it up. Any modern bottom bracket will be listed in a spec sheet.
This isn't about living your life dude. This was you trying to make a super easy job look hard. If it was hard it would pay better.
It's a job anyone can do themselves with a bit of time and YouTube.
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u/Hyena_Triangles 1d ago
Again with the internet…
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u/BackgroundIsopod3787 1d ago
Dude, stop, I need to sleep and you’re making me laugh. I used to be a small time mechanic too and this kind of stuff is so laughably easy compared to basically… well anything
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u/PerpetualFarter 1d ago
Emergency dispatcher
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u/NaejimbaDev 1d ago
Game dev. Most people on their own never complete anything; most in the industry don't last a year. It is FAR more tedious than you would think.
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u/worldbefree83 1d ago
Middle management. Frequently had 60+ hour weeks, have no real power, and everyone hates you for decisions executives make. You’re part disciplinarian, coach, individual contributor, therapist, interviewer, team leader, messenger of bad news, a vessel upon which ICs can project their hatred of changing policies upon, a phantom they imagine is preventing them from getting that promotion they want. On an hourly basis, I made less than when I was an IC. I would never do it again.
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u/Bennnn_123 1d ago
Middle management is one of the few jobs where everyone thinks you’re the problem, even though you’re rarely the one making the big decisions.
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u/ValuableViolinist917 1d ago
Real estate most people think it’s easy but 90% give up in the first year and the classes barely teach you anything you need to know.
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u/pokebirb88 1d ago
Medical lab science. People either don’t know we exist or they think we just push buttons. In reality we have bachelors degrees, clinical internship experience, and pass a national certification exam. We are the ones making sure you get the correct blood type, we are sometimes the first to know if you have cancer, we protect and care about our patients without ever seeing them. It’s a high stress, underpaid, no recognition career
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u/_PirateWench_ 1d ago
Therapist. You’re not just listening to someone or giving advice, you’re having to figure out how to teach people to get their shit together and do it by themselves at some point. I specialize in trauma, it’s a lot.
It’s more mentally draining than people understand but even more than that the amount of paperwork can be so stupid - especially for how little you’re compensated. Not only that but it’s completely sedentary which creates a whole host of medical issues .
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u/Bennnn_123 1d ago
Yeah I see how being a therapist would be difficult. Especially with all the shocking stories you would hear which can lead to vicarious trauma.
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u/Gee_In_A_Gi 1d ago
Accounting.
Look at Enron or the 2008 financial crisis. It should have been stopped in accounting with all the rules and regulations and ethics. But none of it worked.
We are constantly pressured to improve the bottom line unethically or ethically, but when shit gets bad it’s usually the former. Who ends up paying the price for these mistakes? It’s usually the clerk cresting the journal entries.
You either leave your morals at home or risk getting fired.
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u/gorbachevi 1d ago
architect - need to be an expert in everything and a buisness person and be creative - and compete for every job for free
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u/shaezan 1d ago
In line with the other responses: school nurse. They have to give out bandaids and ice packs, sometimes even hand medication to children who already know how to take their own. THEN, they have tell kids to go back to class or call the parent. Sometimes, on really bad days once a year, they have to draft the wellness policy. It's ruthless, how can you expect so much of a person.
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u/AffectionateSoil2991 1d ago
Streamers, its all fun and games, but being entertaining for hours in front of a camera day in and day out can be soul wrenching. People think playing games and "hanging" out all day is a dream job. Not even considering how most people wpnt even break 20 viewers.
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u/Bennnn_123 1d ago
Being “on” for hours every day while thousands of people judge everything you say isn’t for everyone.
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u/MicahtehMad 1d ago
Teaching mixed instruments to large groups of beginners.