I do maintenance at a telescope and occasionally fill in as telescope operator. It doesn’t pay great but the work has been fulfilling. A telescope operator recently quit and they implemented a temp salary (removing my overtime) without discussing the numbers first and ended up putting me at the bottom of a lower pay scale. I thought I was stuck but eventually complained and got reverted back to hourly, but they screwed me out of 200+ hours of overtime because “I didn’t complain soon enough and therefore that is the same as me accepting that salary”. I’m going to quit soon because I don’t work for free.

I am a locksmith and I would say my job is somewhat important and I’m somewhat proud to do it. The world would continue to run without me specifically at my job but having people who can manage large key systems and mechanical security is important. It also gives me enough satisfaction to feel good about what I do. When I am able to repair things and prevent things from ending up being thrown out is when I feel most proud of what I do. When I feel least proud is when we do work for companies that are involved in making weapons for the US military but that’s rare and I am not in a position at my company to decide who we do and don’t do business with.

My dad is a long retired school superintendent. He was able to convince a small community to greatly upgrade their education system.

After he retired he worked (for almost nothing) to help school boards from poorer counties do the same.

He helped lot of people.

Open source developer.

I’d say it’s relatively unimportant in the greater scheme of things; nobody dies and the world would keep going even if I stopped.

But I’m mostly proud to do it and I enjoy working in the non-profit sector, especially since I don’t have an asshole boss or corporate interests to worry about.

On the flip side, I make less money than I would in the corporate space. But I suppose I value the freedom more than the money

I have a great job, I’m reaching the end of a successful career and I’m very happy with the choices I’ve made in my professional life.

But my job is NOT important and I’m not proud of it. I’m only proud of having the honesty to do what I’m paid to do well. Beyond that, my job is a means to an end: supporting my loved ones. They are what’s important. Nobody goes to their grave reflecting on what they did for a living.

911 dispatch, yeah, kind of important.

Wish I could do it for just fire and EMS, and not police, but that’s the way the system works, and the most interesting calls I get are for police I suppose.

In a more ideal world where people don’t have to work just to survive and make ends meet, I probably would still do it, just not on a full-time schedule. It’s one of those things that needs to get done but that absolutely not everyone is cut out for, so I think it’s important for those of us who can hack it to step up to the plate to do it.

As far as whether I’m proud of what I do, well I’m proud that I get to help people, I’m proud of the skills I have that allow me to do it well, but otherwise it’s just a job, I don’t brag about what I do (although I do have a ton of interesting stories from it that I like to share)

And since it is a full time gig and I have tons of things I’d rather be doing, I’m looking forward to hopefully being able to retire someday and never having to go into the office again.

No. I just try to work places that don’t actively work to harm the world.

No and no. I help produce luxury goods for obscenely rich people… 2 units of our product, depending on configuration, is my entire years salary…

Yes and yes. I’m a health inspector.

Would absolutely not do it for free. There’s a lot more that I do than just inspecting restaurants and beauty premises:

• inspection accommodations (hotels, motels, rooming houses, student forms, hostels, camps)

• respond to environmental complaints (dumping, pollution of storm water, failing septics, installation of septics)

• residential complaints (the worst!! People don’t want to talk to each other and problem solve like adults so they threaten each other by dragging me in to sort their shit out for them. If they don’t get the result they want, it’s my fault 🙄)

• emergency response (we suddenly had importance when covid came around, but the nation still wouldn’t acknowledge us as important because we’re not in the “response” side like nurses and doctors. We’re prevention, and nobody cares about us; bushfires, floods, air quality)

• mosquito detection (for diseases they carry and treat the areas that we find have carrier mozzies for diseases like Japanese encephalitis, Ross River, etc.)

• pest control, hoarding, land use, subdivisions, swimming pools, drinking water quality, disposal of dead carcasses, cemeteries, exhumation, outbreaks like gastro, too many things to list. We’re pretty much involved in everything that affects human health.

But we’re underpaid, underappreciated, perpetually short staffed and quickly burning out, and mostly unknown to those who don’t run businesses that require council registration by law.

My job is important within the company, but that’s about it.
I’m not proud to do it though, just mostly amazed I got this far at all. Impostor syndrome runs strong with me and even after all these years there’s still a nagging worry that they’ll find out that I’ve been faking my competence.

My job isn’t important at all - it basically just makes money for our CEO, but I am proud of how little work I can manage to do while still staying in the good graces of my manager, so there’s that.

Yes. I’m an IT sysadmin for the last fully independent local newspaper in my country.
It’s pretty challenging because a newspaper needs special systems that are a clusterfuck of tech debt that the suppliers don’t fix anymore, since the entire industry is dying.

I work for a company that makes lab and medical testing equipment, if you’ve had a medical emergency that required blood tests then odds are good our equipment was used. It feels good knowing that I work somewhere that has a positive impact on many people’s lives.

But, I’ve met our company president and he’s a complete piece of shit. I almost quit because the idea of making him even richer makes my stomach turn. Unfortunately I’ve been unable to find someplace else that will pay me what I need to continue to support my family… so I look at the positive things that we do and try to forget the psycho.

Not that proud, as it’s a fairly trivial IT thing with niche elements. “Anyone” could do it, but there are so many different elements, all of which are trivial separately, that there aren’t a whole lot of people in the world who can do what I do because of the odd combinations.

So while my work is (mysterious and) important for the particular industry I’m in,I’m sure any IT geek with networking and linux experience could do it after a few years of training.

As for importance, kinda. The higher-ups consider it important enough to grant me every demand I stated when they tried to poach me from my previous employer. I was looking for an excuse to turn them down, but they agreed to everything. For example, my contract stipulates that any flight over four hours warrants business class.

My biggest point of actual pride is the fact that I got to where I am despite growing up on a dairy farm and never finishing hischool.

Yup. Psychiatric nurse. I think the field needs a lot of advancements and a lot of the tools I have are barbaric but I’m doing the best I can with what I have and trying to contribute to my field by teaching and pushing for advancements.