Curious, What's your occupation?

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CNC Machinist. Programming, setting-up, and operating. It's very stressful, but I am on my own for the most part.

IT Manager and Vol. Firefighter

General office. Give me a computer, I'll give you professional documents and spreadsheets all day long.

Grocery store deli. It's part time, menial, and chaotic, but I've stuck it out for almost four years now. My main focus is on not getting fired some days...

Bureaucrat.

Full time student (mechatronics)

Power generator mechanic in the army reserves.

What's stressful about it? At some point I want to build a hobby cnc.

There are numerous variables of things you have to watch and be aware of (tool wear, part flexing/distortion, taper, harmonics/chatter, thermal expansion coefficients of your material, et cetera), especially when maintaining tight tolerances such as +/- .0002 (5 microns), which I encounter pretty much daily. These issues become more critical when cutting hard, or fairly exotic materials such as F15 kovar, invar 45, 17-4 PH SS, PEEK, polyamide-imide(Torlon), PTFE (Teflon), and titanium. Keep in mind the boss wants the endless stream of jobs done NOW, so I have to use my time sparingly and wisely.

If you plan on making a hobby CNC, you have no worries, as you have all the time in the world to experiment and learn. I love machining, and would like to have my own lathe or mill, so I could tool around with it at home and possibly do small jobs. Don't let me scare you away from it!

Thanks for the insight, having a cnc would really help my robotics hobby take off.

Our factory is more concerned with quality than making a quota but quota is still important. I'm the only one there that actually likes what I do, so they don't move me to other machines.

I am a freelance translator.

Manufacturing Engineer, CNC Programmer. I program horizontal mills, a 5 axis mill turn machine, and a 3 turret twin spindle lathe.
I love my job but I definitely agree with Drehmaschine that it is a very stressful one. All it takes is one slip up to make some very very unhappy people.

Teacher's aide in a special needs classroom at a high school. I never have trouble relating to the kids. I can understand them needing breaks, lights being too bright, textures being too scratchy, noises being too loud,etc. because I've lived it. I still do, but I've gotten really good at making it look like I cope. There are some tough days where I have to go lie in a dark room when I get home, but since we follow a good routine I function pretty well. Where I have trouble is with some of my non sympathetic NT coworkers. They say and do things with the kids that make me want to smack them because it is obvious they themselves cannot relate to those sort of issues personally.

Most of my coworkers are great though. They are NT, but extraordinarily compassionate. They are accepting of my kookiness because I'm really good at what I do.

Another CNC machinist! I suppose I shouldn't be too surprised. It's a good occupation for an aspie mind. For me, I can visualize parts in my mind and section them, like a mental Solidworks of sorts. I wonder if there are any Swiss lathe machinists on here? I worked with them for a few months, but ended up leaving the company.

LOL Practical Machinist should just become part of this site. If you've ever been on there you'll know what I mean immediately.
As far as the Swiss lathes go, I've never had the opportunity to play with those. I live right near Gleason, I would love to play with their machines too. I have to become more familiar with everything going on behind the scenes in the controls before I move on to different jobs and machines. (meaning parameter editing, becoming fully proficient at writing macros, idiot proofing processes)

Techno-turd catcher for a small industrial film company. Whenever some horrible and disgusting technical problem needs to be solved, everybody turns to me while I try desperately to scramble out of view. Currently I'm building a database of all the films the company has made since the mid 1980s. I was initially hired as a motion graphics animator but there hasn't been much graphics work lately so I end up doing horribly boring housekeeping work.

Perhaps it's time to rethink my career. My latest brilliant idea is to shoot some spec commercials and to try to get work directing commercials and industrial films. My feeling right now is I'm so unlikely to succeed that I have nothing to lose. I might as well try. At least it will be a bit of fun seeing what I can do.

I think someone else said that. I don't find it stressful at all but I can see why people say it is. I love my lathes and rather work with them than people any day. They don't judge you for being different.