What's my dream job?
July 18, 2024 4:24 PM Subscribe
I had a job I really, really liked but my employer is in the process of making it worse/phasing it out and I'm not aware of comparable jobs at other places. Help me find some! I think this is kind of a "specialized librarian/lawyer/analyst" type role, but details under the fold, I'm hoping some of you can help me think outside the box.
The job in question was that I was an expert on both a lot of technical (software) details and a lot of rules and policies. Technical teams would come to me with questions on how and whether those rules applied to things they were doing, and I'd read and interpret relevant documentation, code, and policies, and give them suggestions and answers.
What I liked:
- I never had to work too long on any one topic. I'd figure out what they needed, figure out applicable policy, give them an answer, and move on to something else. Many engagements took hours; occasionally a more involved thing would take weeks or months, but that was unusual. I get bored with projects really easily and the constant novelty was great.
- I felt like I was truly helping people out, all day long.
- I like learning the ins and outs of different kinds of systems and understanding how they interact.
- The questions were usually technically (and sometimes ethically) thorny. The questions at stake were big ones and my decisions made a difference to the lives of many people.
- I could do the job from anywhere, and it very easily could scale to part-time or full-time.
- I didn't need a law degree because my technical expertise was considered sufficient. I had lawyers I could ask to sign off when my work started to cross over into legal advice, but rarely needed it.
- Everyone I worked with was a big ol' nerd in the same vein as me, equally excited about technical topics and policy/legal topics and where they matched up.
I may find myself with a chunk of time on my hands in the next few years and I'm thinking about trying to retrain to do something new. It seems like a whole lot of "get asked a question, do a lot of reading, think real hard, make an informed decision, convey it clearly" jobs are going to get delegated to LLMs or offshored in the next few years. Which is unfortunate, because it's work I really love.
If you have a job like this, and you aren't super worried you're going to get fired in the next six months so ChatGPT can do a much worse but much cheaper job, what is it and how do I get it? I'd rather not get another degree (I have a BS and MS in computer science), but it's not out of the question. It's not important that I make big money - I'd rather have something lower paying (to the point where even a volunteer gig would actually be okay for awhile, and contracting/freelancing is pretty fine with me if it's not a huge pain to find clients) but flexible in terms of hours and location than the reverse.
The job in question was that I was an expert on both a lot of technical (software) details and a lot of rules and policies. Technical teams would come to me with questions on how and whether those rules applied to things they were doing, and I'd read and interpret relevant documentation, code, and policies, and give them suggestions and answers.
What I liked:
- I never had to work too long on any one topic. I'd figure out what they needed, figure out applicable policy, give them an answer, and move on to something else. Many engagements took hours; occasionally a more involved thing would take weeks or months, but that was unusual. I get bored with projects really easily and the constant novelty was great.
- I felt like I was truly helping people out, all day long.
- I like learning the ins and outs of different kinds of systems and understanding how they interact.
- The questions were usually technically (and sometimes ethically) thorny. The questions at stake were big ones and my decisions made a difference to the lives of many people.
- I could do the job from anywhere, and it very easily could scale to part-time or full-time.
- I didn't need a law degree because my technical expertise was considered sufficient. I had lawyers I could ask to sign off when my work started to cross over into legal advice, but rarely needed it.
- Everyone I worked with was a big ol' nerd in the same vein as me, equally excited about technical topics and policy/legal topics and where they matched up.
I may find myself with a chunk of time on my hands in the next few years and I'm thinking about trying to retrain to do something new. It seems like a whole lot of "get asked a question, do a lot of reading, think real hard, make an informed decision, convey it clearly" jobs are going to get delegated to LLMs or offshored in the next few years. Which is unfortunate, because it's work I really love.
If you have a job like this, and you aren't super worried you're going to get fired in the next six months so ChatGPT can do a much worse but much cheaper job, what is it and how do I get it? I'd rather not get another degree (I have a BS and MS in computer science), but it's not out of the question. It's not important that I make big money - I'd rather have something lower paying (to the point where even a volunteer gig would actually be okay for awhile, and contracting/freelancing is pretty fine with me if it's not a huge pain to find clients) but flexible in terms of hours and location than the reverse.
I'm not really convinced LLMs are going to replace this work, but they may assist in structuring and finding information. And if so, you would be the ideal person to create such systems. Maybe there is a somewhat public interest target for your attention in that domain? This is kind of a vague suggestion, but even trying out some projects for information retrieval systems in your field might be satisfying and contribute to future employability.
posted by lookoutbelow at 4:50 PM on July 18 [1 favorite]
posted by lookoutbelow at 4:50 PM on July 18 [1 favorite]
this sounds like Access to information and privacy officer or ATIP consultant in Canada. The privacy or FOIP advisor positions for private companies sometimes are totally remote work. my partner does this in Alberta he works for Alberta health (public not private) and is 90% remote. he has a background in library science and works with lawyers.
posted by zdravo at 5:02 PM on July 18 [4 favorites]
posted by zdravo at 5:02 PM on July 18 [4 favorites]
If you want to stay in software, are you looking at a compliance role?
posted by chesty_a_arthur at 5:24 PM on July 18
posted by chesty_a_arthur at 5:24 PM on July 18
That sounds a lot like Compliance as it was implemented at one old employer.
posted by fedward at 5:25 PM on July 18 [3 favorites]
posted by fedward at 5:25 PM on July 18 [3 favorites]
Compliance or Quality in med tech has pieces of this.
posted by sulaine at 6:11 PM on July 18 [1 favorite]
posted by sulaine at 6:11 PM on July 18 [1 favorite]
IT/IS Auditor
There's a certification that you probably wouldn't need to study too hard to get since it sounds like you've been doing very similar work already
I doubt it will be taken over by ChatGPT because some of the work involves making sure that other humans are following policies
posted by Jacqueline at 6:37 PM on July 18
There's a certification that you probably wouldn't need to study too hard to get since it sounds like you've been doing very similar work already
I doubt it will be taken over by ChatGPT because some of the work involves making sure that other humans are following policies
posted by Jacqueline at 6:37 PM on July 18
Rulemaking coordinator / regulatory affairs in state government
posted by paradeofblimps at 8:25 PM on July 18
posted by paradeofblimps at 8:25 PM on July 18
Hi! You had my dream job. I used to have it too!
Informatics. Specifically implementing health data exchange standards (hl7), like fhir, v2, or cda (the base flavors, with more specific variants for specific purposes like reporting lab results from lab to ordering provider, or from lab to public health, and many many variations). Also, if you have a medical bent, using standard vocabularies like icd10, loinc, snomed, etc, and interpreting (and or commenting on) ever-changing federal policy like HITECH, QHINS, and the brand new HTI-2, all from ONC.
https://www.healthit.gov/topic/laws-regulation-and-policy/health-data-technology-and-interoperability-patient-engagement
It's possible this may not be enough change for you - usually folks grow expertise in one or two specific standards or laboratory software over years, but it's always changing, so if you don't like the direction policy is going right now, wait 2 years.
Employers: VA, HHS, mostly CDC but also NIST, many many many contractors (public health, standards-writers, federal, health care, hie(s), qhins, etc), and health care-related software companies (ehrs and any companies their customers exchange data with), from insurance to hospitals to probably thousands of companies I can't imagine. Also, state, local, city public health, national or international associations, maybe even hospital associations - I'm only familiar with the public health exchanging parts, but if you're not reliant on pslf, you have tons of options.
For an area I'd love to work in but haven't found an in... privacy! There are so many privacy rules being written, not to mention the feds new hipaa and the slightly older samsa standards (thinking privacy for behavioral health data- a gnarly problem if there ever was one, because BH data isn't segmented apart from 'health' data in use, so BH data segmentation is.... uh, variable. This is where you could have an impact on gender affirming care and reproductive health data privacy (storage, segmentation, etc) and of internal policymaking or regulatory interpretation of federal policy and employee training to protect patients. This seems to be poorly understood by the privacy officers I've spoken with, which is why I think it's an area ripe for some clear and thoughtful interpretation.
posted by esoteric things at 8:32 PM on July 18 [1 favorite]
Informatics. Specifically implementing health data exchange standards (hl7), like fhir, v2, or cda (the base flavors, with more specific variants for specific purposes like reporting lab results from lab to ordering provider, or from lab to public health, and many many variations). Also, if you have a medical bent, using standard vocabularies like icd10, loinc, snomed, etc, and interpreting (and or commenting on) ever-changing federal policy like HITECH, QHINS, and the brand new HTI-2, all from ONC.
https://www.healthit.gov/topic/laws-regulation-and-policy/health-data-technology-and-interoperability-patient-engagement
It's possible this may not be enough change for you - usually folks grow expertise in one or two specific standards or laboratory software over years, but it's always changing, so if you don't like the direction policy is going right now, wait 2 years.
Employers: VA, HHS, mostly CDC but also NIST, many many many contractors (public health, standards-writers, federal, health care, hie(s), qhins, etc), and health care-related software companies (ehrs and any companies their customers exchange data with), from insurance to hospitals to probably thousands of companies I can't imagine. Also, state, local, city public health, national or international associations, maybe even hospital associations - I'm only familiar with the public health exchanging parts, but if you're not reliant on pslf, you have tons of options.
For an area I'd love to work in but haven't found an in... privacy! There are so many privacy rules being written, not to mention the feds new hipaa and the slightly older samsa standards (thinking privacy for behavioral health data- a gnarly problem if there ever was one, because BH data isn't segmented apart from 'health' data in use, so BH data segmentation is.... uh, variable. This is where you could have an impact on gender affirming care and reproductive health data privacy (storage, segmentation, etc) and of internal policymaking or regulatory interpretation of federal policy and employee training to protect patients. This seems to be poorly understood by the privacy officers I've spoken with, which is why I think it's an area ripe for some clear and thoughtful interpretation.
posted by esoteric things at 8:32 PM on July 18 [1 favorite]
I came to say compliance and health informatics stuff as well. Hospitals. Medical groups. Revenue cycle. Consultants. Get a privacy certification or a compliance one.
The other big buzzy thing right now is legal operations. It’s done differently everywhere but in my world it’s process improvement, policy making, compliance, implementation, all kinds of stuff. Never boring.
posted by dpx.mfx at 9:39 PM on July 18 [1 favorite]
The other big buzzy thing right now is legal operations. It’s done differently everywhere but in my world it’s process improvement, policy making, compliance, implementation, all kinds of stuff. Never boring.
posted by dpx.mfx at 9:39 PM on July 18 [1 favorite]
Response by poster: Ooh yeah, if there's anything out there where having a CIPT cert gives me an edge, that would be great to know. I got one but seems like there's not much of a market for it in my industry.
posted by potrzebie at 9:46 PM on July 18
posted by potrzebie at 9:46 PM on July 18
My wife was photographic librarian for eight years taking a small library with no real digital backend to a library of a million-ish images. While doing that she also fielded calls and submissions from pro photographers. Her quals were a library diploma, a comp-sci degree, and a 1 year diploma on web tech. It gave her an incredible depth on geography botany fauna and iconic place knowledge.
Everyone was nerdy and had at least two specialites, or at least the afinity to take on s'thing completely unknown and run with it.
I still seriously doubt LLMs are capable of high quality, situational/contextual image keywording.
posted by unearthed at 11:25 PM on July 18
Everyone was nerdy and had at least two specialites, or at least the afinity to take on s'thing completely unknown and run with it.
I still seriously doubt LLMs are capable of high quality, situational/contextual image keywording.
posted by unearthed at 11:25 PM on July 18
I've seen these jobs as "policy" or "trust and safety" particularly at your internet tech companies. If you pick an area with a lot of recent legislation, there is likely an uptick of work in this area -- e.g., post GDPR.
At more highly regulated industries, like Fintech/Finance, I've seen "compliance," "risk" and "supportability" as potential areas.
I also think you could do well in something like "sales enablement" -- how do you train sales people in a company about their products, how to sell, internal policies etc. etc. This requires digesting often complex stuff (reading and talking w/ others) and turning it into something that is easy to teach and easy to remember.
posted by ellerhodes at 5:50 AM on July 19
At more highly regulated industries, like Fintech/Finance, I've seen "compliance," "risk" and "supportability" as potential areas.
I also think you could do well in something like "sales enablement" -- how do you train sales people in a company about their products, how to sell, internal policies etc. etc. This requires digesting often complex stuff (reading and talking w/ others) and turning it into something that is easy to teach and easy to remember.
posted by ellerhodes at 5:50 AM on July 19
So are you saying you have a CIPT certification and can't find work for Data Compliance? Have you thought about expanding into Governance? (I have no idea what the US ((I'm assuming US here) market is for that either but it is a natural corollary.)
posted by DarlingBri at 8:39 AM on July 19
posted by DarlingBri at 8:39 AM on July 19
My current gig is as a "data librarian" in academia and I work with a bunch of folks across our campus whose jobs are described as something like "research facilitator."
That means their jobs involve consulting with research teams to make sure sure the hardware & software provisioning meets the needs of their project, some workflow design, and may include some compliance work (as federally-funded research is about to involve a whole new set of data sharing requirements in the US). One of my former colleagues is now at this place, as an example of this type of environment.
I see a lot of these jobs posted and I cannot envision AI doing much to replace the humans in these roles. If this sounds remotely like your jam, I would google "research facilitator" and look at some of the positions and training programs out there in higher ed. We need these kinds of skills!
posted by pantarei70 at 10:01 AM on July 19 [1 favorite]
That means their jobs involve consulting with research teams to make sure sure the hardware & software provisioning meets the needs of their project, some workflow design, and may include some compliance work (as federally-funded research is about to involve a whole new set of data sharing requirements in the US). One of my former colleagues is now at this place, as an example of this type of environment.
I see a lot of these jobs posted and I cannot envision AI doing much to replace the humans in these roles. If this sounds remotely like your jam, I would google "research facilitator" and look at some of the positions and training programs out there in higher ed. We need these kinds of skills!
posted by pantarei70 at 10:01 AM on July 19 [1 favorite]
Consider a job in legal operations. You would create processes that allow your company to scale, so you are helping everyone in a lot of different ways. I'm working with someone right now who has always been a part of the legal team on companies but who speaks data in a way that I don't so she's able to bridge gaps.
For example, we have a lot of subsidiaries and five years ago I was trying to get our data & technology group to create a product that would allow us to track all of them and sort them by various attributes. The D&T lead did not understand the distinction among subsidiary entities, accounts (such as bank account), and assets (like a piece of machinery that is owned by a subsidiary). She was able to find the words to make him understand and then together we found a product that has the functionality we need and have implemented it.
Meanwhile, she has introduced us to contract lifecycle management programs, which have taken repetitive work off my plate and put it into a system that our investment team can use to create certain common documents and only request legal review on them if there are deviations from our form. Without that, since we are so much larger now than we were five years ago, I would be spending all my time processing the same document over and over.
She is also onboarding a new system that tracks legal spend, which I think is going to save us a ton of money. I was trying to get something like Thompson Reuters several years ago but I don't have time to do my job and also push through innovations.
I honestly didn't know this job existed when she joined the team 3 years ago but now I don't know how we could have grown as much as we have without her.
posted by janey47 at 12:41 AM on July 20
For example, we have a lot of subsidiaries and five years ago I was trying to get our data & technology group to create a product that would allow us to track all of them and sort them by various attributes. The D&T lead did not understand the distinction among subsidiary entities, accounts (such as bank account), and assets (like a piece of machinery that is owned by a subsidiary). She was able to find the words to make him understand and then together we found a product that has the functionality we need and have implemented it.
Meanwhile, she has introduced us to contract lifecycle management programs, which have taken repetitive work off my plate and put it into a system that our investment team can use to create certain common documents and only request legal review on them if there are deviations from our form. Without that, since we are so much larger now than we were five years ago, I would be spending all my time processing the same document over and over.
She is also onboarding a new system that tracks legal spend, which I think is going to save us a ton of money. I was trying to get something like Thompson Reuters several years ago but I don't have time to do my job and also push through innovations.
I honestly didn't know this job existed when she joined the team 3 years ago but now I don't know how we could have grown as much as we have without her.
posted by janey47 at 12:41 AM on July 20
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posted by dg at 4:40 PM on July 18 [2 favorites]