[hollerith]

When I was a kid in the early 1970s, my dad took my brother and me to his workplace sometimes on Saturdays. There I interacted with machinists, electronics techs and at least one engineer. Also my dad was an engineering manager.

It was definitely common and acceptable for the machinists, techs, engineers and manager to say that they would rather be doing something else than working or that they would rather have a job more glamorous than working with machines and pieces of steel. In other words, back then, you had to do your job or risk getting fired, but AFAICT there was no risk to admitting that you didn't like doing your job. In fact, if you went around telling people you really liked your job, my guess is you probably would've been viewed as at least slightly socially inept for being unwilling to engage in the small rituals that lubricated social interactions -- or more precisely for getting one of the common rituals backwards.

This was at a large machine-tool manufacturer in Massachusetts. In something I read or heard IIIRC, this manufacturer was referred to as the IBM of machine tools. The owner of a motorcycle store (which employed many motorcycle mechanics) revealed in conversation with me that he considered being a machinist at this employer to be a particularly good job.

In contrast, does anyone reading this doubt that nowadays if a programmer in Silicon Valley tells his boss that he/she doesn't like his job or doesn't like working as a programmer, he/she risks getting fired unless he/she knows his/her boss at least reasonably well?

[cosmodisk]

For most of the time I really do love my job but even in the senior management meetings I'm very open about the fact that I'd drop it all at once and would do something completely different if there was no need to earn for living. Everyone is cool about it because the head of sales would rather play golf,one CEO would probably spend even more time traveling the world while the other would probably spend even more time playing FPS. Maybe I just happen to work where people don't drink their own kool-aid..

[walshemj]

I am not surprised some very skilled blue collar heavy engineering jobs could be very lucrative.

One example is "suddenly working to rule" just before a major delivery and getting paid back handers off the books for example. This is an example told to me by a hr/ir professional who came from Clydeside

[castlecrasher2]

Conversely, I've heard stories of car manufacturer workers keying cars of other employees who drove in cars of other brands. Not every company nowadays is nutty, but then again, it happened back in the day, too.