Wow
@Julie. never realised what sort or work you did. Way past my pay grade and sounds absolutely fascinating. Plus your worked maths on 3P obviously way up there. Good for you. Nice to see a woman in such a place.
Long career!
First job was at a motor rewind company, they said I would need to do a few office duties, but would go down the engineering route, it was a lie. I was just a receptionist
I managed to start as an apprentice for a switchgear company, they partnered with a couple of utilities and a large electrical installation company. After doing the rounds of all departments internally and external, from inspection through the foundry and site stuff like lv installation, and the rounds of a couple of utilities like their apprentices; I went to University, and moved into the testing arena, then the design department - I ended up being quite senior.
I presented quite a few papers on some specialist research, as at one time I was split between working at the factories in Stafford, and Manchester; the Electrical Research Association in Chester, and doing a further degree at UMIST all associated with modelling electrical field theory and its effects - one area was the use of protective suits whilst operating switchgear - it isn't just flameproof, they have electrical characteristics as well.
Just a few lines for so many years!
After that I moved to a college as a lecturer, which I hated, so moved on rather quickly to a protection company, (everything from lv through transmission line stuff, big on distance protection, motor and generation) then a few consulting companies mainly doing fault level, and protection analysis and design and so on.
Having got a bit sick of the technical side (very challenging, but little money or respect) I moved into tech project management - an absolute doddle, but lots of money. I managed installations of turbine generators/CHP schemes around the world.
Sick of working away, back to consulting, but increasingly away from high voltage to installation type stuff over the last 20 years or so.
So a bit of a wide range of stuff!
Been back and forward between consulting, doing, and managing, over the years - it's somewhat more intertwined than the above summary suggests.
Should have retired several years ago, at 55 then savings and personal pensions until 60, then with personal and state pension, but the b#$%@#&$ shifted it to 67 before I get state pension. So just kind of semi-retired waiting for a good point to retire fully.