Unless you’re exceptionally wealthy or retired, a job is a fact of life for almost everyone. Most of us will spend around one-third of our adult lives at work, with another third spent asleep. This means almost half of our waking lives are dedicated to working, so it’s important we enjoy the job that we do.
If you’re fed up with your current job and thinking about a career change, you may want to consider rewarding careers like nursing. If that doesn’t interest you, then there may be more options available than you first thought. Here are some jobs you probably didn’t know about.
Ostrich Babysitter
If you’ve ever been to a zoo or safari park and seen an ostrich, you know these birds can be very aggressive. So you probably wouldn’t think they’d need a babysitter to look after them.
However, newly-hatched ostriches have even more problems controlling their anger, which regularly results in them attacking each other and running away.
This is where ostrich babysitters come in. You’ll be tasked with keeping an eye on these baby birds and breaking up any brawls. Ostrich babysitters will also need to stop any escape attempts and catch any that manage to make a run for it.
Professional Poker Player
Most people probably think of poker as just a card game, but to some, it’s a career. Professional poker players have existed for decades, though they have increased dramatically in numbers since the turn of the new millennium.
Professional poker players make their money in several ways. The first is from winnings, either when playing through a real money poker app or websites, such as the ones suggested by Pokernews, or in live games and tournaments.
The second is through ambassadorial work. Many professional poker players are contracted to online poker sites to work as an ambassador, appearing in ads, and representing the company in live tournaments.
They can also make additional income through being paid to appear at events, streaming poker games through sites like YouTube and Twitch, and selling books and merchandise to fans.
Professional Pusher
If you get annoyed at the cramped conditions of your morning train or bus, spare a thought for the people of Japan who are packed into trains so tightly that “professional pushers” are required to get the doors closed.
Passengers line up patiently on the station platform, while smartly dressed pushers ready themselves. When the door opens, passengers will fill up every last bit of space on the train. Then the pushers will come along and push a few extra passengers in, packing people as tightly as they can.
It can sometimes take two of them to make sure that the doors close properly, but without their hard work, Japan’s commuters would all be late for work thanks to under capacity and train delays.
Ethical Hacker
The term “hacker” is often perceived with negative connotations. It conjures images of people sitting in a basement, inexplicably wearing sunglasses indoors, typing away at their computer in the dark as they try to gain unauthorized access to a computer network.
However, the term originally referred to anyone who tinkered with computers, electrical equipment, and/or software. Famous tech entrepreneurs like Mark Zuckerberg often referred to themselves as hackers while they built their websites. Events called “hackathons” are regularly held in places like Silicon Valley to promote coding and other skills.
There are plenty of career opportunities in this type of hacking, but there’s also another career path you may not have heard of: ethical hacking.
Ethical hackers deploy many of the same techniques that ill-intentioned hackers do. Except, they use their powers for good instead of evil. Companies will employ ethical hackers to test their computer networks, infrastructure, and software to find backdoors, bugs, and other security vulnerabilities.
These hackers can be employed on a contract or salary basis, providing regular work to the company(s) they work for. Alternatively, they can earn “bug bounties” that companies offer to anyone who’s able to find exploitable bugs in their systems. Big names like Goldman Sachs, Google, and even the US Department of Defense offer bounties to hackers.
Esports Athlete
While there is some debate over whether the term “athlete” is appropriate when describing people who compete in esports, there’s no doubt that they can make considerable sums of money.
Getting the opportunity to play video games for a living is a prospect many people dream of but only a select few get to experience.
Esports athletes earn money in the same ways that traditional athletes do: through prize money, sponsorship deals, and being paid to appear in competitions. Many also run YouTube and Twitch channels where they make money from donations, ads, and selling merchandise to their fans while they broadcast themselves playing games.
Video Game Tester
If you don’t have the skills to make it into the big leagues of esports, you may still be able to earn a living from playing video games. Developers need entire armies of people to test the titles they’ve created before they go on sale. This allows them to remove any embarrassing bugs before customers begin handing over their cash.
Back in the PlayStation 2 era, Driv3r, the second sequel to the incredibly PlayStation game Driver, was rushed to market. This haste meant that several critical bugs were left in, making parts of the game unplayable. This angered many players and was one of the reasons the game was such a flop.
Since the 2010s, video games have had features that allow them to be updated over the internet, so a bug is not such a catastrophic problem. But gamers aren’t going to be happy if they’ve just handed over $60 for a new blockbuster title only for it to crash after a few minutes of playing, so testing is still important.
Don’t expect to just be playing games aimlessly all day, as a video game tester you’ll be required to go through a range of different steps to check everything works as it should. While not always the most fun way to use video games, you will get the opportunity to play many great games before they’re released to the general public.
