Jobs & Roles

Enforces rules set by someone else and absorbs the reaction to them in person.

Sells adherence rather than exercise: the programming is the easy half.

Checks prescriptions against interactions, which makes it a second set of eyes rather than a counter job.

Shooting is a fraction of the work; selecting and editing is where the time goes.

Most of the job is diagnosis rather than repair: finding where water is going takes longer than stopping it.

Cheap to start and hard to sustain, because the work is weekly and the audience builds slowly.

Most shifts involve no crime at all: much of the work is disputes, welfare checks and paperwork.

Elected to make decisions and evaluated on outcomes that arrive after the term ends.

Covers the same route daily in all weather, and knows a neighborhood in a way almost nobody else does.

Negotiates prices for things they will not use, judged by savings rather than by what was bought.

Has responsibility for an outcome and authority over almost nobody, which is the defining feature of the job.

Owns the schedule and none of the work, so the role is mostly finding out what is actually happening.

Paid a percentage by the seller, while spending the day with the buyer.

Paid by the employer and talking to the candidate, which is the structural tension of the role.

Income from owning rather than from working, which is the whole definition and the whole argument.

Works at height and in weather, on a structure that only gets inspected when it has already failed.

Compensated on outcomes that depend partly on the product, which is why the incentive design causes so much argument.

Presence is the deterrent, which means the job is judged by things that did not happen.

Carries a caseload set by funding rather than by need, and makes decisions that get reviewed after the fact.

Broadcasts live for hours, where the performance and the community management happen at the same time.

Knowledge of a city is the traditional skill; navigation apps changed which part of the job is scarce.

Planning and marking happen outside the hours the timetable shows, which is why the two rarely match.

Delivers the same material daily to an audience hearing it once, which is a performance problem as much as a knowledge one.

Braking distances run into hundreds of meters, so almost everything is anticipation rather than reaction.

Treats patients who cannot describe symptoms, for owners who pay the bill and make the decisions.

Paid partly by tips in some countries and not at all in others, which changes the job completely across a border.

Increasingly directed by a handheld device that sets the order and the pace of the work.

Employed by the company while being the person staff bring problems to, which is a role with two masters.

Training runs a decade or more after the degree, and specialization narrows what any one of them actually does.

Spends more time with patients than any other clinical role, which is where most of what gets noticed comes from.