I'm in political communications, so I'm definitely one of the more unconventional people on here career wise. That said, I've been kicking around HN since its founding (under different UNs) and at that time I hadn't started a career yet. (I learned web development + programming as a kid, hence why I was hanging out here).
I initially wanted to be an academic librarian and got an MLIS, but I was diagnosed with MS my last semester of school so that altered my plans, to say the least.
I don't really have a dream job, but what I do have is a growing list of pre-reqs a job and organization has to have before I'll work for them. I won't work a job where my work makes the world a worse place or where I'm disrespected. I won't work for hypocrites. At this point, it's looking more and more like I'll end up going back to freelance work just for the ability to refuse clients I don't want to work for. Right now, my anxiety and risk-tolerance are preventing that; I need to work on my mental health first.
Lots of things. I work for a neutral research org (so not a politician or a political party), which definitely impacts my experience. We field media inquiries, set up interviews (either with experts on staff or, if it's something general, one of us will do it- I've given talks/Q and As on local elections and stuff like that), send out newsletters, write copy for our offerings and gather contact information for people who would be interested, create graphics, answer questions from the public, manage our social media feeds, run/host webinars, etc.
On my team in particular, I'm the team member with the strongest tech and quantitative skills, so I also am the one who collects and presents metrics + owns relationships with a lot of the service providers we have relationships with.
It's not my favorite job I've done (too much 'asap' work and not enough thinking work), but I took the job because I knew marketing and branding was what I was weakest in when I was working for myself, and I wanted to learn about marketing while still having a roof over my head, so I took a comms job.
I initially wanted to be an academic librarian and got an MLIS, but I was diagnosed with MS my last semester of school so that altered my plans, to say the least.
I don't really have a dream job, but what I do have is a growing list of pre-reqs a job and organization has to have before I'll work for them. I won't work a job where my work makes the world a worse place or where I'm disrespected. I won't work for hypocrites. At this point, it's looking more and more like I'll end up going back to freelance work just for the ability to refuse clients I don't want to work for. Right now, my anxiety and risk-tolerance are preventing that; I need to work on my mental health first.