I’m a hardware engineering manager.
Retired. Different timezone
Body shop owner/operator…behind a computer most of the day. I get my riding in before work or after and I’m browsing the forums here and there during the day.
What type of shop you running @mrtopher1980 ?
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Euro repair shop. VW/Audi background but we take in just about anything European.
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I have a theory about especially the knowledge worker kind of jobs I’ve always had. Most people have a good 4-6 hours in them of focused brain intensive work and the more intensive, the less they have in them. In the old days, people would have a lot of water cooler chit chat at work and do their work around that. Some have several hours a day of mindless meetings and then some hours of focused work.
Sure, some people have more mindless jobs of pushing paper through the system at a single pace without a lot of brain power. Bless those people. I could never do that job but I’ve worked with people that were great at those necessary functions.
The last 25 years of my career was in IT where it was very focused problem solving intermixed with some boredom after you did all the good work and all the systems were up and running flawlessly. At that point, you could coast a bit and post on forums until the next 12 hour crisis day poped up.
And granted, some don’t have the luxury of jobs like this. Some are on their feet all day waiting tables or flipping burgers and can’t ever post on a forum.
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Can you work on my Rabbit?
Lets see the stable? My 20’s were spent wrenching and figuring out how to fit smaller tires on wider wheels while my A4 drags across the pavement.
I’m like many here - work on a computer, its a place my fingers take me when i’m between calls or tasks.
2.5? You probably don’t need me, those things are so reliable I think I have one regular customer with one that’s it. Fix a vacuum pump leak and never see them again.
Mk1? let’s talk, ha
Ha too many, some are in the car thread that seems to have not been bumped in ages. Key ones are ~500hp 8P A3 (original owner), 03 allroad manual swapped about to pull motor to build/rs6 turbos, oh and it’s on airlift. 80 rabbit pickup getting a 1.8t/awd when I find the time (there is no time). 02 jetta tdi with 420k miles daily beater, and out of left field 98 Jeep TJ with a cummins.. Half dozen more that are irrelevant stupid trades/couldn’t pass up the deal.
I did spend about 10 years working for a tuning company and got paid to chill on forums all day doing support so that habit is heard to break even if I do my best to avoid car forums these days.
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I had a 2.5 Sportwagen and regret selling it to buy an Alltrack (which I also sold a few years ago).
My Rabbit is an MK1 with the 1.6 IDI. 
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It’s…..a……GOLF 
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That was my first car that actually ran on a regular basis, so many good memories. I had the Rabbit and a non-running 70 Challenger RT 440 that I bought on payments from a friend before I even got my license to drive. The challenger was a rust bucket beast that handled like a dump truck and the rabbit was a zippy decent handling car. Those cars gave me a good appreciation and quick learning curve on the contrasting styles of German vs. American engineering. I remember getting an oversized carb out of the JC Whitney catalog for that Rabbit hoping to squeeze some extra power out of it. I honestly can’t remember how any of us learned how to work on cars back then without resources like youtube and automotive forums. Mostly just tearing into things without knowing better, sometimes with a chilton manual (which were wrong as often as they were right). Memories…
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I work a desk job and am in front of the computer all day, on and off Zoom and Teams for a lot of it. I’m online early, late, and frequently weekends. So, tradeoff is if I want to get a trainer workout in mid-day or pop in to check the forums - I’ve earned it.
Another former car nut here. Sold my E30 M3 Race Car which ended up funding the bike habit (and, it sadly wasn’t getting used anymore and making time to do all the work was different once I hit my late 40’s)
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