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Welcome Wednesday: Dream jobs?

Dave LIAO
Community Champion
April 22, 2026

Howdy Atlassian Community participants! 👋 

Growing up, was there a dream job that you always wanted? Maybe you had two, or three? Like astronaut archaeologist? 🧑‍🚀 

Did you ever end up with that dream job? Or, do you incorporate aspects of this dream occupation in your real life job?

🗯️ Sound off in the comments!

14 comments

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Tomislav Tobijas
Community Champion
April 22, 2026

LEGO designer 🤩 I really like building things!
I kinda incorporated that into building ecosystems and environments with Atlassian tools 😅

BUT... what's your dream job @Dave LIAO ??

Btw, one more interesting dream job I had (have??) - I used to think my dream job was to work at a fairground and run the rides 😂
I'm really into that, as you can see here, and I'm still quite impressed with how some of these machines work lol

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Dave LIAO
Community Champion
April 22, 2026

You just reminded me that I wanted to be a video game designer / developer! I think there is an element of that that comes out when making Automation rules in our apps 🤣 

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Kris Klima _K15t_
Community Champion
April 22, 2026

@Tomislav Tobijas 

Can relate! I grew up with Lego, the old-school Lego from the 1980s that did not use custom, one-off molds for everything. Only reading was better than building my own stuff!

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Martin Runge
Contributor
April 22, 2026

In 2003, I aspired to become a professional DJ in clubs and succeeded in that goal until 2019, performing throughout southern Germany and beyond.

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Tomislav Tobijas
Community Champion
April 22, 2026

@Martin Runge oh, nice! I almost forgot the DJ dream 😄 (apparently I had too many dream jobs)
Back in 2012, I believe, I bought a controller to play around with. After a year or so, I did start to go and play some music in the clubs, but I could mainly play national or regional music, and I was more like a mainstream EDM guy... So, here's me back in 2014 😅

oks.jpg

Btw, I still do have this DDJ T1, and we do use it when doing a bit bigger company events (ACE events included) 🪩

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Thorsten Letschert _Decadis AG_
Community Champion
April 22, 2026

Phew. Coming up with the tough ones!

According to my elementary school yearbook, my dream job was… pilot ✈️ (clearly peak creativity back then 😄).

I didn’t really end up pursuing it — which, in hindsight, might be for the best. Turns out my eyesight would’ve made that career a bit of a short flight anyway.

But the fascination with flying? Still very much there. Even though I got into it later than planned, it never stopped feeling a little bit special every time.

And on that note… looking forward to being back in the air soon ✈️

Really looking forward to seeing some of you in LA in just about a week! 🙌

P.S. @Dave LIAO Coffee this time?

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Mudit Agarwal
Atlassian Team
Atlassian Team members are employees working across the company in a wide variety of roles.
April 22, 2026

In my childhood, I always wanted to be a pilot. Back then, once in a while, you would spot an aircraft in the sky and dream about flying...right.
Slowly that dream faded as I grew up and started 'building' things like wooden storage boxes and shelves. This led me to dream about becoming a Civil Engineer where I would build skyscrapers.
Finally, my dad bought me a computer while I was in school and I took to coding like a duck to water and chased my final dream (hopefully final) of becoming a software engineer.

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Kris Klima _K15t_
Community Champion
April 22, 2026

@Dave LIAO 

HOW DID YOU KNOW? :D 

I actually wanted to be Cosmonaut / Astronaut... was a member of a local observatory's astronomy club, went to competitions... only to learn that with my medical condition, I don't stand a chance.

So I turned my attention to archeology and wanted to combine the two - Archaeoastronomy was relatively new (no, not the Ancient Aliens :). 

And here I am, a documentation writer, contect architect, and Confluence enthusiast working for a company that makes content management apps for Confluence and doc writers... 

Oh...wait 🤩 

 

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Matt Doar _Adaptavist_
Community Champion
April 23, 2026

Yes as well for an astronaut or something space-related. Before that whatever Jacques Cousteau was, or something else marine. But really the most common theme was that I wanted to help other people in some way. And that's still my basic dream

Mikael Sandberg
Community Champion
April 22, 2026

I wanted to be an air traffic controller, but a school nurse said I was color blind and put a stop to that idea (which is not the case, it was my astigmatism that made me fail the test, you know the one with colored dots and find the shape or number).

In high school I was doing accounting and was planning continue doing that until I got an invite to University of Boras and their new (at the time) program for system development and informatics, which led me into SCM and later Atlassian.

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Matt Doar _Adaptavist_
Community Champion
April 23, 2026

Oh, yes, the color blind thing. That steered me away from building PCBs as a teenager, and made chemical titration really difficult. Don't ask me to color in the lines - the lines are no problem, but the colors are.

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Amanda Barber
Community Champion
April 22, 2026

Oooh, we just discussed this question last week as our team "connector" question! I didn't really have a dream job growing up. I became an elementary school teacher mostly for practical purposes, but I did love it for many years! I still don't know what I want to be when I "grow up" - LOL!

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Anahit Sukiasyan
Community Champion
April 22, 2026

I was committed to the dream of either being a famous singer or an actor performing on huge stages, ready for my world tour life. 😄🎤🎭

Fast forward to today… Let’s just say the only stage I regularly perform on is Jira tickets and community events. 😂

Didn’t quite hit the world tour, but I still bring the energy and creativity, just in a slightly different format. 😄

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Stephen_Lugton
Community Champion
April 23, 2026

I remember at one point wanting to be The Last of the Famous International Playboys, I blame Morrisey for that!

But what I really wanted to be growing up was a demolitions engineer, I've had training with demolitions, explosively cut down telegraph poles, tested new types of det cord, and even hold certificates in underwater explosives demolitions.  But then computers started to be more widely available and by the time I got to university I had switched to electronics and software engineering.

I had one friend who wanted to be a big red fire engine when she grew up!

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Arkadiusz Wroblewski
Rising Star
Rising Star
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April 23, 2026

@Dave LIAO 

I always wanted to be a firefighter as a child, but I never got the chance to live that dream.

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Barbara Szczesniak
Rising Star
Rising Star
Rising Stars are recognized for providing high-quality answers to other users. Rising Stars receive a certificate of achievement and are on the path to becoming Community Champions.
April 23, 2026

I wanted to be a doctor. I'm not sure what kind, but my experience as a child was with eye doctors and family doctor, so probably one of those. By the time I got to high school, though, I had no interest in taking biology, so the doctor dream must have faded by then.

I remember the days when you were supposed to put an objective at the top of your resume, and I always wanted to put: A job that's not too taxing but pays an awful lot of money.  

It turns out that, for me, most of the time, being a technical writer is not too taxing, and I have had positions where they pay me good money, so maybe I have found my dream job. Thanks for asking this question, @Dave LIAO. I might not have realized this otherwise.

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Francine Fisher
Community Champion
April 23, 2026

Well, I had plans to be a genetic engineer :dna:. I was working a lot with kids with other abilities and differing amounts of chromosomes. I was fascinated. 

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Jimmy Seddon
Community Champion
April 23, 2026

Back in high school, I took every "computer" course I was able to enroll in.  At the time, I thought I wanted to go into the Game Development industry.

When I went to College, I was in an experimental program that used laptops as a part of the program so classes about programming languages were hands on learning.  In the third year there were a number of classes and projects that were specifically about game design, development and testing.

What I learned from that was that I really enjoy "playing" video games as a hobby and a way to unwind at the end of the day.  I don't think I would enjoy playing games if I spent the entire day working on one.  And, from what I understand long hours under high stress to meet delivery dates.

So, while I still enjoy playing games and now I use that as a means to get involved in charitable volunteer work, I don't think I'll ever being the development side of gaming.

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Darryl Lee
Community Champion
April 24, 2026

I don't know if it was a dream, but I've long enjoyed reading and writing, and thought that being a reporter would be cool.

Or an author.

But yeah, I was primed to be a nerd from pretty early on, with a dad who got us a TRS-80 and Bally Astrocade with a BASIC cartridge.

So yeah, sorry, that would explained why you get all my long-winded blathering here. :-D

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