Many people in the working world and currently enthralled with the daily exploits of Dilbert. Those of us in technology can instead pick up a copy of this book when we need to smile. One example is a sketch of someone in a suit entering a manufacturing facility carrying a briefcase. What I see as the biggest growth areas in science are environmental remediation and restoration and detail process monitoring. There is a need for real time data acquisition - 24 hours is too long for an analytical result.
Conditions can change.
Realtime data are needed in so that a process can be kept in the most economic safe condition possible. I would say the wide variety of technical challenges and areas of technical pursuit. In my workplace we are presented with problems and asked to solve them. These problems can range from determining the amount of acid needed to pH adjust a waste tank to identifying the composition and source of an unknown material found in a process and determining how to prevent its reoccurrence. Our solutions are only limited by our technical and creative ability.