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Traveling Jobs in IT? 103

Posted by Cliff from the avoiding-the-cube-farm dept.
wed128 asks: "I am currently a freshman at Penn State University, studying for a Computer Engineering degree. However, I look at the graduates ahead of me and many of them are cubical warriors. This doesn't really bother me, however i'd like to see the world before being confined to a cube for the rest of my life. Are there any jobs in an IT field where I can travel? How would I go about getting the right contacts regarding this? I have 4 years till graduation, so this isn't a direct plea for a job..."
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Traveling Jobs in IT? More

Traveling Jobs in IT?

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  • Cruise ships (Score:3, Informative)

    by Violet Null ( 452694 ) on Friday November 14, 2003 @09:51PM (#7478831)
    This doesn't help you. I'm just reminiscing.

    My first job was maintenance programming systems for cruise ships -- passenger manifest, inventory, personnel, etc.

    The system was a mess, written in a hodgepodge of languages. The accounting portion, being the most egregious offender, was written in Basic 2.0; that is, y'know, when it required line numbers and didn't have the concept of a subroutine (though you could define one-line functions. W00t.)

    The pay was shit, too.

    But, on the other hand, I did get to see the world. Best trip ever was two weeks in Australia, aboard the Silver Wind [silverseaships.com] -- one of the ultra luxury ships where a two week package can run $5-10k. Other times, you end up for two weeks in drydock in Malta, which isn't so much fun.

  • not as a student (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    seriously - you're not gonna get much travel as a student. even the experienced professionals rarely get to travel, so any trips would immediately go to them without consideration of the intern. your best bet is to save up some cash on your own and use your vacation time to travel around.
    • Actually, it's possible to travel plenty as a student. I traveled 3 out of 4 summers as a college student. This is a great way to combine vacation and get college credit at the same time.

      It wasn't cheap though. I had to use a combination of scholarships and financial aid. If you're resourceful, you'll find a way to raise enough money.

      I only traveled for 4-6 weeks each trip, but they were great experiences. If my schedule was more flexible, I would've studied abroad for a semester or entire academic year.

  • lots of opportunities... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Most large companies have jobs like what you're seeking. Presales engineers usually go out to customer sites and help install and debug installations. Field-service engineers travel to customer sites to debug on-site customer problems.

    These types of jobs require an awareness of computer issues, but not so much programming as problem-solving.

    However, you trade your cubical for lots of travel and 14-hour days in customer machine rooms.
    • However, you trade your cubical for lots of travel...

      • CUBICLE!

      A "cubical warrior" is a warrior shaped like a cube.

      Geez.
    • Yeah, but that isn't really "travelling" as in "seeing lots of places", more like seeing lots of airports and taxis, and customer machine rooms. trust me, a machine room in London looks exactly like a machine room in paris, and all airports look the same these days.

      • Re:lots of opportunities... (Score:1, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Yes, but you don't spend all your time in the machine room. Typically, there is an overnight stay. That give you some time.

        Also, most companies have no problem with you extending your stay Friday to Sunday. Air fares typically fall with a Sat. stay, and most companies will pick up your hotel if the cost nets out equal or lower overall.

        You can do alot in a weekend, if you're organized and motivated.

        • Exactly. One of my friends working for herself goes to major cities every few weeks just to get work done.

          She does not need to go for work, but if she is in another state without distractions then she gets heaps more done, pays for her trip with the extra productivity, and parties in clubs she has never been to.

          __
          Linux Internet hosts [cherry-web...ing.com.au]

  • Consultant (Score:3, Informative)

    by BoomerSooner ( 308737 ) on Friday November 14, 2003 @10:06PM (#7478929) Homepage Journal
    Go work for a large consulting firm with offices world wide. Prove your worth and you'll travel all over the place. Just hope you don't meet "miss right" in college and decide you don't want to travel. You're just a freshman, why worry this early about something you want now but may not want in 3-4 years from now?

    Give yourself options, you'll be glad you did. Oh, learning another language or two can help.
    • Probably because he's considering doing what I did freshmen year: dropping out of CS/EE completely because I didn't want to spend 60 hrs/wk of the best years of my life staring at some screen. I took up a humanities major, went and studied abroad for more than a year, read books, picked up a few instruments, and in short emerged from college a completely different and more well-rounded person than if I had kept my nose to the engineering grindstone for 4 straight years. All things I never would have been ab

  • Traveling Techies (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Large corporations have their own IT staff (but many are out sourcing lately...)

    Most of the people in IT who travel are either desktop support or engineering folks. The travel is pretty much for a year and only during rollouts. i.e. rolling out 15,000+ new computers to all of a companies employees.

    Those that do this sort of rollout generally rack up the frequent flyer miles to the point that they always upgrade to first class and they always travel free for vacation. Of course that means in the peak of

  • Military (Score:3, Funny)

    by Blackknight ( 25168 ) on Friday November 14, 2003 @10:16PM (#7478989) Homepage
    Well, there's always the Navy. They're always looking for skilled people willing to server.
    • Military is a good idea but I would recommend USAF simply because
      A - it looks better on a resume'
      B - they have a wider variety of systems
      C - you don't risk getting stuck on a ship (though you might end up in Omaha, NE or Thule, AL or somesuch :)

      • Re:Military (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Daniel Dvorkin ( 106857 ) *
        Having worked with a wide variety of USAF systems, and a somewhat smaller variety of Navy systems, I'm not sure that there's any reason to believe one service has a wider variety of systems than another. (Disclaimer: I wasn't a techie at the time, I was a medic, so I wasn't paying any more than an interested layman's attention to the details.) I'm also not at all sure that either looks better on a resume than the other -- both the AF and the Navy have pretty high-tech reputations. (Army and Marines migh
    • Or, the State Department. Travel to cubicles all over the world. The first few years tend to be really crappy posts (African Embassies). But at least if you are working at the Embassy, there is a good chance you can get out by helicopter when the local despot starts killing people.
    • I joined the Navy. As I anticipated, they put me on a ship and sent me all over the world. Since you are getting a computer engineering degree you may want to consider this as a career since you probably won't have one with anything related to computers or engineering. I have an engineering degree, a P.E. license and an M.S. in computers from Drexel (just down the road from you a bit) and I am considering buying a Rita's Water Ice :).
    • 3 things
      ===========

      1) NAVY - Never Again Volunteer Yourself (been there, done that, got out damn quick)

      2)when you're out at sea on maneuvers, FOR WEEKS/MONTHS at a time, you are on duty FULLTIME...including weekends and generally about 14 hours a day

      3) you've obviously never been in the service if you failed to point out 1 and 2 above
    • They're always looking for skilled people willing to server.

      Don't you mean "sever"?

    • ...but did you mean to spell serve or sever - I can't quite work it out.

      ,02

      cLive ;-)

    • was Re: Military [slashdot.org]

      Well, there's always the Navy. They're always looking for skilled people willing to server.

      Join the Navy, see the world. Just remember that it's 75% water.
  • Most if not all of the traveling tech jobs I was aware of disappeared around 9/11/01.
    • I'd say the economy was already going downhill.

      The business/investment press seems to really like being able to latch onto pat causes of market shifts.

      9/11 makes a great cause, and the US government has no problem with 9/11 being blown up even bigger than it was -- it makes for a great political tool.

  • Pre-sales engineer (Score:4, Informative)

    by -dsr- ( 6188 ) on Friday November 14, 2003 @10:36PM (#7479096) Homepage Journal
    If you have or can develop people skills -- presentations, answering questions, talking without stuttering, explaining complex technical subjects to your Mom -- then you may want to look into sales engineering.

    A sales engineer has a few important functions: uphold the technical reputation of the company, find solutions to customer problems, and keep the salescritters honest. (Bad sales engineers destroy the company's rep, push the most expensive products even when there's a better cheaper solution, and care only about their salescritters' quarterly numbers. That's a short-term ticket to wealth, followed by the death of your company.)
    • So far this year I have seen Guayaquil Ecuador, Amsterdam, Mexico City, Helsinki, and countless US cities as a pre-sales engineer. It is important to work for an international company though. Since you are usually working with customers, you dont skimp on expenses during your travels. Some positions will travel more than others but if you want to travel, the opportunity is usuall there.

      Sales engineering is like getting a new set of Lego's every few weeks, playing with them and then building something to
    • I second everything the original poster said... when I was first hired at Cobalt, I thought I wanted to be in tech support. I was "talked into" being an SE, and it was definitely the right choice for me.

      Make sure you end up selling a product you can believe in. It's hard to show the required enthusiasm pimping something you don't particularly care about...

      There's a lot of repetition - makes you want to just email an FAQ to the customer before you even get there... but there are always the ones that will
  • This doesn't really bother me, however i'd like to see the world before being confined to a cube for the rest of my life. Are there any jobs in an IT field where I can travel?

    You have got to be kidding me. Join most any company that has a significant consulting services or sales branch, and it is easy to see the world. Within the next six weeks I'll hit cities in four continents.... Surprisingly, the view is about the same as a cube. A card table if the client planned ahead, a hotel every nigh where you spend the rest of the evening making magic, and eating at whatever restaurant is nearby. I know where the plane is on some international flight just by the snack cart shuffling about.

    There was a point - travel is easy. If you want to spelunk the world and enjoy it, better to do it as a vacationer than trying to 'see the world' after a shift is done. I saw more of Europe backpacking on the cheap in college than I have 'commuting' back and forth.

    As a bonus, make sure you pick a career that affords you the purchasing power to see the world. Air and hotel miles are a brutal way to do it... (grin)
    • I disagree completely. I travel between 20% and 40% of my time in any given year, and I've seen many things that I wouldn't have bothered to see otherwise.

      You will as often find yourself in Lizard Lick, North Carolina as you find yourself in Paris, France. The difference is that while you might go to Paris for a vacation, you'll never to to Lizard Lick on your time off.

      But if you make it a point to dig up something interesting no matter where you are, you will always be able to tell stories about that tim
      • Forgive the bitterness... I've been on the road 80-90% since spring. As a father and husband, traveling the world lost much of its glamour. I say goodbye to my family again in a few hours.

        I suspect we are in agreement, however. Seeing the world is a state of mind, rather than being a tourist or worker bee abroad.
        • So why are you spending time reading/posting to slashdot instead of spending it with your family?

          Doug
          • So why are you spending time reading/posting to slashdot instead of spending it with your family?

            Same reason I browse and post from work... because I needed a break.

            You spend thirty minutes helping a 4.5 year old practice 'twinkle, twinkle little star' on a violin, and all parties need some down time afterwards. It is all about choices - for me it's good compromise to hang out in the living room with a wireless connection while she watches House of Mouse.
      • I know there is, I live there.
    • I saw more of Europe backpacking on the cheap in college than I have 'commuting' back and forth.

      True. I've worked in every major financial center from Chicago to Frankfurt. All the airports, hotels, taxis and meeting rooms and the people in them look the same. Sometimes it got to the point where if I had vacation time, the last thing I wanted to do was jump on a plane to somewhere!

      I travel less for work now, but more for fun, and I can say from experience that an office job is fine, if it means you can a

    • You have got to be kidding me. Join most any company that has a significant consulting services or sales branch, and it is easy to see the world. Within the next six weeks I'll hit cities in four continents.... Surprisingly, the view is about the same as a cube. A card table if the client planned ahead, a hotel every nigh where you spend the rest of the evening making magic, and eating at whatever restaurant is nearby. I know where the plane is on some international flight just by the snack cart shuffling

    • Agreed. It sounds glamorous to anyone who's not actually doing it, and, in truth, it can be a lot of fun. The fun begins to tail off when (i) you've been doing it for months, and/or (ii) you have a family at home.

      The breaking point for me, when it finally ceased to be so much fun, was when I spent two months living in the same hotel room in Sydney, Australia, and wasn't flying home for the weekends. On the plus side I got to see a lot of the area; on the minus side, living in the same hotel room for anythi

  • Two Words (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Seraphim_72 ( 622457 )


    Peace Corps


    yeesh - that was easy = next?

    • Seriously though. I am an ICT (Information and Communications Technology) PCV in Mauritania, West Africa. I am working with a Cisco Academy teaching networking at the university [cisco-academy.mr].

      (The Cisco Academies are a part of the UN's Least Developed Countries [netacad.net] (LDC) iniative.)

      I joined the PC and will be getting my CCNA (and CCAI) soon free of charge. Definitely didn't expect that when I signed up.

      My living conditions aren't quite what they were back home, but I like the work I am doing and I am definitely getting

  • My father worked and retired as an IT executive in a large multinational company. He got to travel at least once every 4 months or so to one of the key cities in the US and Asia, occassionally he'd go to Europe. However right before he retired, the company has been cutting down on IT personnel in favor of outsourcing IT services.

  • Any big company (Score:3, Informative)

    by duffbeer703 ( 177751 ) on Friday November 14, 2003 @10:57PM (#7479203)
    IBM Global Services, any consulting company and most "enterprise" software companies.

    If you get into implementing SANs, deploying apps like Tivoli or SAP, or something highly specialized, you'll get to travel.

    Hint: Ask any travelling consultant how they like travelling -- they don't. One of my colleagues had to fly from Virginia to Oregon for staff meetings... it sucks.

  • A GREAT job (Score:3, Interesting)

    by LePrince ( 604021 ) on Friday November 14, 2003 @11:06PM (#7479244)
    Try this : Cirque du Soleil [cirquedusoleil.com]. I work there, but in the International HeadQuarters in Montreal, so I don't travel. But it's a GREAT company, that treats its employees really well and pays a decent salary. And there are of course travelling jobs, with the many tours (Quidam, Saltimbanco, Alegria, Varekai and Dralion). As a matter of fact, the Dralion tech is a good friend of mine... Of course, I don't get to see him much. :-P But beware, these jobs aren't available often, because the techs love their job, so we don't get many departures...

    There are also some "fly-in" jobs that are based in Montreal, and I believe there are some too in Vegas and Amsterdam. Check it out ! :-)

  • Work from home (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Greener ( 139534 )
    I have a friend I met while travelling who works from home for RedHat. He managed to persuade his bos shat since he was working from home why couldn't he move his home around. He then spent 3 months travelling across the US on a moter bike, 3 months living in Scotland, a month in Egypt, 4 months in Australia (where I met him) and 3 weeks in South East Asia. He still put in a full day's work and uploaded his code every day by taking his laptop to an internet cafe.
    • Bosses who let you work from home are rare these days and even those that do, i'd be surprised if I ever met one that would let me travel like that. That boss is 1 in a million or your friend is critical to their company.

  • Geek Corps (Score:2, Interesting)

    by himynameisbrak ( 619466 )
    I will follow up the other two mentions of the Peace Corps or similar outfits with a plug for the Geek Corps [geekcorps.org].

    I haven't done it yet, but I am interested in doing it sometime perhaps a few years from now. The stipend is minimal, but you will get to see a part of the world you normally wouldn't.

    It will give you an appreciation for the opportunities you have here in this country. You will have a much better perspective on the world and it will make you a better person for it. You will suddenly stop carin

  • ISO standards! (Score:2, Interesting)

    by andrewleung ( 48567 )
    work the standards "circus". you get to travel to meet face to face to discuss technical issues on a standard. meet with other engineers in the same field/expertise, etc.

    at this point in your life, you can get "in" with standards committees by doing a LOT of free work for it and presenting proposals and results. the university would pay for it and you can hook up with professionals in the field for a job that would be about the same...

    do some work, travel to present results (usually in very nice locale

  • Education (Score:3, Informative)

    by Jmstuckman ( 561420 ) on Saturday November 15, 2003 @12:34AM (#7479622) Journal
    You might want to try to work for a large company and get into customer education. Many of our instructors travel around the world, delivering education to customers on using our server software.
  • (Out of town) Internships (and) Conferences.

    Trust me, you have an infinite oppurtunity to experience the world as a student if a) you look out for oppurtunities, b) you're willing to work and c) not lament on crazy things such as working (on paper submissions for example) on weekends, ie, set your own performance metrics and achieve them.

    Don't be disheartened by all this talk of economic downturns; not that difficult to travel around the world EVEN NOW without burning holes in your pocket.

    (Saying this as

  • Two options I can think of off hand (I have done both). Military: I served 20 years in the Air Force, nearly all of that as a Sysad. Got some great training, (not only in IT, but several other things also) was paid OK and did get to do a lot of travel. Even though I was often in places where I received combat pay, I never got shot at. The Air Force has a lot of state of the art (or close to it) systems, and if you get the right assignment you could be working on them right out of tech school. The other

  • easy easy (Score:3, Funny)

    by truffle ( 37924 ) on Saturday November 15, 2003 @02:05AM (#7479957) Homepage

    With your IT degree you will be perfectly prepared 4 years from now to land a job in India or China doing IT work for American companies.
  • Go to work for a global investment bank. MS, GS, CSFB, or a software vendor/consulting firm that sells systems to one of those guys.

    If you don't mind selling out and going the analysis/project management route, you will travel a lot. You'll never see rural China this way, but Chicago, NY, London, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Tokyo are all on the list. As an added bonus, you'll fly business class, stay in the best hotels, and bill everything back to the project.

    Pure coding roles see v. little travel, however.
  • Security consultants have the potential to be travelling nearly constantly, spending one to two weeks in each location. The pay is pretty good, but you'll need to be able to express yourself well to other people since you will often be responsible for explaining your findings to the clients.

  • As others have said, there are plenty of jobs where travel is required.

    Some of the best can be airline related. Either working for an airline or working for a company that provides services to an airline.

    With an airline, even if you don't travel from place to place with the airline itself, you get flight privileges which means that you get to travel for free on the airline wherever it goes. Often, you also get reduced rate privileges (or free privileges) on partner airlines. One of my friends complet

  • Take some English classes. (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    and many of them are cubical warriors

    If you wish to travel the world, it is highly likely that you will need to command at least two languages. From your post, it is clear that you do not yet command your native tongue and a second language is highly doubtful.

    Cubical refers to a cube shape. Cubicle refers to a partitioned space, ironically for sleeping, such as a carrell that is commonly used for office workers.

    As a student at a prominent university, with desires to "see the world", one should really h
  • The pay isn't as good as other IT jobs, but the environment is easy-going (unless were doing a merger....) and my bank gives you 21 days off (count 'em!) after you become an officer. That's not including the 10 paid federal holidays. Do the math...that's a lot of travel time to go where I please. There was a 1 1/2 year gap between my graduation and my job that I was hoping to do all kinds of stuff. I've traveled more since I got my job (since I have the money to travel.)
    When I was in college I always sai
  • Have you thought about working on a cruise ship after you graduate? It's a great way to see the world on someone else's dollar, and on many of the cruise lines the IT techs are officer positions, so you'd get your own room, privileges to get people onboard with you for free, etc. This varies depending on what company you hook up with. Most people I worked with burned out on it after a few years, but it's fun while it lasts, and decent experience as well.
  • I've been telecommuting since 1990, and I
    think anyone who works in this industry and
    sets foot on company premises more than once
    a month is living a substandard life.
  • Like so many before me have said A Tech Job in the navy or abord a cruise liner will get you arround the world. I spent some time working for a surveying company, we did hydro acoustic surveying. Not only do you get to travel the world but the inaccuracys involved in sonigraphic surveying are some truely some problems that can tune your solving skills. Sea life is nothing like a 9-5(even with 24hr on call).
    You live in close quarters with your boss and co-workers, you will learn and accomplish more at sea th
  • That's what I do. My company is a 130 strong consultancy with all consultants either on client site, on the bench (not currently assigned), or teleworking on internal company projects. We all keep in touch by email, IM etc, and meet up a few times a year as a company to touch base and have a few beers. I am in the latter group and I can pretty much base myself anywhere I choose. Cool huh. There are always opportunities to do these things if you look around. You are in charge, don't condemn yourself to
  • Gotta be very careful with jobs that require travel. At first it might seem like a lot of fun, but it gets old fast. When you are spending your free time in airports, and living off of hotel room service (novelty of it wears off QUICK) and driving rental cars in the middle of the country, it's not much fun. My job doesn't even require travel, but the little I do gets to me. IT consulting I guess is a good description of what I do, and business travel has taken me from large insurance companies, manufac
  • Try applying to defense contractors. I graduated a year ago and have been working for one since. I've been to Europe twice already and may have the chance to go to some other places too...I think hawaii may be on the list...since you will have a customer that is based all over the world, you'll most likely be involved in a project that requires on-site support...but like some of the other people have said, living out of a hotel room for weeks at a time is not exactly the best life.

    A lot of companies like

  • Some not-quite-techie jobs (Score:3, Interesting)

    by anticypher ( 48312 ) <anticypher@@@gmail...com> on Monday November 17, 2003 @07:17AM (#7492147) Homepage
    Here are some things I've done in between serious periods of technical consulting. Not for everyone, but every few years its good to go out and do something different.

    Travel Writer. While you are still in school, take journalism and creative writing classes. Learn to sell your articles. Use your computer skills to create a website, and maintain your articles in a database or wiki where you can pull one up and quickly re-write it into a new article. Then every time you travel, make sure about 4 hours of each day are spent working on your article(s) of the trip. Take digital photos of lots of things, keep the captions straight. Research hotel prices, interesting things in the area (plagiarize directly from other travel guides, then verify, they often have intentionally misleading info), and keep a diary on some kind of mobile computing device. Make sure you have a website where you can try selling your articles in near-real-time, and if an editor wants a specific angle on a story, you can work it up while there. Start while you are still in school, to have a good base of editorial contacts.

    Technical Trainer. For some products a company needs a trainer to follow up the sale with a few days or a week of on-site training. Good trainers are hard to find, good trainers with extensive technical background are very rare indeed. Only a few companies actually realise this and pay accordingly, but I know one who travels to cities all over the place and earns about 150k euros/year (30 weeks X 5,000 Euros). When he gets an assignment to a location he has never been before, he always adds a few days to his trip for traveling in the area. Needless to say, he is single.

    Events Coordinator. Specifically, hi-tech events. There is a need to work alongside the other coordinators for things like internet access, power requirements, cabling, and speciality telecoms and satellite access. There is also a whole field around event security, providing the big burly guys with working radios, a command centre with computers and video surveillance, and other security related items. There has to be a hands-on techie to ensure smooth operation. Speaking multiple languages is also a key requirement, at least here in Europe.

    There are lots of early career organisations, like the Peace Corps, or Ingenieurs Sans Frontiers [ewb-isf.org], who will place you in a village somewhere for a year to earn some work experience. The only travel involved is in getting to the place, and back home after a year. But its a good way to see at least one other small part of the world. Take lots of language courses while you can, english only goes so far if you want to actually work in non-anglo parts of the world.

    As others have pointed out, serious relationships and a travel career are mutually exclusive. Having children almost certainly means you need to settle down. So plan on having the travel career right after school, while you are still free enough to enjoy it, and expect to change into a cubicle job later.

    the AC


  • Are there any jobs in an IT field where I can travel?

    Learn to speak Urdu / Hindi.
    Plenty of techies are needed to leaise (sp) and the food is bloody excellent.

    Anyway, whats wrong with droping out and bumming your way around the world on a motorbike. [phil-books.com]
    And dont give me that 'I cant' crap. Life is not a rehersal

  • ...You'll be moving house every 6 months just to keep eating...

  • Travel is best suited for young (single?) workers (Score:3, Interesting)

    by dcavanaugh ( 248349 ) on Monday November 17, 2003 @04:52PM (#7495909) Homepage
    Many people with middle-age responsibilities (spouse & kids) are looking to minimize travel. Travel requirements are seldom viewed as a plus, except by young people want to travel. I never thought about it before, but high-travel jobs might be the one area where employers favor recent grads (few responsibilities, willingness to live cheaply, flexible schedules, few complaints).

    Believe me, the mystique of travel fades soon enough. I had an around-the-world trip in 1999. Nobody would do it this way in 2003, but at the time I travelled alone. As an added bonus, I was sick as a dog every step of the way. Sick in UK, sick in Switzerland, sick in Hong Kong, sick in China. Over the course of two weeks, I was miserable in all 24 time zones. If I tried such a thing today, I would have been stuck in the SARS quarantine.

    I met some great people, and discovered that British Air has very nice seats in Business Class on their long-haul international flights. All of this is fine, but travel is a "defensive" game. You are defending your property and yourself against a number of threats, and you are mostly trying to prevent things from going wrong. It's a fun game to play, but the novelty wears off.
  • Create a specialized database for some obscure vertical market. I'm the leading (well, only besides homegrown) database vendor for an industry with about 100 businesses in the US. I travel 2-3 times a year - not enough to completely alienate the family (the spouse only sulks a little bit) or get really tired of it.

    Get a job where you can ride a bicycle or walk to work and back every day. There's always something interesting to see if you're going slow enough to notice it. Really.

    There are a few people who
  • As someone who has been traveling 100% for work for the last 3 years, let me give you a warning. When I first started traveling (right out of college like you) I thought it would be a great way to see different places by exploring the town I was staying in after work. I quickly learned that companies assume that when you are on travel, they can make you work longer hours so there is no "after work". Managers bully you into working longer hours than at home with the attitude of "Why are you leaving? It's
  • Yes. Become a training person in IT. I got a couple certs a few years back. One was a class in Chicago. The other was in Dallas. One instructor was in his early 30s and had done computer networking in the Navy. The other had been networking for decades. I never asked the first guy what he made but the second guy readily divulged all the juicy details while drinking and eating steak at Bone Daddy's in Dallas (nice steak house if you're ever in Dallas BTW, hot waitresses too). He made $1100 a day plus
  • Internal auditors for a company travel to a site and spend 3 - 6 weeks at a site looking through the way the company executes. Probably deadly boring work, but - very little overtime - very little interference from your clients! - weekends and evenings free In 2 years you could visit 12 - 18 countries for long enough to get to know the place a little - not like the rest of us who are on fast in and fast out schedule.
  • First, gain fluency in your favorite second language at a university level of reading, writing and conversation. Second, finish a master's degree (hey, howzabout in that language?) or better so you can enter the government (the only entity bar the military likely to send you overseas anytime soon) at a salary level that won't make you cry. Third, apply for any reasonable job that will provide you with a TS/SCI with full lifestyle polygraph. Fourth, finish 3-year compulsory stint in non-excepted service t

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