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Comments: 783 +- Ask Slashdot: Moving Away From the IT Field? on Wednesday October 28, @12:23AM
Posted
by
kdawson
on Wednesday October 28, @12:23AM
from the life-on-the-other-side dept.
from the life-on-the-other-side dept.
background: url(//a.fsdn.com/sd/topics/topicit.gif); width:75px; height:61px;
it
irving47 writes 'With the economy the way it is, it's a little iffy to even think about switching careers completely, but lately, I've gotten more and more fed up with trying to keep up with the technical demands of companies and customers that are financially and even verbally unappreciative. While I might be good at it, and the money is adequate, I'm curious to hear from Slashdotters who have gone cold-turkey from their IT/Networking careers to something once foreign to them. How did you deal with the income difference, if any? Do you find yourself dealing with people more, and if so, how did that work out?'
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I'd never do it, but (Score:5, Interesting)
you might want to think about nursing. My ex-wife was an RN and she made really good money right out of college.
You have to clean up poop sometimes, but it's decent money.
LK
Re:I'd never do it, but (Score:5, Insightful)
You've obviously never been treated by a nurse who was in the job for the wrong reasons. Please don't ever SUGGEST nursing to people, unless they demonstrate a genuine compassion, patience, and willingness to help others even on their worst days.
Parent
Re:I'd never do it, but (Score:5, Informative)
But for a similar reason I find it stupid that "everyone" keeps promoting IT to people who would not normally consider it.
Plenty of other jobs, especially jobs that can't be outsourced to India or Vietnam or wherever on somebody's whim.
Hairstylists and plumbers aren't going away or going to be outsourced any time soon.
Parent
Re:I'd never do it, but (Score:4, Insightful)
Hairstylists and plumbers aren't going away or going to be outsourced any time soon.
"Insourced" Habla espanol. The key is to find a position where the job can't be sent to China or the worker can't be imported from Mexico. Mostly, this seems to revolve around sales, management, some medical (not all), some education (certainly not all), organized crime/politics and marketing. Anything else?
Parent
Re:I'd never do it, but (Score:5, Interesting)
You've obviously never been treated by a nurse who was in the job for the wrong reasons. Please don't ever SUGGEST nursing to people, unless they demonstrate a genuine compassion, patience, and willingness to help others even on their worst days.
I'd also suggest that you get out of IT unless you have a genuine passion for helping a company make the most of it's IT resources. And by that, I mean helping to make its user community make the most of its IT resources. (The user community IS the company) To many admins could care less about the end users (My brother calls them DFU's) and lock computers down to the point that it's very had to do our jobs. (And we hate you for it) When my IT department makes it harder to do my job, (blame it on company policy if it makes you feel better) I'm less inclined to do my job. Provide us with the tools (both hardware and software) to do our jobs more effectively and listen to feedback from the user community. Otherwise, please get out of the field.
Parent
Re:I'd never do it, but (Score:5, Insightful)
Granted some admins go overboard. But users are a pain in the ass.
Parent
Re:I'd never do it, but (Score:5, Interesting)
Users *can* be a pain. Where I work though, there's an extremely small chance that a situation like this would happen.
Hey I tried to install windows 7 alpha but now my computer doesn't work?
Our company machines require a password to boot from anything but the hard drive. This user would be more likely to call me about getting it installed rather than asking for support after the fact. Even if he somehow managed to guess the password, the fact that he had to do so likely indicates that he's not going to be calling my helpdesk to get support for it, and the fact that he can't log into the domain to access his documents or e-mail means that his machine would be re-imaged by lunchtime.
I have a problem with my computer since I installed mega-zob-toolbar; please fix it.
We have a corporate antivirus to help reduce attacks like that, but if they fail, then this is part of my job. Most users, realizing that it takes significant amounts of time away from their productivity, tend to ask what they can do to avoid it in the future. The majority of virus attacks I get are based on ignorance, not malice.
My kid gave me Adobe CS12 Mega Ultra Designer Pack-DOMINO-REPACK-XXXX to edit that PDF can I have admin right to install it?
First, a quick google search shows that DOMiNO releases DVD rips of movies and isn't a software release group. That said, the majority of the users at work will call me if they need help editing the PDF file in the first place, not asking for help installing 5 DVDs and running a keygen. They know their coworkers can do it, and if they need Acrobat installed on their machines and don't have it, they know that all it takes is a phone call to my desk and I'm going to work on solving their problem.
Hey, I've been trying to send that DVD by email for the last three days but it doesn't work and by the way the email server is very slow.
This one I could technically see happening, but AFAIK the only person here who uses ISO files is me. On a more generic note (i.e. sending stupidly large files via e-mail), our Exchange server has a 10MB limit; users who try to e-mail something larger than that will instantly get a failure message. If they do genuinely need to send that large file, I can arrange for that file to sit on an FTP server so that all the recipient has to do is click the download link. If they don't really need to send the file, then, well, they're not going to call.
Oh that? That's my home wifi router so I can work from the rec room.
Our building has encrypted wi-fi already. The people who need it access it, and if someone starts needing it, you guessed it, they know to call. Even if my building didn't have wireless, if they can see it so can I. We don't have live ethernet jacks anywhere they shouldn't be, so if it's underneath their desk, it's a trivial matter to track down a linksys router. From there, I'd present my case to my boss as to why we shouldn't have wireless access here (or why we should, but at least done properly), and let her decide what she wants me to do about it.
Really?? This Azureus software prevents other people from working? I can't see why.
I haven't had to deal with this one yet, either. About the worst issue I've had so far with regards to bandwidth is that half my office uses Pandora or something similar. Still, our internet speeds are acceptable, I take a peek at our gateway's traffic log to see if there's any high-volume traffic going through abnormal ports, and so far so good. Should this become an issue, I have a supervisor that makes the decision as to what should be done about it.
Hey IT guy why do you pretend it's my statistical report that i made myself in access that slows the database? I'm not even using the database; only access.
A clear, simple explanation usually curbs this one. The majori
Parent
Re:I'd never do it, but (Score:4, Interesting)
If you want to travel, ESL (English as a second language) teaching is great. 20 hours a week teaching (plus prep time), you see your work being used (as the students get better at English), interesting co-workers. If you know (or want to learn) a foreign language, it's a great opportunity.
The best thing is - minimal office politics. There's you, a class, and maybe a head teacher telling you what to do. Co-ordination meetings, blame games, and clueless managers are hard to find. You still have a boss (and work policies), but the soft crap is mostly between you and your students.
Income is much lower in China (where I am), but so are costs. Great news if you have savings and no debts. Other countries have higher pay.
I wouldn't advise it to anyone with a superiority complex (they make poor teachers), or anyone who hates the idea of living overseas, but otherwise, it's a blast.
Parent
Re:I'd never do it, but (Score:5, Informative)
None of what you posted has anything to do with teaching English in a foreign country and therefore isn't relevant to the item you quoted.
Parent
Re:I'd never do it, but (Score:5, Informative)
To become an RN takes 4-5 years of school.
No, speaking as a soon-to--be former IT guy, going from BS/BA to BS-RN takes 2 years. Here in Colorado, several universities have an accelerated program, as long as you can hit the pre-reqs in science (mainly anat & phys, microbiology, pathophysiology) and math (dead simple stuff, not even close to engineering calculus). So no, not 4 years, maybe one year at night nailing down the biology courses, then 2 years full time learning the RN. There are even hospitals that will reimburse your tuition as long as you work 4000 hours (~2 years) for them upon graduation.
Parent
Re:half the jobs in IT are cleaning up (Score:5, Funny)
Not quite the same, but...
I work for part of a University that has a name that sounds like a telemarketing firm.
Frequently, one of my high level clients will call me in a panic and leave a message. I call back, but 50% of the time I get screened by a receptionist who just assumes I am trying to sell something.
If the client is a jerk, I don't even bother to explain. I'll wait until they call back and then tell them I got screened.
This happened to one client 5 or 6 times. Finally I explained to the secretary who I was, so the call would go through. The secretary said, "Oh, I know who you are...but she gave me a list of words to use to screen calls with. And your unit has two of those words in the name. Besides, it's fun to watch her get mad when she doesn't get the call."
I don't blame the secretary at all. But then again, you could only get away with that in the public sector.
Parent
Look before you leap (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm an ex-Navy guy. My military career field was journalism and public affairs. When I got out of the service I went directly into IT.
The same factors that governed my career change would likely work in this, and any other similar situation:
1. Identify things that you LIKE to do.
2. Of the things that you LIKE to do, do you also possess marketable skills doing them?
3. Can you put those skills on a resume?
4. What can you do NOW to add credibility to your new career?
Work those things out and making the leap should be fine. Beware, leaving IT can often mean leaving a good paycheck. You'll want to get your finances and lifestyle in check before making the jump.
Re:Look before you leap (Score:5, Insightful)
It is so refreshing to see someone really follow their passion. A huge percentage of the population today is stuck in jobs they do not like. This leads to resentment, anger, and eventually very negative release of these emotions. What's worse, the smartest of these make it to the top of the food chain, then take out all of this amassed anger on society. Had they not been pushed into fields that did not suit them, they would have most likely contributed a lot more to society, and left the positions they now occupy to those that could fill such roles while living a happier life, and contributing much more to the world.
The way I see it, the purpose of life is to do what you want, enjoy doing it, and enjoy helping others do the same. It is very unfortunate that this does not happen.
Parent
Re:Look before you leap (Score:4, Insightful)
>The way I see it, the purpose of life is to do what you want, enjoy doing it, and enjoy helping others do the same. It is very unfortunate that this does not happen.
I enjoy seeing my children have food to eat and clothes to wear. I enjoy being able to take them out to exciting places. I enjoy being able to send them to school. I enjoy keeping them safe in a reasonable house. My wife enjoys being able to stay at home and look after them.
All of these things are possible because of the cash I earn at a job I don't enjoy.
So, while universal joy is a good aim, in the real world it doesn't usually work like that. You have to choose which bits of your life you are going to enjoy and which bits you are going to endure.
Parent
Re:Look before you leap (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Look before you leap (Score:4, Interesting)
Distance may be a problem, or time constraints.
But hauling around computers and tools is trivial with the right bicycle setup [bikesatwork.com]. :p
Parent
Re:Look before you leap (Score:5, Funny)
I know several IT companies that will only hire Gitmo alumni as managers. Or at least that's the best explanation I can think of.
Parent
Re:Look before you leap (Score:5, Funny)
Off Topic but... "I'm an ex-Navy guy. My military career field was journalism and public affairs. When I got out of the service I went directly into IT." :)
This is also me - 9.5 years Navy Journalist (NMC and AFRTS - Diego Garcia, Adak,AK, Naval Base Seattle Public Affairs, Gitmo) and now 10 years network engineer.... Small world isn't it.
Maybe you're the same guy! Have you checked?
Parent
Re:Look before you leap (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe you're the same guy! Have you checked?
Doubtful. Journalists stopped most of their fact checking decades ago.
Parent
Re:OK how do you get jobs like this? (Score:5, Interesting)
My IT Training came from on-the-job. The Navy was still all dumb terminals and MSDOS. My job, as a journalist, eventually required the command provide me with a system for desktop publishing. That meant either Windows 3.1 or MacOS 7. Fearing Mac, they gave me Windows and Aldus PageMaker. When the command began rolling out Windows to the rest of our personnel, I was the only person on-hand who had any knowledge. I became Tech Support. When they began networking the machines together in a workgroup, I assisted with that as well. Not to mention that cabling a ship for closed circuit television is only a few steps removed from cabling 10Base2 ThinNet.
When my ship pulled into Hawaii, I spent my liberty installing Slackware on my personal laptop. By the time I got out of the Navy, I had plenty of experience with Windows, Unix (Linux), and networking. I got a low-level, low-paying job at a financial corporation and quickly worked my way up by proving my ability and obtaining requisite certs, etc.
Parent
I wish I had stayed down the docks. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I wish I had stayed down the docks. (Score:4, Insightful)
"Unions are very good things people and sooner or later this country is going to figure out."
As someone who has worked public sector, was a union member, and even striked with the union I can say that this is not entirely the case, unions are dangerous and I would rather see them severely weakened in the UK.
Unions are okay if their power is kept small, but in the UK they go out of control- Unison, one of the UK's biggest unions claims over 2 million members, and despite the fact half the working population are taking paycuts right now, Unison is still pushing for pay rises, even though basic IT technicians are still getting paid £29k in some local authorities where their true market worth in private sector for the low levels of ability would be around £16k to £18k. Governments are powerless to say no though, because they simply can't deal with the damage caused by a union that can put a good portion of it's 2 million members on strike. The story is the same with teachers whereby you have teachers strikes because secondary school teachers are underpaid whilst the same union covers primary school teachers who hence get the same rises and who are hence now heavily overpaid for their job, but what can the government do? risk having an entire generation of kids education disrupted setting them back for life?
Similarly, unions have a habit of protecting people at work regardless of the merit of that. This makes it impossible to get rid of dead weight, because you can't afford the associated costs with doing so - it's cheaper to keep those useless people in the job, providing a shit service than it is to get rid of them.
We also have them acting as a strongly political tool, they mail out regularly to their 2 million members telling them who to vote for and who not to vote for, in my opinion this type of political lobbying is far beyond the remit of a union, particularly one with 2 million members who have distinctly varied political views.
I agree a country entirely without unions really would kind of suck for workers, but on the same note, as someone who lives in a country with unions that are simply far too powerful, and as someone who now, looking back wishes they had not given any support whatsoever to such unions I disagree that you want unions to become more popular or more powerful. They can bring countries to a standstill even when their argument has no merit- you only have to look at the current UK postal strikes for evidence of that and note also that the Royal Mail is having to pay £20m a year to provide premises and time off work for it's staff to perform union activities. That's a hell of a burden on a company when the only result is for the company to get screwed over for that £20m it has had to spend. It's hard to tell what the Royal Mail strikes are even about as the official line seems to be changing daily from the union involved- originally they admitted job cuts were needed and that that was not the issue but now they are saying it is about jobs. The Royal Mail has lost a £25m Amazon contract because of this, you simply can't have a union holding a company to ransom like that at the expense of the company, particularly when the union doesn't even seem to be able to remain consistent in what it's actual demands are!
Parent
Re:I wish I had stayed down the docks. (Score:4, Insightful)
"More power to them! In fact you could argue Unison is keeping the pay of private sector technicians from falling further."
No, the fundamental issue is that the type of technicians we're talking about are technicians whose ability doesn't reach much past being able to stick a Windows CD in the drive, boot off it and install it then maybe install a few apps- I would add network drives to the list, but one particular person I used to work with couldn't even do that. He spent 4 hours trying to figure out why he couldn't get a drive to map from another PC, the reason? He hadn't shared it on the other machine. How can we justify paying these people £29k? So what if private sector only pays them £16k - it's all they're worth. Skilled IT workers still get a decent wage in private sector, but the fundamental issue is that many IT workers simply are not skilled despite them believing otherwise because they built their last PC all by themselves. The person to which I refer was by no way unique either, at least 90% of IT workers on that wage level in the council were of similar low levels of ability to him.
Unions aren't part of the market because they require a lot of legal backing to support their effectively artificial existence. In a free market Royal Mail would not have to pay £20million a year to support a union that does not benefit it as a company. If people went on strike in a truly free market they would simply be sacked and replaced - especially in this climate where you have 70,000 Royal Mail workers whining that they don't know their companies future business plan, whilst 2.5million are sat jobless only able to dream of having the job, the pay and the benefits those workers have in the Royal Mail right now.
We have systems like the minimum wage, equality laws, and the industrial tribunal system to ensure workers aren't totally abused so the loss of unions altogether wouldn't be the end of the world, but as I say I don't totally detest the idea of unions. I just wish they stuck to their remit, and were capable of accepting when things are good rather than insisting on continuing to fight battles which really don't make sense to fight- again the CWU won a battle against the Royal Mail a year or two ago, and what's the result of that? It moves onto something else which is so loosely defined it shows they're just trying to justify their existence and it is to the detriment of society- we can't for example justify having a two tier system where the private sector employee getting paid what he's worth at £18k a year is paying taxes so the equally low skilled worker in public sector is getting paid £29k a year, all because the union will play havoc with society if anyone dares try to fix it.
Parent
Re:I wish I had stayed down the docks. (Score:4, Insightful)
And what does the executive do that justifies his income?
That's something you can ask a GM stockholder too. Hurr.
Parent
Re:I wish I had stayed down the docks. (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:I wish I had stayed down the docks. (Score:5, Interesting)
If six weeks vacation (not even two months) will drive a company into bankrupcy, maybe we need to rethink this whole capitalism thing.
I don't see the problem with a docker making $80 an hour. Would it be better if everyone made minimum wage? I thought the whole point of economic growth was that everyone got richer. But then I never bought into trickle-down economics.
Parent
Bean Sprout Farming (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously. You can start with one bag of seed and a few plastic buckets and sell to local businesses (especially organic businesses and asian stores since they sell larger quantities) and scale up from there. Inventory isn't a huge problem since it only takes 72 hours to grow the sprouts, and you can buy the seed by the 25kg bag.
Obviously, I'm simplifying things, but honestly it's a business that's incredibly easy to get into, resistant to non-local competition due to the perishability of the sprouts, and if you can 'get it right', you can definitely market on quality
Re:Bean Sprout Farming (Score:5, Funny)
While you're at it, why not sell raman noodle trees? With the economy the way it is there's bound to be people who would fall for that sort of scam on craigslist or feebay.
Or you can sell them baggies full of cheerios - just tell them they're donut seeds.
Parent
Baggies, yes ... but cheerios? (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure, people selling little baggies of things will prosper and grow. But it ain't going to be cheerios.
Honestly, I'm an Indian IT guy who looks like this [flic.kr] and is a straight edge [wikipedia.org] vegetarian. But despite all that, twice in Portland, people have stopped me and asked me for some weed.
Now, there's a market which expands during a recession.
Parent
Re:Why not Farming itself? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Forget software engineering. (Score:5, Funny)
Only bad thing is I have to pretend I'm a recovering crackhead.
-Steve
Govt Security, Accounting, Jobs with boots Here (Score:5, Insightful)
IT jobs get absolutely no respect any more.
They get paid crap.
They have *ON CALL* work.
They have to read the minds of dolts who make more money (and work in a more sex balanced environment and who often get to go out drinking on the company dime).
I had to beg our manager to take the guys to lunch. And he wouldn't spring 15 bucks for an appetizer.
Meanwhile the other side of the building is meeting for drinks at the bar at night dropping easily 10 to 20 bucks per person.
At my friend's company, the IT folks get up at 6am, get left at work while everyone goes out drinking for extended lunches (because they are "sales and executives")-- entire company is smaller than my last team. Executives my ass.
Somehow, we let them do this to us. When I was getting into the field, we were priest kings in air-conditioned rooms with complete power. But with each passing year, we underbid each other and passed control over to people who worked us to death.
Leave the field.
If your in it, learn to fail gracefully.
Negotiate for more money and leave when they don't give it to you. Leave them in a lurch.
This all sounds like a troll but it's more bitterness seeing complete idiots making 6 and 7 figure salaries while the "intelligent" folks are working as slaves.
How did it come to this?
Re:Govt Security, Accounting, Jobs with boots Here (Score:5, Insightful)
Simple: there are too many in IT who actually believe in the philosophy of "Atlas Shrugged" - a race-to-the-bottom, out-compete-each-other-for-the-good-of-mankind philosophy.
Ayn Rand and the army of philosophical libertarians in the U.S. whose intellect (required to understand the philosophy and economics behind it) naturally puts them in positions of influence and power via which these ideas are implemented (example: Alan Greenspan, a deep fan of Rand), along with the army of free-market economists who use their own work as faux-empirical justification for libertarian economic policies, NEVER talk about the humanitarian downsides of a hyper-competitive feedback loop/death-spiral... except to mock them in "Atlas Shrugged" (America's second most-influential book after the Bible, according to one survey conducted in the early 1990s).
I say this as a slowly-recovering right-libertarian (and developer) myself, turned moderate left-libertarian.
We in IT have cut our own personal income profit margins and raised our hours in an attempt to out-compete each other; we've raised the bar year after year on ourselves. We have, in short, cut our own throats. We now, and increasingly-moreso, live in the cutthroat environment we (and admittedly, I) have so often advocated.
Parent
Re:Govt Security, Accounting, Jobs with boots Here (Score:4, Informative)
You can thank Clinton and Bush for making it so easy and profitable to outsource American labor. When consumer spending owns 70% of the economy because there is no manufacturing or business spending left in the U.S. it is a huge problem.
In past recessions business spending brings the economy up and then consumers follow. Now it does not make a difference as invested money just goes to China and India and not back to us. Consumers are working for less and working more hours cut back on spending until things improve.
We did not allow this. THe corrupt lobbiests and politicians did. We need to fight back and form a third party or get involved with other workers like auto and factory workers who can't compete and end free trade. Only then will we get our salaries and our jobs back. Yes in a recession like this one I am willing to cut throat and kiss b*tt not to go homeless and its hopeless trying to have us all agree to stand up when so much labor is available.
Parent
Re:Govt Security, Accounting, Jobs with boots Here (Score:5, Insightful)
This all sounds like a troll but it's more bitterness seeing complete idiots making 6 and 7 figure salaries while the "intelligent" folks are working as slaves.
How did it come to this?
I don't know, mate, but I do know the feeling.
I hit the low point some 4 years ago. , when it suddenly dawned on me that I tended to wake up in the morning thinking how much easier it would be just to give up; take an overdose of something pleasant and say goodbye. Except that you can't, really, when you have children adn a wife that love you - sometimes hope really is the worst thing.
Instead I started thinking about what it was that I hated about my job and my life, and what role I played in maintaining the status quo. Why didn't I have any friends at work? Well, to be honest, I was a grumpy git that never tried to fit in - I had all the right reasons, like I can't stand idiotic smalltalk about nothing, but the truth is that I was simply intolerant and fairly obnoxious. And why didn't I get any of the interesting projects with career potential? It's easy to see now, of course, that nobody wants to work with a contrary idiot, who seems to begrudge the very existence of his colleagues, but back then I didn't have the courage to admit it.
I didn't turn all that around in an instant, but I found that I could start out small, by standing up for myself on a few points. The thing is - I realised that a lot of the reason why I was that way was that I didn't have confidence in my own value. And how can others respect you if you don't respect yourself? Standing up for myself in small ways built up my self-confidence, which made me work to a better standard and it also helped others believe in me. I found the energy to be a little bit of an "idiot" like the rest and be more tolerant; now I am The Almighty UNIX Manager - in a small way - and the bosses actually talk to me with respect. It's not all wonderful, far from it, but I think I can see the light at the other end of the tunnel sometimes.
Of course this is just my story, but I think the morale is that it doesn't all have to be bad; if you find you are knee-deep in shit, bag it and sell manure.
Parent
Re:Govt Security, Accounting, Jobs with boots Here (Score:5, Insightful)
How did it come to this?
What do you mean, come to? Didn't high school teach you that jocks run the world?
Working hard and being useful just means someone else is working less hard, being less useful, and making more money. That's life.
I blame my parents for raising me with morals.
Parent
Re:Govt Security, Accounting, Jobs with boots Here (Score:5, Insightful)
That's utter bullshit. "Jocks" don't run the world, real jocks end up working at an auto plant and become alcoholics by the time they're 35. Hustlers run the world. If you want the world you can't be a sheep. You can't follow the other sheeps and wonder why you're not getting anywhere special.
Look at John D. Rockefeller, that guy was the perfect example of the successful aggressive hustler. From co-owning one refinery he pulled every possible trick to become more competitive than anyone else, eat the competition to get even bigger until he had a complete monopoly and became the richest son of a bitch in the world. No one told him what to do, no one showed him what to do, no one made it easy for him, he didn't follow anyone or complain like a big loser.
At the other end of the spectrum you've got people complaining in this topic that their quasi-janitorial job isn't getting them anywhere. I mean shit, the type of jobs we're talking about here partially consists in making sure people don't have CAPS LOCK turned on when they login in the morning. What the hell did you expect?! No one gets anywhere special by following the safe, pre-designed path that you've borrowed. What you do isn't special, you're probably spending most of your work day typing in some MySQL when you're not typing rants on Slashdot with your Cheetos-scented fingers.
I was just watching the Colbert Report and there was this thing about the university degrees the world's billionaires had. And guess what, a lot of them had none. Steve Jobs had none. Bill Gates had none. John D. Rockefeller had none. And you know what else these guys have in common? They're hustlers, and they got rich as hell. They didn't work for 20 years for some large company waiting to realise their career is shit, they took the bull by the horns, created their own damn company and strived to make it successful.
You don't want to create your own company? You don't have any sort of entrepreneurial spirit? You don't want to quit your day job? Well too bad for you. In life you can only choose two of the following three things : have it easy, do something you like, become rich and respected. You chose the first two, don't complain you'll never see the third.
Parent
Very timely... (Score:5, Informative)
Out of the frying pan, and into the fire (Score:5, Interesting)
I got out of IT after more than 10 years in the field (and CTO-ing for a public company in my last job) as I finally got fed up with it. After a longish sabbatical, I started a small bakery/coffee shop. I'd say it is as big a change as you can axe for, and I have been pretty happy so far. I still use some of my mad skillz, but since I went the hard way - designed and built my shop and equipment more or less from scratch - I had to learn (and I am still learning) a lot of stuff - from carpentry, construction work and machinery to advanced chemistry. ;)
At the beginning, the money wasn't that good and it was hard work and long hours, but eventually things picked up and now I am better off than I used to be. The biggest benefit outside of the pay is the free time -- now I have a lot of time for side projects. Half are somewhat related to extending the business, the other half are just things I like. I don't push it very hard though, because that was what I was running away from in the first place. Overall, I regret it I didn't run away from the field earlier. That said, I got into IT by accident, and I didn't like it that much.
Good luck.
Oi (Score:5, Funny)
A Change is as Good as a Rest (Score:5, Interesting)
I hit the same point about 2002. The Dot Com thing had soured and I was just tired of the whole game. I did a two year volunteering gig in the South Pacific... and never left.
It's fascinating, because a lot of the stuff I was doing when I first arrived here was the same I'd been doing 10 years before (I mean literally the same technology). Since then I've moved along and now I'm pretty much current with the kind of things I'd likely be doing back in Canada (technical manager for a local university institution). Just this week I submitted patches to a wireless network driver for the latest version of Ubuntu. So what's changed for me? Just this:
IT work in development has taken me to cities, towns and villages in Fiji, the Solomon Islands, East Timor and Vanuatu (where I now live). I'll be off to South Africa in a little over a month.
I have faced crazy demands in the past (Windows activation from a place with no networks and no telephones? Keeping the minutes for a week-long meeting in a town with no power?) I've had malaria and been hospitalised with kidney stones from dehydration. I've shared the room with rats, roaches, fire ants and geckoes. I've slept on cement and eaten more cold rice than I ever thought possible.
But I've also had breakfast in the clouds, been to the brink of volcanoes, rambled in rain forest and snorkeled in coral reefs so often that it's run-of-the-mill, dined with Ministers of state... and helped make people's lives a little more liveable.
The work is engaging, challenging and stretches one's creativity to the limit, trying to figure out how to mesh Internet technologies with cultures largely unchanged in the last 3000 years. It pays a tiny fraction of what I used to make, but the rewards are infinitely greater.
Re:A Change is as Good as a Rest (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Allow me to summarize (Score:5, Insightful)
- Buzzword compliance resume is more valuable than actual skills - Check
- Your job can be shipped off to India, China or the Next-Offshore-Location any single day - Check
- You make a lot less than what people think you do - and a lot of your staff hates you [esp for Administrators] - Check
Did I miss anything ? So what's there NOT to hate an IT Job ?
How'd I handle the income change after leaving IT? (Score:4, Funny)
I just started lighting Altadis Behike cigars with $1,000 bills. As long as I smoked at least a couple a week, my income stayed about the same.
SciOps (Score:5, Interesting)
I spent about 15 years in IT (programmer, sysadmin, webmaster, web dev, consultant). 5.5 years ago consulting was slow (if you knew my town, you'd know why) so I was looking for a full-time sysadmin gig. Just so happens the biggest local UNIX shops are observatories - the kind with telescopes.
I was applying for sysadmin jobs when a part-time gig operating a small telescope came along. I didn't know a whole lot of astronomy (okay, I knew woefully little, and had never had a single class in it) but the telescope was controlled by UNIX and Linux boxes, and I sure as heck knew those. I had to learn about "right ascension" and "declination." I picked up some other part-time jobs, so my worst year (2005?) ended up only being 80% less than my best dot-com year (2002).
About a year later, I started doing sporadic laser-safety stuff at a couple other observatories. Not in terms of actually working on the lasers, but in terms of making sure they didn't, um, hit any airplanes. :)
A couple years in, some folks who were using the telescope a lot decided that since I was a techie, curious, and actually talked to them (they used an AIM chatroom for communication between collaborators on a couple continents, and all my fellow operators were thoroughly non-instant-messaging sorts), they'd train me to use their data-taking setup (xterms and some custom GUI apps, running in VNCs over an SSH tunnel). So before long I had entries in ADSABS and a .gov email address and life was getting weird.
Last year, after 4 years of being a computer geek surrounded by astronomers, I signed up for an online graduate certificate program in astronomy, in hopes of learning what all those strange words meant. This spring, being in a graduate program weighed in my favor and I got a full-time job as an operator-in-training at a (much larger) telescope, which basically pays enough to live on, here (and has a lot of upside potential).
So... pros and cons of going from IT operations to technical work in science operations...
Cons: ;)
You'll never hear anyone talking about crazy dot-edu or dot-org pay.
The survival of your job depends in part on survival of their funding.
If you're a lone wolf or primadonna, operations is not the place for you.
Work ethic may be different; no foosball table.
Pros:
Science abhors a vacuum between people's ears, so everyone you work with will be smart in some way or another.
Scientists actually recognize and appreciate the fact that You Make Things Work. (egad!)
Hiring authorities often equally happy with a degree in their science, some other science, technology, or engineering.
Stress level can be significantly lower in some cases (like mine).
Oh, and FWIW, science-y places also need electronics engineers, electrical engineers, mechanical engineers, programmers, sysadmins, builders of instrumentation - all kinds of techies.
Just sayin'.
Applying economics to job hunting (Score:5, Insightful)
I hear people complaining about their shitty IT conditions, and I really do sympathise.
I used to be in a similar situation, before I learned a bit more about Economics and applied it to job hunting.
Supply and Demand alone suggest jobs in places like the Games industry (to which most male gamers under the age of about 25 aspire) will be horrible. The massive supply of labour will be chewed up and spat out by the fickle industry, paid low money and treated like crap.
Likewise, many people in IT are on the cost side of the ledger, where a company is always going to be seeking for reductions in cost and increases in efficiency.
My suggestion? Find an industry which is old (and thus has well established work principles), deeply unsexy, and (if you can) look for jobs on the income side of the ledger. And then be the guy that steps up to take responsibility for safe-guarding that income, the guy that can step up and speak truth to power and be taken seriously because it's your job to make sure that $100m, or $1b, or $10b revenue stream never ever ever stops.
In my case, I discovered the logistics industry and found a programming job at the largest company in my country maintaining the codebase responsible for 80% of their sales (and climbing).
Good money, normal 9-5 hours, prohibited from doing overtime, a proper infra team to manage the hardware, a proper ops team to deploy and run our software, and a reasonable ability to requisition just about anything we need, because The Spice Must Flow.
I would imagine that similar jobs to mine exist in all kinds of places that sound really boring, places like power companies and garbage recycling and anywhere else that needs a lot of IT but will never be mentioned on the front page of slashdot.
Lose the boss (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:switched. (Score:5, Funny)
Spelling and morals are both still optional?
Parent
Re:Is it IT that's bad... (Score:4, Insightful)
You hit upon something here. There are a lot of IT related fields. One can be a sysadmin, a DBA, an admin watching over developer projects, an architect who designs infrastructure, the network admin who sets up the core/edge structure, the implementers who implement, the security auditor, the corporate compliance people, etc.
I wonder if people might be better off changing their IT field, rather than leaving the industry completely and starting from ground zero. For example, changing from a sysadmin specialty to a DBA would require a lot less retooling than changing completely out of IT and not having any common skills.
Parent
Re:Other Industries (Score:4, Interesting)
True - and since I have been brought up on a farm I know that weather is an important problem to worry about.
If you really want to see the scope of troubles in different jobs I suggest that you can watch Mike Rowe in the show "Dirty Jobs".
In reality - either you have a job filled with problems or you have a dull job where you are never challenged intellectually and you become stagnant.
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