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Traveling Jobs in IT?
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..."
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 -- 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.
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.
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.
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.)
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.
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.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
I happen to know that The Naval Research Facility is hiring network and system engineers. These guys do a lot of traveling since they have contracts with and support the US Navy. They are all over the place (Hawaii, Norfolk, Japan, Italy, etc) installing equipment and such in Navy ships.
Word of caution, traveling sucks after a while...the first few times it is cool but after that you will hate it. I don't know about most people but I don't like flying every week a day flying to a destination and another day flying backs from it.
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One is born into aristocracy, but mediocrity can only be achieved through hard work.
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.