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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..."
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.)
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.