Adventuresome or "Hands On" Careers in Tech?

omission9 asks: "For about 10 years I have worked mostly behind a desk in a cubicle and am starting to feel that this environment is making me miserable. The cheap fluorescent lights, the stuffy air, and the restless feeling I get from just sitting so long are starting to really annoy me. My background is mainly as a programmer but I started my career as a network engineer/network administrator. I am also a member of the US Naval Reserve and am cleared as high as Top Secret. Are there any jobs out there that match this sort of skill set (more or less programmer but generally excellent tech skills) that don't require being stuck behind a desk? Paying relatively well would be a major plus as would something that provides a solid career (20+ years of work). Is there anyone out there, from anywhere other than a cube farm, that may have some advice?"

Comments

Risk appetite

[leeum]

From the article:

Paying relatively well would be a major plus as would something that provides a solid career (20+ years of work).

Given the sentence from the article, the submitter may not have the risk appetite for what you're suggesting.

While I agree that starting your own business does provide the sort of flexibility and widening of job scope that the submitter wants, the solid career and the good pay are not guaranteed. I've read statistics (no sources spring to mind, sorry) that only about 10 - 30% of startups survive past the first three years. And these are the years where you're likely to be getting the least amount of pay out of the business as you'll be wanting to reinvest everything into the business to give it the best possible chance of succeeding in the long run.

That being said, starting (or trying to start) a business can be the most rewarding thing around. I've tried it several times and failed for various reasons, but I would do it all over again if I spotted a reasonably good opportunity because it gives you the chance (in fact, it's practically a requirement) to move around a good deal and fill in gaps in your knowledge you probably never knew you had.

Ask yourself the following questions if this is a route you're considering:

1. Are you prepared to take on a substantial amount of risk when you're starting out? Remember that you will not have much in terms of financial leverage and brand name, and there will be unscrupulous customers who will try to delay payment as much as possible just because they know they have a reasonable chance of getting away with it.

2. Can you ensure that you will have a good work-life balance when you're doing this? A lot of people I know who have started businesses of their own have started with a home office to save on costs, but having a family as well means that you will probably find it hard to differentiate between "work time" and "family time".

Field Science

[hey!]

There's a ton of science and social science that's done in the field: ecology; archaeology, primatology; ethnology; ethnobotany; geology; palentology; oceanography.

In some field seasons nothing much interesting happens; in most something interesting enough to write about happens. And in a very few seasons, careers and reputations can be made. It is in those rare, once in a lifetime seasons that careers and reputations are made. In those seasons, there is never enough time to do everything that is needed. The ability to store and analyze data in real time can make a great difference.

I have (from the comfort of my desk) worked with a number of field scientists over the years. By in large they are either technologically hopeless, or enthusiastic but unskilled. They usually rely on graduate students, usually a graduate student, to take care of their tech. A few lucky ones have a grad student who has a year or two experience in IT. Even though they only have a few rudimentary skills, they are regarded as if they have some rare gift. And it is rare, to have more than basic IT skills.

You could go to grad school, or try to find or create a staff job. If you've been in business, act like an entrepreneur. Find somebody doing something you are interested in, and create an opportunity. Principal Investigators are like entrepreneurs too. They have to sing for their supper, convince the funders that their project is more worthy than other projects.

Now the downside: science is done for love and glory, not money. Scientists who have achieved tenure live a secure, middle class lifestyle, but everyone else is hand to mouth. You might not get paid at all, or paid a pittance. If you're lucky, you might make 20-30K. You might have to work for nothing until you can bring in some grant money. On the other hand, set this against the things you might be doing: travelling to Africa to study lions; trekking the silk road to find uncharted ruins; exploring the jungle of New Guinea to find the last speaker of a dying language.

Some research even involves danger. I happened to be at CDC Ft Collins DVBID when they were scrambling a team of epidemiologists and trop-med guys to go to Africa because of an outbreak of Rift Valley Fever. Most people would be running the other way, but when some new disease like Ebola emerges and has people bleeding out their eyeballs, somebody has to get on the ground to study it. Presumably those people could use somebody to look after their sat phones, fix their laptops, figure out how to make their databases work.

How much would experiences like that be worth in dollar terms?

In the few times I've gone into the field, I've had some thrilling experiences: unearthing what was the forth known instance of a fossil shark species; assisting a paleontolgist with a triceratops skull. Even the mundane things you do are out of the ordinary, like hiking the trails of the badlands in the early morning fragance of crushed sagebrush rising from your boots, or clambering up a remote talus slope in search of the next find.

Life is, in the end, about filling your limited allotment of time with wonderful experiences. Money is only instrumental to that end. If you have no dependents who are relying on your income, why not spend a few years doing things that many people dream about, but only one in a thousand experience?

Suppose, after a few years, you decide to go back to corporate IT. Imagine that the first item on your resume was that you spent the last two years exploring and raising artifacts from a 2000 year old Roman warship. Or maybe you were part of a team that discovered a dozen new plant species unknown to science, one of which shows promise in treating cancer. Is that going to lose you any interviews, versus having have worked with the Java framework du jour? Maybe, but not at any place you or I would want to work at.