Moving Away From the IT Field?

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?'

Comments

Look before you leap

[FPhlyer]

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

[TikiTDO]

I am with you, pick what you like, and move in that direction.

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.

Bean Sprout Farming

[serps]

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

Govt Security, Accounting, Jobs with boots Here

[Maxo-Texas]

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

[Money for Nothin']

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.

Re:Govt Security, Accounting, Jobs with boots Here

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:I'd never do it, but

[CarpetShark]

you might want to think about nursing.

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.

Applying economics to job hunting

[adamkennedy]

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.