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Ask Slashdot: In What Other Occupations Are IT Skills and Background Useful?
An anonymous reader writes "Here on Slashdot we sometimes see questions about how to get IT jobs while having little experience, changing from one specialty to another, or being (gasp) middle aged. And, we see comments that bemoan various aspects of IT work and express a desire to do something entirely different. This is what I'm wondering about, and I thought I'd put my questions to Ask Slashdot. Has anyone successfully applied their years of IT experience to other lines of work? Is the field that you moved on to entirely unrelated, or is there a more substantial link to your new (but clearly not IT) role?"
Okay, since you asked nicely.
I've been doing IT since I chose to become a programmer. As you can see, being a programmer didn't really happen, even though I had been programming and even went to school for it since I was a mere youth. Fast forward many millions of years later and I still manage some IT systems for a select group of high-end clients whom I know personally. That's a plus and it's easy work for me. This whole time that I've been doing IT I have been doing many other projects: building custom high-end servers and workstations; doing wordpress buildouts, and running some eCommerce sites on various platforms. Somehow this morphed into driving traffic and is changing into a lucrative business. I don't worry about where I will end up, so whatever I start digging my nails is where I go.
It's all tech-ish somehow.
When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
Mostly campfire talk and bar speak. These skills always help me find a way to keep on talking while the drinks keep pouring.
professional resume consulting.
Business skills are not actually applicable in business. Sure, like recognizes like, but that mostly applies in golf, accounting, and working on Cisco routers. Three completely separate skill sets. Once you are pigeon-holed as IT, there you will stay.
You can move to marketing and run reports and websites. But don't try to be creative, because you are IT.
Senior Management won't want you around, because IT are nerds.
HR? Well, that's a career for paid liars, so maybe you could work there.
Accounting? Get your CPA.
Sales? No, because you are IT.
Get it? Good. Now get a golf club and start making friends.
Hoist Number One and Number Six.
1. Dealing with a wide array sockets and dongles.
2. Freelancing more remunerative but far more risky.
3. Constantly worrying about viruses and having to conduct frequent screenings.
4. Coping with strange end-user requests.
5. Getting fucked by clients AND bosses.
There's a waning supply of automotive technicians, especially as demand rises for electronics repair and so on. As EVs become more prevalent, and it looks like they finally will do that this time, these skills will only be in more demand. Preparation for the ASE exam on automotive electronics can be done at a trade school or sometimes through a six-unit course at a community college. If you know your way around computers in a big way, and know which end of a soldering iron is which, you'll find it a doddle.
Granted, you'll still get your hands dirty, because all this electronic stuff still runs to and from grease pits at this point, but that's set to change. And meanwhile, it's some of the highest-billed automotive work. Generally speaking, only high-end performance, high-end body work (stainless, aluminum, metal finishing) or paint (whether custom paint or spot repair) can touch it, per-hour. You can get paid just to hook up a scanner and read out codes, at this point, mobile diagnosis is a business all on its own and it requires just a handful of stuff. If you want to do it non-hackishly you need a couple grand in scanners, but you can always work for a shop, or a dealer. Some body shops also have an electrical guy, but often that guy is also the A/C guy and that pretty much sucks. Compressor oil is hard on the skin.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
They already know how to dispense the fertilizer.
Jumping out of IT is difficult, but not impossible. One way to do it while still staying on 'technical' track is to jump into Information Assurance field. Most direct jump is to do network security audits, penetration testing, or security certification.
one of the basic IT Skills is ... "Troubleshooting". Yup that basic 101 skill that is used by every IT person that I know MUST know how to troubleshoot. You know by the amount of time the skills of a person when he applies is IT skills at work with troubleshooting. Someone who could of resolved a matter in minutes and does it in an hour, you know he needs lots of training. This troubleshooting skill can be applied in almost every field that requires some thinking.
Not that is a major career switch because I only had two years in IT, but I have been working in Finance for 7 years now after going to school, but not finishing, for electrical engineering.
I actually landed the finance job by selling my technical aptitude. You'd be amazed at the kind of elementary mistakes people make in other fields just because they don't know how to properly operate a computer, and how they can get hung up on the most menial tasks because they are scared of the system in front of them. It took a while to learn the finance side of things, but once I got rolling, I was able to double or triple the productivity of others with lower error rates. Add on to this that someone from IT understands enough to automate menial tasks, and you have a recipe for efficiency and process improvement. A lot of finance is simply getting the data into custom forms or formats for transmittal to the next or from the previous step, with 1 or 2 points where human intervention or review is required. The career change has worked out well for me.
It also helps to be able to liason between departments. I noticed that in meetings between IT and Finance managers, sometimes there's a 'language barrier.' You get rewarded nicely to solve these miscommunication issues before they show up at the end of a development project.
Over 50% of practices have moved to electronic medical records. Most doctors (all?) are woefully unprepared to administer their networks. Some run servers and host their own EMR; many are moving to hosted "cloud-based" EMRs. There are an increasing number of regulatory burdens such as HIPAA, meaningful use, etc. It's a growth industry.
There are quite a number of freelance consultants and IT providers. You can provide sales, installation, support at the local level or partner with a vendor. Or, work in a large hospital or clinic system.
They can't afford real CEO's. They can't afford real tech people. They need smart, analytically minded people that can perform a bunch of tasks. IT people are already well versed in begging for money, so you have that base covered.
You can graduate from any IT field into IT Project Management if that's your bag. Just get the latest (ALWAYS the latest) PMBOK, some supplemental material (Tres Roeder's book, for example), and take a course and a test.
Your experience may lend itself to risk management, especially if you did computer security. Infosec doesn't automatically make you good at risk management, but it does give you a lot of functional knowledge. Grab a Project Management Practice Standard for Project Risk Management, grab some books about Operational Risk Management, do some other studies. It's not about eliminating risk, but rather analyzing and understanding risk. You apply your risk appetite to risk, then decide which risks to accept and which to mitigate or reject entirely, and how to do so.
Both of these benefit from knowing something about your subject matter. A good PM can run a project on anything; but a good PM also knows he's much more effective running a project centered around subject matter he's personally familiar with. Likewise, risk management is much easier when you can understand the shit you're trying to analyze, along with why certain actions are risky.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
I started with doing stage crew as a hobby, but I've also done it professionally and found that there's a significant overlap with IT, especially in smaller houses where the whole stage system may need to be rebuilt for each production.
If you're old enough to remember the old bus-tobology networks, you already know enough to rig DMX lights. If newer networks are your thing, you can probably set up a cat5e-based audio network easily enough. If you're more comfortable with object-oriented design, passing data between objects apply well-defined functions based on their internal state, then the processing chains in the audio rack will be easy for you to manage.
The most important skill in IT is the ability to keep track of many pathways and failure modes. It turns out that's also a useful skill when you're trying to figure out which parts of your 500-component stage are misbehaving.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
I made the jump, at 40-something, from IT to an engineer with that-cable-company, where I now get to play with thousands of Linux boxes, and never, ever have to get viruses off someone's damn laptop after they surfed too many pr0n sites. And, while my company has a not-exactly-sterling reputation from outside, inside, it's surprisingly fun: management really *does* "get" technology, and is doing its best to both back it and see it forward.
Bottom line: still a stressful environment with on-call, etc., but in many respects, a lot more fun.
there is always some new product coming out where you can make a lot of money selling it to sucker PHB's
get out of IT and get a sales job and use your skills to talk some technical nonsense to PHB's in a conference room to sell them on some software or some appliance or other
only problem is that today's money maker will be tomorrow's commodity crap so you always have to find new work with new companies as new products are released
I moved from IT into business development and now product management. My ability to use a computer and know the underpinnings of systems allows me to translate how it should work for everyone else has proven to be exceedingly valuable. It is nice to be able to talk to the IT department, speak their language and understand how/why they have concerns, and translate those into something the bosses on the business end can understand. It puts you in a really neat role, bridging the gaps between fields. It can also provide huge value to a company as it stops them from developing stupid crap, or taking approaches to development that minimize errors or redundancy. This of course assumes that you can speak to people and can understand the more business-side of things.
Kind of "mid-range" IT skills can be useful in almost any job (like programming your own tools and having enough knowledge to not require waiting helpdesk to do every little thing for you). "High-end range" not so much (like being able to configure SAN or understanding the inner workings of Struts).
However, there is one field where IT skills and background is very useful: Selling those things. There is a catch of course: A big portion of those who have IT skills/background do not want to be salesmen. But if you do (and have the skills required), it will be a lot easier for you to build the business case where your product can help. And if you have solid background in IT, your word can have higher weight than those who have only been in sales, especially in the eyes of the client's IT.
I've never made the transition myself, but I've seen others do it. You need a new profession that works closely with your current one, so you can be "The guy who knows how to talk to the techies". There are quite a few roles that can act as the buffer between management/customers and IT. It depends on where you currently work, but I've seen people do this with both Project Management and Business Analysis. If your boss is open to the idea of you filling one of these roles on a few projects, you can get the experience you need while still performing your current job.
Depends on what you did in IT. That is such a broad range that it's hard to say specifically.
If you were a business logic programmer, or some type of "analysts", or even just a tech that had to deal with business apps, you might look in the manufacturing industry. They are very numbers driven. Engineering documents, specs, CNC programming, etc. There is also capacity planning, scheduling, forecasting and other areas that are all very numbers driven. If you have SQL experience, especially in a traditional ERP environment, you will be able to make buds with the IT department and get read access to the DB to write queries. Those queries answer business questions and give you insight other managers could not obtain (at least not as easy). This makes you the better manager/decision maker.
I would imagine many other businesses are the same. If you have knowledge of general business systems to the depth that you can program them, then you have all the technical skills to succeed in business. You may not have the other skills needed...
To sum up, everything is going digital and computer system driven. IT is a great place leaping pad to many careers/industries and that is only going to become more true as computers and data driven system grow into any industry. Whatever industry you support, is a good candidate for moving into when you feel like you are losing that "techy" edge and getting too damn old for this crap.
Of course, if you were coding processor architecture and only have two buttons on your keyboard, the above may not apply.
I finally updated my sig, but now it's lame.
I was a salaried programmer until schizophrenia, hospitilsation and institutionalisation set in.
Fortunately I'm in England so I'm looked after by the NHS and Social Services.
So these days I help out (as a volunteer) at a mental health charity. I provide technical support, tuition. run a self-help group for those experiencing auditory hallucinations, make hot drinks etc. I'm still studying programming because all the above leave me with time on my hands.
In addition to Auditing which was mentioned earlier, Accounting and Finance in modern organisations is currently organized as a large database. There is always an incentive in every organization to be more productive with less human resources and encouragement to leverage IT technologies. Knowing basic principles of Boolean logic, ability to write an excel formula, understanding indexing will put you among top 10% performers within technical knowledge criteria. This, also, also opens pathways to the management. As an additional benefit, in my experience, IT skills allows to find necessary data and analyze. In my experience significant amount of resources and time in every organization are spent communicating about the data and information.
I currently work in IT attached to a science data archive.
Much of the software is written by the scientists themselves, who really should not be writing production code. (Sure, the scientists should spec it out ... but have someone who understands security & maintainability write the code ... so doesn't write C that generates Perl that then calls shell commands ... and wraps the whole thing in a csh script to run as a CGI)
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
Most occupations make use of the computer.
It is incredible how horribly bad everyone is at using computers when they are so ubiquitous and necessary.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Consider K-12 teaching. I did it for a while and am still on a mailing list of tech-heavy people in classrooms.
It's not an easy road at all. Low pay, horrible politics, etc. In many places, if you know tech at all, you'll be "the tech guy" for the school PLUS teaching 6 classes. But, in some states, you don't have to go through a full teacher-ed program if you have a STEM degree and can pass the PRAXIS tests and a background check. Kids can be awful, but a lot of them will grow to respect you (more than the principal ever will) when you geek them out. Particularly if you're a parent already and have figured out that you're okay at it, it has its rewards.
PSIM, Physical Security Information Management. Per Wiki: Physical security information management (PSIM) is a category of software that provides a platform and applications created by middleware developers, designed to integrate multiple unconnected security applications and devices and control them through one comprehensive user interface. It collects and correlates events from existing disparate security devices and information systems (video, access control, sensors, analytics, networks, building systems, etc.) to empower personnel to identify and proactively resolve situations. PSIM integration enables numerous organisational benefits, including increased control, improved situation awareness and management reporting. Ultimately, these solutions allow organisations to reduce costs through improved efficiency and to improve security through increased intelligence.
Both these are becoming more and more about the computers that actually do the work and the production people have NO idea how to get the most out of their equipment. Even the engineering staff (that's Me), frequently has problems with networking and programming for various background functions.
I know it sounds strange, but there are a lot of skills that overlap:
I wouldn't recommend it as a career, though. I did 6 months as a town commissioner (while working full time) before I needed to take some time off.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
Yep. Gas industry paid me quite well for a number of years. Lot's of interesting problem domains, e.g. GIS modeling, reservoir modeling,compliance, optimization, big data; and I do mean BIG data; etc.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
IT's encroaching on so many people's jobs these days. A lot of people need to learn to integrate IT into the regular jobs, e.g. customer relationship management, sales and PR, teaching, and training. These jobs tend to attract personality types that aren't good at figuring out how to use machines and tech. If you've got the necessary interpersonal skills and can handle working with groups of people who'll often try your patience (think of those wierd, non-sensical, and insistent end-user and client requests you get), you could try training people to use IT.
I recommend getting some training and experience in learning and teaching theory and practice first though. Teaching and training ain't rocket science, it's more complex, however, most attempts at teaching are successful to a certain extent, especially if their teacher is personable, kind, helpful, patient, and listens carefully.
I'm considering this as well. I think it depends on your personal skills. The past ten years I've been many times in a situation where nobody else could help me out with a particular problem (programming, sysadmin etc). The only help I got was from online resources, and to use those effectively I developed the skill to write good questions, to do basic research before asking, and to write everything out that I had tried, so people helping me wouldn't waste their time.
I can listen, explain stuff in a simple way (which is not always simple to do), and I think these skills can be useful in very different situations. The only catch: how to find such a job?! Tips are welcome! (Netherlands, Europe)
That depends on you. If you're having trouble applying your skills to things outside of programming then you likely should stick to programming. I can do anything. I could walk into whatever your business is and start doing something valuable almost immediately. My only concern when applying for a new job is the culture of the people I'll be working with. If I can get along with my co-workers and the management bureaucracy isn't too frustrating I'll do well. If it's a shop full of self aggrandizing jerks or management can't wrap their heads around how you could write a process doc in something other than MS Word, then no, I'll likely not do well.
What I'd recommend for you is that you go out and volunteer. It will let you know if you can handle work outside your comfort zone. I've worked habitat for humanity, worked at the red cross, fed people on holidays. If you can be content handing out cookies to annoying people low on blood, you can be content anywhere.
Actually, IT skills are entirely useless in any kind of an apocalypse, unless other people with other skills manage to restore power.
Someone you trust is one of us.
I went from being a developer & manager of 10+ years back to graduate school for public health and social psychology. In my work then and now I was able to use my skills to design and build tools that would vastly increase the efficiency and rigor of the research projects I was involved with.
School was free as I landed an assistantship. Pay cut was a pain - only earned 25k/year + free tuition - but between savings and doing some consulting I was able to make it through without too much hardship. I was able to build a reputation while in school and had multiple offers by the time I finished my program.
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
In larger libraries, there's often someone with the title of 'systems librarian. It might be the person who just configures the software packages that the library uses, but it's often someone with a bit of IT skills.
It might be an IT person who slowly picks up the librarian issues (and some will go and get a library degree if at an academic library), or it's a library person with a bit of IT skills.
If you're one of these people, and aren't already on the code4lib mailing list, I highly recommend it. (although be warned, occassionally threads get out of control).
You can also check the code4lib jobs board for what sort of skills libraries are looking for.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
Having an IT Background whilst doing PR and marketing can be great, if you are able to handle the discrepancy between talk and knowledge by most of your collegues and customers. Being the only guy in a crew of 25 that has done web development and knows versioning and *nix CLI stuff and can help writing usecases that are actually implementable in the given timeframe and budget and helping agency folks actually organize their work can be quite rewarding. And the pay is nice too.
Doing wordpress plugin hacks is actually quite bearable, as long as people don't expect you to do it every day all day and also give you other assignment, such as requirements analysis and such.
I'm doing that type of work right now and it feels good. I can deliver value, the team is glad to have me and I get to learn new trends and technologies as part of my job. Customer politics can be quite anyoing though, but that's what PMs and Bosses are for. :-)
My 2 cents.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
google is trying to dominate all internet new supports.
Home Tuition - Home Tutor - Tutor Singapore http://www.housetutor.com.sg/
Direct application to IT skills outside IT is going to be tough.
However if you have studied math in depth as part of your education you have a tool that with some additional schooling you can open a lot of doors.
Sure I went back, finished my undergrad degree, got my masters in Forensic Computing but my 10+ years experience in IT definitely helps.
"We have these weird files, do you know what they are?"
"Oh that's from the same type of document management system this company I worked at uses."
"Oh Lotus Notes, does any one have experience with this?"
"Why yes I do."
Those are some small examples but registry locations, locations of where OS's and Applications keep their files, etc directly translates into useful info in Forensics/Security. We even had someone join my last company as an Associate (sort of entry level) that worked IT for 15yrs, no formal Forensics/Security training, but after a while, he was doing quite well. I think it'd be important to tailor your resume to show you know some of the requisite info and bring it home in an interview.
Supply Chain Management is a field that tends to be on the tech heavy side but unfortunately most people working in it do not have an CS/Programming background. Having that background would give you a leg up if you can get hired. There are some interesting problems in this field like linear optimization and forecasting to keep you busy.
I am a Controls Department Manager. Controls Engineering is that discipline that programs the Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs) and Distributed Controls Systems (DCS) that talk to all of the instrumentation in an industrial plants.
Our Operator Interfaces are typically Windows boxes, or vendor specific OS and are tied to a LAN so they can talk to the controls systems. In addition, we are starting to get more and more I/O that is Ethernet I/O (plug in an e-net cable and talk to it that way).
Add to the fact that IT departments at many companies don't get the difference between a business network environment and controls environment and many controls engineers have to learn enough IT to maintain their own network and hardware. At the 3 companies I have worked at in the past 14 years, each company I found few IT personnel who understood what I do enough to help and many more that wanted to do things on my network that would simply just shut down the production lines so I just learn to do it myself with help of those few that understand the production needs.
All companies are Information companies now. Any job that you can get will require some minimal knowledge of how to use a computer.
Well.. Nowdays I think people having less skills applying more in IT. IT is not just developing android java or any other networking job.. From the Data Entry jobs to a developer in Apple computers . All requires computer skills.
It is something I have wondered about myself. I know quite a few people who have left their career in IT behind in order to work as builders or decorators, of all things, and I begin to see why: It is a reasonably high-skilled profession, but not really difficult. You just have to be able to use tools, understand complex systems and be able to learn and follow rules. Having worked in IT means that you probably have a systematic engineering approach to solving problems, so you are already half-ways there. And it pays very well, if you are good - how about £3000 for constructing a driveway? This takes about a week and that was 3 thousand GBP, probably cash. Or perhaps £10,000 to build a conservatory? These are prices I have actually enquired about, and you can probably look them up online if you want to check.
The first thing you should probably do is an honest skills assessment. What are you good at? What are you not so good at? What do you enjoy or not enjoy doing? Most of the IT people I know tend to be more on the analytical side, good at problem solving, meticulous, etc. If it's just programming that you don't want to do then you could maybe try your hand at IT Security, Systems Administration, maybe even teaching if you want to show others how to do what you no longer want to do :-)
If you are comfortable taking a leadership role, can talk in front of large groups and are a bit more outgoing then you might be good at IT Sales, Project Management or Technical Management.
On the topic of introvert vs. extrovert: if you are an extrovert you're going to have more options. It's that simple. Extroverts are generally seen as being better "management material", mainly because other managers tend to be like that. And they like to hang out with people that are like them. Nearly every Sales person I have met has been an extrovert - many of them annoyingly so.
Being an introvert doesn't mean that you can't do these jobs. Just know that the vast majority of your peers are going to lean towards the extroverted side. Most importantly, if you're an introvert don't try to pretend that you're an extrovert. In the end, you'll be unhappy. Embrace who you are and find something you enjoy doing. That's the most important thing.
Holding the entire process in one's head, visualizing a change and then back inferring what that change implies you should do right now in the middle of that process. Both being a chef and being in IT require this skill.
I volunteer at a non-profit 1x/wk, and they struggle with technology. They have a full time "CIO" on staff, but I don't think he really knows what he's doing, and basically manages a few contracts for their website, a file server, network management, and he spends the rest of his time driving social media. The rest of the staff (about 25) come to me for help anything and everything, and I'm only there 4 hours a week.
I'm to the point where I don't really enjoy the cube life and program management, I wouldn't mind working at the non-profit full time in an operations capacity, my skills would definitely improve their technology abilities, and make things more efficient.
My first "real job" was as an artist for a newspaper (even though my degree is in IT, I also do graphic & web design). Because of my IT degree, though, I was the backup for the IT person should he go on vacation/sick leave. Eventually, I became the systems manager there.
Years later, after working for a failed dot com and getting back into the trenches as a newspaper geek doing production work, my IT experience gave me a leg up in doing a lot of troubleshooting/automation, and I was also able to suggest upgrades to the production setup that improved our print quality by leaps and bounds. Now I'm working as a web/digital artist again, and still utilize my IT experience here in there (if not for anything else, then to make IT's life easier when submitting support requests).
Nearly any office job can be improved by some IT experience, especially in the realm of scripting/automation. The best part about IT experience? Understanding how and why something works (or doesn't). General logic skills combined with a little tech/scripting experience can go a long way to improving your workflow.
"Better to be vulgar than non-existent" -Bev Henson
Most offices need a "go to guy" for IT issues. If you can "be that guy" it makes you much more employable.
Also, in you social clubs, religious organizations, etc. if you are known as the "IT guy" people can call when the church computer goes on the fritz, it can help you with networking for your next paid job or your next freelance gig.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Owning a pub or a restaraunt means you have systems like Micros and Aloha as your Point of Sale machines. Losing these during a night when you're expected to process $7,000 an hour in credit card transactions is basically game over. getting your PoS hacked means a sizeable number of regular customers will never, ever return. Working on the 1:8 rule (1 bad experience translates to 8 bad stories) you'll take an identifiable hit that might cost you a new draught line or a much needed walk-in freezer repair.
Understanding hubs, switches, and general network connectivity helps greatly. shaving 2 seconds off a credit card transaction because you know QoS and packet shaping translates into happier customers and faster sales...your bartenders spend more time slinging product instead of standing at the register. If you know how to run cat5 you can basically put a PoS anywhere, anytime. it helps during summer if you want/have a patio because your servers are now twice as quick as the competition next door. Learning to restrict PoS systems to local networks and how to segment and protect the customers who want free wifi and the luxury of a credit card transaction is something of a benefit as well. Speaking as a pub owner, when my neighborhood cable internet died and I knew how to configure my android tablet as a stand-in 4g router for credit cards, I watched two bars close early and had to call in an extra bartender to handle my friday night crowd.
Good people go to bed earlier.
I mean, duh. And someone who already knows computers who is learning how to program is invariably going to be more competent than those morons taking "Learn X in Y weeks" courses with dollar signs in their eyes.
By a strange coincidence, “None at all” is exactly how much suspicion the ape-descendant Arthur Dent had that one of his closest friends was not descended from an ape, but was, in fact, from a small planet somewhere in the vicinity of Betelgeuse. Arthur Dent's failure to suspect this reflects the care with which his friend blended himself into human society - after a fairly shaky start. When he first arrived fifteen years ago, the minimal research he had done had suggested to him that the name ‘Ford Prefect' would be nicely inconspicuous. He will enter our story in thirty-five seconds and say “Hello, Arthur.” The ape-descendant will greet him in return, but in deference to a million years of evolution, he will not attempt to pick fleas off him; Earthmen are not proud of their ancestors and never invite them round to dinner.
It also depends on the scientist.
I was a software engineer for most of a decade. Then I was a computational biochemist, and now I'm a neurobiologist.
My computer background opened an amazing number of doors for me when I decided to go into research. There aren't a lot of people who can deal with both computers and biology well. (Though, sadly, there are a lot of people who are equally half-assed in each, which predictably produces a full ass...)
After all, working with computers, you're already used to dealing with other people's shit.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
You never know where your career will take you. My cousin trained for IT, got a job doing programming for the IT accounting department of a rather large bakery firm here in Canada, and in 2-3 years was managing projects. From there he shifted to managing the department, which mean he now had both accounting and IT people reporting to him. Fast forward another 20 years and he's the director of the finance department, and hasn't touched a keyboard in over 15 years for anything other than email.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
I was a professional magician before I was in IT, so I enjoyed your post. A good sysadmin / programmer who knows how to use their shell and scripting language can also do what looks like magic. "You spend four hours every Friday doing that? Here, let me just type this in real quick ... done." You can accomplish in seconds what takes hours for other people to do. In other words:
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic - Arthur C. Clarke
I've certainly found this to be true in my experience being self-employed. Customers would buy whatever I recommended because my recommendations were clearly based on significant technical knowledge. Of course it was also important that at times I would advise them NOT to buy product X from my company. If the product wasn't a good fit, I'd definitely let them know. Sometimes I'd suggest that they add a calendar entry nine months later, to see if their business was ready for the product at a later date, because they didn't need to spend the money on it _yet_.
Suggestions from the c2-dot-com wiki (AlternativeJobsForProgrammers):
Technology Related:
- ProjectManager
- ChiefArchitect / TechnicalLead
- development team coach
- DBA
- TechnicalWriter or TechnicalEditor?
- consultant
- teacher/trainer
- OpenSourceDeveloper
- marketing (of software or development tools)
- test engineer
- system/network/web/database administration
- CTO/technologist/IT manager
- hardware designer
- technical recruiter
- technical/sales support
- web site design
- Ad-hoc report and/or query writer
Non-Tech:
- accounting/bookkeeping/controller
- insurance adjuster
- business owner
- Law
- MassiveAlgaeFarming
- T-shirts/humorist/cartoonist (Ex: Dilbert)
Blue-collar trades:
- Electrician
- Plumber
- Auto-mechanic
- Municipal equipment mechanic
- Cat juggler [tsk tsk jokers]
Table-ized A.I.
c/c++ for 10 years then back to school for veterinary medicine
Craft brewing increasingly has IT bits and gadgets in it -- from tracking and delivery systems to cell counters (and even PCR widgets in larger breweries) to controllers on the brewing equipment (solenoids and the like), often controlled through what looks suspiciously like cheap Android tablets.
I don't know if you could make a living out of solely implementing an IT infrastructures at small breweries (seriously, I know of lots that get into trouble with the feds over poor record keeping), but it's something to consider. Ruggedized, waterproof tablets for brewers to enter notes and logs into. Tracking info for kegs and batches. Record keeping for tax purposes. Mobile connectivity for sales and delivery guys. Accounting. At your smaller breweries, all those systems are ad hoc, if they exist at all.
And, of course, your larger craft breweries may have some systems in place, but, like any other modern business, all those systems need tending to.
It's a growth industry (beer sales are, overall, down, but craft sales are still seeing double digit growth). A reasonably high good person to douche ratio. Beer.
Recipes require technical skill to follow. Words matter. Mincing is different than chopping. Internal temperatures, resting, and precise amounts are all very familiar concepts. Recipes are documentation. Anyone who can't cook simply can't figure out how to follow very precise directions in-sequence.
In my kitchen, I re-write/re-format recipes into documentation -- I lay things out in a manner consistent with technical writing, which makes things oh so much easier and faster to follow. None of these long-winded, yet abbreviated-to-shit method paragraphs, and long-listed ingredient columns which seven different units of measure. The funny part is that even though my programming is rarely object-oriented -- I simply don't care for it -- my recipes are almost always object-oriented! Well, bowl-oriented. Go figure.
I can do pretty much everyone's job better than them at my entire company just on the basis of typing speed, internet information lookup speed, and MS Office proficiency. So you can basically get any job. I'm insisting to my HR department only hire people with moderate to advanced computer skills because we've hired some real winners that don't even have a computer at home. I am not kidding when I say they are incapable of doing their job because of it.
My #1 suggestion is importing computer parts from China in bulk and reselling them. After building and repairing thousands of PCs at my shop, I know that Crucial M500's would fly off the shelves if I put them on ebay but Kingston value line RAM would sit idle for all eternity until I sold it at a loss. No normal tech warehouser and reseller knows that.
My wife is a bookkeeper for a small non-profit. She asked me to help her automate some reports, which required me to know Windows, Crystal Reports, how to use window's task scheduler, and a fair amount of Oracle skill to hack the back end. As I was working on it, she mentioned that she wished she new SQL so she could use Crystal Reports better.
While I was working on the system, I noticed that the method they use to backup Oracle isn't a good, solid method. I'm going to try to understand what they are doing a little better, and if I still feel it's substandard, I might try to implement a more acceptable method.
If my wife had more IT skills, she could do a lot of these things herself. I already have significant accounting skills that I've earned over the years working with accounting departments, so it wouldn't take too much for me to get an accounting technical degree and become a bookkeeper.
So while I think there are many places where IT skills come in handy, any person expecting to make an IT-like salary doing so will probably be disappointed. And I doubt if I would be very challenged in a job where many of the tasks are simple data entry tasks, with only occasional needs for higher levels of skills.
All that being said, I have contemplated getting an accounting degree and provide accounting services when I retire in 5-10 years. It's something that I can do part time, doesn't require the huge investment in keeping up-to-date like being in IT or being a CPA. But I doubt if I'll be able to maintain the same salary/benefit level that I do today. So it's a two edged sword, I can leverage my IT skills to provide better accounting services than some, but I'll never be able to justify the same salary unless I become a CPA.
Not a problem if I'm retired and have retirement income that I'm only interested in supplementing. Or I have paid off my house, credit cards, and any other debt and have reduced my income needs significantly.
I think whether or not someone can leverage an IT background into a new job depends on a lot more than just learning a new trade.
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
Ha! Fooled you! I never post short answers!
Seriously, I have used IT skills in archaeology. You are basically examining a system where some components are black-box and some are white-box, where you have fragments of state information at given points in time, a library of studies into systems containing similar components, and another library of studies into system dynamics.
Archaeologists trained only in archaeology have only recently started to grasp the importance of systems analysis and reverse engineering. They are still not too clued-up on how to perform rigorous testing of black-box environments, which is why most of them view the subject as a pure humanity and haven't quite figured out that pure humanities don't actually exist.
They are also not very good at understanding how to store, retrieve or correctly associate vast amounts of information. A rather essential skill, one might think, when you can be gathering hundreds - sometimes thousands - of fragments in a relatively small area. It's why reassembled objects tend to be rare, even though pieces that fit together are a lot more common. The data is incompletely collected or never examined for patterns.
I do not recommend barging in and telling them how to do their job. Even though sometimes I wish someone would. Not Invented Here Syndrome and the usual evil of Office Politics applies just as much to the Mediocre Outdoors as to the Even More Mediocre Indoors.
On the other hand, applying the skills, making the necessary observations, making the necessary records, installing a database with just a tad more oomph than Microsoft Access (though leave the basic card entry screen) - that will help you not miss the blindingly obvious.
Hardware Engineer? Pffft! It is not that complex to convert the Open Source hardware spectrometer into an Open Source hardware thermoluminescence ceramic dating device. Might not be as good as the high-end commercial rigs, but high-end commercial rigs are very expensive to buy time on and archaeologists don't have the cash to even afford a decent hat and bull whip any more. But if you can, through decent approximation, show that there's something interesting going on, cash will materialize.
Please bear in mind, though, that although it's not complex to do the conversion, it's not hard to screw it up either. Do test things and do use a better camera than the one the prefab kit comes with.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Fiction. Although I primarily write science fiction, I've also dabbled in fantasy, horror, paranormal, and all manner of genres over the years. Sure, my sci-fi series has a sentient robot as an antagonist and my IT knowledge has been invaluable, but even in the paranormal and horror genres I can usually wiggle something in. "Approximate knowledge of many things" is by far the most useful skill for a writer to have, but it also helps to have a specailisation too.
Check out my sci-fi book "Lacuna" at http://goo.gl/MVxX8
You can use code to analyse data, help see patterns. The most important aspect though is that we are used to figuring out hard things, and know we must follow rules for something to work, and that giving up only means you don't get the thing done.
After ~20 years working in every area of IT, for a number of reasons I've recently transitioned over to "Online Content Developer" as a career track.
I'm just starting a new job with a major supplier of accounting / tax software. Most of the reason I was hired was my IT background, since a big part of my job will be helping manage the flow of information (internally and, eventually, to the public) from the tech support and consulting departments to other areas of the company.
In this new role, I use some of my technical skills just getting the most from all the internal systems and platforms here, but mostly I draw from my experience with helping people use technology. I understand tech support from both sides of the equation, and can help translate issues to people who don't. Later on I'll be tasked with helping interpret complex accounting software issues for the general public as well.
In the past I've done similar work for a vocational training company, and again my experience with developing helpdesk materials, Knowledge Bases and other forms of online training was a big reason why I was hired. (I also have a track record in writing and video production, with lots of exposure to online marketing methods as well - but many people have that without being techies)
FWIW!
Perfectly Normal Industries
I went to do a Masters in Library Science after several years in IT and teaching. The IT skills and experience got me my first job out of grad school (granted, I was one of 2 students at the time who knew anything about computers beyond how to turn the darn machine on), and every one since. Now I manage a large academic library and an academic technology shop (supporting faculty who want to teach online or digitize materials or incorporate more interactivity in their courses, etc.) for the same college. Having the IT background has been exceptionally helpful in managing relationships with campus IT and other IT shops. I tell prospective librarians to get all the tech skills they can - they're in high demand for things like building digital collections, digitizing archival materials, building library systems, etc.