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?"

Comments

It's all "tech"-ish

[alphatel]

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.

Drinking

[what2123]

Mostly campfire talk and bar speak. These skills always help me find a way to keep on talking while the drinks keep pouring.

additional skill

[akume325]

professional resume consulting.

None / Driving

[Stargoat]

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.

Whoredom

[korbulon]

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.

Automotive

[drinkypoo]

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.

Re:Automotive

[TWX]

The only automotive service job that an IT guy might be able to do with no prior experience would be as the service manager. And that job usually goes to someone that worked their way up through being a mechanic, not a computer expert.

Computers were my hobby until I made them my profession and then started disliking them. I spent a decade learning how to work on cars for my hobby, and it took a lot of effort to get to where I was any good, and that's with platforms that are fairly simple to work on, ie, large RWD cars with simple control systems.

Sure, a computer geek can figure out how to use a CANBUS scanner, but will a computer geek be happy with busted knuckles, grease-filled lacerations, no cooling in the summer, no heat in the winter, caustic chemicals, etc? Probably not your average computer geek, we got into this profession with the intention to not get that dirty, and the worst we normally have to face is dustbunnies.

An IT professional could probably transition into industrial control systems, but would have to spend some time getting acquainted with the mechanical side and all the sweat and strain that it entails.

Re:Automotive

[rbrewrr]

I don't know if I completely agree with this assessment. The mechanics that service our fleet of vehicles needs to be fairly familiar with a variety of computer systems. We use a web-based issue ticketing and tracking system and our more tech-savvy technicians provide valuable feedback to make that system better. Our Cummins, International, and other vendors for brake systems, air conditioning systems, and others use software combined with various leads and interfaces to access computer data. Our newest vehicles can report information back to our system wirelessly within our shops. Precious few of our mechanics are familiar with the systems enough to use them to their potential. One of our newest acquisitions is a Snap-On Verus, which is a WinXP based tablet with a variety of modules that interface with vehicle systems for troubleshooting. It is capable of not only gathering the symptoms, but also searches online databases for highest probability resolutions for those problems. Again, I'm not entirely sure I agree with your assessment, because you may be correct that a computer geek might not want to do this type of work, what I see in our shop is a transition from the mechanic work of my father's day (basic ODB-II scanner capable, but more at home with a dwell meter and basic timing light) to the modern mechanic who must know how to effectively search databases and extract data from complex electronic systems.

Re:Automotive

[drinkypoo]

Sure, a computer geek can figure out how to use a CANBUS scanner, but will a computer geek be happy with busted knuckles, grease-filled lacerations, no cooling in the summer, no heat in the winter, caustic chemicals, etc?

There is still a certain element of that, and as I alluded, not everyone wants dirty hands. But there's less of that than ever before, and virtually everyone these days is working in a shop with at least heating, if not A/C. And the electronics guy rarely has to actually do any serious wrenching, although sometimes you will have to remove a bumper or something. These days, that's usually hilariously easy.

Pen testing and auditing

[sinij]

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.

everywhere

[flufythedestroyer]

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.

Finance

[PPalmgren]

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.

Re:Finance

[VIPERsssss]

This is the correct answer. If you help the Finance team reduce cost you're their best friend.
Automate some processes and remove 5 or 6 hours from the Month End Closeout and you have people who will always have your back.

Always, always make sure your report balances back to the Finance team's number.

Re:Finance

[PPalmgren]

You're completely off the mark and are thinking of sales and contracts, not finance. Finance from a company that sells a product or offers a service usually has a few key parts: Billing, Accounts Receivables, Collections, Accounts Payables, Accounting, Treasury, and Payroll ( which is sometimes tied to HR) are the big ones with others in tow.

Ever wonder how your 401k and other deductions get credited every week and all those corresponding companies, including your taxes, get paid to various entities? Payroll and HR does that. Ever wonder who figured out those line items on your bills? Billing does that. Ever wonder how a company funds all of their rent/electricity/payroll/operations on time without sitting on a massive wad of wasted cash but not overdrafting? Treasury does that, AP pays it. Ever wonder how they keep track of all that shit and make sure the right stuff is getting done, nothing more or nothing less? Accounting does that. There's a lot of background stuff that has to get done to keep all this working in a big company.

In my case, I started as what would usually be considered AP, but we had to figure out our own bills based on operational data and pay them with the backup for said bills. Lots of data sources, lots of reporting requirements, lots of special nuances in reporting, so hard to automate but useful to understand how to work with data. Now I'm doing something similar, but with payroll data instead of operations data.

Medical

[gordonb]

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.

IT Project Manager, Risk Management

[bluefoxlucid]

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.

Stage tech

[Sarten-X]

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.

Engineer at $CABLEMONOPOLY

[Slartibartfast]

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.

IT Sales

[alen]

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

Depends on your other skillsets

[Kingkaid]

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.

Most

[wisnoskij]

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.

For something completely different

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Government officials

[oneiros27]

I know it sounds strange, but there are a lot of skills that overlap:

• trying to think about problems that might arise before they actually do
• making sure that the stuff planned can actually get done in a reasonable amount of time
• dealing with conflicting goals from different stakeholders
• doing research to teach yourself strange concepts in only a week or two

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.

Training other people to use IT?

[matbury]

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.

Problem solving

[rvw]

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)

Re:No one expects the...

[mlts]

I tried my hand at sales once at one company... started telling prospective customers where the product is weak at and where they are going to have to throw man hours in order to get it working. Told them also where the advantage was for spending $BIGNUM for purchasing the product. Also told them the first three support calls they will be making when they start implementing.

Turns out, I gave them the only straight answer of any of the companies they were looking at... and they made the purchase... then found out that IT people didn't get commissions...

Librarian

[oneiros27]

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.

PR & Marketing, Agency work in general

[Qbertino]

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.

Forensics/Security

[bytethese]

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

[galgon]

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.

Re:Supply Chain

[ranton]

Good to know. I'm going to study that at university from this September. I suppose I should get in some classes programming etc while I'm there. Thanks!

My wife is in Supply Chain Management as an analyst, and here are some of the ares of IT that she feels would help her do her job better (and once the kids are in school she may have time to work on them).

Databases are by far the most important area of IT for someone working in SCM. Understand how database schemas work. Know basic optimization techniques; you probably won't need to implement it yourself but you may need to intelligently discuss this topic with your DBAs. Know the difference between OLAP and OLTP (and not just the definitions).

Simple programming knowledge will also help immensely. Sometimes you need to manipulate data in a way that your BI tools won't allow. The difference between an SCM analyst/planner that has full control over her data and one that doesn't is immense. You will often be fighting against intuitive solutions with data driven solutions, and usually that will be hard. So far my wife has had to rely on me when she needs something done and can't get developer resources assigned at work. Usually the result is a couple hours of work on my part to allow her to solve a problem that would have literally been impossible for a team of dozens without the use of custom code.

A few ideas...

[erp_consultant]

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.

Re:Running a local Non-Profit

[HornWumpus]

God no, stay away.

Many non-profits are hobbies for bored rich housewives who fancy themselves executives. Provides a nice deduction for their husband and his friends. Fund the wives' hobbies and keep them from fucking their tennis/yoga instructors.

The idea of non-profits is nice; the reality not so much. Can you say 'petty tyrant'? I knew you could.

Short answer:

[jd]

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.