• We’re currently investigating an issue related to the forum theme and styling that is impacting page layout and visual formatting. The problem has been identified, and we are actively working on a resolution. There is no impact to user data or functionality, this is strictly a front-end display issue. We’ll post an update once the fix has been deployed. Thanks for your patience while we get this sorted.

Think about switching careers to IT, could use some advice.

B

BD2003

Lifer
So I'm having one of those days where I take a step back and wonder how on earth I got into the field I'm currently in. I'm a Cytotechnologist, something prob most of you have never heard of....I'm basically a pathologist's assistant. Half of my time is spent screening biopsies like Pap smears, which sounds interesting, but in reality is more like watching flowered wallpaper going by and marking the flowers that look abnormal. The other half is spent performing needle biopsies, basically confirming people are going to die. It pays well (~70-80K a year) and I'm good at it, but I'm absolutely bored to death with it, and I'm really tired of monotony, the paperwork and the constant reminder of my mortality.....

Anyways, I've been into PCs since I was a kid, everyone always assumed that would be my line of work. I still tinker with this stuff every day, and I still enjoy it. I read books like windows internals for fun, I do pointless things like RAIDing SSDs just because I can...etc. I've never been particularly good at math though, and although I can program a bit and I'm sure I can learn it to the extent I need to, it isn't really my thing.

What I really want to do (I think at least), is build and manage BIG computers - datacenter type stuff. Giant storage arrays, GPU supercomputers, etc. I'm fairly certain if someone gave me the chance, I'd learn everything on the job with little issue - but I know the real world doesn't work like that. So in terms of formal education, what should I be targeting? Computer science seems more programming oriented, engineering more hardware design oriented....what degree/field should I be looking at for this?

And if anyone in the field would indulge me and give me some idea of the current state of it - how the job market is, what the day to day is like, what the pay is like, etc....I'd be super appreciative.

Edit: A few things I should mention. I'm 34, live in Long Island, NY (close enough to commute to NYC if I have to), and I already have two bachelors degrees. A BA in psychology and a BS in cytotechnology.
 
Last edited:
I've been doing IT for 28 years and regret it every single day of my life. The stress is just not worth it. Yes, I make great money being an IT director now but I wish I stayed away from IT back in the 80s and kept it as a hobby.

The IT market right now is so saturated that unless you are a wizard programmer or databse guru I would stay away. Building PCs, today IMO, is not worth it as far as a job goes. PCs are so cheap now that its easier to toss one away and just buy a new one. I personally just replace them rather than troubleshoot.
 
Oyeve said:
I've been doing IT for 28 years and regret it every single day of my life. The stress is just not worth it. Yes, I make great money being an IT director now but I wish I stayed away from IT back in the 80s and kept it as a hobby.

The IT market right now is so saturated that unless you are a wizard programmer or databse guru I would stay away. Building PCs, today IMO, is not worth it as far as a job goes. PCs are so cheap now that its easier to toss one away and just buy a new one. I personally just replace them rather than troubleshoot.
Click to expand...


I'm not interested in building desktops though, more like the backend of cloud computing, etc...

What's so stressful about it though?
 
Are you prepared to go back to school and reach at least a masters level of education in comp science? Are you prepared to work the thankless trenches with less salary then you have now while you develop the skills and talents the big companies are looking for?

Are you prepared to enter a job market where being 30 is old and being 40 is damn near unemployable (except in management)?

If so, I say go for it.
 
Yeah, I wouldn't make that switch (and I work in IT, with a BA in Music, incidentally.)

You'd take a hefty pay cut up front, and if paperwork and monotony are the beefs you have with what you do now.... that's a constant.

I think you need a vacation and some new hobbies.
 
Do you have enough saved away to take a few months off? If so, I'd suggest looking for a company offering internships in the fields in which you're interested. You won't typically get paid anything but you'll get an idea of what the job requires and what you'll need in order to succeed.
 
sourceninja said:
Are you prepared to go back to school and reach at least a masters level of education in comp science? Are you prepared to work the thankless trenches with less salary then you have now while you develop the skills and talents the big companies are looking for?

Are you prepared to enter a job market where being 30 is old and being 40 is damn near unemployable (except in management)?

If so, I say go for it.
Click to expand...

I don't really agree with the age part, but overall this is a good comment. Working at the entry level while not getting stuck/pigeon-holed as a support/noc tech, all while developing marketable skills will take a lot of time with no guarantee. Skills and experience, along with industry contacts are what will get you these jobs.
 
BD2003 said:
I'm not interested in building desktops though, more like the backend of cloud computing, etc...

What's so stressful about it though?
Click to expand...

You want to get into engineering then ... otherwise you won't be building anything.

What you might be talking about is an architect job, where you design and purchase the hardware, but you needs years of experience for that. No one will trust a no one, and even with 5~ years of experience in the 'right' area you won't land an architect job. The architects here have been doing IT work for 15-20 years, and are fighting over who gets that job.

If you want to be a data center monkey, where you plug stuff in, move physical hardware around in a data center you could do that. You won't get paid a lot though.... maybe 15~ an hour. Good news is you could probably jump right into it as it's considered entry level.

If you want to deal with SANs/NASs all day, then look at NETAPP, dell complinet, HP, IBM, etc ... they all have their own network storage solutions.

You either need to focus, or broaden that job scope. Either way though, you're going to start down in the shit, unless you know someone who is willing to risk their business on you managing their hardware.
 
Last edited:
Making the switch isn't impossible, but most places are looking for years of experience and know how over education. This doesn't mean they aren't looking for papers to back it up. If you don't have it, you will be at a disadvantage when trying to look for a job.

Stressful and thankless is a good way to describe your life in IT. Stressful because decisions are made above you based solely on money. Then it becomes your job to try to make it work in ways it was never intended to on impossible timelines, and your fault when it doesn't. More times than not you will be the scapegoat, not the hero.
 
Last edited:
You complain about monotony, but that's EXACTLY what IT is. Especially if you're going to be doing entry-level stuff and especially working NOCs in a data center.
 
sourceninja said:
Are you prepared to go back to school and reach at least a masters level of education in comp science? Are you prepared to work the thankless trenches with less salary then you have now while you develop the skills and talents the big companies are looking for?

Are you prepared to enter a job market where being 30 is old and being 40 is damn near unemployable (except in management)?

If so, I say go for it.
Click to expand...


Let's put it this way....I'm not a naive college kid. I'm trying to be realistic about it. I'm prepared to pay dues, and I don't expect anyone to hand me a high paying job on a platter. I've also got real world responsibilities like rent and a child. But I've got savings, and my wife makes a comparable amount and is willing to support me for a while. My current job is also rare in that it can also be done part time at the same pay, with a completely flexible schedule. And I can listen to lectures etc while I work. So I wouldn't be quitting my day job to pursue some wild dream, more likely slowly transitioning and building the necessary skills without jumping off a cliff.

A big problem with my job (and health care in general), is that it's extremely difficult to break out of your position. Everything requires a professional license, which requires 1-2 years of full time, extremely expensive study, and you basically start at the top in that field. To advance in my field I'd basically need to go to medical school, and I'm legally forbidden to do anything at a similar pay level without a degree/license. It was nice to start fresh out of school making 70K, but now there's nowhere to go but management.

One of my main concerns would be that I'd be perceived as "too old" to break in to the field...is that really an pervasive issue across the industry? Is it really that saturated?

And also....anyone here actually like their IT job?
 
I like my IT job (was network administrator, now senior systems engineer), but I am technical, not management. I personally do not want to do management anytime soon, but maybe when I get older. From what i've seen in the companies i've worked for, management is first to get downsized.

Those saying it's boring/monotonous, depends what you get into, and what you're allowed into. When I was a net admin for a small (5k size) company, I could do everything, vmware, cisco, netapp, wireless, F5's, windows, linux, etc I touched everything.

As a senior systems engineer (this company is 40k+ in size), I deal with mostly apache, tomcat, java, LDAP, Oracle SQL, inhouse software, linux, that's it. I get paid a bunch more doing this, as it's more specialized. But I do miss the wide range of stuff I got to work on... as a jack of all trades. That's why I keep madgenius around, lets me play with other stuff 😀

I am 26, so I am not sure how the too old thing really plays out. Minneapolis seems pretty booming in the IT market, so I don't think a lot of people have a hard time landing anything. We had a few lay offs on my team, but they were dragging us down anyway. We replaced them with some older gents (one is 44 the other is 48) who seem to know their shit, but they said they were looking for about 6-12 months before they landed this job.
 
Last edited:
BD2003 said:
Let's put it this way....I'm not a naive college kid. I'm trying to be realistic about it. I'm prepared to pay dues, and I don't expect anyone to hand me a high paying job on a platter. I've also got real world responsibilities like rent and a child. But I've got savings, and my wife makes a comparable amount and is willing to support me for a while. My current job is also rare in that it can also be done part time at the same pay, with a completely flexible schedule. And I can listen to lectures etc while I work. So I wouldn't be quitting my day job to pursue some wild dream, more likely slowly transitioning and building the necessary skills without jumping off a cliff.

A big problem with my job (and health care in general), is that it's extremely difficult to break out of your position. Everything requires a professional license, which requires 1-2 years of full time, extremely expensive study, and you basically start at the top in that field. To advance in my field I'd basically need to go to medical school, and I'm legally forbidden to do anything at a similar pay level without a degree/license. It was nice to start fresh out of school making 70K, but now there's nowhere to go but management.

One of my main concerns would be that I'd be perceived as "too old" to break in to the field...is that really an pervasive issue across the industry? Is it really that saturated?

And also....anyone here actually like their IT job?
Click to expand...

Don't think we don't like our jobs. I love my job, but IT is thankless and grueling. I mostly made the age comment as a joke, but it's partially true. Many startups are run by young people and therefor tend to hire mostly young people. Also as you age it gets harder to keep up with the trends, and that can make you less employable.

But the reality of the situation is that you are probably not going to increase your salary beyond that 70k (not in the short term of the next 10 years). I've been in this field for 15 years and the only way I'm breaking 6 figures is to move out to the coast where the cost of living is higher.

Many of the complaints of your current job are going to be true in IT. You can easily get stuck in a pidiginhole. Many IT people don't even notice until it's too late. You then struggle to break out without changing companies, and those companies are not going to want to hire you without X years doing the job they are hiring for. It's a catch 22.

I had a hard time going from just being a vmware/linux guy with a programming background into devOps. Nobody wanted me for DevOps because I had never 'done' DevOps. It didn't matter that I had 5 years of programming experience and 7 years of systems exp. I just didn't' have the title they were looking for. Luckily I found a place that didn't have DevOps, and I made a nitche for myself over time.

Education, like the medical field, is never ending. I've got a list of certs to constantly study for and update, new tech to keep on top of (unless I want to be out of a job with aged skills), and the constant maintenance and upkeep of the environment. 14 hour days are a norm for me most of the time (during audits, upgrades, migrations, etc). It's high stress in that a single mistake can cost my company thousands in minutes and my job in hours.

But that's what I strive on, high risk with the only reward being my self satisfaction that my team was able to create something from nothing.

If that sounds fun, get back to school!
 
I am not sure about that sourceninja, I make more then 80k at my day job and i've been doing actual IT for maybe 7~ years. I am on track to break into 100k if I balls up and take one of the lead jobs or something. You are right though, cost of living will be a factor of wherever you land a job. My 80k in Minneapolis is probably like 200k in any of the tech hubs in Cali, haha.

I see the same thing with titles, I am surprised I was able to transition from Network Administrator to Systems Engineer ... luckily I knew someone, not sure I would have been able to make the jump if I didn't.
 
sourceninja said:
Don't think we don't like our jobs. I love my job, but IT is thankless and grueling. I mostly made the age comment as a joke, but it's partially true. Many startups are run by young people and therefor tend to hire mostly young people. Also as you age it gets harder to keep up with the trends, and that can make you less employable.



But the reality of the situation is that you are probably not going to increase your salary beyond that 70k (not in the short term of the next 10 years). I've been in this field for 15 years and the only way I'm breaking 6 figures is to move out to the coast where the cost of living is higher.



Many of the complaints of your current job are going to be true in IT. You can easily get stuck in a pidiginhole. Many IT people don't even notice until it's too late. You then struggle to break out without changing companies, and those companies are not going to want to hire you without X years doing the job they are hiring for. It's a catch 22.



I had a hard time going from just being a vmware/linux guy with a programming background into devOps. Nobody wanted me for DevOps because I had never 'done' DevOps. It didn't matter that I had 5 years of programming experience and 7 years of systems exp. I just didn't' have the title they were looking for. Luckily I found a place that didn't have DevOps, and I made a nitche for myself over time.



Education, like the medical field, is never ending. I've got a list of certs to constantly study for and update, new tech to keep on top of (unless I want to be out of a job with aged skills), and the constant maintenance and upkeep of the environment. 14 hour days are a norm for me most of the time (during audits, upgrades, migrations, etc). It's high stress in that a single mistake can cost my company thousands in minutes and my job in hours.



But that's what I strive on, high risk with the only reward being my self satisfaction that my team was able to create something from nothing.



If that sounds fun, get back to school!
Click to expand...


Lol, nothing sounds fun about 14 hour days. If that's the norm, count me out. I work 9-5 with an hour for lunch, get paid time and a half for overtime (~60ish an hour), and the moment I clock out I don't give work a second thought.

It just seems odd to me that a field that requires such a high level of technical expertise can be so brutal on their employees. I hear over and over how these tech companies can't find enough qualified candidates, but then they treat their employees like they're replaceable like walmart? How can I reconcile that?
 
You would just trading one monotonous job for another. Are you really that into computer science, networking technologies, etc.?
 
It depends what job you land. I used to leave work and not think about work at all. Working in a hosting environment, I get calls if something blows up and the juniors can't fix it...but it's generally maybe 5~ hours every 3 months I put in of OT. I used to be the junior guying oncall, rotated amongst 4 other guys, and sometimes i'd put in 20-40 extra hours that week...man those paydays were awesome because I was salaried and paid time and a half on OT.

I now work 9-4 with 1-2 hour lunches ... as long as you get your work done, a good manager will not care about the 'hours' put in.
 
I love my job. IT consultant since 1993. I look after a few small to medium businesses and one small city (half days there and the rest of my clients in the afternoon or jump if there is an emergency). 140k in a place with slightly higher than average cost of living.
But. This is not something you can jump into. Being a jack of all trades means years and years of experience.
Networking, tcpip, vmware, servers, PC's, Exchange, msoffice, Active directory, Group policy, DNS, DHCP, SQL, security and a host of different software that is specific to your clients business.

Edit: I do weekend maintenance. I log in saturday or sunday mornings, check backups and server health, install updates and reboot servers. Takes 1 to 2 hours. I bill them each for 1 and then I go Golfing having just made $700.
 
Last edited:
ViviTheMage said:
I am not sure about that sourceninja, I make more then 80k at my day job and i've been doing actual IT for maybe 7~ years. I am on track to break into 100k if I balls up and take one of the lead jobs or something. You are right though, cost of living will be a factor of wherever you land a job. My 80k in Minneapolis is probably like 200k in any of the tech hubs in Cali, haha.

I see the same thing with titles, I am surprised I was able to transition from Network Administrator to Systems Engineer ... luckily I knew someone, not sure I would have been able to make the jump if I didn't.
Click to expand...

The IT field in my area is pretty small. We basically all know each other. There are very few people here making over 90k. Some of the really good CCNE cisco guys fall into that category, but your talking a handful of jobs that are probably going to be filled until those guys retire.

I did get an offer a few years back for Minneapolis, the tech field is pretty good up there. It was an mid level programming position and they were paying 70k. We checked it out but ultimately the cost of living was just high enough to make it not worth the move. I lucked out and got a better offer closer to home a few months later.

Realistically I might hit 6 figures in the next 5 years. Hopefully finishing my masters degree and focusing on getting into IT management will make that a reality.
 
It's not ALL bad, which is why people find it difficult to leave once they are in. For instance for me, I work from home 99% of the time. I can take comp time/half day/hour here or there whenever I need to assuming I don't have back to back meetings all day. I can take days off/vacation pretty much on a whim.

I do find the salary conversation interesting though. I cleared 6 figures within 6 years in a moderately low cost area of the country. I do work for a large bank doing NAS/SAN work which may be the difference. I used to love my job, but large changes in the management and direction as well as cutbacks on people in the last 2 years have made everyone on the IT sides lives miserable. Now I tolerate my job with promises of it will get better.

In IT though, the big thing to remember is if you value your 8-5, then it probably isn't for you.
 
Some people want the challenge and the associated stress, others don't. I enjoy the work and the challenges. Problem solving is great fun.
 
I'm trying to break into IT myself and instead of going for a 4 year degree (i already have one) I'm just pursuing entry level certifications right now.

I'm starting with the A+ then getting CCNA after that. I currently work in probably the most stressful job imaginable (healthcare management) and don't make enough money doing it for the amount of effort and time I put in. I would be elated to get an entry level PC tech/network tech job for 35,000 a year just to be working with technology and not having to deal with low life scum employees anymore.

I'd suggest looking at the certification route if you already have a few degrees. Most of the time the people doing the initial candidate search could care less about you if you do not have that certification listed on your resume.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Back
Top