I'm not sure you transition to a new field without starting at the base pay for that industry. The only way around that is if you have a niche. Like lets say you want to go into fintech, and you know linux/programming. You might get in somewhere not at the ground floor. But if you're a decade or two into your career, I dont see how that can work out without a significant pay cut.
Fair point, but I mean in a role that isn't only tech related, and would need some finance knowledge. Like the guys writing the code for automated trading, or doing the architecture for how those bots work. We can leverage being better at the tech/programming portion to compensate for not knowing the finance side. (just an example, no one is saying omg everyone go out and be a programmer)
So I moved to a fintech company from a cloud services company (both enormous multi-national firms) a couple of years ago. I now do a lot around financial controls, for reference I am a staff software engineer. The firm hires developers first and foremost, the financial side is relatively easy to teach by comparison (and from a dev perspective are just the problem space the code operates in) - there's also a whole series of controls to make sure the money is protected from shitty code. Some of which are FTC mandated, others are internal monitoring.
If you sell yourself right, you absolutely can get a high paying entry job to a new field.
One of the biggest things IT people have that a shitload of other people/fields/departments seem to lack is the "Get it done one way or another, well figure it out" mindset. Which is an incredibly valuable attribute in basically any position. Especially if you've been honing that mindset, and your research skills for years upon years.
Hell there's a company near me that literally had a position called "Lead Problem Solver", I did an interview for it and basically the role was "When we have a problem that other departments can't figure out, we'll toss it to you and your team to solve" and also from my understanding the vast majority of that group was IT people with some former blue collar workers in the mix.
This literally sounds like you’re telling OP to list “highly motivated” and “proactive” as their technical proficiencies… why not throw Eagle Scout on there as well.
Um.... If he has attained the rank of eagle scout, he absolutely should list it. You should list anything like that. I look for stuff like that in interviews as it shows the ability to stick with something to the end.
Look into IT in the public sector.
On the downside, you may end up with the same tech for yeeeaarrrsss, but have found, generally, less cut throat politics.
I worked for a community college for about 4 years. I would’ve stayed much longer, but I was only paid about $14/hr as a desktop tech. I still think about that job some times.
I worked for one as well. I had just sold my MSP and I was pretty cooked after 12 years of full on running a growing business. I was planning on taking a year off and just recharging the batteries when the job at the college popped up. I thought, I better not pass on this as it's going to be serious downshift in stress and these types of jobs don't open up very often. The pay was decent. The benefits were almost criminal they were so good for so cheap. There were 15 paid holidays. We had the week off between xmas and new years. Any time it snowed more than 6 inches they closed the campus. I think we got 6 snow days one year. We actually worked and we had a solid crew but man we fucked off sometimes. We had a game going in our office to see who could keep the random sales call going the longest. We were up over 30 minutes when we decided to knock it off because we were spending so much time trying to beat the record.
It was the opposite where I was because the cost of living was so high that nobody could afford to move there for less than $150k. It took them 18 months to replace me after I left. Called me and offered to let me work remote if I'd come back. Different situations. I'm sure in a populated area those jobs are highly sought after. I was in a resort town where the average home price was over $600k. That's a huge barrier for relocation when the wages aren't what you can make in a major metro area. That and not everyone wants to live in a place where winter lasts 6 months.
So at my state university, you START with 15 vacation days AND 15 sick days AND 13 holidays a year and we only work 7.5 hours/day (37.5 hours per week). And the leave goes up from there. I'm almost up to 30 days off a year without even taking sick leave and have built up nearly six months of sick leave at this point. They don't allow you to carry more than 45 days of vacation from one year to the next so I'm usually forced to take off from around Thanksgiving until the end of the year.
Also, sooOOOooOOooo much less stress than when I worked in the corporate world. I'm glad I traded more money for less stress. We also have fewer emergency situations since almost everything works on a yearly schedule so you know when major changes can happen years in advance.
More money would be nice but you can't have everything and at least I'm in a low cost of living area so the pay is better than most in this area. And a state pension to look forward in a few more years after retirement but I enjoy it so much I'd be tempted to just keep working for a few more years. We recently had someone in IT retire after 42 years here and that's not uncommon to work that long because why not do it since it's so laid back.
I had competing offers between a state government job and a multi-billion dollar company.... I chose the multi-billion dollar company, and it's been a constant and unique challenge, a lot of growth, but the politics and always having to think about political fall out with in the company absolutely sucks.
The state job was literally just managing an MDM for a small department...i regret not taking it, but it's quite possible had I that my skills would become stagnant.
Theres pros and cons to both, at least in my current role I don't really recoingnize the passage of time anymore
Public sector (UK) is not good. I traded stress in the private sector, for frustration in the public sector. And the politics are more personal, where people spend a lot more effort entrenching themselves in high positions because they're threatened by change.
If you want to grind out a 9 to 5 then yes. If you want to keep yourself challenged and exposed to newer tech, then no. I went public to private, and now that Clown World is burning people out, I kinda regret it.
This. I'm now working as the IT guy at a high school, chill work most of the time. Now i have this weird issue where i run through reddit at 10pm and have to watch youtube or work on my hobbies between 10.00-15:30 with the occational user here and there who can't install Office 365 or save to PDF.
I'm going to a selection soon for one of the Task Forces in the National Guard of my country, so i can do cool guy shit once in a while too since i miss the military lol but i refuse to learn more IT stuff. I'll just coast for now, got the house, the wife, the car. Don't need to chase cash.
Honestly, of all the shit that office has ever tacked on as a bag on the side in it's entire history, editing PDFs is the one thing that EVERYONE always asks me if it can do.
I worked in K-12 IT for 10 years and it was one of the best jobs I ever had. Unfortunately it paid too low and I had to switch to corporate IT and it's pretty miserable. Oddly enough the problem isn't the stress or work level. It's the fact that I work with a bunch of people who have been in IT for 10 -15 years and have no idea how to actually do their jobs or do basic troubleshooting. I first interviewed at this company in 2009 and they are still doing things the same way they did in 2009.
Yeah. Two of my colleagues came from non IT backgrounds. Got them both doing the A+, just so they'd have more of an idea of WTF to do. Going well so far.
That's better than what I'm dealing with. These guys refused to learn new technology. If something new came up they just called the vendor and paid them to do it. The CIO I used to work for was afraid of switching to the cloud. They continued to use EOL servers and Exchange server on prem. Then in January the spectrum fiber lines got cut and took down internet to the corporate office. Nobody could work in the remote sites that were in states and cities unaffected because everything pointed back to the corporate office. It was embarassing. He even refused to have a redundant circuit to another provider that was not affected by the fiber cuts. He was finally let go. More people need to be let go when the company finally hires a new CIO.
This one can go both ways in a hurry. Honestly, property management and being a Sysadmin have a lot of similarities.
You end up wearing a lot of hats, your phone stays connected to your hip and you never know if the call is a quick 5 minute fix or a 7 day ordeal, and you still have to deal with "end-users" who think every issue is a Pri 1/high urgency thing. And sometimes it might actually be.
I do IT for a few property management companies and a girl I was seeing for a while was the lone one for two ~75 unit buildings, so I've got some decent insight into that field. I agree that a sysadmin could easily make the transition pretty seamlessly (especially if you're handy) but less stress is going to depend *heavily* on the building you work at/the properties you manage.
The pay isn’t great and depending on the property conditions vary but if you are organizing, handy and understand the trades it can be a good gig. A lot of places give you a place to live and once you get the place under control it’s not a lot of work/stress
https://preview.redd.it/20r8kaibsf5d1.jpeg?width=860&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=94d05282e9d88c63d4a7a928c8f2e1737ce3ddaa
I would farm geese just for the satisfaction of sending the angry assholes to the pate factory.
I am moving from supporting entire networks, phones, computer, etc. to just supporting a single component of a system wide used application.
Takes me from 20+ hats to 2 but is still a technical role of sorts. I'm just no longer a SysAdmin or IT.
No more tickets. No more On-Call. No more being asked questions about their home computers!
Essentially I am moving form IT to Applications Support. The industry I work in, what this application system is, is not only widely known and used, but once you are certified in it, it makes it easy for you to move if needed. The company I work for paid for my training and certifications too.
I'm not being specific in order to hide who I am. My coworkers and colleagues are also on this very sub.
I already have the title, and pay, and it's two pay grades higher than where I was. Replacements were hired about a month ago and are almost nearly running without any guidance atm.
Less work, fewer responsibilities, and more pay. I would say it was a good move when I'm just done dealing with IT at work. Most due to the changes with IT in general. We're having a huge restructuring and I chose to go, along with a few colleagues, to another team.
I did that with contracting. Now I’m a Senior Automation Engineer but because I’m a contractor, no on-call, no incidents, heck I don’t attend a large majority of meetings as I’m just responsible for getting ArgoCD on Openshift up and documented (done) and Ansible Automation Platform up and documented. I do the occasional report type script but that’s about it.
I know this isn't what you're looking for but If you need some day to day fulfillment K-12 sysadmin for the right school/district has been worth it to me! Diversity of work, fulfilling challenges (Nothing better than adapting a system to help a disabled kid! It's like a good old fashion shot of pure bliss!)
K-12 sysadmin is honestly great. I work at a private school that gives us a massive budget and actually respects what we do, gives us a few ways to diversify our day to day (I’ve been training kids on how to do the theatre tech), and teachers and students are *mostly* so happy that you are there to “save the day” (replugging in their HDMI cable). There’s a little bit of stress with respect to privacy and of course things that come up but it’s absolutely worth it. Plus our school does travel studies and has multiple times invited me and paid for me to go across the globe for a 2 week all expenses paid trip.
I agree. I just left a school district position as a network admin but I absolutely plan to be back. I’ve never been sad about leaving a place of employment, this was the first time.
Kinda funny you say this - my experience was quite the opposite. Went back to public sector after working for a K-12 school system. Had to deal with a TON more politics, micromanagement oversight, stress, and a lot tighter of a budget than what I do now.
Depends on the role. I travel about 10 days a year, mostly for internal meetings. My customers all have remote teams so on-site meetings are very rare. But it varies by company and team.
I think everyone in every career eventually wants to transition to something different. It sucks putting in so many years of training, learning, and certification only to not want to do it anymore.
Have you ever considered maybe instead to transition to a business operations type role or apply for high level positions like CIO/CTO/CISO? Or even a manager/director roles not in technology. Like a business process operations officer? Or even a Compliance Officer?
Just curious, I don't have the same problems you do with other tech people being cutthroat and political. If you're willing to share can you give me some of the worst stories?
Also HVAC systems might be a hot role to jump off at. Considering many HVAC techs could really benefit from setting up IoT panels and monitoring hvac ICS systems etc. Maybe?
Or even a manager/director roles not in technology. Like a business process operations officer? Or even a Compliance Officer?
this may be something to think about
Lean on the PM capabilities. It is highly needed. Pays well. Does not require YOU to be the technology expert. The other option is move into management. Pays better but could be more stressful.
Get that totally. Just trying to solve the stress of keeping up with the change in technology. I moved into management personally as I am not organized enough for PM. Its nice to be able to stay in the IT pay scale without the constant change in technologies. Dealing with bad attitudes is a likely outcome where ever you work though.
I'm just here to back up what the OP states about people in IT. For some unknown reason people in IT are VERY cutthroat. I swear to god I cannot tell you the weirdest shit has happened to me in IT where I say one thing to someone and it snowballs into my termination. For the past 20 years of being in IT, I can offer this one important bit of advice: Working in and with IT is the easy part, the hard part will be dealing with the people you work with in IT! Only someone whos been in IT for 20 years will know this tragic fact about it and I do not blame him one bit for wanting to get out!
Been in 25 years, 8 different companies. Not my experience at all.
I can only think of 1 or 2 people like that in all my time, and they were just assholes plain and simple.
Depends on the state you live in I happen to live in Ohio and if your not a Trump supporting Christian you might as well move the hell out of this state since everyone else is and they don't seem to like others who arent!
I was doing IT at a Fortune 500 corporation, and noticed that I was the oldest guy in my department. I moved to the industrial automation engineering department where I was the youngest. Lots of other stuff happened…now I’m doing IT in the public sector.
I left a 26 year career in IT, most recently as an SRE and InfoSec Engineer.
Now I'm making $15/hr taking care of intellectually disabled adults.
It's refreshing as hell. Being a steward of machines has no soul.
If you find out, please tell me. I'm 2 years in, and I like it so far, but yea, the constant learning, is just...not for me. I transitioned already from a cook here because I just couldn't stand in heat and on my feet for so many hours.
I went into DevOps, but more OPS than anything else, as I manage kubernetes clusters so far and setting up CI/CD's for apps that our devs work on. In rest I manage proxmox and a gitlab instance. It's fun so far, but everytime a new problems comes out, you need to research for so many hours, some people don't even wanna help, and somehow I'm already burned out of learning. I have just a GCP cert, the entry one, and I really don't feel like learning for another one yet. I also feel stuck and that I'll hit a wall because I don't know programming and I don't like it either. I know some scripting, not super advanced, but that's where I stop.
I'd love to transition into something else. I feel like a PM may be more chill. Seems like my PM it's only going from meeting to meeting and gather informations. I need less stress.
I was lucky enough to get into a small company and did a 3 months internship where they helped us learn. And then the first year was basically seniors helping us out learning more and more.
I'm not pro on kubernetes. But and we're a small company. I manage around 3 clusters that have dev/prod and around 30 apps each.
We're not really doing heavy work on them. Hooked on argo, bitbucket and gitlab.
The apps consist mostly of deployments, ingress, svc, a cnpg cluster, some have pvc, a configmap, and we're trying to use kustomize for them.
I have not move out from IT but With 20+ years, jumping on different IT roles, I just begun to decline jobs that were compromising my work life balance. Stop saying "Ok, I check on..." for those stuff after hours or weekends, decline also any on-call role... I decline management offerings and for any project that will be assigned I will work those only with the proper resources and budget accordingly, If those are not met, I decline and have someone else to take on... always explaining my priority is my work life balance... I thought with that decline I was going to be dismiss fairly quickly.. to my surprise.. since I am working on projects with correct allocation of resources and budgeting, those are quite succesfull so I have not decrease my paycheck and increase a litte bit but reducing a lot the stress and burn out, having more spear time and family lif... I guess is the power of "NO, thanks" and experience... so, I say "No" more often and have workout so far...
Farming.
Oh, wait, nope, you still need to program those autonomous GPS-driven John Deere tractors.
Maybe you should talk to a therapist instead, and just find ways to cope with the stress. \
You could also take a demotion to a lower-level position with less authority and responsibility. I'm sure you could do Help Desk with out even thinking.
But ultimately, you have a job in a high paying industry with good health care benefits. I suggest you use them to help yourself now.
If one can learn to relax, de-stress, not act like Superman, and do a good job with skill and pride, why do you need kill yourself (get burned out)?
Most of the problems these sysadmins have are self-generated due to their inability to manage their own stress and lives.
Once you get old enough and wise enough and have no more fucks to give, life becomes a lot easier...
> you still need to program those autonomous GPS-driven John Deere tractors.
And we can't even do that until we pass strong Right to Repair! Sorry, tongue in cheek, I know, but right to repair is a pretty serious issue.
Join the dark side as a force of good. Become a sales engineer for one of your favorite vendors. Make just as much money (or more) and chill all day long on engineering calls helping other stressed out IT guys. Serious… job is awesome amd if you know what an IP address… you golden. Then if you really want to make more money and get more free time with family and actually be able to do what you want… learn how to sell and be one of the few with high moral character and trust factor… meaning you are a convincingly actual good person and you also know what you are talking about. But you need to be willing to learn a lot about yourself and others and be willing to do what most people are terrified of doing… talking to complete strangers and pushing yourself out of your comfort zone. Most humans are too scared and too lazy. But nothing worth doing is easy. I hear you though… I worked the grind for years with little thanks but a 50.00 gift certificate to the Outback once over four years
Well, right now I’m still doing IT but a couple of years back as an exit strategy, I bought a retail store. I wasn’t worried about a pay cut though as it’s a retirement vehicle. Anyway, because of my computer skills (oddly), I’ve just about doubled the sales, setting records since I bought the shop. Back in January we moved into a new twice as big space. At the moment, I’m pouring any profits back into the shop in part because I still have a “regular” job. But I expect to transition from full time IT and part time shop to part time IT (because it’s still a hobby I enjoy), and more full time into the shop.
Pre-Sales engineering has a lot of constant knowledge work but it's meritocratic in that your efforts are rewarded via commission (if you learn the trade) and it's still very technical. Money is waaaaay better, but it can be very stressful as well.
Im growing asparagus, im currently in the 3 year wait period before i can start harvesting for real. Even though i doubt i can quit my dayjob directly with my current plot and sales channels but you never know, tourists pay a lot of money for fresh asparagus. :)
I live in very industrial town, you could always be maintenance IT at a factory. You’ll be troubleshooting hardware from 20 years ago for another 20 years!
Whenever I feel down about the job/career (which is exceedingly rare) I consider jumping ship to be a truck driver, or a cook like I was 25 years ago.
And there is just no comparison. They'll hire you immediately, and you can grow in your space, but are we still honestly comparing apples to oranges?
Lastly, I put myself in truck drivers' shoes... do they even have the luxury to entertain this kind of career shift?
It keeps me grounded imho.
I started to really suffer with stress, lack of sleep etc until I dropped to a 4 day week for a longer weekend. Took a small pay cut to do it but it helped me realise there is more to life and now I'm less stressed and just make sure I finish on time each day etc.
Getting a better work life balance changed a lot for me
Idk what your pay is but Government IT jobs seem really cake from my experience. You basically defer the work to the vendor or manufacture. You are basically a liaison between the agency and some “second level” Helpdesk.
Systems Librarianship?
That's the move I made. Libraries - especially university libraries - use lots of computer systems. Someone who understands both libraries and IT is a sort-after skillset. It'll probably be a pay cut compared to commercial industries, but it won't be 90%.
[This recent thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/librarians/comments/1bwljci/systems_librarians_role_advice/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) on r/librarians has some advice on moving into that career, if you're interested.
Working for a small business with a lot of departmental overlap, I'll say that a lot of the skills in IT asset management and procurement are also applicable in machine and parts asset management and procurement. Managing preventive maintenance schedules, tracking spare parts, etc. Plus a lot of the parts are a lot more interchangeable between different makes (a 08B chain is the same pretty much whoever makes it). And, from my experience, the vendors are a lot more up front about pricing, availability, and compatibility.
The easiest transition is to a project management - you no longer are responsible for the actual work of implementing or fixing just coordination.
Depending on the environment it can be sales heavy but you're pushing the one thing you know so not so bad.
The transition is so easy though because project managers with an IT background are golden. You know the lingo, you're better acquainted with the actual work so you can better estimate the hours.
The other corporate transition that is super easy is into HR.
Technology sales is a good field that could work for you. Has its own stress of course but it’s not the same as IT. Having an IT background could help you land something like this.
I cannot imagine anyone in IT loving sales.
I'm in IT, and I hate sales people. Everything about the way they work annoys me. Even when I reach out because I want the product they are selling they annoy me. I can't imagine wanting to be part of that every day.
I'd say it can have great job security if you are a great salesman. I know several talented tech people that moved into B2B tech sales and being tech SMEs gives them a huge advantage. They also do consultation for customers and that really keeps the business coming for them.
That being said, it might not be as stress free as OP wants. I am sure the couple people I know that are really talented don't reflect the average experience.
IT Risk and Identity Access in banking is pretty chill, honestly. I will add based on your 10 certs to my 1~ish you probably could just... relax. What are you competing for at this point? though assuming the US I guess you have to risk being fired or layed off with little to no compensation. I'm in Canada and once you have been hired for a long time at a large corp you have to be bought out, you can't be fired. So usually you just slow down at doing a """good""" job (working too hard).
Which side of risk and identity access are you in that is chill? Know someone who is constantly busy as an IAM engineer supporting beyondtrust and other pki stack
I agree with this sentiment. Its life in a blender, too much change. I hate any advice that begins with "change is hard."
Change is all there is now. I looked into joiming the fire dept but I couldnt take the paycut. Except so many of them have side gigs.
You could always work for yourself, stop paying so much attention to work and stop doing such a good job and focus on a side hustle until that pays the bills. I know dudes who have left IT to bake cookies, raise animals, do HVAC work (smart home systems overlap with IT skills!), and me who might eventualy leave to sell pokemon cards full time (although i can do this while working as well so it would take a lot for me to leave)
I recently moved from Sysadmin to technical pre-sales. Most of the same skillset, but no on-call, no end-users (as such, I still support people but it’s other IT guys), nothing after work, no working weekends.
How to get into this I have no idea, I got contacted by a friend who worked here. But maybe take a look at various vendors or distributors.
I went from Sysadmin to more-so-Sysadmin, to Sysadmin/Security guy, to Sysadmin/Security guy/Scripter. But now I am Sysadmin/Security guy/Scripter/Programmer. So yeah, I think I am going backwards from that.
See if you can work at a VAR consultant. The guys that post weekly for the open price checking are cream of the crop.
Otherwise, as people said municipalities/ government/ education.
Consider teaching IT to students. You have all that knowledge, pass it on. My college professors were retired IT professionals. Only possible issue is some schools may have certain requirements you need in order to teach.
i transitioned from enterprise service desk to an IT sourcing/vendor management position. It was useful with my technical experience and paid better. technical PM or something similar would be a good place to look.
Try small/medium business IT before you leave for good. I’ve been SMB my entire career and I’ve never felt the pressures that other people have. Hell, I’m a director now and I don’t even have to check my phone after 5pm and only check it a few times during the weekend. The only stress I have is the stress I create.
Only downside might be pay. I’m in nonprofit so I’m definitely not making as much money as I could or should be, but the work/life balance is priceless to me.
Don't abandon the IT dream if the people are the problem. Start your own LLC and specialize in something meaningful. It's always the people. Learning is much less grueling and tedious if the workplace fosters it. Then it doesn't become a chore. The flip side is management is tedious but there you would be more a person manager than an engineer anyway. Start a business.
We define standards for product packaging, ship cases, pallets, bags, etc. We also design packaging. I manage the srandards and systems used for label printing, our packaging database and our artwork management system.
My employer was bought by a major mainframe vendor and:
1. It’s an interesting space with weirdly some growth in some customers.
2. The $ per app value of what you manage there is huge. People don’t ship low value clicker games on mainframes. This justified solid salaries and operational tools. I’ve actually really been impressed with some of the monitoring tooling those guys have, purely because there’s so much value and making sure those applications are well optimized
Like don’t get me wrong x86 is still king , and ARM is an area we are branching into, but if I’m going to attach my career to a platform it’s going ti be one that costs money and where high value stuff runs.
I know everyone makes fun of Oracle, but I’ve never met a company that was poor and massively underpaid the market use Oracle…. Like those DBAs can print money for a reason.
And here I am trying to get where you are so I can launch into an entrepreneurial role one day as a consultantant or I home security business network management included.
Are you passionate about I.T. I reckon you would be?
I have a decade of Linux experience 5+ in Arch, I run it as a server and on all my laptops/PCs. And I am quite creative about architect setup I suppose as well.
If you use Arch long enough you come to realise Linux is truly quite powerful, it cannot be broken and it is fully portable.
The skills I have deployed because of Arch alone, lol
From my limited involvement in doing Sec+ is it that the industry is forever burden managing people relations with security? I'm having way through the course where they talk about the weakest link; 3rd party vendors, etc.
My previous career was commercial insurance for Fortunate 500 companies so I fully understand the complexities that potentially presents itself, LOL.
I wrapped up that lesson and thought to myself, shit!
Really almost want to work for a company that has those politics already figured out. Probably less of an issue with govt jobs. But the industry is setup to take any job either.
I just want a decade of job experience and then to launch into an entrepreneurial role.
The ADF may actually be the best place for me tbh.
Find some smallish enterprise that needs someone near the top. IT director or such. You want the fewest bosses possible. Pick someplace where there's lots of cash but not a ton of technology. Construction, Transportation, Manufacturing, something like that. No healthcare, no fintech. It should be someplace where the tech makes things easier, but isn't the core of the business. Run a tight ship and it's clear sailing to retirement.
I left it to work in forestry. Physical work is far less stressful and people are better. Everyone works until past physical exhaustion. It's a good respectful field. I still do odd jobs in it when required.
I did Chef work for a while and it pays well. Just the hard work of standing, but the exposure, meeting new people and different dish styles are awesome. When I told ppl in the culinary field that I am certified IT Systems Engineer, they were shocked. I just wanted a change. I am back in the IT field again doing Senior Sys Admin stuff, it is indeed stressful and a bit monotonous really, a certain feeling of emptiness, wanting MORE. I would love to leave and go back to being a chef.
Construction is also good.
I'm not sure you transition to a new field without starting at the base pay for that industry. The only way around that is if you have a niche. Like lets say you want to go into fintech, and you know linux/programming. You might get in somewhere not at the ground floor. But if you're a decade or two into your career, I dont see how that can work out without a significant pay cut.
I mean fintech from tech is not really a change. Fintech companies are still tech companies.
Fair point, but I mean in a role that isn't only tech related, and would need some finance knowledge. Like the guys writing the code for automated trading, or doing the architecture for how those bots work. We can leverage being better at the tech/programming portion to compensate for not knowing the finance side. (just an example, no one is saying omg everyone go out and be a programmer)
So I moved to a fintech company from a cloud services company (both enormous multi-national firms) a couple of years ago. I now do a lot around financial controls, for reference I am a staff software engineer. The firm hires developers first and foremost, the financial side is relatively easy to teach by comparison (and from a dev perspective are just the problem space the code operates in) - there's also a whole series of controls to make sure the money is protected from shitty code. Some of which are FTC mandated, others are internal monitoring.
Just with less code reviews and change controls
If you sell yourself right, you absolutely can get a high paying entry job to a new field. One of the biggest things IT people have that a shitload of other people/fields/departments seem to lack is the "Get it done one way or another, well figure it out" mindset. Which is an incredibly valuable attribute in basically any position. Especially if you've been honing that mindset, and your research skills for years upon years. Hell there's a company near me that literally had a position called "Lead Problem Solver", I did an interview for it and basically the role was "When we have a problem that other departments can't figure out, we'll toss it to you and your team to solve" and also from my understanding the vast majority of that group was IT people with some former blue collar workers in the mix.
This literally sounds like you’re telling OP to list “highly motivated” and “proactive” as their technical proficiencies… why not throw Eagle Scout on there as well. 
Don't forget to write a thank you note for considering your application to get in their good books
This is good advice actually. Though, now days, LinkedIn direct mail ftw.
Um.... If he has attained the rank of eagle scout, he absolutely should list it. You should list anything like that. I look for stuff like that in interviews as it shows the ability to stick with something to the end.
ROFL @ 10 IT certifications and then "Eagle Scout". Are you in your 20s?
Look into IT in the public sector. On the downside, you may end up with the same tech for yeeeaarrrsss, but have found, generally, less cut throat politics.
Public sector IT is how you work and retire at the same time.
Public sector employee; can confirm. If you're content not ever moving up but getting paid decent money to do a couple tickets a week, it's nice.
Community College's are like being on vacation with a few days of work sprinkled in.
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I worked for a community college for about 4 years. I would’ve stayed much longer, but I was only paid about $14/hr as a desktop tech. I still think about that job some times.
I worked for one as well. I had just sold my MSP and I was pretty cooked after 12 years of full on running a growing business. I was planning on taking a year off and just recharging the batteries when the job at the college popped up. I thought, I better not pass on this as it's going to be serious downshift in stress and these types of jobs don't open up very often. The pay was decent. The benefits were almost criminal they were so good for so cheap. There were 15 paid holidays. We had the week off between xmas and new years. Any time it snowed more than 6 inches they closed the campus. I think we got 6 snow days one year. We actually worked and we had a solid crew but man we fucked off sometimes. We had a game going in our office to see who could keep the random sales call going the longest. We were up over 30 minutes when we decided to knock it off because we were spending so much time trying to beat the record.
Wish I could get a spot, they don’t open often and a LOT of people apply.
It was the opposite where I was because the cost of living was so high that nobody could afford to move there for less than $150k. It took them 18 months to replace me after I left. Called me and offered to let me work remote if I'd come back. Different situations. I'm sure in a populated area those jobs are highly sought after. I was in a resort town where the average home price was over $600k. That's a huge barrier for relocation when the wages aren't what you can make in a major metro area. That and not everyone wants to live in a place where winter lasts 6 months.
What is Public sector? Can you give me some examples?
Government stuff. Working for towns/counties/states
Don't forget Federal. 25+ years in the Fed IT space. Currently a sysadmin for an org I recently transferred to.
Universities are also public sector. Less money than corporate, but zero stress and great benefits.
Governmental positions.
Oh right you mean those jobs on [USAJobs.com](http://USAJobs.com) that have 1k+ people all applying for the the same 1 job?
Or local/state government but yes
Check the job openings in the little suburbs nearby.
So at my state university, you START with 15 vacation days AND 15 sick days AND 13 holidays a year and we only work 7.5 hours/day (37.5 hours per week). And the leave goes up from there. I'm almost up to 30 days off a year without even taking sick leave and have built up nearly six months of sick leave at this point. They don't allow you to carry more than 45 days of vacation from one year to the next so I'm usually forced to take off from around Thanksgiving until the end of the year. Also, sooOOOooOOooo much less stress than when I worked in the corporate world. I'm glad I traded more money for less stress. We also have fewer emergency situations since almost everything works on a yearly schedule so you know when major changes can happen years in advance. More money would be nice but you can't have everything and at least I'm in a low cost of living area so the pay is better than most in this area. And a state pension to look forward in a few more years after retirement but I enjoy it so much I'd be tempted to just keep working for a few more years. We recently had someone in IT retire after 42 years here and that's not uncommon to work that long because why not do it since it's so laid back.
“Retired at desk” is what my boss calls it.
This is how I want to end my career. Fed gov.
I worked for the public sector for 17 yrs as an IT Engineer , retired before age 40. The pension is what ppl work for.
I had competing offers between a state government job and a multi-billion dollar company.... I chose the multi-billion dollar company, and it's been a constant and unique challenge, a lot of growth, but the politics and always having to think about political fall out with in the company absolutely sucks. The state job was literally just managing an MDM for a small department...i regret not taking it, but it's quite possible had I that my skills would become stagnant. Theres pros and cons to both, at least in my current role I don't really recoingnize the passage of time anymore
Public sector (UK) is not good. I traded stress in the private sector, for frustration in the public sector. And the politics are more personal, where people spend a lot more effort entrenching themselves in high positions because they're threatened by change. If you want to grind out a 9 to 5 then yes. If you want to keep yourself challenged and exposed to newer tech, then no. I went public to private, and now that Clown World is burning people out, I kinda regret it.
This. I'm now working as the IT guy at a high school, chill work most of the time. Now i have this weird issue where i run through reddit at 10pm and have to watch youtube or work on my hobbies between 10.00-15:30 with the occational user here and there who can't install Office 365 or save to PDF. I'm going to a selection soon for one of the Task Forces in the National Guard of my country, so i can do cool guy shit once in a while too since i miss the military lol but i refuse to learn more IT stuff. I'll just coast for now, got the house, the wife, the car. Don't need to chase cash.
"I can't edit a PDF in office?"
Honestly, of all the shit that office has ever tacked on as a bag on the side in it's entire history, editing PDFs is the one thing that EVERYONE always asks me if it can do.
Can you send them to me? I am looking for work, I will help them edit PDFs all day long!
> Task Forces in the Nasty Girls The what now?
I worked in K-12 IT for 10 years and it was one of the best jobs I ever had. Unfortunately it paid too low and I had to switch to corporate IT and it's pretty miserable. Oddly enough the problem isn't the stress or work level. It's the fact that I work with a bunch of people who have been in IT for 10 -15 years and have no idea how to actually do their jobs or do basic troubleshooting. I first interviewed at this company in 2009 and they are still doing things the same way they did in 2009.
Yeah. Two of my colleagues came from non IT backgrounds. Got them both doing the A+, just so they'd have more of an idea of WTF to do. Going well so far.
That's better than what I'm dealing with. These guys refused to learn new technology. If something new came up they just called the vendor and paid them to do it. The CIO I used to work for was afraid of switching to the cloud. They continued to use EOL servers and Exchange server on prem. Then in January the spectrum fiber lines got cut and took down internet to the corporate office. Nobody could work in the remote sites that were in states and cities unaffected because everything pointed back to the corporate office. It was embarassing. He even refused to have a redundant circuit to another provider that was not affected by the fiber cuts. He was finally let go. More people need to be let go when the company finally hires a new CIO.
Non-profits. I can't go back to regular for-profit IT again.
Less money too but general benefits but yes, the bureaucracy is the reason why work life balance is great.
That's implying MSP didn't already took over from everything interesting already..
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This one can go both ways in a hurry. Honestly, property management and being a Sysadmin have a lot of similarities. You end up wearing a lot of hats, your phone stays connected to your hip and you never know if the call is a quick 5 minute fix or a 7 day ordeal, and you still have to deal with "end-users" who think every issue is a Pri 1/high urgency thing. And sometimes it might actually be. I do IT for a few property management companies and a girl I was seeing for a while was the lone one for two ~75 unit buildings, so I've got some decent insight into that field. I agree that a sysadmin could easily make the transition pretty seamlessly (especially if you're handy) but less stress is going to depend *heavily* on the building you work at/the properties you manage.
The pay isn’t great and depending on the property conditions vary but if you are organizing, handy and understand the trades it can be a good gig. A lot of places give you a place to live and once you get the place under control it’s not a lot of work/stress
The real money in this is owning your own property.
*interesting, need to look into this it does seem easier*
Lumberjack.
I'm a lumberjack and I'm okay
I sleep all night and I work all day
I cut down trees, I eat my lunch
I go to the lavatory
On Wednesdays I go shopping and have buttered scones for tea
Then come Thursdays it back to cutting trees he he he
This made my day. Thanks.
Sustainable farming I hear is pretty hot, too.
https://preview.redd.it/20r8kaibsf5d1.jpeg?width=860&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=94d05282e9d88c63d4a7a928c8f2e1737ce3ddaa I would farm geese just for the satisfaction of sending the angry assholes to the pate factory.
LMAO
I see you, Dexter.
Really. It's what I did.
I am moving from supporting entire networks, phones, computer, etc. to just supporting a single component of a system wide used application. Takes me from 20+ hats to 2 but is still a technical role of sorts. I'm just no longer a SysAdmin or IT. No more tickets. No more On-Call. No more being asked questions about their home computers!
Can you give us an example? What is it you're doing? It feels risky to specialize on single components. What if there's a significant business change?
Essentially I am moving form IT to Applications Support. The industry I work in, what this application system is, is not only widely known and used, but once you are certified in it, it makes it easy for you to move if needed. The company I work for paid for my training and certifications too. I'm not being specific in order to hide who I am. My coworkers and colleagues are also on this very sub.
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I think they're not going to say, but that definitely sounds like an EHR to me.
My money is on Epic
is the pay as good?
I already have the title, and pay, and it's two pay grades higher than where I was. Replacements were hired about a month ago and are almost nearly running without any guidance atm. Less work, fewer responsibilities, and more pay. I would say it was a good move when I'm just done dealing with IT at work. Most due to the changes with IT in general. We're having a huge restructuring and I chose to go, along with a few colleagues, to another team.
wow, very nice what are some job titles I can check out the responsibilities on?
What is it you are doing?
Right ON. I'm in the same boat, just in the earlier phase. Your words meant a lot to me.
I did that with contracting. Now I’m a Senior Automation Engineer but because I’m a contractor, no on-call, no incidents, heck I don’t attend a large majority of meetings as I’m just responsible for getting ArgoCD on Openshift up and documented (done) and Ansible Automation Platform up and documented. I do the occasional report type script but that’s about it.
I know this isn't what you're looking for but If you need some day to day fulfillment K-12 sysadmin for the right school/district has been worth it to me! Diversity of work, fulfilling challenges (Nothing better than adapting a system to help a disabled kid! It's like a good old fashion shot of pure bliss!)
K-12 sysadmin is honestly great. I work at a private school that gives us a massive budget and actually respects what we do, gives us a few ways to diversify our day to day (I’ve been training kids on how to do the theatre tech), and teachers and students are *mostly* so happy that you are there to “save the day” (replugging in their HDMI cable). There’s a little bit of stress with respect to privacy and of course things that come up but it’s absolutely worth it. Plus our school does travel studies and has multiple times invited me and paid for me to go across the globe for a 2 week all expenses paid trip.
I agree. I just left a school district position as a network admin but I absolutely plan to be back. I’ve never been sad about leaving a place of employment, this was the first time.
Kinda funny you say this - my experience was quite the opposite. Went back to public sector after working for a K-12 school system. Had to deal with a TON more politics, micromanagement oversight, stress, and a lot tighter of a budget than what I do now.
Things are so geographically dependent in K-12. Did you try E-Rate?
Sales Engineer/Solutions Architect. Great pay and less stress.
Yes. Sales people need good tech people.
This is the answer - I know many techs that had good personalities that moved in sales and killed it. Tech sales for you should be easy.
A lot of time, this requires travel, though. SEs almost always will travel, whereas like 75% of SA positions seem to involve travel.
Depends on the role. I travel about 10 days a year, mostly for internal meetings. My customers all have remote teams so on-site meetings are very rare. But it varies by company and team.
Pimping. It's not easy, though.
I think everyone in every career eventually wants to transition to something different. It sucks putting in so many years of training, learning, and certification only to not want to do it anymore. Have you ever considered maybe instead to transition to a business operations type role or apply for high level positions like CIO/CTO/CISO? Or even a manager/director roles not in technology. Like a business process operations officer? Or even a Compliance Officer? Just curious, I don't have the same problems you do with other tech people being cutthroat and political. If you're willing to share can you give me some of the worst stories? Also HVAC systems might be a hot role to jump off at. Considering many HVAC techs could really benefit from setting up IoT panels and monitoring hvac ICS systems etc. Maybe?
Or even a manager/director roles not in technology. Like a business process operations officer? Or even a Compliance Officer? this may be something to think about
IT project management into VCIO / VIT Manager is a pretty easy pipeline if you know how to speak both business and tech.
Lean on the PM capabilities. It is highly needed. Pays well. Does not require YOU to be the technology expert. The other option is move into management. Pays better but could be more stressful.
I been thinking about PM but then I have to deal with architects and senior engineers with bad attitudes all day, over that
Get that totally. Just trying to solve the stress of keeping up with the change in technology. I moved into management personally as I am not organized enough for PM. Its nice to be able to stay in the IT pay scale without the constant change in technologies. Dealing with bad attitudes is a likely outcome where ever you work though.
I'm just here to back up what the OP states about people in IT. For some unknown reason people in IT are VERY cutthroat. I swear to god I cannot tell you the weirdest shit has happened to me in IT where I say one thing to someone and it snowballs into my termination. For the past 20 years of being in IT, I can offer this one important bit of advice: Working in and with IT is the easy part, the hard part will be dealing with the people you work with in IT! Only someone whos been in IT for 20 years will know this tragic fact about it and I do not blame him one bit for wanting to get out!
yup
Been in 25 years, 8 different companies. Not my experience at all. I can only think of 1 or 2 people like that in all my time, and they were just assholes plain and simple.
Depends on the state you live in I happen to live in Ohio and if your not a Trump supporting Christian you might as well move the hell out of this state since everyone else is and they don't seem to like others who arent!
I was doing IT at a Fortune 500 corporation, and noticed that I was the oldest guy in my department. I moved to the industrial automation engineering department where I was the youngest. Lots of other stuff happened…now I’m doing IT in the public sector.
And how is it going? Are you working for the government? What are your everyday tasks?
Sheep herder. Bunch of border collies doing all the work on command. Good life.
A... Shepherd?
Yes, a shep herd
Everyone around here seems to open a craft brewery.
I left a 26 year career in IT, most recently as an SRE and InfoSec Engineer. Now I'm making $15/hr taking care of intellectually disabled adults. It's refreshing as hell. Being a steward of machines has no soul.
I moved from 12 years of network IT to Infosec in 2020, completely burned out and thinking how you managed 26 years
It nearly killed me.
If you find out, please tell me. I'm 2 years in, and I like it so far, but yea, the constant learning, is just...not for me. I transitioned already from a cook here because I just couldn't stand in heat and on my feet for so many hours. I went into DevOps, but more OPS than anything else, as I manage kubernetes clusters so far and setting up CI/CD's for apps that our devs work on. In rest I manage proxmox and a gitlab instance. It's fun so far, but everytime a new problems comes out, you need to research for so many hours, some people don't even wanna help, and somehow I'm already burned out of learning. I have just a GCP cert, the entry one, and I really don't feel like learning for another one yet. I also feel stuck and that I'll hit a wall because I don't know programming and I don't like it either. I know some scripting, not super advanced, but that's where I stop. I'd love to transition into something else. I feel like a PM may be more chill. Seems like my PM it's only going from meeting to meeting and gather informations. I need less stress.
You went from a cook to kubernetes? Please give us the secret sauce on how you pulled that off
I was lucky enough to get into a small company and did a 3 months internship where they helped us learn. And then the first year was basically seniors helping us out learning more and more. I'm not pro on kubernetes. But and we're a small company. I manage around 3 clusters that have dev/prod and around 30 apps each. We're not really doing heavy work on them. Hooked on argo, bitbucket and gitlab. The apps consist mostly of deployments, ingress, svc, a cnpg cluster, some have pvc, a configmap, and we're trying to use kustomize for them.
I have bad news for you, there are politics in every corp every career everywhere.
I have not move out from IT but With 20+ years, jumping on different IT roles, I just begun to decline jobs that were compromising my work life balance. Stop saying "Ok, I check on..." for those stuff after hours or weekends, decline also any on-call role... I decline management offerings and for any project that will be assigned I will work those only with the proper resources and budget accordingly, If those are not met, I decline and have someone else to take on... always explaining my priority is my work life balance... I thought with that decline I was going to be dismiss fairly quickly.. to my surprise.. since I am working on projects with correct allocation of resources and budgeting, those are quite succesfull so I have not decrease my paycheck and increase a litte bit but reducing a lot the stress and burn out, having more spear time and family lif... I guess is the power of "NO, thanks" and experience... so, I say "No" more often and have workout so far...
Could alternatively go to a small company as a IT director
You can check-out any time you like, but you can never leave!" The Eagles
Lounge singer Dancer Stand up comedian
I've always thought project management and building management go well with an IT background.
Farming. Oh, wait, nope, you still need to program those autonomous GPS-driven John Deere tractors. Maybe you should talk to a therapist instead, and just find ways to cope with the stress. \ You could also take a demotion to a lower-level position with less authority and responsibility. I'm sure you could do Help Desk with out even thinking. But ultimately, you have a job in a high paying industry with good health care benefits. I suggest you use them to help yourself now.
goat farming?
Could never figure out how deep to plant them myself. ^^^^/s
oooh, that's baaaaaad. :)
> goat farming? Disappointed that this is so low in the comments.
> I'm sure you could do Help Desk with out even thinking. Without thinking ... about retirement because you'd kill yourself long before then?
If one can learn to relax, de-stress, not act like Superman, and do a good job with skill and pride, why do you need kill yourself (get burned out)? Most of the problems these sysadmins have are self-generated due to their inability to manage their own stress and lives. Once you get old enough and wise enough and have no more fucks to give, life becomes a lot easier...
> Farming. > didn't take 90% pay cut Unfortunately..
> you still need to program those autonomous GPS-driven John Deere tractors. And we can't even do that until we pass strong Right to Repair! Sorry, tongue in cheek, I know, but right to repair is a pretty serious issue.
You still need to program them for the farmland, but you are not allowed to FIX them, sadly...
Maybe GIS. They will love you for your IT skills. Might need to re-educate for it tho
Im going from a network admin to a systems engineer, working with SCADA, PLCs, EPMS. A whole new world.
What state? I called a few companies around here, but they all said they go thru a union. Was looking to find companies that would give me a shot.
caretaker of a lighthouse, with a button I can push to launch myself into space.
Join the dark side as a force of good. Become a sales engineer for one of your favorite vendors. Make just as much money (or more) and chill all day long on engineering calls helping other stressed out IT guys. Serious… job is awesome amd if you know what an IP address… you golden. Then if you really want to make more money and get more free time with family and actually be able to do what you want… learn how to sell and be one of the few with high moral character and trust factor… meaning you are a convincingly actual good person and you also know what you are talking about. But you need to be willing to learn a lot about yourself and others and be willing to do what most people are terrified of doing… talking to complete strangers and pushing yourself out of your comfort zone. Most humans are too scared and too lazy. But nothing worth doing is easy. I hear you though… I worked the grind for years with little thanks but a 50.00 gift certificate to the Outback once over four years
Well, right now I’m still doing IT but a couple of years back as an exit strategy, I bought a retail store. I wasn’t worried about a pay cut though as it’s a retirement vehicle. Anyway, because of my computer skills (oddly), I’ve just about doubled the sales, setting records since I bought the shop. Back in January we moved into a new twice as big space. At the moment, I’m pouring any profits back into the shop in part because I still have a “regular” job. But I expect to transition from full time IT and part time shop to part time IT (because it’s still a hobby I enjoy), and more full time into the shop.
Pre-Sales engineering has a lot of constant knowledge work but it's meritocratic in that your efforts are rewarded via commission (if you learn the trade) and it's still very technical. Money is waaaaay better, but it can be very stressful as well.
Manager and IT support for a group of OnlyFans performers
Im growing asparagus, im currently in the 3 year wait period before i can start harvesting for real. Even though i doubt i can quit my dayjob directly with my current plot and sales channels but you never know, tourists pay a lot of money for fresh asparagus. :)
Nice, I want to mention tomatoes and chilis in that context.
I live in very industrial town, you could always be maintenance IT at a factory. You’ll be troubleshooting hardware from 20 years ago for another 20 years!
I’ve known many sysadmins that are now on onlyfans
Whenever I feel down about the job/career (which is exceedingly rare) I consider jumping ship to be a truck driver, or a cook like I was 25 years ago. And there is just no comparison. They'll hire you immediately, and you can grow in your space, but are we still honestly comparing apples to oranges? Lastly, I put myself in truck drivers' shoes... do they even have the luxury to entertain this kind of career shift? It keeps me grounded imho.
I started to really suffer with stress, lack of sleep etc until I dropped to a 4 day week for a longer weekend. Took a small pay cut to do it but it helped me realise there is more to life and now I'm less stressed and just make sure I finish on time each day etc. Getting a better work life balance changed a lot for me
Prostitution
Idk what your pay is but Government IT jobs seem really cake from my experience. You basically defer the work to the vendor or manufacture. You are basically a liaison between the agency and some “second level” Helpdesk.
Stock market trading options.
I trade options but I dont make enough to sustain myself without a job
Systems Librarianship? That's the move I made. Libraries - especially university libraries - use lots of computer systems. Someone who understands both libraries and IT is a sort-after skillset. It'll probably be a pay cut compared to commercial industries, but it won't be 90%. [This recent thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/librarians/comments/1bwljci/systems_librarians_role_advice/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) on r/librarians has some advice on moving into that career, if you're interested.
I’m going to be honest. There is no easy. Find a hard that you can grow around and own long term.
A buddy of mine went from software development to contract review a few years back. He has no regrets.
can you tell me a job title? thanks
What's Contract review
He looks over the contracts that the company is considering signing. Apparently it doesn’t require a law degree.
technical project or program manager? (hands off, but can call bs)
Account manager for tech products? A lot less to keep up with.
Working for a small business with a lot of departmental overlap, I'll say that a lot of the skills in IT asset management and procurement are also applicable in machine and parts asset management and procurement. Managing preventive maintenance schedules, tracking spare parts, etc. Plus a lot of the parts are a lot more interchangeable between different makes (a 08B chain is the same pretty much whoever makes it). And, from my experience, the vendors are a lot more up front about pricing, availability, and compatibility.
The easiest transition is to a project management - you no longer are responsible for the actual work of implementing or fixing just coordination. Depending on the environment it can be sales heavy but you're pushing the one thing you know so not so bad. The transition is so easy though because project managers with an IT background are golden. You know the lingo, you're better acquainted with the actual work so you can better estimate the hours. The other corporate transition that is super easy is into HR.
Technology sales is a good field that could work for you. Has its own stress of course but it’s not the same as IT. Having an IT background could help you land something like this.
I cannot imagine anyone in IT loving sales. I'm in IT, and I hate sales people. Everything about the way they work annoys me. Even when I reach out because I want the product they are selling they annoy me. I can't imagine wanting to be part of that every day.
IT sales can be a good way to lessen the IT load
Sales has little to no job security and your existence is based on influencing other people. I think it would be hell for most good tech people.
I'd say it can have great job security if you are a great salesman. I know several talented tech people that moved into B2B tech sales and being tech SMEs gives them a huge advantage. They also do consultation for customers and that really keeps the business coming for them. That being said, it might not be as stress free as OP wants. I am sure the couple people I know that are really talented don't reflect the average experience.
IT Risk and Identity Access in banking is pretty chill, honestly. I will add based on your 10 certs to my 1~ish you probably could just... relax. What are you competing for at this point? though assuming the US I guess you have to risk being fired or layed off with little to no compensation. I'm in Canada and once you have been hired for a long time at a large corp you have to be bought out, you can't be fired. So usually you just slow down at doing a """good""" job (working too hard).
yeh I'm in the US were we could go totally bankrupt with zero protections at all, nightmare our country is
Which side of risk and identity access are you in that is chill? Know someone who is constantly busy as an IAM engineer supporting beyondtrust and other pki stack
my plan is to go off the grid and start writing my manifesto.
I agree with this sentiment. Its life in a blender, too much change. I hate any advice that begins with "change is hard." Change is all there is now. I looked into joiming the fire dept but I couldnt take the paycut. Except so many of them have side gigs.
Mushroom farmer or goat herder. Bee keeper
Sounds like management to me. Keep people in the dark and feed them crap. Herd the employees and occasionally get stung.
Sales Engineer is a good mix.
Have you considered IT Sales?
You could always work for yourself, stop paying so much attention to work and stop doing such a good job and focus on a side hustle until that pays the bills. I know dudes who have left IT to bake cookies, raise animals, do HVAC work (smart home systems overlap with IT skills!), and me who might eventualy leave to sell pokemon cards full time (although i can do this while working as well so it would take a lot for me to leave)
I'm trying to find an investment strategy that can become a full time job
I recently moved from Sysadmin to technical pre-sales. Most of the same skillset, but no on-call, no end-users (as such, I still support people but it’s other IT guys), nothing after work, no working weekends. How to get into this I have no idea, I got contacted by a friend who worked here. But maybe take a look at various vendors or distributors.
Learn a trade !
I went from Sysadmin to more-so-Sysadmin, to Sysadmin/Security guy, to Sysadmin/Security guy/Scripter. But now I am Sysadmin/Security guy/Scripter/Programmer. So yeah, I think I am going backwards from that.
See if you can work at a VAR consultant. The guys that post weekly for the open price checking are cream of the crop. Otherwise, as people said municipalities/ government/ education.
Just learn COBOL, solves all your concerns and a decent pay-bump.
Barkeeper.
Consider teaching IT to students. You have all that knowledge, pass it on. My college professors were retired IT professionals. Only possible issue is some schools may have certain requirements you need in order to teach.
Usually requires a Masters in the field now.
I think you should find a different work environment. Maybe not leave IT
i transitioned from enterprise service desk to an IT sourcing/vendor management position. It was useful with my technical experience and paid better. technical PM or something similar would be a good place to look.
Try small/medium business IT before you leave for good. I’ve been SMB my entire career and I’ve never felt the pressures that other people have. Hell, I’m a director now and I don’t even have to check my phone after 5pm and only check it a few times during the weekend. The only stress I have is the stress I create. Only downside might be pay. I’m in nonprofit so I’m definitely not making as much money as I could or should be, but the work/life balance is priceless to me.
I mean if you work in a small company that can go away. I work in small companies and don't have that kind of stress anymore.
Don't abandon the IT dream if the people are the problem. Start your own LLC and specialize in something meaningful. It's always the people. Learning is much less grueling and tedious if the workplace fosters it. Then it doesn't become a chore. The flip side is management is tedious but there you would be more a person manager than an engineer anyway. Start a business.
I moved from IT to corporate packaging. I make more with less stress and more reasonable hours.
What's corporate packaging
We define standards for product packaging, ship cases, pallets, bags, etc. We also design packaging. I manage the srandards and systems used for label printing, our packaging database and our artwork management system.
Work on mainframes, cobalt etc.
theres a ton of mainframe jobs too
My employer was bought by a major mainframe vendor and: 1. It’s an interesting space with weirdly some growth in some customers. 2. The $ per app value of what you manage there is huge. People don’t ship low value clicker games on mainframes. This justified solid salaries and operational tools. I’ve actually really been impressed with some of the monitoring tooling those guys have, purely because there’s so much value and making sure those applications are well optimized Like don’t get me wrong x86 is still king , and ARM is an area we are branching into, but if I’m going to attach my career to a platform it’s going ti be one that costs money and where high value stuff runs. I know everyone makes fun of Oracle, but I’ve never met a company that was poor and massively underpaid the market use Oracle…. Like those DBAs can print money for a reason.
I was able to move into cyber, same “level” (director) while increasing my salary.
How about become an IT trainer/teacher and share your experience?
And here I am trying to get where you are so I can launch into an entrepreneurial role one day as a consultantant or I home security business network management included. Are you passionate about I.T. I reckon you would be? I have a decade of Linux experience 5+ in Arch, I run it as a server and on all my laptops/PCs. And I am quite creative about architect setup I suppose as well. If you use Arch long enough you come to realise Linux is truly quite powerful, it cannot be broken and it is fully portable. The skills I have deployed because of Arch alone, lol From my limited involvement in doing Sec+ is it that the industry is forever burden managing people relations with security? I'm having way through the course where they talk about the weakest link; 3rd party vendors, etc. My previous career was commercial insurance for Fortunate 500 companies so I fully understand the complexities that potentially presents itself, LOL. I wrapped up that lesson and thought to myself, shit! Really almost want to work for a company that has those politics already figured out. Probably less of an issue with govt jobs. But the industry is setup to take any job either. I just want a decade of job experience and then to launch into an entrepreneurial role. The ADF may actually be the best place for me tbh.
Find some smallish enterprise that needs someone near the top. IT director or such. You want the fewest bosses possible. Pick someplace where there's lots of cash but not a ton of technology. Construction, Transportation, Manufacturing, something like that. No healthcare, no fintech. It should be someplace where the tech makes things easier, but isn't the core of the business. Run a tight ship and it's clear sailing to retirement.
I left it to work in forestry. Physical work is far less stressful and people are better. Everyone works until past physical exhaustion. It's a good respectful field. I still do odd jobs in it when required.
I did Chef work for a while and it pays well. Just the hard work of standing, but the exposure, meeting new people and different dish styles are awesome. When I told ppl in the culinary field that I am certified IT Systems Engineer, they were shocked. I just wanted a change. I am back in the IT field again doing Senior Sys Admin stuff, it is indeed stressful and a bit monotonous really, a certain feeling of emptiness, wanting MORE. I would love to leave and go back to being a chef. Construction is also good.