Working Part-Time on weekends

marcj04

I was just curious what opportunities are available for IT professionals who seek part time work on the weekends? Like if you already have a 9-5 job during the week but want to make some extra money. Obviously this is assuming your current job doesn't allow you to work overtime.

iBrokeIT

Personally, I would rather put that time in studying so I can get a better job and not have to work two jobs if I were in that situation.

TylerBarrett

I've been working at Canadian Tire for as long as I've been at the MSP I work for. Not that it really helps you seeing as how you're in Baltimore.

To go with what iBrokeIT said, I've taken my A+, Net+, Server+ and gotten raises for all of them. My next raise would come after hitting my MCSE. However, working for the MSP isn't enough to make ends meet so I had to pick up a part time job.

They've been great about working with the oncall rotation at my MSP.

Essendon

Study for certs and exercise on weekends. Way more ROI.

I did try working on the weekends a few years ago, I was a delivery driver for some courier company. Quickly realized it wasn't for me and taxes for a second job did not make it even close to being worth my time. Just so you know, two of my VCAP certs got me a $60,000 jump in pay (I did switch employers too). Unreal you may think, but true. Well it wasn't just the certs themselves, it was the knowledge that came with them and the experience to back them up.

Codyy

My wife started working for a small company that was searching for an IT person, mainly for a Windows 7 migration, other random things, and then service call work here and there. I went for it, not really for the money, more so to keep my skills relevant since I don't work on the "desktop support" side of IT anymore. It's rewarding, but man it can really be frustrating. I forgot how annoying working with non IT people can be at times, on the flip side since they don't understand IT they think you're amazing whenever you fix the smallest issue. I don't regret taking on the roll, though I'm not sure I'd do it over again. Kinda glad I did ..like I said it's pretty rewarding when I hear that they're happy to finally have an IT person that knows what they're doing ..but prepare yourself for some frustrating times if you take this route. Especially small businesses ..outdated software that's no longer supported, old machines, poor software version control, etc..

LeBroke

Ironically, I decided to keep doing my old data center job for 1 day a week. Money is kind of not really worth it, but it's still extra income that my day job won't allow for, and way better than any typical part time jobs in my area.

The real reason I stayed though, is being able to keep playing with large-scale enterprise stuff, even if in a more junior role. Is it worth it over spending time working on certs? Probably not if considered in a short-term monetary sense, but I think in the long-term, the extra knowledge/experience will make up for it with better skills.

Also, I get to keep 3 dedicated servers for my own projects. It's pretty nice having access to a mail server, OpenVAS scanner, my own /26 IP block, and any VMs I want to provision for stuff.