Looking for new career / new focus in IT

murdatapes

Hey board. Had a quick question about transitioning to another area of IT. To make this short and sweet, I am totally burnt out from the "hands on / configuration side of IT and want to move into another area (Product Management, Project Management, management, sales engineering....etc). I wanted to see if anyone has done this lately or in the past, and what was your experience, and what you needed to do (if anything) to get into what you transitioned into?

paul78

I don't think that it's unusual to be burnt out if you are a hard-driving person in any job. For me, I think there are a few ways to address it. If you like working with the technology, you could try to move to another company where perhaps you can do the same type of work but perhaps a change a scenery could invigorate you. Also - depending on what you do today - there could be related type roles. You didn't really explain what you did so for example - if you are a network engineer perhaps you could move to an operational role where it's more about troubleshooting.

And of course - if you really want to make a more radical change - certainly as you mentioned - going into sales engineering, management, etc. could be a course of action.

For me - I've done a combination of a different things. I've left companies to get a change of scenery (that's what I'm trying to do now). I've also moved into different roles such as from software engineering to infrastructure management, to management, to security, etc.

Good luck.

beads

Project management is high in demand on all levels and is a skill set never out of style. Associate of the PMP is a difficult exam to fulfill but would be more than enough to get some attention. Problem of course is the approximate 40 hours of class time prior to taking the exam that stops most. The full PMP requires somewhere in the thousands of hours of documented experience - depending on personally "flexible" you are with experience. Both project management and sales engineering have one remarkable trait in common. Its mostly communicating with others, influencing outcomes and all that pysch stuff I should have forgotten long ago.

Sales Engineering, etc. I have been approached many times - not my thing but I am chatty. LOL. So I don't feel I'd be much help there.

What I can tell you is that "burnout" is really a MILD form of depression, nothing more. Everyone gets a bit down or out of sync with where they want or need to be career wise. Try to use your negative feelings for your present position as motivation for the next. Rah! - Rah!!

Keep the board posted and see where the new avenue takes you.

- b/eads