Unusual Paths in IT

ProFamous

Hello,
I am not really in IT at the moment, just work at a computer repair shop. Just curious of the paths that are available that are different from the whole traditional "working up the corporate ladder" thing.

For example, something that attracts me that strays from the norm is IT consulting, as being self-employed has always been attractive to me.

Do any of you have or know of jobs that you say would be "different"?

Thanks!

TechGuru80

You can't really consult if you haven't done enterprise IT before. You won't really know what's going on. Different paths would be pentesting, forensics, project management, sales engineer...but basically everybody will end up in the corporate hierarchy in some fashion.

The main thing is can you jump in at different points and not have to go help desk to system admin and so on...it's all about timing on breaking in and your knowledge level.

OctalDump

One area which is outside of the standard large enterprise corporate world is with managed service providers. Some companies specialise in servicing small companies and organisations which don't have a full time IT staff, and so require "jack of all trades" type IT workers to provide the range of IT services a small organisation might need.

Roles like this can be an excellent way to get a broad range of experience, both from the technical viewpoint, but also of different organisations and industries. Smaller companies tend also to be more tolerant of substandard service, which can also benefit someone still learning IT.

There are also things like freelancing, which typically is more to a development bent, but can also be in the infrastructure side in "one off" jobs e.g. migrating a server from Windows 2003 to 2012, or virtualising a rack of servers, or setting up a new mail server, recovering a service, or migrating an office to Office 365. If you get into a niche with this area, you can make a reasonable living off word of mouth and a few loyal clients.

There's also national guard/reserve/territorials (depending where you are in the world, it has different names), which requires IT people, but you work in a military context, so you get quite a different view on the world and technology including some things that you won't ever touch otherwise.

There's also a difference working with information technology companies and working for organisations where IT is just another business unit. There was a thread here recently on the pros and cons. Higher education and research centres - organisations doing research in IT - can also be quite interesting places, since the goals aren't quite the same. High Performance Computing - HPC - can be quite an exciting area in itself, too.

Another option, at the fringe, is occasionally there are roles which come up for things like Antarctic expeditions. I know a New Zealand electrical engineer who has taken a few seasons down there and found the work to be quite interesting. Since you are more remote, you get some interesting challenges.

So, a couple of options outside of the helpdesk -> junior admin -> senior admin -> management -> CIO path.

techfiend

You could always be a cheap alternative to MSP's but you'll need some credentials and experience to back it up. You also need to be able to market yourself. It can be really rewarding but stressful at times.

Depending on the size of the company. Some have no IT staff, where it can be very stressful to support all the small things. While others have a help desk but don't want to pay a full time server/network employee, if you get into one of these you can gain some very nice architecture experience with low stress, most of the time.

ProFamous

Excellent responses! Hell no to the Antarctic expeditions but thanks for the ideas!