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Getting away from physical work

zenhound

This is a weird question, but I'm wondering what area in IT would let me get away from physical work. I have a medical condition which is statistically likely to leave me physically disabled at some point in the future and while I'll still be able to work, pulling cables and doing rack and stack server set ups isn't going to work at that point. My interest is in networking and security. If you go far enough in networking, are you out of the physical setup aspects or is that always part of it even if you're an architect or whatever?

Obviously, programming and software development type work might be ideal, but I have no programming experience. Just wondering if I can do what I like or if I should change directions.

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Comments

odysseyelite

Get into a large enough enterprise and you don't need to touch the equipment. We have a group that does all the rack and stacks for us.

daviddws

You could get into application or technical support type positions. In those types of jobs you rarely if ever get up from your desk.

grayfox587

Programming, there is no chance you will be doing physical stuff, IT will always be doing physical work.

networker050184

grayfox587 wrote: »

Programming, there is no chance you will be doing physical stuff, IT will always be doing physical work.

No you won't always be doing physical stuff in IT. As odysseyelite pointed out if you get into a large enough organization there will be teams that do the physical work. Especially the higher you go the less you actually touch any kind of equipment.

DigitalZeroOne

Generally, the higher you are, the less physical work you do, but it really depends on the company. I was a Server Admin, and because of management and our budget, a lot of the server guys racked their own servers when the area called for a refresh. We used to rack the UPS, the server, cables, we took away all the old equipment and and shipped it back to our warehouse.

I have not had to really do anything too demanding recently, but again, it's based on the company. The last few contracts that I worked at required outside companies to physically rack the equipment...the only physical work that I have had to do in the last few years is just plug in some cables every now and then.

Forsaken_GA

My group is located out of an operations center that isn't located anywhere near our sites. I can safely wear nice clothes into work without fear that I'm going to get the dirty or torn with datacenter work.

Develop your brain muscles, and you can get away from using the physical ones.

Krunchi

You could get into Enterprise Support with a Server Company "HP, Dell, IBM" Supporting Administrators in everything thing from Basic Hardware Troubleshooting to OS\NOS Troubleshooting or both. I know Dell has a Team that all the do is remote installs from a DRAC setting up Servers for customers.

Zero Physical labor and a Nice Pay and Benefits package.

zenhound

Thanks for all the replies. That is kind of what I thought, if I could get the right situation I could work without doing too much physical stuff. I do want to build my programming skills just in case, but that's kind of long term at this point.

filkenjitsu

I would say Network Operations Center work. Also, Tier 3 support roles within an organization or a vendor.