What type of industries have you all worked in?

Looking to possibly switch industries in the near future. I have only ever worked in IT at one company so I really do not know the pros and cons of the different industries out there.

What type of industry did you work in?
What was your job title and responsibilities?
How was the overall environment?
Which ones should I stay away from and why?
Are there any industries that have a good reputation?

Thanks!

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Comments

markulous

I worked in land surveying/civil engineering. I had quite a few responsibilities from topographic and boundary surveys to construction staking. At the office I'd use AutoCAD to draw up any surveys or proposed plans.

The environment sucked. Most of the people I worked with were really strange and not nice people. They also seemed guarded when it came to knowledge because they are afraid you'll surpass them. Also, several people I worked for thought that employees should be run into the ground and not be given breaks.

Needless to say I'm happy in IT

NetworkNewb

What?! lol I used to work in an IT Dept at a civil engineering firm. I actually really like the company and people. My wife is the HR manager and I still go to all of their events :P Played in their annual golf tournament a couple weeks ago...

But before I got in IT, I drove a forklift for 4 years parttime while I went to college. It was definitely nice working outside in the spring and fall. Driving a forklift outside in the Minnesota winters suck though! Need plenty of layers!

alan2308

My first job in I.T. was with an MSP, so I got to see a little bit of everything. There's good and bad in every industry.

iBrokeIT

Computer Repair Shop - Tech
Outsourced Call Center for 50ish small Dialup/DSL ISPs - Internet Tech Support
Small Financial Planning Firm - IT Specialist
Power Company - IT Intern
Window & Door manufacturer/sales - Systems Admin
Medical Device company - Virtualization/Systems Engineer

I've been all over place. I care more about what my roles is and the technologies I will be working with than what the company does.

techfiend

Transportation - Sys Admin

I enjoy it, very laid back environment but not very professional. It's not very lucrative and can only go so far, good start but not a career.

Looking to get into the finance (knowledge/money), sports (big fan) or tech industry.

iBrokeIT: I'm currently looking to move on in the twin cities and trying to get in through friends and family into the largest power company around here and the largest medical device company. Having worked at both (likely same companies) which one did you prefer and why?

Polynomial

Started in higher ed, went to private aviation, went back to higher ed, now knee deep in the tech industry.

paul78

I've worked in the broker-dealer sector of financial services for a big chuck of my career with a smattering of tech-only companies. Generally speaking I like the industry since it's very tech-heavy on the vendor-side.

hammncheese wrote: »

Which ones should I stay aware from and why?
Are there any industries that have a good reputation?

That's a somewhat odd question. Industries don't have good or bad reputations - individual companies do. Each industry segment serves some purpose and while some may have a more noble purpose like public service or charities, it may not be for everyone depending on one's aspirations. If I had to suggest staying away from any particular industry, I would suggest not getting involved in illegal ones like drug-trafficking, cyber-crime, etc.

Deathmage

Process Manufactoring mainly.

TWX

I've only worked in computing.

ISP phone support technician (back when one had to provision ISDN lines and install Trumpet Winsock on Windows 3.1)
Field Service Consultant and Depot Service Tech
Systems Administrator for a large single-office company on NT
Internet Services Administrator, Linux, Apache, BIND, Sendmail
Software Quality Assurance Engineer
DNS Registrar phone support technician (back when one had to get on a UNIX box to do WHOIS lookups)
More desktop support (yay dotcom bubble )
Infrastructure Technician for a large Enterprise network
Network Engineer for a large Enterprise network

I've worked everything from component-level repair with a soldering iron, to the PC as a system, to the horizonta cable in the wall, to the switch, to the backbone fiber, to the router, to the private WAN link, to the central office, to the servers, to the outbound Internet connection, to the Internet protocols that resolve hostnames to IP addresses. I'm a vertically-integrated monopoly! *laugh*

JoJoCal19

8 of my 10 years of IT/InfoSec experience has been with global financial firms. The other two are split between a small envelope manufacturer and insurance company. And as things stand now there is a really good chance I'm going to yet another global financial firm.

v1ral

I've done IT for several companies specializing in vastly different industries.

Company 1, Jr Server Admin/desktop support. - Large scale construction management, very posh and upscale. The IT staff was fun to be with (nerf gun battles). But had to wear dress shirt and tie everyday.

Company 2, NOC Engineer. - Tech corporation dealing cloud and managed IT services. I worked in their NOC and they taught me networking in a month. Grueling hours and seem to be stingy with pay. Great learning experience and my coworkers helped ease the long hours. Very laid back like any other tech company.

Company 3, IT support Engineer. - Transportation industry, very old company tech wise and in a rapid pace to modernize it's current technology. Due to the various locations the company serves, im usually on the road upgrading, fixing, computer/network/server issues.

markulous

NetworkNewb wrote: »

What?! lol I used to work in an IT Dept at a civil engineering firm. I actually really like the company and people. My wife is the HR manager and I still go to all of their events :P Played in their annual golf tournament a couple weeks ago...

But before I got in IT, I drove a forklift for 4 years parttime while I went to college. It was definitely nice working outside in the spring and fall. Driving a forklift outside in the Minnesota winters suck though! Need plenty of layers!

I'm sure I just had bad luck. One of the companies I worked for was actually pretty decent for the most part but all the others were pretty bad.

One of my bosses would get off by manipulating the board of surveyors to shut down his competition. He also wouldn't let us go to the bathroom and/or eat in a certain city. And then he shut down my hours after I missed one of his 6am Saturday unpaid meetings LOL.

iBrokeIT

techfiend wrote: »

iBrokeIT: I'm currently looking to move on in the twin cities and trying to get in through friends and family into the largest power company around here and the largest medical device company. Having worked at both (likely same companies) which one did you prefer and why?

The power company was when I still lived in Western SD and the medical device company is only $1B market cap which has just merger with another company so I job hunting again because the headquarters is moving out the Twin Cities.

I prefer my current gig due to my role and because like Paul said, it's all about the individual company and not the industry. Not to say the power company wasn't good either, I was just doing lower level desktop stuff and grunt level rack work. You really should look at your role and compensation far before you consider industry.

The major factor industry will play is what type of regulation you will operate under. If you want to work for an retailer you damn well better know what PCI is before you go to the interview, medical device company - its FDA/GAMP and maybe some HIPAA, the power company was NERC I believe and publicly traded companies are SOX.

dustervoice

Health Care, Publishing, AlcoholBev,Telecommunications,Financial, Media. All IT related work each industry add a different perspective on security... looking into Aviation next.

RHEL

In high school/college:
- large private ISP
- state government
- state university
- private university

Post-college:
- aerospace/defense
- casino/resort
- non-profit health insurance

techfiend

iBrokeIT: Thanks for the insight. I was wrong on both of them, thought those were some pretty good odds too.

Kinet1c

These are my experiences doing infra support in different industries:

MSP - money is tight, tech tends to be dated, always fire fighting, no appreciation of the work put in - I would never go back to this sort of job, ever.
Financial - big budgets, tech is a couple of years old and very very very very slow to change, too many processes and it hinders getting stuff done, you're merely a number - I would go here in the later stages of my career as money/benefits can be good with low pressure environment.
Gambling/Gaming - big budgets, tech can be fairly new but not cutting edge, good exposure to different tech, 24/7 environment so can be a lot of on call - knowledge sharing was an issue for me, people building mini empires to keep their jobs.
IT Security - working here just over 6 months, first impressions are good for my company. Knowledge sharing is very prevalent and team want to get stuff done.

aderon

I've worked for an enterprise storage company, an ISP, and a CDN. To be honest, the industry hasn't seemed to make any sort of difference.

The one thing I have noticed is that the size of the company does play a pretty large factor. Smaller companies (200-300 employees) tend to let you do more and touch more technologies, because their staff is limited. The flip-side is that because you work on more things, you're now also responsible for more things and can find yourself in hot water more often.

Whereas big companies (15000+ employees) generally have very clear and defined boundaries and there's very little judgement calls that need to be made. The problem is that it gets dreadfully boring. The lower tiers don't get to play with as many fun technologies and progression through the ranks can take a while. I feel like if you held a senior position at a large company then it would probably be much more interesting.