Switching Careers: From Nursing to IT..Networking?

wrong move.

 

Let me know when you quit. I want to do that. lol.

 

You should do the Pacs for hospitals.

 

Just curious...What's the official role of that position?

I started from the bottom working as a web QA at a video game company for three years. Some people get stuck there. I was fortunate enough to learn a lot and got promoted one or two times during that span. You make at most 12/hr at the very bottom. I started at 11 w/o benefits as a contractor.

Later on, the company tried to short change me (it's a battle even when your skills are crucial) and by chance, I stumbled into a consulting career.

I think for those w/o a degree, starting off at the bottom is the major hurdle. I had a degree in something else and during those years, I felt pretty resentful for the way my company "exploited" me. Some of it was entitled pride, but they were truly screwing me over for a while to the point that when I quit, they had to hire 2 new people and bring a dev over to replace me.

My degree is in Environmental Science. They're pushing me to learn more programming, but my main expectation is to learn patterns, have a good technical grasp at a high level, while paying attention to detail.

Programming is a bonus, but I'm learning that the industry is overlooking QAs with my kind of mindset. People think it's either a dev/engineer level or manual and menial grunt work. Instead, it's really about having an empirical mindset for experimentation, lateral thinking, and problem solving, things a hard science degree somewhat provides.

In short, if you have tons of patience (for testing), like to prove people wrong, and like breaking things, then being a QA isn't as hard as some people think it should be. Your ceiling compared to devs is lower, and I ultimately learned that I wasn't a very fast programmer, but I enjoyed ruining other's people work and was getting appreciation for doing it.

You need the right kind of manager though, but the experience in getting that foot in the door is immense.

 

BTW, for you guys already in IT, what do you think is the higher paid of the various IT sub groups? Programming? Good chance, especially since you can latch on to some sort of startup. But barring some sort of Google/Facebook... I'm talking average salary. Networking? Storage? Servers? Web Dev?

 

Managing said positions...

 

No. I haven't had a manager in 12 years that makes more than me. Director level maybe.

 

It honestly just depends on where you end up and what kind of experience you get under your belt. There is certainly good money in being a dev if you are good and latch on with the right company. Network Engineers are always known for making good money. On the server side, I'd say it's better to eventually specialize in something rather than being a generalist server admin for your entire career (Storage, DBA, Web Servers, etc).

 

Asian sausage fest :grin:

 

You don't **** where you eat.

 

I suppose so. Product managers make ~90+. A senior/lead with 7+ years can bring in 110 depending in the company.