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Welding, plumbing, electrician… plenty of work for the foreseeable future.
Is this a joke comment? Those people work twice as hard as me and get paid half of what I do.
Not trying to hijack here. Just showing a bit of the other side of the coin, to those that may be interested. It's symbiotic. Without us, their ecosystem is shit, without them, our pretty hardware just wastes clock cycles. To anyone considering a Systems Admin role, be aware, you have a lot of work ahead. SysAdmins are commonly generalists. We don't go super vertical in a lot of things, but we do go wider every day.…
Where do I find these generalist jobs? Everyone seems to want a specialization I don't have.
Once you have a year or 2 under your belt in environments that provide training wheels (not insulting, we all started somewhere and noobs need training wheels), you can move on to a higher support tier, or leave and go work for a non-IT company, in the IT role.
The next step is commonly small companies that only have the FTE budget for 1 technical emp, but need someone in-house. This person will spend their time addressing any and all issues for an entire small company, and farm out the things that require specialties.
This is a great learning experience, imo. You get to touch damn near everything, from firewalls, to PCs, to printers, etc.
After that, assuming you picked up the info, apply it well, deliver good customer service, etc. you have many more options.
As far as where to look?
I'd start with small computer companies (break/fix shops), MSPs or similar also often need more Tier 1s.
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Where do I find these generalist jobs? Everyone seems to want a specialization I don't have.
The jobs find you once you’ve worked on a huge range of different problems. Elect yourself next time some obscure problems comes up at work or school or whatever and keep doing that.
I have 30+ years of IT in my resume. The skillset sheet is a whole 2nd page, by itself. This isn't because I'm Wile E. Coyote, Supre-genius, but after 30+ years, if you're not an moron, you pick up a wide variety of skills.
As a simple example of OSes I know or have worked in, to various levels, *nix, all versions of Windows, OS/2 WARP, Novell 3.x-5, Motorola AIX, SCO Unix, VAX VMS (just a touch), Cisco IOS, and many obscure IoT CLIs, like Microtik, Sophos XG, or more obscure stuff like the AT commands to open and close valves on an LCMS (an instrument used to analyze compounds) and I'm likely missing some.
As you may be able to tell, I started a long, long time ago, in a world where 110/300 bps access to another computer over phone lines was the internet and Compu-serve is where the chatrooms were. In fact, I still remember my compu-serve ID and password, not because it's useful, but the weirdest shit sticks sometimes.
Sounds like a list of things to do if you don't have a family, friends, pets, hobbies, chores or a job.
For a lot of people starting their careers, this is probably close to the truth. For people like me (I’ve got all of those besides the pets, unless you consider fish), well… Yeah, you might want to consider a different path.
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Work that doesn’t pay particularly well and can be hard on your body. This is a huge departure.
Experienced welders, plumbers, and electricians make as much as senior software devs do, at least in my part of the US.
As a software person this sort of thing seldom comes to mind. What we also dismiss is all that professional association and certification stuff that we don't have to deal with. I don't know about you, but so far I still like the freedom and ability to move up and around we have better than being stuck working myself up from entry level through to a high paying job by waiting for someone else to retire or move up and out of the way first. Or you become a business owner, which in the plumbing and electrician business I guess is very common. But not everyone is cut out for that.
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What's changed?
The entire mindset of the industry has shifted to one of maximal monetary extraction rather than producing quality, useful products. Everywhere I look, I see our industry engaging in practices that abuse others for profit. This applies to how we treat our customers, how we treat society, and even how we treat developers. For a microcosm of the problem, look at how often comments here focus on being a developer in ord…
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What is a better career?
Management. Chew up the grinders and spit them out when there is no flavor left. There's an endless supply; they extoll the virtues of the grind to the next generation, all the way until they've been spit out. But nobody listens to them once that's happened.
As a BA I hated how there was no communication regarding schedules or scope or active client management and everything ended up in crunch time. So I became a PM.
As a PM I got loaded down with too many projects to effectively manage and got no support from management. So I became a Development Manager.
As a development manager there was no support from senior management, good PM's were rare, developers were still getting abused (evening and weekends) and I had to pick up the slack. So I became a President.
As a president, I had to oversee ridiculous metrics and play financial games with shareholders that only cared for extracting as much money as possible from the company. And constantly try to straddle a line between looking out for myself or others, especially in terms of my own compensation (every dollar I take is 1 dollar less to retain talent or add to the team).
So I quit.
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Experienced welders, plumbers, and electricians make as much as senior software devs do, at least in my part of the US.
Which works or doesn't work depending on where you are. You're not the son of that particular (local) biker gang's members or in favour with them? Sorry, no welding for you! As a software person this sort of thing seldom comes to mind. What we also dismiss is all that professional association and certification stuff that we don't have to deal with. I don't know about you, but so far I still like the freedom and abili…
That seems super local. I've got welder friends (and electrician friend, and plumber friends and my brother is a GC). I've lived in Texas, Michigan, Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin and Ontario.
I've never heard that biker gangs have a monopoly on welding jobs. And in my crazy 20s I dated a CC Riders ex-wife.
Sounds like a list of things to do if you don't have a family, friends, pets, hobbies, chores or a job.
Medical, Legal, Accounting, and other professions including various categories of engineer.
This is part of a knowledge work career-- staying up to date with new knowledge and incorporating it.
5-15 hours per month really ain't so bad.
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What is a better career?
Welding, plumbing, electrician… plenty of work for the foreseeable future.
And even at the senior end, unless you're a contractor owning your own business employing other skilled tradespeople, the money is still at best half what I earn to lay in bed all day typing on a laptop.
I've spent the last 20 years now in cushy, easy jobs giving away thousands of dollars at a time to the rest of my family because of the general unreliability of their income streams working in skilled trades.