IT Jobs in the USA

o-maco-mac
Posted:
in General Discussion edited January 2014
It seems like the only jobs people can get here are the sad IT Customer Service ones.



There's nothing wrong with those jobs but does anyone want to be doing that kind of work for the next 10-15 years?



What else is out there?

And what is out there for people who want to use Macs as their primary machine?

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 5
    hmurchisonhmurchison Posts: 12,425member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by O-Mac View Post


    It seems like the only jobs people can get here are the sad IT Customer Service ones.



    There's nothing wrong with those jobs but does anyone want to be doing that kind of work for the next 10-15 years?



    What else is out there?

    And what is out there for people who want to use Macs as their primary machine?



    Become a consultant. IT in America has become Wal*Mart'ified. Which means labor is done abroad and you get to clean up the mess.
  • Reply 2 of 5
    iposteriposter Posts: 1,560member
    The Veteran's Administration (VA) will no longer fund IT degrees for veterans, due to the lack of potential employment and the instability of the IT job market in the foreseeable future. I switched from IT to the medical radiology field, not much possibility of outsourcing there.
  • Reply 3 of 5
    dfilerdfiler Posts: 3,420member
    IT is a damn big category. Its like saying medical industry... which includes everything from ER janitors to helicopter pilots. For anyone to provide actually useful advice, more info is necessary about your experience, skills, desires, and location.



    The industry is so broad now that being skilled in one area doesn't really make you skilled in another. For instance a network engineer knows nothing about parallelizing code for multi-processing. And both may not have the skill-set needed for corporate desktop/user support. Technical project managers are also different... etc.



    Thankfully the IT job market is relatively strong compared to most. Some of the low-skilled tasks are being sent overseas. But as of yet there are many parts of IT which haven't been affected at all.
  • Reply 4 of 5
    o-maco-mac Posts: 777member
    Let's talk about the lower-skilled tasked folks trying to move up. For those people who have been doing that for a a long time, what do they do? Do they give it up and try another industry? Or do they try to move their careers upward only to run into the people already there that don't want to lose their jobs either?
  • Reply 5 of 5
    dfilerdfiler Posts: 3,420member
    For some tasks, such as user support, advancement might be tough... but still possible.



    One option is to move into systems administration. Administering servers or networks is generally a higher skilled job than that of maintaining workstations. Some people pursuing this career path take it upon themselves to setup servers at home and spend their free time learning everything backwards and forwards. For this strategy to be successful, it really helps if you would already be doing that kind of thing just for fun. Some companies value certifications but I've never been terribly impressed by them.



    The good news is that IT is more of a meritocracy than most fields. If you're good at what you do, chances are you'll be given a chance to prove yourself.
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