Changing of Career from Engineering to I.T - Advice please lads...

Michaeljcox24

Michaeljcox24

Michaeljcox24

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I currently working in a foundry in the Midlands as a metallurgist, but feel very strongly about a career change into the I.T industry. I've been working with Windows based machines since the mid 90's, right up to the stage now where I can quite confidently build and o'c my own machines, fault find, and alike. Of course this isn't the limit of what I can do but I would class myself as a fairly competent user.

The industry I work in is very dirty, hours are long, and the rewards just aren't there anymore.

Can anyone give me any advice on what possible path to follow? Some people have mentioned computeach, some people have mentioned Open Uni, and I've thought about doing some non-paid work at a well known high street retailer just to get some comercial experience.
 
there are thousands of threads like this posted daily here in GD. have a look and see some of the great advice :p
 
There isn't much money in doing technical support like that or building machines. Though a lot start out there and move up. Pretty much anyone can do it too.

There is money if you get a good skillset in more specific areas, like networking, or development, where less people have good skills. Get a degree, do certs, and get experience and look to where you want to be in 3 or 4 years.
 
If you are already a qualified engineer then think about taking a masters to hop another rung on the ladder. I study Embedded Systems Engineering which is basically software + electronic eng, if you did a masters similar to this then you could possibly sidestep into coding/electronics without too much difficulty and it's a foothold which could lead to an IT career.
 
if you want to start in a techie role then you will pretty much start on a service/help desk doing first line support unless you build up some fairly serious paperwork or experience, as every 16 year old and their dog can do windows desktop/hardware support and will work for peanuts.

First line support pay is usually crap, the job can be soul destroying and all your managers will be self important asshats. If you must go first line, then internal service desks in large companies tend to pay much better than dealing with the public, and will actually have career prospects. These tend to require more knowledge than the basic, customer oriented helpdesks (broadband support etc)

Dealing with the public (broadband helpdesks etc) is horrfying when it involves computers. Anyone who isnt a simpleton will have googled the problem and will tell you what the issue is (this call will last all of two minutes while you log it and route to the relevant resolver group); everyone else will be completely useless and make you so frustrated that you'll want to beat them to death and/or eat your keyboard. you WILL hear 'ooo! its like spaghetti junction back there' about a gazillion times a day.

If you want paperwork, then the A+ is pretty useless (unless you want to go into first line...), the network+ is only a bit less useless (useful if you know bugger all about networking), the mcse is often ignored by employers as so many training places do intense courses designed to teach people to pass the exams, which has led to rather a lot of mcse'd halfwits flooding the market with sod all idea of what they are doing. Its useful from a 'learning stuff' point of view though. The cisco stuff is worth a look, though the learning curve can be kind of steep.

A lot of the ads i see looking for people these days are linux/unix server types, database admin (oracle, db2 etc) or programmers. Learning java/.net/C/etc seems to have good prospects. Either that or doing first line support in you pick of a dozen random languages (it cant be that hard to tell them to reboot it in swahili, surely?).
 
I went from engineering to IT chasing the $$$. It was ok at first, ended up earning good money and had good prospects but, holy cow it bored me senseless after a while, and I ended up returning to engineering.

My engineering was originally like yours. It was hard work and I ended up coming home filthy every day. What I've moved into is more desk and brain based. I've had the dirty fun and now it's time to push my career in the cleaner side of engineering.

Have a think about it. It might just be that you need a break from the dirty stuff and go more theory based. There's only a certain length of time I could take working like that, having a bit of fun, but after a while you crave something a little less hands on. Engineering can be epically difficult to get back into once you leave, which is also worth thinking about :)
 
I'm moving out of IT and into something more enjoyable to me.

I've had enough on the complaining bar stewards. You broke it - you fix it!
 
Yeah I've done it for almost 13 years now, and badly need a change. Massive amounts of pressure is put on our company from our customers to ramp down prices to compete with the Chinese, get production levels up, develop alloys that behave outside the realms of normal physics etc.

It's just getting too much. I don't think I would want to go into a support role, because as so many people have pointed out, on here, and IT bods I know, support guys with A+'s are ten a penny.

Need a niche.
 
Financial corporate real estate was where I was at. Pays well and is a very incestuous niche. You won't be short of work if you're good at it, a new job was never much further than a phonecall away if you wanted it.
 
The_TailGunner said:
If you want paperwork, then the A+ is pretty useless (unless you want to go into first line...), the network+ is only a bit less useless (useful if you know bugger all about networking
Click to expand...

Even this is a generous description! :p

To the OP, do you have any programming skills? Thats where the money is and will stay for a while in my opinion. The trouble is it's not just something you can pick up in a weekend.
 
Jonny69 said:
Financial corporate real estate was where I was at. Pays well and is a very incestuous niche. You won't be short of work if you're good at it, a new job was never much further than a phonecall away if you wanted it.
Click to expand...

Corporate real estate is IT?

Or have I picked you wrong here somewhere?

What engineering do you do now?
 
I'm lost too.

At the moment I'm doing metallurgy. Designing, testing, and working with alloys. Only IT involved is operation of software related to testing of the materials. Dirtiest part of the job is the actual manufacturing process. Once you've designed the alloy composition, you have to melt the raw materials in an induction furnace. It's hot, sweaty, dirty work. Breathing in a lot of **** during the day, long ish hours (7AM till 430 most days) and its becoming mind numbingly dull.

I am most keen to go into networking or programming. I realise there is no money in support desk because everyone can do it, I just don't have a clue where to start.

I'm 33 now, but have no kids, nor am I married (not a saddo loner) I'm recently out of a long term relationship lol.
 
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J.B said:
Even this is a generous description! :p

To the OP, do you have any programming skills? Thats where the money is and will stay for a while in my opinion. The trouble is it's not just something you can pick up in a weekend.
Click to expand...

There more money in programming, even at the bottom of the ladder. But I think its under pressure from outsourcing and lots of apps that people would have coded before are now being replaced by apps in the cloud and off the shelf solutions. That said I think there'll still be work in it, but increasingly you really have to have all the right skillsets to get work in it.
 
Michaeljcox24 said:
Yeah I've done it for almost 13 years now, and badly need a change. Massive amounts of pressure is put on our company from our customers to ramp down prices to compete with the Chinese, get production levels up, develop alloys that behave outside the realms of normal physics etc.

It's just getting too much. I don't think I would want to go into a support role, because as so many people have pointed out, on here, and IT bods I know, support guys with A+'s are ten a penny.

Need a niche.
Click to expand...

Do you have a degree? Physics I'm presuming?

If so then why not either do a CS masters or teach yourself to code in your spare time.

Perhaps even look at doing something combining your physics degree - computational physics, computational mathematics etc...

Would open doors for fairly well paid roles that lots of ordinary developers don't have the maths skills to do.
 
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No degree in physics, Higher National Diploma in metallurgical sciences. I quoted physics because of the way materials work. a lot of automotive companies at the moment are asking developers to design alloys that resist oxidation at high temperatures (engine parts run hotter and hotter each year) but at the same time require huge amounts of impact resistance and toughness. You just can't have both, it's like having a CPU that gets performs better the hotter it gets.
 
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