Anyone left IT for another job path?

randal24 said:
Well that's part of the problem Shicky, there are no real technical challenges in corporate IT any more for me. I spend most of my day raising change requests and tickets for other groups to make changes, some which can take weeks to go through various processes and review gates to achieve.

I remember a time where you could raise a ticket to cover someone's work, walk across the office and ask them to do it. Racking a server used to take me a couple of hours to get an IP, VLAN configured, racked up, base OS built and deployed. Now it takes weeks, if not longer.

Spend more time chasing the red tape around the place than actually doing proper work.

I understand the need for process, I understand why a company would want to have such mechanisms in place but rarely are they implemented in an efficient manner and as mentioned above just serve to obfuscate a job which should take a fraction of the time to complete.

The frustrations aside, my other main driver for wanting to work for a small company is to get back to a sense of pride and ownership in a job. To know that what you're doing will actually have an impact, to know that it'll be recognised. To also know that if you **** it up then you're in the firing line. A job where you really don't mind staying late to do something, or get in early to make a dent on. Something I think that is sorely missing for corporations, that eagerness and desire to go the extra mile hasn't been around in my experience for some time because it just doesn't get the recognition it deserves.
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hear hear! Exactly what I've seen and feel though I failed to experience the old days when red tape wasn't quite such a road block. Part of me is wondering whether it is JUST this causing me to want to jump ship from IT completely or whether there is other things to blame. I guess as I feel I can't / don't want to make it as a developer, it screws the natural progression up for me.

I'd love to find some sort of split around nutrition / fitness / IT / business or some sort of mix anyway to test the water. At the moment teaching seems like the closest I would get.
 
Well why would you want to stay in an industry that prides itself on models and disciplines that clearly don't work the majority of the time? How can you be proud to work for a company that takes weeks to do the simplest of tasks? It's embarrassing!

My fear is that this practice is endemic to the industry now, so leaving one job for another is a frying pan/fire scenario. Hence my thoughts about nipping into contracting, at least you get a change of scenery every 3,6,12 months and the money has the potential to be a lot better. Sure there's pros and cons to each I admit, but you never know until you try. :)
 
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randal24 said:
I yearn to work for a smaller company again, I'm even considering taking a drop in pay to get something that fits the bill. In my experience, corporate IT is a guffawing, buzz-word driven hell hole that's been allowed to grow into an acronym flooded mess so entangled in it's own sense of importance it's forever sawing off the branch it's sitting on.
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Our business is currently going through ever-increasing expansion, and things are moving from a previously enjoyable, dynamic and challenging workplace to an utter mess at a standstill at the behest of recently introduced process managers, internal auditors, implementation of workflows that only seem to cease the flow of any actual work.

Just found out today that my best colleague, the backbone of the UK operation, and essentially my rock here is leaving in January to seek something outside network support/admin, and I'm seriously bummed about it.

What you describe above is exactly where this place is headed. It's already started, and I feel like I'm screaming into a void just trying to get something -- anything -- done as it needs to. All the while it feels like people sit idly by spouting as many three-to-ten letter acronyms as they can to excuse the fact that nobody appears to be improving anything. It's maddening, and that paragraph you posted couldn't have been said any better.
 
Any further stories of people switching drastically within IT? Switching fields entirely? Perhaps even switching to teaching? Any computer science teachers / lecturers in here?
 
I sometimes wonder if I want to stay in IT, but I dont see how I can make the money to maintain my lifestyle in anything else - I'd have to go back several steps for any career change

I have a sideline that I'm just starting out in - but it'll be a couple of years until I make any money from it, and it may never be a living..
 
Did IT support for about 9 years (as I've mentioned in other threads), but left that at the end of 2006 after repeatedly banging my head against a brick wall due to upper management not knowing their **** from their elbows.

Took six months off and then started temping as a Purchase Ledger Clerk. I've since done about four short term/fixed contract jobs in that area. Then worked for the MoD for almost 2 years again as an IT Admin Assistant. It was supposed to be just an office admin job, but the IT manager actually wanted someone to help him with the support, so I ended up doing mostly support there and very little office admin.

Left that job at the end of last year to study towards a finance qualification, that for various reasons I never completed. Funnily enough, the IT manager at the last job emailed me to say he'd left about two months later. I'm only speculating, but I don't think he could do the job without me anymore, and I know he wasn't that happy with the way his job was going and had been looking at the job boards. I think my leaving was the final straw.

So now I'm looking for office admin jobs again and hoping to find something before I either:

run completely out of money
kill the jobcentre advisor I'm currently forced to deal with
 
I love IT, I always wanted to get in to it, I still love it, I spend 7 hours at a PC at work then get home and spend a further 6-12 on a PC. Kind of cool working on something you have as a hobby and the type of job I have had and currently do means if I have any issues with my PC, hosting, websites etc generally I can sort them out myself.
 
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chk4 - Can I ask:

What role do you do in IT?
How long have you done it for?
How much interaction do you have with management and process/governance types?
 
randal24 said:
chk4 - Can I ask:

What role do you do in IT?
How long have you done it for?
How much interaction do you have with management and process/governance types?
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Sure, currently I'm a technical consultant. I deal with BizTalk servers, building, deployment and administration of them. Looking after our environment (SQL, Sequence, Robotics and loads of other things) again from building, maintenance, deployment, troubleshooting.

I've worked in IT now for nearly 6 years, prior to this roll I was doing 2nd line technical support.

I'm not going to lie, I have to deal with them a lot and I work in a very large company but everyone seems to be really nice and sound. I could just be lucky but I get on with everyone. Most people seem to stick around here, I'm one of the newest employees here and I've been with this company 5 years... There are a lot who have been here 20+++ years.
 
I've avoided blaming ITIL directly, because there is some good stuff in it. The problem with ITIL is how it's interpreted and implemented, and the people who have total faith in it thereafter.

I agree, things used to be a lot simpler pre-ITIL days. Certainly a lot less guff speak, and people who think they know what they're on about because they've got an ITIL practitioner qualification.

The latest buzz qualification around here is Six Sigma, which people keep mentioning to me as if everyone is supposed to be a master of the discipline. Or, they keep mentioning it to make themselves sound like they're ahead of the curve. :rolleyes:
 
I went from IT technical to training and assessing people to do that kind of work.

You can get your training/teaching qualification at night school. Obviously the more skilled you are the higher the level you can teach too and the more money you can get (you sound far more skilled than me).

Even teaching MS Office with a a few other things such as Sage I could get about £300 a day when running a course. Obviously training courses don't run 52 weeks of the year so I backed this up with NVQ assessing at less money but was freelance so I could fit it in around the course bookings.
 
Third Opinion said:
I went from IT technical to training and assessing people to do that kind of work.

You can get your training/teaching qualification at night school. Obviously the more skilled you are the higher the level you can teach too and the more money you can get (you sound far more skilled than me).

Even teaching MS Office with a a few other things such as Sage I could get about £300 a day when running a course. Obviously training courses don't run 52 weeks of the year so I backed this up with NVQ assessing at less money but was freelance so I could fit it in around the course bookings.
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I assume you're training adults? I looked into this at one stage, but don't you have to cart around tonnes of equipment up and down the country and essentially you're on the road lots? Do you find it boring dealing with the same material repeatedly? Bored by lack of complexity? I ask as those were my main concerns, I have a mate who did it, he's now an IT manager at a huge firm on mega bucks - don't think i'd be keen on his workload or stress levels though!
 
Shicky said:
I assume you're training adults? I looked into this at one stage, but don't you have to cart around tonnes of equipment up and down the country and essentially you're on the road lots? Do you find it boring dealing with the same material repeatedly? Bored by lack of complexity? I ask as those were my main concerns, I have a mate who did it, he's now an IT manager at a huge firm on mega bucks - don't think i'd be keen on his workload or stress levels though!
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My main client was only about 30 minutes from my home. They brought in clients (trainee's) from all over the world, Government workers mainly. Each course was different so sometimes you might have a financial angle and other times more of a personnel.

Most companies who hire trainers have training facilities, such as well equipped training rooms. I would use their photocopiers and printing facilities so all I really carried a majority of the time was my lap top, a few training manuals and lots of things on hard drives. I did have my own projector just in case.

You either enjoy teaching or you don't. When doing courses you have to be on top of your game all the time, not a good time to have an off day. You need to be confident with people and not afraid to talk to groups.

Their is also a lot of preparation involved which you usually get paid for if it is a bespoke course. As a trainer you can expect all expenses including hotel rooms if your stuck far away.

I turned mine into a business and had 3 employee's. I sold the business when my health deteriorated. I use to take an assistant trainer with me some days if it was a large group.

With the right clients you can grow your business very quickly. I never had a problem locating clients, especially local Government and Health care places.
 
@OP the main problem might not be that you're in IT but that you're in IT, in a bank - that's got to be one of the worst places to be if you work in IT - even the back office/operations guys think they're above you.

Have you considered moving to a vendor or a consultancy firm? Do you have much business knowledge, are you supporting a particular area/group etc.. FX, fixed income etc... or are you in a more generic IT orientated role? If you've got some applicable skills and relevant business knowledge then perhaps just get out of there and get into a software firm that develops products for that sector (perhaps even one of the vendor's who's products you've been supporting) - if you don't like development then maybe do the consultancy thing...
 
I also work in a support area for an investment bank (management though, not actually fixing it myself). Hate investment banking and getting really fed up with the job after 25 years. I'm intending to change direction in a couple of years when I can downsize house etc.

EDIT: I've worked in different banks in both retail banking and investment banking. Retail is really nice and people are down to earth. I hate investment banking though and it's a completely different atmosphere.
 
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I did a small stint in a large retail financial (not actually a bank but near enough ;) ) and on the whole it was a nice place to work, just wasn't for me due to circumstances.
 
Did tech support for 7 years then moved to the finance department and started studying for my CIMA qualification while working as a trainee financial analyst. Best decision I've ever made. :)
 
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