Career change - Engineering to IT!

Dunks

Dunks

Dunks

Soldato
Joined
31 Oct 2004
Posts
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Location
London
Gents,

In two minds whether engineering is for me! Currently a Mechanical Engineer, graduated two years ago with a degree in Mechanical Engineering and have almost two years engineering experience. I've done one year of a computer science degree before changing to Mech. Eng.

I'm not too sure what part of IT I would want to end up in, but my main interests seem to revolve around large scale networking/virtualisation/storage technologies (experience from personal projects, albeit not on a large scale!).

I'm only 25 so I figured the earlier I change the better.

What would be the best route if I were to break into these areas?
 
Helpdesk then work your way up probably, completing a couple of courses along the way.

I'm a network engineer.

Get an HNC or any kind of qualification to get your foot in the door and work your way up the ladder.

Our helpdesk is full of Computer Science graduates.
 
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Why are you in 2 minds about engineering? IT isn't all sunshine and rainbows.
 
LiE said:
Why are you in 2 minds about engineering? IT isn't all sunshine and rainbows.
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Not sure if I find it as exciting as I first did. I think I'm just having a mid-20's crisis :p

I've always had a pretty strong interest in IT. Play around with various virtualisation (VMWare, Xen), run my own dedicated server for hosting and misc use etc. Obviously far from professional though!
 
Dunks said:
Not sure if I find it as exciting as I first did. I think I'm just having a mid-20's crisis :p

I've always had a pretty strong interest in IT. Play around with various virtualisation (VMWare, Xen), run my own dedicated server for hosting and misc use etc. Obviously far from professional though!
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IT won't be exciting either after a year or two and believe me an out of work interest does not always mean you'll be happy to spend your life doing it, these days the less I have to go near a PC out of work the happier I am and I used to love messing about with kit in my spare time.
 
How are you with people Dunks? Reason I ask is, look at pre-sales / technical consultant / systems engineer roles if you don't mind customer facing activities, I would avoid help desk like the plague.
 
Chiz said:
Helpdesk then work your way up probably, completing a couple of courses along the way.
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Which should be enough of a reason not to - helpdesk work has its place, obviously, but I don't see why a mechanical engineering graduate with a job in mechanical engineering would want to leave that to work on an IT helpdesk. I mean, really?
 
[TW]Fox;26736532 said:
Which should be enough of a reason not to - helpdesk work has its place, obviously, but I don't see why a mechanical engineering graduate with a job in mechanical engineering would want to leave that to work on an IT helpdesk. I mean, really?
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Why?

He told you why. He wants to work in networking/virtualisation.

He's a mechanical engineer graduate, not a computer science graduate. I wouldn't exactly give him a job as a network/visualisation engineer, especially with no formal computing experience, would you?

He needs experience, and to get that, you need to work hard and learn from the bottom up.
 
Chiz said:
Why?

He told you why. He wants to work in networking/virtualisation.
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He'd likely be far better off just finding something else in engineering he wants to do. Engineering is a highly respected and potentially extremely lucrative career path and he's already got the hard part of getting onto that particular ladder out of his way. Jumping right off and starting at the bottom on a helpdesk so he might one day work in virtualisation just seems incredibly foolish.

Why spend all that time getting as far as he has in something as good as engineering only to start from the bottom in IT?

There must be a better answer to 'I dont like my current job' than resetting passwords on a helpdesk in the hope of one day moving to greater things, it just doesn't sound sensible and whilst 5 years ago that might have been a good idea for him it surely isn't now?

rubberduck said:
Are you sure you aren't confusing 'being bored of mechanical engineering in general' with simply being bored in your current position?
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I think this is spot on and it'd be an enormous shame to throw away something like that for the wrong reasons.
 
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He didn't ask us what we think he should do with his life. He asked us the best route into his desired fields of IT.

Disregarding the above however, I completely agree 100% with you. He'd be an idiot to throw away that degree and work in IT. All that hard work (and possibly money) for nothing.

Like you said Mechanical Engineering would probably be a lot more lucrative than many/most jobs in IT.
 
Op you are insane.

Why don't you like your job? Maybe just change employer.

Why not join the military as an engineer? They would snap your hand off I think.
 
What exactly is your current mech eng role? As others have said, maybe it's your role/company rather than disliking the whole discipline.
 
Thanks guys. I think you're right, I just need to find what I want to do in engineering rather than change career! I've always had IT as a hobby so maybe it's better leaving it that way!

I've been looking at getting into building services/structural but quite tricky with my set of skills/experience! Just afraid of getting stuck doing something I'm not sure I want to do!

Why is life so complicated :p
 
alx said:
What exactly is your current mech eng role? As others have said, maybe it's your role/company rather than disliking the whole discipline.
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Currently working in nuclear as a Design Engineer on the reactor plant itself.
 
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