IT Field Employment/Job Crisis at 35... What to do?

[ibex333]

So here's my story... Fresh out of High School, I got very ill. I had to drop out of several colleges because of my health and did very poorly in college. Eventually, in the course of the next 11 years, I barely managed to get an AS Liberal Arts in a community college and at around 25 I tried to do a 4 year school again. Same thing happened. Health suffered, had to drop out.

At 29, I found a crappy private school and enrolled, because small size classes, and friendly environment were easier for me to handle. I first got a BS in Data Communications, and then an MS in Information Systems. I also got a CompTIA A+ Certification.

Now here's my problem. After all that schooling, I can honestly admit that they didn't really teach me anything. Well, that or barely thought me anything at all. My Information systems program was heavily focused on Web Development. I learned the basics of HTML, JavaScript and CSS. And that's pretty much it. The rest was useless fluff! In the course of the program I realized I hate programming with all my heart. It's boring, too difficult, tedious, and just not my thing. But I pressed on, not wanting to waste the time I put into that degree.

So here I am today, with a Masters Degree I might as well shove up my *** and a shitty 36k/year job as a help-desk support technician. When I ask myself what I can do today, the answer is pretty much just "fix and troubleshoot computers". I cant say I know much of anything else.

I don't think going back to school at 35 to start all over again in a different direction would be a good idea. I honestly don't think I can handle it all, what with all that Trigonometry, Pre-Calulus and Calculus they will most definitely bombard me with. I would most definitely get sick again with all the stress, and will be forced to drop out. I barely remember any programming, and I don't think I want to do it.

What would you do if you were in my situation? How can I break this deadly cycle and hopefully get a 70/80k/year job? 36k is just not enough to make any kind of a living in New York City.

A lot of people say... "Well, what do you expect? You don't know shit, and you are not marketable. You didn't go to a prestigious college, and did not get a good education. No wonder you are stuck in this position!"

Hearing things like this, doesn't help. I wonder what I can do in my particular situation to help myself.

 

[zinfamous]

I don't know that field at all, but does it at least qualify you for an entry or 2nd tier position in some IT department at a large institution, like the thousands of NYC colleges and universities, museums, and all that? Seems to me that if you can put out the right paper (and it will likely take many, many tries), then manage a few interviews to get into a group with a small staff of more experienced IT folks, that is where you want to start and where the real learning begins.

Again, I'm not familiar with the difficulty of getting into these places, or how you qualify, and you've probably already considered/tried this route, but it seems to me that those are the best targets for someone with your qualifications and general lack of professional experience as related to your training? Those won't pay all that well, maybe, but you have some mobility but more importantly, several years to really learn how to work in that field.

 

[NesuD]

You have a masters in information systems. Was the private school accredited? Start working on certifications on the administration/engineering side if you don't like coding. A+ is entry level start getting more advanced industry certs from Microsoft, Cisco if your interested in the network engineering/administration side. The masters is great to have but doesn't demonstrate on iota of applicable knowledge in IT administration or engineering fields. You need certs and experience for those.

 

[nakedfrog]

Have you considered not living in NYC?

 

[vi edit]

You need to be looking at pathways to more traditional technical roles. Server admin, VM admin, storage, ect. Hell even an entry level data center monkey would be a step up. Where have you been looking for employment? I work healthcare IT and it's virtually impossible for us to get even remotely qualified candidates. We tried hiring a level 1 position for application support and we got truck drivers, receptionists, ect applying. I was *hoping* to find someone with a help desk or field service background. Couldn't even get that.

Start looking at major hospital systems in your area. In NYC Cedar/Mount Sinai is the big one. They have hospitals all over the 5 boroughs. That background, assuming you don't come across as a rambling buffoon in your screening interview should be able to get you easily into a Level I or even II application analyst or entry level windows server admin role. Once you are in those larger systems there will be opportunity to advance or transfer to different groups should your skill set or interests change.

 

[Viper GTS]

For what it's worth technology related jobs are (in my experience) not particularly sensitive to degrees or certifications. I am about your age in North Jersey and make more than double the upper end of your target. I have no 4 year degree, and no certifications.

What I DO have is 20+ years of job history in IT and media related jobs. I've done help desk making nearly nothing, I've done boring general IT for small companies, and now (for the last 11 years) I work in broadcast.

If you want your income to go up you need to get experience in stuff you don't currently know. If you aren't getting that exposure at work (which is likely the case in a helpdesk role) then you need to supplement it and/or find a new job. Build and play with stuff at home. Spend time with free demos and trials. Find a new job if necessary that will give you exposure to new things. Nearly all of us started where you are, you need to find your way out of it. Complacency and expecting your company to train you to leave them will leave you 'stuck' in helpdesk roles.

Also - Properly manage your relationships (particularly those with power to influence your career). At a minimum manage people's impression of you. If you are the one they want to call when they have a problem you're likely to be the one they call when they have a position open. I generally hate the idea of 'networking' and I've never done it for the sake of it, but your odds of getting a good job vs a candidate who knows people are not good. Know people.

Have you considered not living in NYC?

While I get what you're suggesting, now that I live in this area that's a really shortsighted suggestion. The opportunity density here is MASSIVE. Moving to a low cost of living area sounds great except you are fucking the earning potential of your entire life. Suffer now and when you have the experience to command high salaries you'll find an entire career's worth of job changing and upward mobility all in one geographic area.

Viper GTS

 

[nakedfrog]

While I get what you're suggesting, now that I live in this area that's a really shortsighted suggestion. The opportunity density here is MASSIVE. Moving to a low cost of living area sounds great except you are fucking the earning potential of your entire life. Suffer now and when you have the experience to command high salaries you'll find an entire career's worth of job changing and upward mobility all in one geographic area.

Viper GTS

How do you figure?

 

[Viper GTS]

How do you figure?

Slightly over-stated perhaps but the impact on lifetime earnings from excess time spent at lower than potential income is well documented. Look at students entering the job market during recessions, the impact of unemployment, etc. Willfully leaving an opportunity rich location like the greater NYC area during your prime income years is not something to be taken lightly. There are of course exceptions, but if your income is still growing and you have healthy career prospects - I'd much rather be here.

If I was dealing with fixed income, approaching retirement, poor career prospects, etc then retreating for lower cost of living areas might make sense. It doesn't seem like this applies to him.

Viper GTS

 

[Cal166]

If you're in NYC, in IT field and only making $36k a year, you are doing something wrong. As Viper suggested, you should make yourself the go-to person for all issues, assist and always lend a helping hand. Willingness to take on more responsibilities and tasks.

Lastly, find another company and find a sys-admin position.

 

[sourceninja]

...

 

[interchange]

I can't answer for the field specifically, but if your education does not provide automatically high earning potential at the start, it's best to find a place that has culture to promote within and the valued skills are more likely to be professionalism rather than certification. Someone who is accountable and demonstrates ability to be self-starting and has appropriate respect for boundaries, good communication, reliably on time, attends and participates in meetings, shows understanding and appreciation of what is good for the company rather than the individual is going to be much more valuable to an organization than someone with high qualifications and skill but stays to themselves and fails to report mistakes or problems or take interest in addressing issues with the way work is done (i.e. doing something rather than complaining).

Personally I teach and supervise psychiatric residents. With rare exception, they are all competent. But people who don't follow through on things, don't communicate about time away, don't show interest in problems with the system, don't respond to feedback well, etc. are the ones that make me miserable and often are smarter and more knowledgeable.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Well, I'm 35 and getting a second bachelor's, so...

You should not be working a helpdesk and need to get a new job. Now.

Apply for school/government IT jobs.

There are two schools of thought re: education and content. The first is that when you graduate with a four year degree, you should be a fucking ninja at one thing, and go do that. The second is that tech is a constantly moving target, so a good program will focus more on theory, process, soft skills, and study habits, assuming that future-you will have to mostly teach yourself the technical tidbits anyway.

I happen to favor the second viewpoint. A commitment to lifelong learning is an asset in virtually any career. Even a "soft-skills-centric" program will have to teach you enough technical stuff that you can use the tools to learn the theory, but some intern who has a meltdown because he has to code in Perl instead of Ruby is simply not equipped for life.

But if your program didn't do either, then you may be in a bad situation. If you somehow got a 4-year degree in IT without taking calculus, or at least pre-calc and discrete math, I... umm... I have my suspicions about your alma mater. (I had to take those classes before I could even be accepted into the CS or CIS/IT program at the school I'm attending now. And yes, it's used.)

With your current degrees, you can go the Information Services route and avoid most coding. But if your schools aren't prestigous, or the alumni association, placement office, etc., aren't helping you out w/ networking and job searching, then you need to do something to make yours a more appealing resume.

With an MIS, you should probably be aiming for management track positions for companies that do project planning and IT infrastructure stuff. But while you're Paying Your Dues™ you're going to need some technical skills to justify your existence. An Agile cert and a couple networking certs will probably help you here. The problem is that a lot of that's outsourced now, so you might end up working as a contractor. But those sorts of jobs go to the best-networked schmoozer with the flair for salemanship, not necessary the most technically competent person. So you may need to change your job hunting strategy. (Local meetup.com groups or something?)

On the completely opposite end-of-the-spectrum, have you considered something like becoming a car diagnostic tech? It's not easy to do, and is a fairly technical job - what with all the computers cars have now - but it's a definite pay bump from the more common technicians/wrenchers, and most Community Colleges would be able to get you trained up fairly quickly.

Edit: Also, you should be running Linux at home, and you should be teach yourself Python even if you hate coding. It's the programming language for people who hate coding.

 

[nakedfrog]

Slightly over-stated perhaps but the impact on lifetime earnings from excess time spent at lower than potential income is well documented. Look at students entering the job market during recessions, the impact of unemployment, etc. Willfully leaving an opportunity rich location like the greater NYC area during your prime income years is not something to be taken lightly. There are of course exceptions, but if your income is still growing and you have healthy career prospects - I'd much rather be here.

If I was dealing with fixed income, approaching retirement, poor career prospects, etc then retreating for lower cost of living areas might make sense. It doesn't seem like this applies to him.

Viper GTS

There are LOTS of IT opportunities in places with lower cost of living.

Conversely, I'd have to be paid a stupidly, stupidly large amount to be willing to work/live in NYC...

 

[sourceninja]

...

 

[vi edit]

It's a problem I face when I've been hiring. How do you convince someone that moving to Indiana is a good career move. They can't understand that 95-100k here is a LOT more money than 150k in SanFrancisco.

My 3000sq foot home has a $900 mortgage. I couldn't even find an apartment in SF for that.

It's definitely tough. I used to live in Central, IL. It is *VERY* hard to get qualified workers there. Unless you want a couple acres of ground and/or a decent amount of hunting/fishing there is almost nothing appealing to someone that did not grow up in a rural area. For someone that is used to living in a large city, they will more than likely be miserable moving to a smaller/rural area. The inverse isn't so true. There's a number of GenX/Millennials that grew up in rural areas and GTFO when they could. Never to come back. It's evident by flight/popution growth from midwest states and rural areas

 

[[DHT]Osiris]

So here's my story... Fresh out of High School, I got very ill. I had to drop out of several colleges because of my health and did very poorly in college. Eventually, in the course of the next 11 years, I barely managed to get an AS Liberal Arts in a community college and at around 25 I tried to do a 4 year school again. Same thing happened. Health suffered, had to drop out.

At 29, I found a crappy private school and enrolled, because small size classes, and friendly environment were easier for me to handle. I first got a BS in Data Communications, and then an MS in Information Systems. I also got a CompTIA A+ Certification.

Now here's my problem. After all that schooling, I can honestly admit that they didn't really teach me anything. Well, that or barely thought me anything at all. My Information systems program was heavily focused on Web Development. I learned the basics of HTML, JavaScript and CSS. And that's pretty much it. The rest was useless fluff! In the course of the program I realized I hate programming with all my heart. It's boring, too difficult, tedious, and just not my thing. But I pressed on, not wanting to waste the time I put into that degree.

So here I am today, with a Masters Degree I might as well shove up my *** and a shitty 36k/year job as a help-desk support technician. When I ask myself what I can do today, the answer is pretty much just "fix and troubleshoot computers". I cant say I know much of anything else.

I don't think going back to school at 35 to start all over again in a different direction would be a good idea. I honestly don't think I can handle it all, what with all that Trigonometry, Pre-Calulus and Calculus they will most definitely bombard me with. I would most definitely get sick again with all the stress, and will be forced to drop out. I barely remember any programming, and I don't think I want to do it.

What would you do if you were in my situation? How can I break this deadly cycle and hopefully get a 70/80k/year job? 36k is just not enough to make any kind of a living in New York City.

A lot of people say... "Well, what do you expect? You don't know shit, and you are not marketable. You didn't go to a prestigious college, and did not get a good education. No wonder you are stuck in this position!"

Hearing things like this, doesn't help. I wonder what I can do in my particular situation to help myself.

I'm 34 and in IT, started in the military around 24, so I've had some time under my belt. First thing I'd say is, there's nothing wrong with working IT, definitely something wrong with working it for $36k/yr in NYC.

Second off, don't put too much emphasis on your degree. I've done a *lot* of job searching on the market, both within government, general business, and academia. Most give zero shits about your degree status, unless it's tied to some contract (the VA is bad about that). From my experience, 90% of places care about one thing: your experience level. I've had verbal offers >$90k purely off phone interviews because I knew what I was talking about in the interview. Having said that, I've worked alongside probably 70 different IT workers total throughout my career and I can put on one hand how many were competent at what their job was. The rest just cannot cut it, flounder about, can't tell you one whit about how anything works outside of their lane. Zero understanding of the interactions between hardware, software, networking, OSI layers, etc. You having real, no-shit knowledge of how IT works (and you probably don't if you work Tier 1 help desk, no offence, just lack of exposure) is the number 1 thing you can do to get your crap together and get a well paying IT job. This doesn't require you to take a billion certs, doesn't require you to shell out $10k on boot camps (please for the love of god don't go to boot camps), doesn't require you to buy a hundred '$thing for dummies' books or anything else. Just find a way to worm your way into whatever your current employer does with their IT staff, and learn learn learn. Learn storage, learn networking, learn mail, learn web apps, learn OS imaging, learn SCCM, monitoring systems, firewall, security, IA, identity management, GPO, and how all of it interacts with each other. If you can speak coherently to several groups that normally don't interact with each other themselves, you become invaluable with that alone, much less if you can actually do the work that they do.

Third: Temper your expectations. If you don't realistically see yourself getting a >$90k/yr job in NYC, GTFO. Go find a nice place in the VA mountains, go work in Austin TX, go find something in Ohio or Montana, or wherever. Don't live in a major city unless someone's damn near bribing you to live there because it's not worth it. You'll make new friends, you'll find a new house, you'll move all your Ikea garbage after throwing out the shit you don't need and life will move on, but at least you won't be giving someone else ~50k/yr for the pleasure of living in a shoebox. I'm far happier in upstate NY in the $80k range than I'd ever be in NYC, LA, SF, or anything similar, south of around $130k.

Finally: I don't know everything about everything, I'm just a sysad. I'm sure there's a plethora of work available being a web designer, a code monkey, documentation guy, or who knows what else within IT. Hell even management, a master's in IT with some hands-on knowledge might be enough for a low level PHB manager, if that gets your motor running. Just saying, you have options, don't try to limit yourself in some way. Nothing beats good old fashioned hard work though. Pick a path, nose to the grindstone, get really good at it, and someone will pay you to do it.

 

[sourceninja]

...

 

[AznAnarchy99]

That's how I feel right now but at 26. Trying to get a job out of this field ASAP.

 

[Exterous]

Don't sweat the degree at all - it doesn't really matter for most IT stuff. My degree is in Architecture, I knew jack shit about computers in college and have manged to make a good career out of it. Many places just care that you have a degree and thats it.

One of the best things you can do is search out answers and education opportunities on your own. When I was a lowly help desk monkey I would often work with our network\sys\dba admins and 'shoulder surf' problems with them. I could have just passed them off and thats it but I wouldn't have learned anything by doing that. You might think you're being annoying and asking a ton of questions (and maybe it is a little bit) but if you can show you can take the lessons you learn and escalate fewer tickets they'll love you for it and usually won't mind teaching you things. Too many tier 1 and 2 people are just expensive email\ticket forwarding services. Also try to bring potential solutions: "Here's what I've tried so I think it might be X but I don't know how to find out for sure". Depending on how rigid your workplace is they might let you start taking on tougher\edge case problems allowing you to improve your resume. Good interviewing skills help a lot too. Emphasis clear communication abilities, team player ideals, enthusiasm for being able to learn from existing expertise, and a desire for collaborative environments where you can lend your own skills to the team.

Home labs are pretty useful too. Learn how to setup your own VMs or build your own NAS. Doesn't have to be expensive either - you can play around with a ton of stuff with a Raspberry Pi.

If you can angle towards Cloud Services, virtualization (or both as they are getting more tightly integrated), and networking those seem to be pretty strong fields IMO. Storage is too but more and more companies are looking to outsource that to the cloud (despite not necessarily understanding the costs behind doing that)

And being good at Google searches is very important.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

And being good at Google searches is very important.

I've made a career out of it.

 

[Ken g6]

In the course of the program I realized I hate programming with all my heart.

Alright. What do you like? Preferably in the general area of IT? That might help narrow our suggestions.

 

[BudAshes]

Nobody wants you unless you have at least 2 years of experience. Might sound dumb but I'd recommend trying an internship at a company you want to work for. If you show you're competent and get hired on you can many times get promoted fairly quickly, especially with a masters on your resume.

 

[sourceninja]

...

 

[Red Squirrel]

IT was awesome in the early 2000's, so many jobs and opportunities. Now IT is seen as a cost, like janitorial services, and companies want to outsource it or pay near minimum wage. There are still good IT related jobs out there but it's super cut throat and you probably have to live in a big city if you want it to pay half decent but then your costs of living go up and quality of life goes down so it's practically not worth it. When they say you have to be "marketable" they basically want you to have every cert imaginable etc so your life is spent studying and getting these certs and always staying up to date etc... at that point you live to work. I got lucky myself and found a fairly cushy job in telecom so I will ride it out for as long as I can, but I like to look at what's out there in terms of jobs for fun in case I lost mine and there's really not much unfortunately, at least not in my area. Most jobs also require like 10 years of experience in software/technology that has not even been out for that long.

Best bet is to probably start a small IT consulting business, but that's not easy, people arn't willing to pay. You charge $100 to fix a computer and they'll just go buy a new one instead.

 

[LPCTech]

Focus on servers and Administration. I was in almost exactly your situation, I was very sick for most of my 20's and some of my 30s. Im 38 and finally well. I have A+, Network+ and Security+ Comptia certs. I have no college degree. I recently accepted a position as a sys admin at a large national company for roughly 10K/yr more than you are making. I live in the midwest up against lake Michigan. You need to learn some programming to break 50-60K unless you have years of experience or become the admin for a whole company. But JavaScript is a GREAT way to go.