Ask HN: How can I change my career trajectory from IT Support?

4 points by hello_marmalade 5 years ago | 1 comment

I've been working for a long time now as IT Support, but it's never been my passion. I love computers and have been doing all kinds of things with them since I was 11 and even earlier. I ended up falling into IT Support as a career because I had the natural skill set basically from just troubleshooting my own issues constantly. That said while I'm making decent money I've never been satisfied with what I'm doing. Bluetooth connectivity issues and faulty mice were never what made me passionate about computers, and I want to move on to what does.

I'd love to get into development (I've been enjoying my time on my own with Scheme and Python) or even Linux engineer type stuff, but it feels like even though I've had the chance to do projects related to that occasionally, I haven't gotten enough that I can really be a competitive candidate for anything else. I don't have any college education either which I feel might put me at a disadvantage. I have in the past year however been able to get a lot of hands on real world experience with automating tasks using Python and handling API integrations and the like, which has been really enjoyable.

Would anyone have any recommendations as to how to move out of the business of fixing simple problems and into the business of creating interesting solutions?

Thanks!

jedberg 5 years ago |

I started in IT too, for the same reason. Because I was good at troubleshooting Windows issues.

My career took off when I got a job at a startup, where the IT group was in charge of not only all of the desktops, but also all of the unix servers, firewalls, routers, etc.

I got lucky that our senior engineers were great mentors, and would allow us to take on less critical projects that used those other technologies.

Also at the same time, I vowed to use only Linux at home as my primary desktop, which forced me to learn a lot about admining unix boxes. I'd take the old servers home that were going to be tossed and set them up as web servers or mail servers.

So I'd say try to find a job with a small IT team that has other bigger responsibilities.