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How to successfully transition out of IT at age 40+? (self.cs_career_questions)

submitted 4 weeks ago by Kyrgizion to c/[email protected]

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As stated in the title. I've worked in IT for over 15 years despite having no related degree.

I've been closing tickets nonstop at my current company for almost 10 years. After several restructurings and shuffling of higher posts, it has become clear to me that while this employer isn't the worst out there, I will never be internally promoted or have my job duties changed if I don't leave.

Worse, ever since Covid I've started falling out of love with IT and computers in general. I used to be stoked to learn about all the new developments in tech, nowadays, not so much - the only "innovation" I've seen in the last 10 years was companies trying to make absolutely everything a fucking subscription model. Now I honestly don't know nor care what's in the newest tech stack, how security has evolved,... I just want my shit to work and not having to worry about everything under the hood.

So getting another helpdesk- or related job seems out of the question for mental health reasons.

What would be another niche or industry where someone with an analytical mind and a greatly developed loathing for corporate mooching could find their spot in the coming two decades or so?

I've long since accepted that I'll never be able to climb any ladders anywhere since I never had the right contacts or stayed long enough, so it would likewise have to be something I could mentally and physically endure being in the bottom rungs of for the aforementioned duration.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 weeks ago

A sidestep into cloud administration, Salesforce and the like could be good? Similar skillet but ultimately all of the heavy troubleshooting and downtime critical problems are outsourced to the SAAS vendor and you'll probably have a paid support contract with the vendor to hawk what you don't want to deal with onto. I stumbled into it as the best role I could land following a layoff and it's been extremely chill as all of the really nasty stuff is the vendor's problem but plenty of fun project work and poking at technical challenges for me. On the other hand I'm not yet at a point of feeling burnt out or waning passion so I'm just tired of everything being so far from the wire and generally feeling "fake" and like my changes have zero meaning

I'm definitely watching this post since I've watched family members get burnt out and change careers unsuccessfully and want to keep an exit strategy in mind at all times so I don't find myself as burnt out