2y ago

What can a senior desktop support tech do who is burned out?

I am wondering what kind of career moves I have available to me because I am over the bullshit of desktop support. I have been brushing up on my Linux skills, learning docker, and doing a whole bunch of networking-related things. At this point, I am 46 years old. Would it benefit me to go back to school to learn a skill to help me advance beyond this role? I just don't know what to do. There are many options, none of them truly low cost and all of them involving a significant amount of risk.

I get that there is no avoiding risk when making a career change so late in life. I was looking at training for Java or Oracle and it isn't cheap. Maybe given my experience I could teach A+ or Network+? I don't know. I'll welcome any ideas right now.

67 comments

When I got burnt out I did a hard turn. I now manage a Turkey Farm and just do IT on the side. Most relaxing decision I've ever made
- Users are definitely harder to train than turkeys
  
  And it is more discouraged to kill and eat the users when they get out of line.
  
  Users are so hard. Turkeys you just have to find any way they may kill themselves and fix it before they do
- That's pretty cool actually. Wish I were in a position to do something similar but I need my next step to parlay with the base skill set I already have.
  
  If your under 39 and in decent enough shape (and US based) the Space Force is looking for recruits and has plenty of IT jobs available. When I'm ready to get back in to the service that is my plan currently
  
  Picking something that doesn't take much prior skill is a very good way out. (Not saying you necessarily should) but, it's very easy. The Farm even provides me with housing and paid me to move so it worked out very well
- Man that's a jump. My issue is leaving the fairly good pay. But I think it's going to need to happen soon.
  
  I left a Factory IT Admin job and honestly after factoring in my free housing only make 1k less a year than I did in IT. but, I left March 2020 and the factory didn't survive COVID. Glad I jumped that ship
- Almost no stress at all. I have like 1 or two deadlines a month (load out and baby bird arrival) we have 40k birds handled between me and a part time farmhand. Everyday is as easy as walking through barns and picking up dead followed by yard work and maintenance. And once a month I run a litter machine through one of 3 finishers to keep the barns clean. Other than that it's just monitoring bird health which after you get used to it is easy. Most important thing is to keep the birds healthy, comfortable and happy
- wouldn't you know it, look who i found...
  
  Yeah man I'm here lol weird seeing other JB guys out and about

QA work has a fairly low barrier of entry, and from there I've known a few people who moved from QA into Developer roles. So there's that route.
- Okay, that sounds promising. By QA I believe you mean software QA, right?
  
  Yep, correct
  Different companies have different requirements, but generally if you know a bit of SQL and a bit of Linux terminal commands you should be good. Maybe have a browse through a testing framework like Selenium, though frameworks would vary depending on what the company does, so don't fret too much about that.
- Can confirm, have taught a lot of QA people coding and got them into developer roles.

With Docker and Linux you could check the opportunities in the field of IT operations.

DevOps?
- Okay, I don't really know what DevOps means or is. I'll have to search on this one. Thank you for giving me something to consider. 👍
  
  DevOps is fun and you'll learn a lot in a short amount of time. You will have to learn a bunch of stuff about automation, how different technologies are built and deployed, source control, etc. It's a steep learning curve but awesome if you're up to the challenge. It is never boring. I've been working on DevOps processes since before it was called DevOps. I've always been happy to be in this sector. Keep in mind that there is no set definition for DevOps. Some purists will argue what I do, setting up the tools and automation then let the devs do their thing, is not DevOps. They might believe that DevOps means developers set everything up and support everything. Of course, that doesn't scale. Other companies just rebrand build engineers as DevOps. That's about the most boring thing I can think of, besides QA. :-) Good luck!
  
  You are welcome, have a good day!
- No. I switched to DevOps and it's worse.

There's not enough Linux admins. Come to the dark side. I make so much more money than I ever did doing desktop support.
- The hard part is convincing somebody to hire me without formal production experience. I am in the classic Catch-22 situation: How do I get experience if nobody will give me the opportunity?
  
  You're going to need a portfolio of stuff you've built if you want to show you can do it but if you have a nice webpage that you setup professionally and have Linux skills on your resume you'll get a hit. My company cannot hire competent Linux admins fast enough.
  
  Go look on upwork for some gigs at your current hourly rate. Once you do one or two the interviews will go much smoother.
  Highly recommend this Linux admin path for you. Knowing from personal exp the pay in support desk vs devops, you might 4x your pay inside 3 years.

Goat farming
- You can start by feeding me
  
  I'll need to milk you first

I'm currently a software dev in the US, and I've always got a few things in the back of my mind: USPS, UPS, tradesman (electrician, carpentry, plumbing). Also not sure what your family situation is like, but if it's just you, I've always found the idea of owning my own tiny home exciting, and it could potentially reduce your financial burdens opening up more options for work because you won't need as much money.

There’s a lot of good advice here. I just want to add that you absolutely do not need to go back to school. It’s a waste of money! I’m 100% self-taught, work in “DevOps” and not a single employer in the last 6 years has asked me about my education or credentials. I enjoy it and it pays well. You don’t have to do DevOps though. Lots of jobs in IT and employers are competing for skills.
- I don't know why I am languishing as senior desktop support then. It seems I lack the ability to even get my resume in front of anyone, let alone an interview.
  
  Believe it or not, with the right skill set (ie if you have skills that employers are looking for) you won’t even need to apply. Headhunters WILL find your linkedin. Right now the market is noticeably slow and thousands of IT professionals got laid off in the last few months alone. The economy will recover soon though so maybe get ready for when that happens by learning new skills. AI, big data, IaC, etc are all in demand.
- How many employers have you give through in 6 years?
  
  3 (all contracts and by choice). But I did at least a dozen interviews in the same period and no one ever asked about any diplomas.

If you are wanting to move into a more programming oriented career, then I would say that while a college degree is useful it is by no means required. One of the things that you could do is complete a certification course and then apply for an entry level position, you'll take a pay cut but unfortunately that's common when changing careers. What type of work are you currently hope to move into?
- I have to search for a course that would hold weight and not just look like Uncle Slappy's IT Career School.
  
  Indeed. I'm certain they exist, but it's a case of needing to research which organizations are reputable and respected for their certifications.

This happened to me in my mid-thirties. I tried a couple pivots. One was to web development, which I found didn't really help the burnout. So I pivoted again to project management. Project management doesn't pay as well, but the hours and workload are far easier to deal with. It's also a lot more accepting of older workers than IT is. Find yourself a project management position in IT somewhere. If you can get one in information security you could build up some time in that sector and get the CISSP, which would open a lot of doors to great paying jobs.
- I tried Project Management and did not succeed at it. I am thinking of the DevOps course of action. I am still relatively young at 46. I'll try and make the pivot.

The best advice I can give is to get away from a front line support role. If you stay in tech you could work your to engineering, sysadmin, data stuff, or project management. If you want to get away from tech go as far as you feel you can (because once people learn your good with computers...).
- I've been in a support role for 25 years. I can stomach it no longer.
  
  Then. Honestly. You need to do a radical shift. No matter what part of IT you are in you will still be doing some level of support.

I was a SysAdmin/Tech Support for 15+ years and also super burned out. I moved into Analytics, specifically using visualization software (Tableau) with SQL, and I could not be happier with it. The stakes are so much lower, and therefore, so is the stress. I feel that it's just technical enough to scratch that itch, but not so much that I end up just doing tech support again. Nobody needs a pie chart at 3 fucking am like they needed with server reboots.
With your background in tech, any viz software should be relatively easy for you to pick up. I was able to get into a free program in my area that trained for Analytics, so I'm not sure what may or may be available to you in your area. But at the very least, there should be plenty of stuff online for learning Tableau and SQL for free if that interests you.
- That's really good that you were able to get out. I guess I could consider Tableau and SQL but I literally have zero passion or interest in it/for it. If I am going to make a change, this time it both has to make monetary sense and has to be something that I don't hate every waking minute of.

Hey person, I was in tech support for about 6 different companies, over 8 years. I left that to become a consultant. Best move, for me. It's a lot like TS but you earn more and make money for the company, instead of being a cost center.
I taught myself some coding before I got my first job. JS and web technologies in my case. If you've been successful in TS for years, you could do this next.

I'd consider learning cloud. There are a lot of cheap certs for azure/aws.
You could also learn kubernetes, it's something you'll get paid quite well to be able to run for a company

What kind of technology did you work with while doing desktop support? If you like working with endpoints you could consider doing client platform engineering.

67 comments