How many work in IT or related? :-)

I worked IT from about 95-02 doing RAS and CMTS support. I then had to move to somewhere where there weren't a heck of a lot of IT jobs to take care of family. Since then, I went back to school and earned a degree in Information Science, and now work in an archivist/records management position.

That's pretty much the first thing any Desktop Support person would do anyway, so congrats, you already know half the job.

15 Years in IT Programming wasn't for me.

Does oilfield count as IT?

Working to transition to business analysis or project management, but still stuck in IT until the right opportunity lands in my inbox. 12 year anniversary with my employer coming up in 3 weeks.

Ah, I spent 6 years in theUS Navy repainring or learning how to repair radar and associated gear. Got a Bacherlos degree in computer science, and just over 33 years as a computer tech, network specialist, computer security, etc. Now I volunteer at a web host. So, about 42 to 45 years total working on something in electronics or computers.

IT instructor here. MCT, MCSA, MCSE, CCNA, Security+ ect.

Raises Hand, over 30 years now

+1 ... SQL / VB for about the last 20 years

13 years IT, currently server admin. have done networking, desktop support, and project management.

I got a really wierd job...

Road to get there was Computer Science and Psychology at uni, military background also (1st LT I think it would be), student worker programmer in R&D in a biotec company, project & program management, head of corp IT dev, and then “strategist”, same company. Mostly a token title....

Basically I work with the organization to do stuff that is really different, and is related to some kind of digital thing, and that the corporation should be doing, but has no idea off, and often is quite resistant to do.

I run around a year or two running workshops, raising funding internally, having leadersip aligned and educated wrt what they need to know about the thing at hand, have the org take ownership for the transformation and the narrative, etc etc, and then....

Then I have nothing to do for a while, other than a little bit of internal consulting... until it starts again, often in 2-3 year cycles.

A way of explaining it could be that the job is to “hack” the organization to do things it is inherrently resistant to. It is about making people do the transformation (tm), do power points, talk talk talk, present, convince, deal, charm, push, twist arms, and erhhh understand the machiavellian machinations of a corporation...

I usually have a token leader who let me do what I want, and often have very limited insight in what I do, but is almost always very encouraging, and ocassionally helps me (or suffer) when I have pushed stakeholders a bit too hard for their own comfort, or run over them because they where resisting the thing... I am quite low in the hierachy (lowest middle management level), but engage with all levels below EVP many times a week... and EVPs from time to time. It is highly relational towards upper management layers. It generates quite a lot of anxiety being so “meta” to the organisation, where everybody else is doing something quite sensible with their time, and nobody to peer with... so I have applied for a more conventional position internally, hopefully I will know something soon.

I have no idea if this job is somehing other people have seen. To be clear, it is the biggest IT projects in the company that come out of this activity, so it is not just hot air, which it could easily sound like with the ludicrousness of the job content described above, and the amount of... errr... blah(?) that is involved before the projects are moved into production, at which point I have been long gone...

Perhaps oversharing a bit, but hey, it is the internet... it could be so much worse :-D

I used to program and understand that bugs will happen sometimes no matter how careful you are. Never had a user come to me and say "it doesnt start anymore" because of a change I made.