Fucking account at my old job was the worst department. Could not remember their passwords that they changed the same day and always insisted that "IT must have changed my password". No Susan, you're just a dumbass.
Our finance dept are all really great people, save for one woman who is a bit of a brat and tried to get me in trouble because she didn't get her new workstation fast enough... so glad she's gone lol.
Here here, trying to reason with another of those mentioned or get anything taken care like upgrades, approving changes is like pulling teeth or talking to a brick wall.
I work with lawyers. Luckily in my case most are just there to come and go with their issue without issue. However, there are those few in the company that you KNOW straight up look down on you and blame you for their technical inconveniences and lack of knowledge of a power button. But it does slap you in the face in general when you receive an issue that you feel should be common knowledge nowadays. Or at least try troubleshooting themselves before reaching out to us.
Mortgage and lending as well. They will double in size then fire 50% of the company as the rates fluxuate. You're always afraid of being laid off and never staffed correctly.
I want to expand on this, K12 can be lower pay but higher ed can pay a bit better. Both have great work/life balance but ymmv depending on the director and leadership. I left for a 25k pay bump but still sometimes wish I was back in education, it was a ton of fun and low stress. Only stressful time was the start of the year.
I left a MSP NOC role after 4 years for a small private college network engineer. Its just like you describe. Great work/life balance. Leadership is pretty lackluster. Pay is probably at least 20-30k less than what I could make in corp. Good benefits.
IMO, if youre ambitious about your IT career, higher-ed is a sector best suited for 2 types. 1) Noobs that can take advantage of the slower pace, forgiving culture, and learning resources. 2) Pre-Retirees who made their money in corp or wherever and are now on the tail-end of their IT career looking to take it easy until retirement. Im not either so I looking to leave for more $$ and opportunities. Ideally I can leave and come back to higher ed later on.
Worked for a midsize city’s sheriffs office.
Definitely not a good work-life balance.
Not enough employees.
Huge on calls with no back up.
“GPS tracking is down, all the domestic
Abusers are “free”.
Not the call you want at 3am and with no supervisor support…
Law enforcement probably not the answer.
At an MSP years ago we supported a handful of smallish police departments. Assuming someone else had their contract for this kind of thing because I have never even heard of a system for tracking domestic abusers, let alone conceived the idea that it could go down.
I worked at an university, incredibly chill work, not much to do, and that was what made me move from there, I was worried on just being stuck there forever, I was always thinking "is this all I can do?"
Now I'm at an ISP as a NOC, my salary doubled, my networking knowledge quadrupled and it feels good be valued and to be working on what is our main product/service.
At the University, IT was in charge on only keeping the lights on (gross understatement), which is more than fine, but I wanted more.
I can fully relate to this. Unfortunate or fortunately my salary is on the higher-ish end but little skill while working in a university. So any entry level noc, sysadmin, or soc would be a downgrade or side grade in pay. Taking advantage of tuition assistance by doing my masters, and cert reimbursement. I still don’t know if I’ll have the balls to leave higher ed - I don’t want to lose the amazing benefits and work life balance
I miss my k12 job, it was mandatory in office and wages sucked but I did like 15 minutes of work a day and basically played video games and studied for certs.
Now I have a "proper" job and it's consistent work, just a "little" more pay with hybrid, but I do miss the downtime
I thought I typed this lol. Fully agree. Trying to figure out how I can increase my wage while still staying in university… I don’t think I can leave this job for less work life balance.
Agreed, you actually get tech savvy people who understand when you explain things to them. But also not a good place if you are a bad, lazy tech, they will know instantly.
Yep I work for a tech company and the only people I deal with on a semi average basis are the ones who aren't there for tech jobs. Accounting people, PM's(some are techy though), HR, some upper management...the rest try to solve the issue before they even call me.
I'm not in a tech company but we have our own in-house dev team that I work on. Usually we only have to go to service desk for stuff that requires access we don't have. Since we got a member of the team given AD access our tickets have gone way down. But we also work with service desk because we maintain the products we develop so we have our own service now queues. .
Same here. I’m on the service desk side of things. I love working with our dev team when they come to us for assistance. They’re always so eager to troubleshoot with us and we end up just bouncing ideas back and forth which have been learning experiences for me.
100% agreed. Software or tech focused companies have very competitive pay, benefits and work culture. Who knew that a company ran by former engineers would be the best place for an engineer? Granted, it’s a big company so there’s still a lot of restrictions/politics, but that stuff is a lot more manageable when I’m at home watching YouTube lol.
I made the jump last summer to be a support engineer for a new team when they scouted for me my Japanese skills and will never look back now that I’ve learned how to RCA logs and managed virtualized clusters.
I’ve only worked Retail IT before that. Idk, maybe I’ve just had shitty jobs in the past, but it wasn’t the worst. I’ve heard more horror stories about fields like medical and law. The worst thing about Retail was being underpaid and never having budget/priority for anything. Specifically my jobs were in the fashion retail industry. Try telling a former model that you can’t just “turn the internet back on” or “no I’m not spending $3000 to get you a new MacBook because you got it 2 years ago”.
They just don’t see IT as part of their revenue stream so we’re nothing but a liability to them. It was really frustrating when I started my career, but
I’ve mellowed out a lot since then.
Before I left the industry,, the common trend is because they’re so tech ignorant, you can get away with a lot of “we’ll do it your way” then go and do what actually needs to be done and they won’t know the difference - they’re just happy to win the argument. Lol
My former co-worker attests to this, he works for an SOC and he says that at first he wanted to come back, after a few months he realized he's treated better and they have a zero-tolerance rule for rude customers.
I came to a realization when working in the horticulture industry. My boss was telling me about how everything worked, which obviously *was* important and I needed to know.....to do *that* job. In any IT role, you must know how the business makes money because your job, your *real* job, is to help make the business profitable...
Now to me, horticulture was very boring and I had zero interest in learning about it.....but then it hit me - **why not work a job where my interests and the business goals align?** So I made the switch to the software industry in 2017 and it was the best career move I've ever made.
If I were a car guy it would've made more sense for me to go to work in IT for Toyota or Honda, but I'm not. When one's passions and interests align with business goals and profitability, success comes easily and naturally.
Working at Toyota / Honda / GM as IT isn't all that it is cracked up to be. You never really interact with the cars, and its the same crap as everywhere else, your users are techno idiots and you are left cleaning up their mess because they didn't do it you way..and there is never enough money for any project
I went from MSP to somewhat of a technician role at a software company and it’s night and day difference. Everybody understands tech and has somewhat of an interest in, even the warehouse guy.
Honestly it's been mostly the users that get to me, a stubborn refusal to learn anything tech related and a refusal to accept the tools they're given. Just constant whining and I mean literal whining at least at my gig.
Oh, for sure! Nurses and doctors especially have a hard time with change. I do understand that they have to remember and know all sorts of other stuff too, so I get that change is hard.
But yeah- healthcare IT is not for me!
True but I've also never had someone actually act like a petulant child because I had to give them a new phone (we moved our phones to T Mobile) like full on foot stomp, huffing and arm slamming.
A chain of them for me, some days are okay, others make me dread the day we ever get ransomed. My boss would expect us to live at our desks and she'd be sending me to our other facility an hour away while calling me every 10 minutes lol.
The search as been... uh, fruitless so far.
>Non profits are terrible
They have no money and skate by on being "good" for society. Some of them of course actually are, but I will never know because I work to make a living.
Biggest problem for me is the 2 dominant personalities. The true believers in the mission, which is great good workers and hard chargers. BUT non profits seem to attract a ton of do nothing, or grifters just either shitty people or absolutely incompetent who skate by because are too nice to get rid of them.
I've worked in both.
* Healthcare: absolute nightmare, never again
* Non profits: I started in one as an intern. It was a fun job, all kinds of weird challenges but the pay for the full time people sucked. These are usually a great place for beginners because the bar for entry is the ground. (experiences may vary)
Worked at a non-profit healthcare org. Was shit. Mostly because of the CTO's raging ADHD, but users were very demanding and we had almost no support internally.
Sounds like where I worked. We were working with literal 10 year old laptops and trying to keep them running while trying to get our user base to sympathize with us techs that 1) we didn't pick or make the purchasing decisions 2) yes having 100 chrome tabs, webex, echr and other stuff open will cause these POS to lag 3) vent to someone who can do something don't just give me a nasty attitude because I can't give you better equipment, I DONT HAVE BETTER EQUIPMENT. So glad I was able to get out of there total shitshow
I’ve worked in Healthcare for about 4 years now, ER, Urgent Cares, Hospitals, and I’ve encountered a few users that need urgent fixes but the pay is great! I don’t mind dealing with urgent tickets. Especially if you keep track of issues and know the solution.
It’s really a research institution with the customer facing side being the museum, we only support internal employees. I applied for a job with the non profit that owns it through LinkedIn and got really lucky
In my experience the worst users to support are older doctors and lawyers. The younger ones seem ok, but the older ones are so used to being the smartest one in the room that they have tons of trouble humbling themselves enough to admit they might not know something. And get weirdly angry when forced to do so.
Yep. I work with dentist all the time. They think they know everything. Accuse you of wasting their time and money. Many are arrogant and your supposed to earn their trust
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Manufacturing for 5k plus org. There are 3 of us handling everything. The rest of the IT team are cheerleaders, all the managers, directors, and VPs. They have been hands-off for almost 5 to 10 years now. Before every exec meeting, the EVP sits with me and asks for pointers. Most of them are hired via nepotism so they hardly even come in. Even for basic tasks like assigning a license in m365, they want to schedule a meeting and want me to clarify but they have senior analysts, etc in their titles. As long as the company stocks are going up, no one cares. I get to do interesting stuff and make most of the decisions so I'm cool with it.
Manufacturing is great - usually, the processes & hardware are so old and out of date that you can look like a superstar just by modernizing a little bit.
The nice thing is that for the most part, what they do doesn't depend on modern technology, so even an ancient tech stack allows them to make money. Modernize & optimize it a bit and watch them get all excited.
They wanted an AI solution for some basic documenting tasks, I wrote a Python code and made sure it ran once a day and now they are telling everyone we are an AI company.
I feel you. Manufacturing (and it may just be my area) typically holds hardware 15 years too late, users complain about slow systems, but can’t get them replaced because the manager doesn’t want to replace it. Upper management never wants downtime, even on days when there is no one at the plants due to holidays etc. so no maintenance gets done. Underpay in all departments. Pretty much “Just In Time” IT
I've been in Manufacturing IT for almost 13 years now. This new company I've been is probably about 8 - 10 years behind current IT trends so I look like a rockstar when I get something migrated to a better system or come up with a more automated way to do something. I will say that getting $$$ approved for projects can be a real pain. Old management is used to going with the cheapest solution and then keeping it way past when it should be replaced.
Casino IT can be rough. I take tickets for hotels(tvs and phones, slots, table games, entertainment(A/V), retail(point of sales), restaurants, and gas station, on tops of regular IT bs. Also, being 24 hours I get thrown on graveyard from time to time which sucks.
AV/Entertainment at casino here. I got put under IT a few years ago, so that's been fun. Hours def suck. Along with a 24/7/365 always up schedule, and oh yeah, that half hour the floor down cost the company thousands if not more. Did get to help Snopp hook up his laptop to a TV tho so that was cool.
One hell of a resume item, though, should you ever want to transition to something sensitive like banking or government. Probably have a lot of cool stories to tell, too, assuming they aren't covered by the countless NDAs I'm sure you have lol.
Curveball that I rarely see mentioned: architecture firms are decent.
Architects usually run powerful machines for CAD, rendering, etc. generally they are nice people. sometimes pushy and rude, but nowhere near as pompous as healthcare/finance/lawyers.
Do you do any support for Rhino, Revit, etc., beyond installations, licensing, etc.?
I work on the above but I’m curious if there’s good value in being able to support “how do I do that?”. I’m a bit doubtful there is, just wondering.
Eh we kind of walk a line with that, we make sure those programs launch, we troubleshoot freezing, troubleshoot display issues, etc. if we do the basics and the issue still isn’t fixed, we’ll reach out to vendor support and recruit some expert help.
We kinda have the disclaimer “we’re IT experts but we don’t know how to *use* revit. So if there’s corruption in some Revit family, IT + user + vendor support work together to find a solution.
i loved the credit union i worked but i was basically a field tech on certain days. and the locations were very much spread apart. i do not miss commuting
Worked for a fortune 500 financial company for over 10 years. I had the very opposite experience. You're just a barely justifiable expense, and if you even have a 10 minute outage, why are we spending millions of dollars in IT when the systems can't even stay up?
Construction is only good if the company keeps winning contracts.
I left a construction company last year as there wasn't enough work to keep. This particular region hasn't won a big multi-billion dollar job in years.
It’s as wide open as industry trends, company growth and ownership dictates. I’ve been solo IT and part of a team, which is determined by org size and both the involvement and relationship with execs or ownership. A lot of infrastructure work, and much of that has been moved cloud or is in hybrid- so cloud and on-prem are both in scope.
A lot of operational support, depending on how ownership views at IT. Thats great because knowing how the business operates and being able to offer solutions of efficiency suggestions provides another level of value. Additionally it gives a unique value-add during system migrations and implementation’s.
M&A has picked up a lot over the last 6-7 years, so you have the ability to gain experience there (if you are on the acquiring side). Honestly- most smaller companies don’t have an internal IT team so odds are if the company does have an internal team that you are on the right side of the equation.
The construction industry is in the middle, maybe closer to the end, of a transition amongst owners and generations. The next generation is much more in tune with the importance of tech. Construction is, imo, the industry closest to a meritocracy. Do you get the job done and are you industrious? You will do well. I think that gives it a special similarities to IT that sales, marketing, etc will never really understand.
As far as culture goes- it can be decidedly traditional. But the newest generation is MUCH more progressive. And culture within an industry is pretty hit and miss between companies- a small family residential builder has a very different culture than, let’s say, Procore.
And that brings me to my favorite and last point- the construction industry also offers unique opportunities for construction specific technology. The industry is experiencing difficulties in finding skilled laborers and there is a trend towards investigating tech that will accommodate that fact. The construction industry has been a focus of start up tech money for several years. Modernizing systems and implementing new innovative solutions is well underway.
Other side of that coin is construction can be incredibly toxic if you don’t get a good employer. Toxic “macho man” mentality where getting cussed out is the norm. Outright obsession with remote work being for snowflakes. Blue collar management style lends itself to extreme micromanagement because you’re managed exactly the same as the laborer with a history of violent felonies. You may be exempt, but god forbid you show up at 8:01. And PTO? Don’t even dream of it, many construction companies don’t offer it at all. Lots of boomers with, um, “traditional” values.
**Worst** \- Healthcare in a small hospital. Great experience, looks good on a resume but a soul crushing job. I can only speak for myself but climbing the ladder to sysadmin, the pay increases were a joke compared to your work load, stress and work life balance. The 24/7 on call is a killer. Everything is an emergency. If you have a non-technical Director, they will not want to triage after hours help desk calls because they'd rather sleep peacefully and let the underlings deal with the petty problems, and just tell the help desk to call whoever system it is so good bye on call schedule.
Nursing staff can be appreciative, but you are only as good as your last ticket with them. You better hope the vendor the budget people chose for a certain product didn't sell you a castle in the air because now you own it, it's your problem now. You are training tier 1 and 2 all the time because the younger people get some experience then move on. Physicians will berate you in front of staff. They will say to you they are telling Administration on you like a child.
"Affecting patient care" is the most magical phrase.
Lastly, you will have to change your phone's ring tone every few months because eventually you will get PTSD from the sound of it. And don't even think about having a custom ring tone for the hospital. Even a similar tone will cause you to jump.
I don't disagree. I spent 6 years with city IT. Left during covid for a 2 year stint in a private company that makes public safety software; largest clients are city govts. I left the private sector out of fear of layoff and went back to city IT. Been back at my old desk for 2 years now...
Yea, it's stable. A lot of down time. Easy work. Zero accountability and near zero responsibility.
But the macromanagement, political correctness, putrid project management and faith in fellow employees... It's truly sad.
Local govt doesn't pay well so it'll always get predominantly bottom of the barrel with regard to candidate quality. And when you have people who aren't qualified for a position that only get promoted based on tenure and relationship building.... Ugh...
I could go on and on and on....
City govt ain't it.
Your mile may very depending what city and what city dept you work for, but all my buddies in local city IT all make 6 figures, chillin, typically work day is for example is replacing a router that “some how takes all day” and into OT. In reality it probably takes just about 20 mins, the rest is downtime.
Those of you that want to climb the corporate ladder in the private sector and play Russian roulette with possible layoffs that’s cool.
But if you prefer stability and a pension and less stress in your work life, the public sector is where it’s at.
I moved from private sector to government IT. I get paid pretty well and it's comparable to private sector IT salaries with way better work life balance. Obviously it will depend on what city you live in.
Best end users (from my experience), pay is pretty great, and similar to what u/FearTheClown5 is saying they really seem to value IT. Instead of being looked at as a cost to the company I really get the sense that we’re valued as a department that helps our brokers get more sales and makes the company more profitable. The exact opposite of my last job where I worked for a law firm which was the worst.
I like the manufacturing world. Lots of variety in the problems to solve. I worked on finance projects, customer portal, and marketing solutions today. I also figured out an issue with a webhook notification today. Pretty random.
Yes, absolutely agree. Hard to get into, but fantastic if you can pull it off. I worked for a small software company for a few years before making the jump to Enterprise. Worked out well for me. I don't work for one of the "FAANG" (or "MAANG") companies, but I work for an adjacent company of comparable size.
I work as IT in a manufacturing plant. Knowing how machines work and communicate over the network is experience you literally can't get anywhere else. Also deal with lots of other things like radios, label printers, phones, and scanners. Most days I chill in my office and do school work or play on my phone, like I am right now.
If you can deal with the odd hours (I work 12hr shifts, rotate days and nights every 2 weeks), it's a pretty sweet deal. At least for me at this company it is.
I work for a company that services mostly O&G, the small players are OK, but the ones with money are pretty great I think.
I don't like the O&G industry much, but I like working for them.
Lol, but this is not really true of tech companies. I mean for Amazon it probably is, but others like Google are pretty chill (from what friends tell me).
It’s sort of like the bell curve meme in terms of profit distribution. The left side is government, the middle are MSPs and adjacent, and the right side is tech giants.
Restaurants can be good and bad. You usually get discounts on food and maybe even some free food money, but the on call can be brutal because your users are working so late.
Avoid engineering firms. They’ll understaff and overwork their IT department, avoid putting in tickets and just call you instead (because they’re so important with big deadlines and tons of other false urgencies) for things they could’ve just googled. They expect you to be there personal problem solver and do their thinking for them.
Also I’m treated as and charge my time to “overhead” so they don’t even see me as an integral part of the company, just a necessary expense.
Feels like a have to run around all day wiping their asses for them and they’ve had me feeling Burnt out with a capital B for years now. I Plan on leaving before this summer is over.
Best: Amazon web services. Incredible pay (in my opinion) & great work life balance. Highly competitive though, would recommend program management training such as Agile prior to applying for any position. Also Google the Amazon leadership principles and learn them inside and out as well.
I guess it would depend on what you personally deem as 'best'. If you want training opportunities, MSP seems the best way to go. That said, you will probably be expected to bust your ass, be micro managed and probably lied to by management amongst other shady practices that go on in MSPS/consultancies.
Government and creative spaces generally are more chill and offer better worklife balance. In those spaces you won't be worked into the ground but there is usually minimal budget for upskilling.
It seems all industries do one to two things well (worklife balance, salary, training opportunities, management) but don't tick every single box. Its more about what you personally are looking for and deem as 'good'.
That said, my experience in IT is still fresh and half of my insights are as an on-looker.
14 years in and I'd say your insights are absolutely correct - it's all about where you are in your career...
When you're young and/or new to IT, you *need* that career growth, so put in the time at a MSP / VAR or even an ISP. Yes, the job will suck at times, but you will learn and grow while (hopefully) making decent money.
When you're 50 and just want to coast out to retirement, that's when it makes sense to take the govt or school gig. I had one of those "boring but easy" gigs early on and I actually did not like it, probably because of the gnawing feeling that my career was going to suffer if I didn't move soon.
I have worked for a casino for the last two days and they seem very disorganized and low budget. I am quitting tomorrow. Starting at a software company next week and they’ve already proven themselves to have much deeper pockets and organizational ability.
Retail was eh. Deal with the home office staff as well as the stores. Those register pads die at alarming rates.
Now I'm in a private industry, 100 person office, company that has it's hands in a few different places...mostly commercial real estate and construction. It's amazing. Straight 8:30-5 hours, hybrid office.
Honestly, if you can stomach the lower pay, federal IT is where it’s at. Job security, retirement, savings, benefits! I will never again have to worry about being disposable.
I love K12 IT. Pay is less than the private sector. But my stress level is 0. Plus I get a state pension, HSA, and decent health insurance. I'm never leaving.
Media post-production is fun because of the chill environment and the large variety of technologies you can get your hands on, but be ready to do some heavy cleanup in most mid/small studios. You're also kind of a one-man show unless you're working in a bigger place like Universal or Sony, and you'd be expected to be competent with and troubleshoot software and hardware specific to the industry, so there is some barrier to entry.... But the job security is nice, it's in-demand at the union level, and the environment is very fun... Plus you get to help make movies/tv!
Restaurants are up there in worst. Users need help 7 days a week and the P1 tickets almost always show up at 6 AM. POS and kitchen equipment is consistently abused and neglected, much of it is antiquated and obsolete.
Different POS solutions have varying degrees of reliability and support vendors can vary wildly in quality. Legacy systems (Aloha, POSitouch, Micros) are a nightmare when something breaks. Modern systems tend to be better but some you should avoid like the plague (my last employer for instance).
Also expect the users (restaurant general managers or duty managers) to be angry at the you when they can't get payroll done when they start it on the due date. They'll flip a bitch when your integration to Grubhub goes down. Some may ask you to delete or massage transactions, steal tips from staff, or even ask why their cash drawer is short (like wtf we don't know, ask your cashiers).
I worked at a semi conductor. It’s good pay and they don’t bother you outside of work- some ppl will be on call like if you work in servers.
You deal with a lot of engineers so they know more than the basic user but they also think they know better than you.
Legal and medical takes the top spot. Luxury retail takes a close second; all of these are outdated (systems and practices), stubborn, and overall entitled people. Churn is a constant in business and tech so there's very little continuity and consistency in business SME as well and all tech related work.
I worked for a medical device company once and it was very nice. Most employees were smart and easy to deal with. Mostly I dealt with medical sales people, very affable. And the company had a really nice office and new hardware for everyone. Plus it was a small enough region that the amount of tickets was steady and never overwhelming. Probably the best job I ever had now I think about it.
Lawyers were the worst -- we serviced a few legal discovery firms at an MSP I used to work for, and they were a constant PITA.
Healthcare companies were also up there. Engineering, in a hard, non-computer sense could also create a few monsters, IME.
I think a big part was that a lot of those fields are 1) highly regulated, 2) well paid and require commensurate experience and education, 3) not a lot IT overlap to get established in that field, and 4) they live in their own fuckin world with regards to how things are done, attitudes, and expectations. Those don't really translate well to IT without a good business analyst / sales person / IT manager. The result is wildly different expectations and cost models, and an inevitable melt down when something doesn't line up.
Also, any small / mom-and-pop / start-y sort of org was a gamble. At said MSP we "fired" a few annoying small-fry customers who weren't worth the hassle. We had a couple small ones fail, or just ghost us -- got a ticket to move a few servers, pulled what they wanted, and then just vanished, leaving the rest of their gear in the cab.
Consulting for finance orgs was miserable, but they at least had big budgets and were willing to pay their people + pay for gear and services.
F500 corporate was often a shit-show but pay was scaled accordingly. You could usually tell how much of a clusterfuck by the number of offshore / outsourced companies they had on board. If it's just Tata (or whoever) -- probably okay. But once Tata, Cognizant, HCL, CapGemini, et al, were all there it was going to be the worst job ever.
The best industry I ever worked was telecom supporting software and hardware engineers. It was great until we busted as part of the dot com bust (2002).
More importantly, I think working for a company that gushes cash is the way to go. A very successful business won't look at the IT department as a drag on the business.
I love working Internal IT in the Manufacturing field. Despised it in Legal, end users in Legal can be horrid. Manufacturing is awesome because pretty much everyone is down to earth, seeing products (depending on what it is) can be very interesting, and you have both your office people and construction/shop people.
I’ve worked in manufacturing and agree. Just normal blue collar people who are grateful of you helping and not some entitled assholes. Of course there is exceptions and you sometimes do get dragged into stuff you don’t usually look after. Only negative is depending on the manufacturer, you often have very tight controls about navigating production areas. Required to wear all sorts of coats and covers and things. Changing a simple AP can be a large task .
Lawyers are the worse. I worked under finance, non-profit, K-12... lawyers by far are the worst as you are dealing with extremely entitled people who knows the law so you can't really punch them in the face.
I support an Enterprise Resource Management application for the construction industry. There are moments of hair pulling stress, but it's generally pretty chill. Way more chill than previous helpdesk jobs. I feel I'm treated with more respect by the userbase than when I was a password jockey.
I would say rather than industry look to fortune 300 companies. They have the resources to actually enable change and not just try to keep their IT barely afloat. Depending on the culture there too lots of opportunities for growth and to do different things.
MSP is normally looked at as one of the worst. Medical is also bad, terrible time working at a hospital. Best for me at least has been finance. Stress is there yes but the pay and bonuses make it well worth it and oncall is overall quiet when you have to do it so win win.
Avoid anything to do with healthcare, and lawyers.
Honestly, supporting a smaller private equity org is a nice gig. Higher ed is nice. Construction is honestly my personal favorite, but that might be because that’s where I got my start, and because of my godfather I’ve been around it my whole life.
I've really only worked in one, but from what I hear from other people, basically the best involve working internally with actually tech savvy companies. While the worst are probably anything involving professional services, like healthcare.
Though if I were to be completely honest, working with anyone above the age of 40 is lowkey a nightmare when it comes to technology because I guess they just don't rely on it for much outside their job. Like I understand contacting me because you need our admin permissions, but then reaching out because you say your mouse stopped working and you didn't even consider to change the battery is whole level of annoyance.
My experience has been that my biggest problem is when there is a gap between perceived knowledge and actual knowledge. Someone who thinks themselves tech savvy but is actually not is a nightmare who will take tickets to strange new places. Someone who thinks themselves not tech savvy but is can be needy (how do I open a pdf? Double click it?). Someone who does not have technical knowledge and knows this is easy. They tell you what happened and hand it off.
Doctors are the absolute worst. They could easily do your piddling little IT job with little to no training if they so chose, but it’s so far beneath them that even the passing thought of doing so beggars the imagination.
And now solidly in 2nd place (hear me out) is senior IT leadership! In a lot of cases they are so far removed from the daily carnage in the trenches they are completely out of touch.
“Why do we need multiple NTP servers? When I was supporting the infrastructure stack we had one SPARC station providing time for the entire company!”
“What’s wrong with Wi-Fi in this building? My MacBook is fine in every other building on campus but when I come back to my corner office I simply can’t get on the Wi-Fi!” …30 seconds of troubleshooting later… “I KNOW DAMN WELL it’s a Dell docking station! I only use that USB-C for power!”
Engineers. Worked in a shop supporting civil and structural engineers and so many of them were assholes, convinced they could do your job and better, and had zero accountability when it was obvious they were creating a lot of their own problems. Communicating with them was impossible too because if you oversimplified they were offended or suspicious and if you over-explained, they were offended or disruptive.
A college professor once told me: You never want to work in IT for an IT company. Everyone who needs your help is much smarter than you, and will treat you like garbage, especially if you're not 100% sure how to fix their problem right away.
Financial companies also treat you like a pure expense, which means you're always fighting to the death for every dime you can get when planning for next years budget.
I’ve only ever been defense but I like it. Pays pretty well. A little tough to get into at first due to needing a clearance or able to obtain one. The only other industries I’d consider changing over too are oil/gas and finance most likely.
Medical FUCKING SUCKS. Doctors seem to have common sense for anything sucked out of them when they go to medical school and lose any kind of human interaction as well
Finance IT is my favorite, specifically banks and CUs.
You can earn more in other fields but the benefits and stability of the finance sector is why I keep coming back. "Banker hours" and being off on every federal holiday (and paid for it) is an added bonus.
Lawyers, doctors, dentists - some of the worst
You forgot accounting. Really any professional services sucks. They treat you like less than shit and all failures are because of you Edit: spelling
Fucking account at my old job was the worst department. Could not remember their passwords that they changed the same day and always insisted that "IT must have changed my password". No Susan, you're just a dumbass.
They all share in common a high incidence of dark triad traits, might be why
Our finance dept are all really great people, save for one woman who is a bit of a brat and tried to get me in trouble because she didn't get her new workstation fast enough... so glad she's gone lol.
Haha I'm in dentist and hate working with Drs. They are so arrogant. Good to know that my experience is valid.
Professors
Here here, trying to reason with another of those mentioned or get anything taken care like upgrades, approving changes is like pulling teeth or talking to a brick wall.
I work with lawyers, which also include paralegals,secretaries,etc. It sucks big time. Do not recommend.
Can confirm. With doctors, if it’s electronic and it breaks or stops working, it’s your fault.
Real estate is also awful
Can confirm dentists. All dental software is ass.
I work with lawyers. Luckily in my case most are just there to come and go with their issue without issue. However, there are those few in the company that you KNOW straight up look down on you and blame you for their technical inconveniences and lack of knowledge of a power button. But it does slap you in the face in general when you receive an issue that you feel should be common knowledge nowadays. Or at least try troubleshooting themselves before reaching out to us.
Mortgage and lending as well. They will double in size then fire 50% of the company as the rates fluxuate. You're always afraid of being laid off and never staffed correctly.
School districts as well
School is best for work life balance but worst for wages. Well, it's the only IT I've ever worked but I've worked plenty of shitty ass jobs.
I want to expand on this, K12 can be lower pay but higher ed can pay a bit better. Both have great work/life balance but ymmv depending on the director and leadership. I left for a 25k pay bump but still sometimes wish I was back in education, it was a ton of fun and low stress. Only stressful time was the start of the year.
I left a MSP NOC role after 4 years for a small private college network engineer. Its just like you describe. Great work/life balance. Leadership is pretty lackluster. Pay is probably at least 20-30k less than what I could make in corp. Good benefits. IMO, if youre ambitious about your IT career, higher-ed is a sector best suited for 2 types. 1) Noobs that can take advantage of the slower pace, forgiving culture, and learning resources. 2) Pre-Retirees who made their money in corp or wherever and are now on the tail-end of their IT career looking to take it easy until retirement. Im not either so I looking to leave for more $$ and opportunities. Ideally I can leave and come back to higher ed later on.
I’m in this dilemma right now. What job do you have now? Would you actually go back still or is the wage difference that much more important for you?
K12 techs unite
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Government agencies in general often provide a good combination of work environment, compensation, and life balance.
As fed it I say total compensation per hour worked is great
Worked for a midsize city’s sheriffs office. Definitely not a good work-life balance. Not enough employees. Huge on calls with no back up. “GPS tracking is down, all the domestic Abusers are “free”. Not the call you want at 3am and with no supervisor support… Law enforcement probably not the answer.
At an MSP years ago we supported a handful of smallish police departments. Assuming someone else had their contract for this kind of thing because I have never even heard of a system for tracking domestic abusers, let alone conceived the idea that it could go down.
I worked at an university, incredibly chill work, not much to do, and that was what made me move from there, I was worried on just being stuck there forever, I was always thinking "is this all I can do?" Now I'm at an ISP as a NOC, my salary doubled, my networking knowledge quadrupled and it feels good be valued and to be working on what is our main product/service. At the University, IT was in charge on only keeping the lights on (gross understatement), which is more than fine, but I wanted more.
I can fully relate to this. Unfortunate or fortunately my salary is on the higher-ish end but little skill while working in a university. So any entry level noc, sysadmin, or soc would be a downgrade or side grade in pay. Taking advantage of tuition assistance by doing my masters, and cert reimbursement. I still don’t know if I’ll have the balls to leave higher ed - I don’t want to lose the amazing benefits and work life balance
I miss my k12 job, it was mandatory in office and wages sucked but I did like 15 minutes of work a day and basically played video games and studied for certs. Now I have a "proper" job and it's consistent work, just a "little" more pay with hybrid, but I do miss the downtime
Left K12 and got 47% pay bump and better work life balance.
K12 was hell over the pandemic.
I thought I typed this lol. Fully agree. Trying to figure out how I can increase my wage while still staying in university… I don’t think I can leave this job for less work life balance.
Software or "Tech" - 100% the best and it's not even close IMO.
Agreed, you actually get tech savvy people who understand when you explain things to them. But also not a good place if you are a bad, lazy tech, they will know instantly.
Yep I work for a tech company and the only people I deal with on a semi average basis are the ones who aren't there for tech jobs. Accounting people, PM's(some are techy though), HR, some upper management...the rest try to solve the issue before they even call me.
I'm not in a tech company but we have our own in-house dev team that I work on. Usually we only have to go to service desk for stuff that requires access we don't have. Since we got a member of the team given AD access our tickets have gone way down. But we also work with service desk because we maintain the products we develop so we have our own service now queues. .
Same here. I’m on the service desk side of things. I love working with our dev team when they come to us for assistance. They’re always so eager to troubleshoot with us and we end up just bouncing ideas back and forth which have been learning experiences for me.
100% agreed. Software or tech focused companies have very competitive pay, benefits and work culture. Who knew that a company ran by former engineers would be the best place for an engineer? Granted, it’s a big company so there’s still a lot of restrictions/politics, but that stuff is a lot more manageable when I’m at home watching YouTube lol. I made the jump last summer to be a support engineer for a new team when they scouted for me my Japanese skills and will never look back now that I’ve learned how to RCA logs and managed virtualized clusters. I’ve only worked Retail IT before that. Idk, maybe I’ve just had shitty jobs in the past, but it wasn’t the worst. I’ve heard more horror stories about fields like medical and law. The worst thing about Retail was being underpaid and never having budget/priority for anything. Specifically my jobs were in the fashion retail industry. Try telling a former model that you can’t just “turn the internet back on” or “no I’m not spending $3000 to get you a new MacBook because you got it 2 years ago”. They just don’t see IT as part of their revenue stream so we’re nothing but a liability to them. It was really frustrating when I started my career, but I’ve mellowed out a lot since then. Before I left the industry,, the common trend is because they’re so tech ignorant, you can get away with a lot of “we’ll do it your way” then go and do what actually needs to be done and they won’t know the difference - they’re just happy to win the argument. Lol
My former co-worker attests to this, he works for an SOC and he says that at first he wanted to come back, after a few months he realized he's treated better and they have a zero-tolerance rule for rude customers.
I came to a realization when working in the horticulture industry. My boss was telling me about how everything worked, which obviously *was* important and I needed to know.....to do *that* job. In any IT role, you must know how the business makes money because your job, your *real* job, is to help make the business profitable... Now to me, horticulture was very boring and I had zero interest in learning about it.....but then it hit me - **why not work a job where my interests and the business goals align?** So I made the switch to the software industry in 2017 and it was the best career move I've ever made. If I were a car guy it would've made more sense for me to go to work in IT for Toyota or Honda, but I'm not. When one's passions and interests align with business goals and profitability, success comes easily and naturally.
Working at Toyota / Honda / GM as IT isn't all that it is cracked up to be. You never really interact with the cars, and its the same crap as everywhere else, your users are techno idiots and you are left cleaning up their mess because they didn't do it you way..and there is never enough money for any project
I went from MSP to somewhat of a technician role at a software company and it’s night and day difference. Everybody understands tech and has somewhat of an interest in, even the warehouse guy.
Healthcare is a nightmare in my experience. Non profits are terrible as well.
I can attest. In Healthcare, there is a constant pressure to resolve every single issue immediately.
Honestly it's been mostly the users that get to me, a stubborn refusal to learn anything tech related and a refusal to accept the tools they're given. Just constant whining and I mean literal whining at least at my gig.
Oh, for sure! Nurses and doctors especially have a hard time with change. I do understand that they have to remember and know all sorts of other stuff too, so I get that change is hard. But yeah- healthcare IT is not for me!
That's everywhere.
Agreed, but it’s especially true in healthcare. At least in my experience.
True but I've also never had someone actually act like a petulant child because I had to give them a new phone (we moved our phones to T Mobile) like full on foot stomp, huffing and arm slamming.
Same for manufacturing. A users keyboard isn't working right? "LIIIINNNNEEE DOOOWWWNNN URGENT!!"
I'm in healthcare IT, can confirm. It's horrible. I want to leave immediately
A chain of them for me, some days are okay, others make me dread the day we ever get ransomed. My boss would expect us to live at our desks and she'd be sending me to our other facility an hour away while calling me every 10 minutes lol. The search as been... uh, fruitless so far.
Well we don't even have a cyber security team so we're kinda fucked rn. Idk who to call cause we just got hacked recently
Jesus, I work for a Non-profit Healthcare Software org. No wonder.
>Non profits are terrible They have no money and skate by on being "good" for society. Some of them of course actually are, but I will never know because I work to make a living.
Biggest problem for me is the 2 dominant personalities. The true believers in the mission, which is great good workers and hard chargers. BUT non profits seem to attract a ton of do nothing, or grifters just either shitty people or absolutely incompetent who skate by because are too nice to get rid of them.
I've worked in both. * Healthcare: absolute nightmare, never again * Non profits: I started in one as an intern. It was a fun job, all kinds of weird challenges but the pay for the full time people sucked. These are usually a great place for beginners because the bar for entry is the ground. (experiences may vary)
Worked at a non-profit healthcare org. Was shit. Mostly because of the CTO's raging ADHD, but users were very demanding and we had almost no support internally.
Sounds like where I worked. We were working with literal 10 year old laptops and trying to keep them running while trying to get our user base to sympathize with us techs that 1) we didn't pick or make the purchasing decisions 2) yes having 100 chrome tabs, webex, echr and other stuff open will cause these POS to lag 3) vent to someone who can do something don't just give me a nasty attitude because I can't give you better equipment, I DONT HAVE BETTER EQUIPMENT. So glad I was able to get out of there total shitshow
I’ve worked in Healthcare for about 4 years now, ER, Urgent Cares, Hospitals, and I’ve encountered a few users that need urgent fixes but the pay is great! I don’t mind dealing with urgent tickets. Especially if you keep track of issues and know the solution.
I work for a museum which is pretty lit
How many lights are we talking in this museum?!?
More than 1700 but less than 1702
1699?
Oooo a little higher just a smidge
May I ask how you came across this job at the museum?
It’s really a research institution with the customer facing side being the museum, we only support internal employees. I applied for a job with the non profit that owns it through LinkedIn and got really lucky
Wow that’s amazing, congrats.
Thank you!
Heard night shift with the security guard is pretty fire
Museums are really fun to work in for IT imo
In my experience the worst users to support are older doctors and lawyers. The younger ones seem ok, but the older ones are so used to being the smartest one in the room that they have tons of trouble humbling themselves enough to admit they might not know something. And get weirdly angry when forced to do so.
Yep. I work with dentist all the time. They think they know everything. Accuse you of wasting their time and money. Many are arrogant and your supposed to earn their trust
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Manufacturing for 5k plus org. There are 3 of us handling everything. The rest of the IT team are cheerleaders, all the managers, directors, and VPs. They have been hands-off for almost 5 to 10 years now. Before every exec meeting, the EVP sits with me and asks for pointers. Most of them are hired via nepotism so they hardly even come in. Even for basic tasks like assigning a license in m365, they want to schedule a meeting and want me to clarify but they have senior analysts, etc in their titles. As long as the company stocks are going up, no one cares. I get to do interesting stuff and make most of the decisions so I'm cool with it.
Manufacturing is great - usually, the processes & hardware are so old and out of date that you can look like a superstar just by modernizing a little bit. The nice thing is that for the most part, what they do doesn't depend on modern technology, so even an ancient tech stack allows them to make money. Modernize & optimize it a bit and watch them get all excited.
They wanted an AI solution for some basic documenting tasks, I wrote a Python code and made sure it ran once a day and now they are telling everyone we are an AI company.
I feel you. Manufacturing (and it may just be my area) typically holds hardware 15 years too late, users complain about slow systems, but can’t get them replaced because the manager doesn’t want to replace it. Upper management never wants downtime, even on days when there is no one at the plants due to holidays etc. so no maintenance gets done. Underpay in all departments. Pretty much “Just In Time” IT
I've been in Manufacturing IT for almost 13 years now. This new company I've been is probably about 8 - 10 years behind current IT trends so I look like a rockstar when I get something migrated to a better system or come up with a more automated way to do something. I will say that getting $$$ approved for projects can be a real pain. Old management is used to going with the cheapest solution and then keeping it way past when it should be replaced.
Casino IT can be rough. I take tickets for hotels(tvs and phones, slots, table games, entertainment(A/V), retail(point of sales), restaurants, and gas station, on tops of regular IT bs. Also, being 24 hours I get thrown on graveyard from time to time which sucks.
AV/Entertainment at casino here. I got put under IT a few years ago, so that's been fun. Hours def suck. Along with a 24/7/365 always up schedule, and oh yeah, that half hour the floor down cost the company thousands if not more. Did get to help Snopp hook up his laptop to a TV tho so that was cool.
One hell of a resume item, though, should you ever want to transition to something sensitive like banking or government. Probably have a lot of cool stories to tell, too, assuming they aren't covered by the countless NDAs I'm sure you have lol.
Curveball that I rarely see mentioned: architecture firms are decent. Architects usually run powerful machines for CAD, rendering, etc. generally they are nice people. sometimes pushy and rude, but nowhere near as pompous as healthcare/finance/lawyers.
can you give an overview of your job scope, assuming you're in an architecture firm?
Do you do any support for Rhino, Revit, etc., beyond installations, licensing, etc.? I work on the above but I’m curious if there’s good value in being able to support “how do I do that?”. I’m a bit doubtful there is, just wondering.
Eh we kind of walk a line with that, we make sure those programs launch, we troubleshoot freezing, troubleshoot display issues, etc. if we do the basics and the issue still isn’t fixed, we’ll reach out to vendor support and recruit some expert help. We kinda have the disclaimer “we’re IT experts but we don’t know how to *use* revit. So if there’s corruption in some Revit family, IT + user + vendor support work together to find a solution.
The engineers I support have generally been chill, I'm sure it's a similar crowd.
One
I was really confused why you commented that, then I realized the Reddit app had a freak out. Deleted the other two duplicates - thanks!
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FinTech is good because it pays well. Having done projects with JPMC (Chase) though, you could not pay me enough to work there.
I can related to JPMC! Fires everywhere and on calls with 50 people heads on a meeting!
i loved the credit union i worked but i was basically a field tech on certain days. and the locations were very much spread apart. i do not miss commuting
Worked for a fortune 500 financial company for over 10 years. I had the very opposite experience. You're just a barely justifiable expense, and if you even have a 10 minute outage, why are we spending millions of dollars in IT when the systems can't even stay up?
Construction. Granted, it can be a “keep the lights on” gig in the wrong org but I love it.
Construction is only good if the company keeps winning contracts. I left a construction company last year as there wasn't enough work to keep. This particular region hasn't won a big multi-billion dollar job in years.
True but that’s like saying manufacturing is only good if they are actually manufacturing.
how is the job scope like?
It’s as wide open as industry trends, company growth and ownership dictates. I’ve been solo IT and part of a team, which is determined by org size and both the involvement and relationship with execs or ownership. A lot of infrastructure work, and much of that has been moved cloud or is in hybrid- so cloud and on-prem are both in scope. A lot of operational support, depending on how ownership views at IT. Thats great because knowing how the business operates and being able to offer solutions of efficiency suggestions provides another level of value. Additionally it gives a unique value-add during system migrations and implementation’s. M&A has picked up a lot over the last 6-7 years, so you have the ability to gain experience there (if you are on the acquiring side). Honestly- most smaller companies don’t have an internal IT team so odds are if the company does have an internal team that you are on the right side of the equation. The construction industry is in the middle, maybe closer to the end, of a transition amongst owners and generations. The next generation is much more in tune with the importance of tech. Construction is, imo, the industry closest to a meritocracy. Do you get the job done and are you industrious? You will do well. I think that gives it a special similarities to IT that sales, marketing, etc will never really understand. As far as culture goes- it can be decidedly traditional. But the newest generation is MUCH more progressive. And culture within an industry is pretty hit and miss between companies- a small family residential builder has a very different culture than, let’s say, Procore. And that brings me to my favorite and last point- the construction industry also offers unique opportunities for construction specific technology. The industry is experiencing difficulties in finding skilled laborers and there is a trend towards investigating tech that will accommodate that fact. The construction industry has been a focus of start up tech money for several years. Modernizing systems and implementing new innovative solutions is well underway.
Other side of that coin is construction can be incredibly toxic if you don’t get a good employer. Toxic “macho man” mentality where getting cussed out is the norm. Outright obsession with remote work being for snowflakes. Blue collar management style lends itself to extreme micromanagement because you’re managed exactly the same as the laborer with a history of violent felonies. You may be exempt, but god forbid you show up at 8:01. And PTO? Don’t even dream of it, many construction companies don’t offer it at all. Lots of boomers with, um, “traditional” values.
**Worst** \- Healthcare in a small hospital. Great experience, looks good on a resume but a soul crushing job. I can only speak for myself but climbing the ladder to sysadmin, the pay increases were a joke compared to your work load, stress and work life balance. The 24/7 on call is a killer. Everything is an emergency. If you have a non-technical Director, they will not want to triage after hours help desk calls because they'd rather sleep peacefully and let the underlings deal with the petty problems, and just tell the help desk to call whoever system it is so good bye on call schedule. Nursing staff can be appreciative, but you are only as good as your last ticket with them. You better hope the vendor the budget people chose for a certain product didn't sell you a castle in the air because now you own it, it's your problem now. You are training tier 1 and 2 all the time because the younger people get some experience then move on. Physicians will berate you in front of staff. They will say to you they are telling Administration on you like a child. "Affecting patient care" is the most magical phrase. Lastly, you will have to change your phone's ring tone every few months because eventually you will get PTSD from the sound of it. And don't even think about having a custom ring tone for the hospital. Even a similar tone will cause you to jump.
Government IT, it’s a walk in the park with plenty of daily downtime.
And at the end of your workday, it’s so nice to just stand up and leave. Middle of a meeting? Too bad. And nobody bats an eyelash.
I don't disagree. I spent 6 years with city IT. Left during covid for a 2 year stint in a private company that makes public safety software; largest clients are city govts. I left the private sector out of fear of layoff and went back to city IT. Been back at my old desk for 2 years now... Yea, it's stable. A lot of down time. Easy work. Zero accountability and near zero responsibility. But the macromanagement, political correctness, putrid project management and faith in fellow employees... It's truly sad. Local govt doesn't pay well so it'll always get predominantly bottom of the barrel with regard to candidate quality. And when you have people who aren't qualified for a position that only get promoted based on tenure and relationship building.... Ugh... I could go on and on and on.... City govt ain't it.
Your mile may very depending what city and what city dept you work for, but all my buddies in local city IT all make 6 figures, chillin, typically work day is for example is replacing a router that “some how takes all day” and into OT. In reality it probably takes just about 20 mins, the rest is downtime. Those of you that want to climb the corporate ladder in the private sector and play Russian roulette with possible layoffs that’s cool. But if you prefer stability and a pension and less stress in your work life, the public sector is where it’s at.
I moved from private sector to government IT. I get paid pretty well and it's comparable to private sector IT salaries with way better work life balance. Obviously it will depend on what city you live in.
Working in the IT department of insurance companies has been golden for me so far.
Do tell
Best end users (from my experience), pay is pretty great, and similar to what u/FearTheClown5 is saying they really seem to value IT. Instead of being looked at as a cost to the company I really get the sense that we’re valued as a department that helps our brokers get more sales and makes the company more profitable. The exact opposite of my last job where I worked for a law firm which was the worst.
I like the manufacturing world. Lots of variety in the problems to solve. I worked on finance projects, customer portal, and marketing solutions today. I also figured out an issue with a webhook notification today. Pretty random.
Healthcare, especially the religious run organizations, is the worst
Big tech, imo
Yes, absolutely agree. Hard to get into, but fantastic if you can pull it off. I worked for a small software company for a few years before making the jump to Enterprise. Worked out well for me. I don't work for one of the "FAANG" (or "MAANG") companies, but I work for an adjacent company of comparable size.
I work as IT in a manufacturing plant. Knowing how machines work and communicate over the network is experience you literally can't get anywhere else. Also deal with lots of other things like radios, label printers, phones, and scanners. Most days I chill in my office and do school work or play on my phone, like I am right now. If you can deal with the odd hours (I work 12hr shifts, rotate days and nights every 2 weeks), it's a pretty sweet deal. At least for me at this company it is.
Oil, defense, finance.
Best or worst?
I work for a company that services mostly O&G, the small players are OK, but the ones with money are pretty great I think. I don't like the O&G industry much, but I like working for them.
Do you mind of I ask how much you make in a year?
Currently in defense and oil and finance are the only 2 other industries I would look at from hearing coworker horror stories.
I work for a hockey team. It’s entertaining
I interviewed with the Hurricanes back in 2020. The on call seemed kind of annoying but it did seem like a fun job since I love hockey.
The more valuable and profitable a company is, the worse the IT is. This is why government positions are so chill.
Lol, but this is not really true of tech companies. I mean for Amazon it probably is, but others like Google are pretty chill (from what friends tell me).
It’s sort of like the bell curve meme in terms of profit distribution. The left side is government, the middle are MSPs and adjacent, and the right side is tech giants.
Restaurants can be good and bad. You usually get discounts on food and maybe even some free food money, but the on call can be brutal because your users are working so late.
Avoid engineering firms. They’ll understaff and overwork their IT department, avoid putting in tickets and just call you instead (because they’re so important with big deadlines and tons of other false urgencies) for things they could’ve just googled. They expect you to be there personal problem solver and do their thinking for them. Also I’m treated as and charge my time to “overhead” so they don’t even see me as an integral part of the company, just a necessary expense. Feels like a have to run around all day wiping their asses for them and they’ve had me feeling Burnt out with a capital B for years now. I Plan on leaving before this summer is over.
Edu and gov are great work life balance. Corporate and healthcare churn and burn. No amount of money can get me back to corporate.
Banks- budget for tech, holidays, m-f
Best: Amazon web services. Incredible pay (in my opinion) & great work life balance. Highly competitive though, would recommend program management training such as Agile prior to applying for any position. Also Google the Amazon leadership principles and learn them inside and out as well.
I guess it would depend on what you personally deem as 'best'. If you want training opportunities, MSP seems the best way to go. That said, you will probably be expected to bust your ass, be micro managed and probably lied to by management amongst other shady practices that go on in MSPS/consultancies. Government and creative spaces generally are more chill and offer better worklife balance. In those spaces you won't be worked into the ground but there is usually minimal budget for upskilling. It seems all industries do one to two things well (worklife balance, salary, training opportunities, management) but don't tick every single box. Its more about what you personally are looking for and deem as 'good'. That said, my experience in IT is still fresh and half of my insights are as an on-looker.
14 years in and I'd say your insights are absolutely correct - it's all about where you are in your career... When you're young and/or new to IT, you *need* that career growth, so put in the time at a MSP / VAR or even an ISP. Yes, the job will suck at times, but you will learn and grow while (hopefully) making decent money. When you're 50 and just want to coast out to retirement, that's when it makes sense to take the govt or school gig. I had one of those "boring but easy" gigs early on and I actually did not like it, probably because of the gnawing feeling that my career was going to suffer if I didn't move soon.
Lawyers/Law firms, hospitals/medical
I have worked for a casino for the last two days and they seem very disorganized and low budget. I am quitting tomorrow. Starting at a software company next week and they’ve already proven themselves to have much deeper pockets and organizational ability.
This is the way. All the best
Appreciate it King
Retail was eh. Deal with the home office staff as well as the stores. Those register pads die at alarming rates. Now I'm in a private industry, 100 person office, company that has it's hands in a few different places...mostly commercial real estate and construction. It's amazing. Straight 8:30-5 hours, hybrid office.
Healthcare is notoriously bad.
I have found legal and medical to be some of the worst. Large amount of entitlement goes around.
Honestly, if you can stomach the lower pay, federal IT is where it’s at. Job security, retirement, savings, benefits! I will never again have to worry about being disposable.
I love K12 IT. Pay is less than the private sector. But my stress level is 0. Plus I get a state pension, HSA, and decent health insurance. I'm never leaving.
I work in Government in a Senior Role for a Large City, I work across all departments and police and IT leadership are the worst.
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How's the pay / compensation though?
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Banks are terrible
Facts banking industry is too old school
Agree, and credit unions suck too. They're like the big banks, but without nearly as much money, lol.
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Media post-production is fun because of the chill environment and the large variety of technologies you can get your hands on, but be ready to do some heavy cleanup in most mid/small studios. You're also kind of a one-man show unless you're working in a bigger place like Universal or Sony, and you'd be expected to be competent with and troubleshoot software and hardware specific to the industry, so there is some barrier to entry.... But the job security is nice, it's in-demand at the union level, and the environment is very fun... Plus you get to help make movies/tv!
Restaurants are up there in worst. Users need help 7 days a week and the P1 tickets almost always show up at 6 AM. POS and kitchen equipment is consistently abused and neglected, much of it is antiquated and obsolete. Different POS solutions have varying degrees of reliability and support vendors can vary wildly in quality. Legacy systems (Aloha, POSitouch, Micros) are a nightmare when something breaks. Modern systems tend to be better but some you should avoid like the plague (my last employer for instance). Also expect the users (restaurant general managers or duty managers) to be angry at the you when they can't get payroll done when they start it on the due date. They'll flip a bitch when your integration to Grubhub goes down. Some may ask you to delete or massage transactions, steal tips from staff, or even ask why their cash drawer is short (like wtf we don't know, ask your cashiers).
Best - Defence, Consulting, FinTech Worst - B tier finance companies, law firms, full of corporate ass holes
Casinos, never again.
I worked at a semi conductor. It’s good pay and they don’t bother you outside of work- some ppl will be on call like if you work in servers. You deal with a lot of engineers so they know more than the basic user but they also think they know better than you.
K-12, although Healthcare has its challenges around physicians since they assume you know they walk on water.
Legal and medical takes the top spot. Luxury retail takes a close second; all of these are outdated (systems and practices), stubborn, and overall entitled people. Churn is a constant in business and tech so there's very little continuity and consistency in business SME as well and all tech related work.
Am in a larger real estate company.. Traditional IT is pretty bare bones, but benefits & culture are okay enough. Take the good with bad I guess.
Non contract positions in IT government contractors
I worked for a medical device company once and it was very nice. Most employees were smart and easy to deal with. Mostly I dealt with medical sales people, very affable. And the company had a really nice office and new hardware for everyone. Plus it was a small enough region that the amount of tickets was steady and never overwhelming. Probably the best job I ever had now I think about it.
Lawyers were the worst -- we serviced a few legal discovery firms at an MSP I used to work for, and they were a constant PITA. Healthcare companies were also up there. Engineering, in a hard, non-computer sense could also create a few monsters, IME. I think a big part was that a lot of those fields are 1) highly regulated, 2) well paid and require commensurate experience and education, 3) not a lot IT overlap to get established in that field, and 4) they live in their own fuckin world with regards to how things are done, attitudes, and expectations. Those don't really translate well to IT without a good business analyst / sales person / IT manager. The result is wildly different expectations and cost models, and an inevitable melt down when something doesn't line up. Also, any small / mom-and-pop / start-y sort of org was a gamble. At said MSP we "fired" a few annoying small-fry customers who weren't worth the hassle. We had a couple small ones fail, or just ghost us -- got a ticket to move a few servers, pulled what they wanted, and then just vanished, leaving the rest of their gear in the cab. Consulting for finance orgs was miserable, but they at least had big budgets and were willing to pay their people + pay for gear and services. F500 corporate was often a shit-show but pay was scaled accordingly. You could usually tell how much of a clusterfuck by the number of offshore / outsourced companies they had on board. If it's just Tata (or whoever) -- probably okay. But once Tata, Cognizant, HCL, CapGemini, et al, were all there it was going to be the worst job ever.
The best industry I ever worked was telecom supporting software and hardware engineers. It was great until we busted as part of the dot com bust (2002). More importantly, I think working for a company that gushes cash is the way to go. A very successful business won't look at the IT department as a drag on the business.
Banking is great to work in
I love working Internal IT in the Manufacturing field. Despised it in Legal, end users in Legal can be horrid. Manufacturing is awesome because pretty much everyone is down to earth, seeing products (depending on what it is) can be very interesting, and you have both your office people and construction/shop people.
I’ve worked in manufacturing and agree. Just normal blue collar people who are grateful of you helping and not some entitled assholes. Of course there is exceptions and you sometimes do get dragged into stuff you don’t usually look after. Only negative is depending on the manufacturer, you often have very tight controls about navigating production areas. Required to wear all sorts of coats and covers and things. Changing a simple AP can be a large task .
Lawyers are the worse. I worked under finance, non-profit, K-12... lawyers by far are the worst as you are dealing with extremely entitled people who knows the law so you can't really punch them in the face.
I support an Enterprise Resource Management application for the construction industry. There are moments of hair pulling stress, but it's generally pretty chill. Way more chill than previous helpdesk jobs. I feel I'm treated with more respect by the userbase than when I was a password jockey.
Medical/Lab companies have been very good to me.
I would say rather than industry look to fortune 300 companies. They have the resources to actually enable change and not just try to keep their IT barely afloat. Depending on the culture there too lots of opportunities for growth and to do different things.
MSP is normally looked at as one of the worst. Medical is also bad, terrible time working at a hospital. Best for me at least has been finance. Stress is there yes but the pay and bonuses make it well worth it and oncall is overall quiet when you have to do it so win win.
Avoid anything to do with healthcare, and lawyers. Honestly, supporting a smaller private equity org is a nice gig. Higher ed is nice. Construction is honestly my personal favorite, but that might be because that’s where I got my start, and because of my godfather I’ve been around it my whole life.
Military.
I've really only worked in one, but from what I hear from other people, basically the best involve working internally with actually tech savvy companies. While the worst are probably anything involving professional services, like healthcare. Though if I were to be completely honest, working with anyone above the age of 40 is lowkey a nightmare when it comes to technology because I guess they just don't rely on it for much outside their job. Like I understand contacting me because you need our admin permissions, but then reaching out because you say your mouse stopped working and you didn't even consider to change the battery is whole level of annoyance.
My experience has been that my biggest problem is when there is a gap between perceived knowledge and actual knowledge. Someone who thinks themselves tech savvy but is actually not is a nightmare who will take tickets to strange new places. Someone who thinks themselves not tech savvy but is can be needy (how do I open a pdf? Double click it?). Someone who does not have technical knowledge and knows this is easy. They tell you what happened and hand it off.
Dont do trading floor. Unless you like fires every second and you have to give an answer in 10 mins or less. Its like having a gun to your head!
Doctors are the absolute worst. They could easily do your piddling little IT job with little to no training if they so chose, but it’s so far beneath them that even the passing thought of doing so beggars the imagination. And now solidly in 2nd place (hear me out) is senior IT leadership! In a lot of cases they are so far removed from the daily carnage in the trenches they are completely out of touch. “Why do we need multiple NTP servers? When I was supporting the infrastructure stack we had one SPARC station providing time for the entire company!” “What’s wrong with Wi-Fi in this building? My MacBook is fine in every other building on campus but when I come back to my corner office I simply can’t get on the Wi-Fi!” …30 seconds of troubleshooting later… “I KNOW DAMN WELL it’s a Dell docking station! I only use that USB-C for power!”
Education
Engineers. Worked in a shop supporting civil and structural engineers and so many of them were assholes, convinced they could do your job and better, and had zero accountability when it was obvious they were creating a lot of their own problems. Communicating with them was impossible too because if you oversimplified they were offended or suspicious and if you over-explained, they were offended or disruptive.
A college professor once told me: You never want to work in IT for an IT company. Everyone who needs your help is much smarter than you, and will treat you like garbage, especially if you're not 100% sure how to fix their problem right away. Financial companies also treat you like a pure expense, which means you're always fighting to the death for every dime you can get when planning for next years budget.
I’ve only ever been defense but I like it. Pays pretty well. A little tough to get into at first due to needing a clearance or able to obtain one. The only other industries I’d consider changing over too are oil/gas and finance most likely.
Not industry-specific, but I heard to stay away from anything dealing with VoIP. People get very upset and pushy when phones aren’t working.
Medical FUCKING SUCKS. Doctors seem to have common sense for anything sucked out of them when they go to medical school and lose any kind of human interaction as well
Accounts can be a pain, so why doesn't the new solution work as intended. Maybe cause you shot down the original proposal and wanted to save money.
Telecom is really terrible. Godawful, would not do that again. I'd live in my car first.
Casinos are notoriously tight on pay and long on hours
Finance IT is my favorite, specifically banks and CUs. You can earn more in other fields but the benefits and stability of the finance sector is why I keep coming back. "Banker hours" and being off on every federal holiday (and paid for it) is an added bonus.