[ale] OT: what other than IT do geeks do for a living?

[J.M. Taylor]

ALE has gotten me thru many a crisis before, and I have tremendous respect
for the variety of backgrounds and knowledge on this list. So I'm
enlisting your help with a crisis of another kind -- what on earth do I
want to be when I grow up? :)

Short history: I've been a *nix admin since I was 19, and have programmed
since 22 (I'm not quite 30 at the moment).  All my friends, acquaintances
and people I bothered to keep up with from school are in IT. I know no
other world.  I never got my undergrad degree, which was in English lit
anyhow so I figured why bother.

Now I'm starting back in school, and I've spent the last 4 years trying to
figure out what *other* than IT I could do (this isn't a bad-economy
whim).  I've experienced a lot of the very-common-IT-jobs world, and I
know that the things I enjoy aren't things I want to spend my life doing
(network/sys admin, database admin, and security).  Seems like the ideal
time to change careers and make my education fit a little better.

My problem is, tho I know in general the broad categories of careers that
are more or less geeky, I have no idea what people doing those jobs
actually *do* in real life and what the general environment is. So I've
absolutely no clue if I would really enjoy doing electrical engineering,
for example.  I have a pretty good feel for my strengths and weaknesses,
and what environments I do better in jobwise, so I'd like to have a good
realistic view of what it's like to do other stuff before I make the leap.
 I've not really narrowed it down, I'm interested in just about
everything.

So for anyone who isn't in IT, or is in a more specialized branch of IT,
or who has changed careers, or has knowledge of the rest of the world --
what do you DO?  Do you like it?  Where are the majority of jobs in your
experience (big companies? little companies? independent consultancy
stuff?)?  All advice is appreciated.

I'm happy to keep this off list unless others are interested. And I thank
you, as usual, in advance.

Jenn



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