DEV Community

Ben Halpern
Ben Halpern Subscriber

Posted on

What non-dev IT jobs have you had?

I haven't worked "in IT" outside of software development, and I don't even have a great idea of what the various jobs are. Anybody had one or more IT jobs outside of software development?

Top comments (67)

Collapse
 
yechielk profile image
Yechiel Kalmenson

I started out doing tech support.

From there I worked my way up to developer support (helping developers integrate with our API) which had me realize that I wasn't happy just supporting devs, I wanted to be a dev.

Collapse
 
scrabill profile image
Shannon Crabill

Oddly, I've wondered if moving into a tech support like role would be helpful in my developer career.

πŸ€”

Collapse
 
sahuvikramp profile image
Vikram Sahu

It will surely help you if you are allowed to debug in deep.
Rather just giving pre documented answers.

:-)

Collapse
 
yechielk profile image
Yechiel Kalmenson

I definitely feel like having that background helped me in my developer career, it gives me an empathy towards the end-used that I find many devs lack.

Collapse
 
nickytonline profile image
Nick Taylor

Non-dev IT jobs for me were:

  • Internet technical support for Bell, a Canadian ISP. I definitely had some interesting phone calls. I’m sure anyone who has done technical support has war stories as well.
  • software installer for automotive software. Basically I’d go to garages and car dealers and install software that allowed them to order parts. It was Windows based software, so usually when things went wrong, it was a registry fix. regedit.exe forever baby! πŸ˜‰
Collapse
 
eaich profile image
Eddie • Edited

My first job out of college was managing and vetting collaborative tools for use inside the company - instant messaging, live webcasting, web conferencing, eLearning, etc. Once a tool was selected, I'd develop implementation/deployment plans and documentation which required coordination with other IT depts like Security, Architecture, Help Desk, Desktop (in cases where the software had to be installed on all employee machines).

I also worked in accessibility. There was a group that hired mostly hard-of-hearing/deaf employees, so I helped deploy an application that converted text to ASL for them, and devices that allowed employees with cochlear implants to listen to live webcasts and learning modules because traditional headphones would interfere with their implants.

After that, I worked for an accounting firm managing the live webcasting tools and services internally and externally. This was the most challenging because there were so many moving parts and dependencies. For one, video was a such a huge burden on the network, so the Network team hated us =). But we'd work with them to deploy internal CDN technologies from Cisco, Riverbed, etc. I got to work directly with the executives in the company, learned about audio/video production, learned how to work under pressure and troubleshoot in real-time.

In hindsight, these experiences helped me a lot by understanding how end users use and learn new technologies that are presented to them without much choice really, and also how companies procure technologies for internal use.

Collapse
 
jacobherrington profile image
Jacob Herrington (he/him)

I interned on a hardware support/sysadmin team for one of the largest logistics companies on Earth. It was pretty difficult but really fun.

At the same company, I also interned on a "Business Intelligence" team, which was kind of like a step between working on a dev team and a data science team. A lot of web portals, SQL reports, and ETL work.

After that, I worked as a pseudo-DBA at a different logistics company.

Somewhere in between those jobs I started writing JavaScript and did some PHP and Python development for an ecommerce company (they paid $8/hr). I dropped out of college and went on to full-time software development about 8 months after that!

Collapse
 
michielnuyts profile image
Michiel Nuyts
  • Construction Worker

  • Call Center Employee (most miserable ever)
    This was definitely the worst job I ever did. But I had the option to work part-time here, I could focus on studies, started doing full-time software development not long after I took this job :)

  • Band Worker at Ford Factory (I left after a few weeks)

Collapse
 
tuwang profile image
TuWang • Edited

I have had an internship position called β€œIT Attestation” for three months in a public accounting firm. Unfortunately I hated every second of it because it doesn’t provide any sort of technical growth or career development path. I got the returning offer that year, but ... nah, I politely rejected, and dashed out of the door when no one is looking πŸ€ͺ

Two things in the internship that killed this path for me:

  • I built a very basic web page with a random number generator that suggests lunches for the team. That’s it; it took a day. My teammates were shocked: β€œ wow I know you study computer science but I didn’t you can do that!?”. They might be business-style nice to me or they really have no clue how less effort that is. I immediately know I have already reached the top of technical growth in the intern, sadly.
  • The director tried to convince me to accept the offer this way: β€œhere you have the opportunity to learn what other companies’ technical systems; isn’t that fun and challenging? I came from an engineer background. If you choose an engineer path, all that you do is to sit there, take order and focus on one thing. Don’t you find it boring?” Nah, it was bitter. As a software engineer, I got so much to deal with nowadays, with all different teams, on multiple projects. The most critical difference is: in public accounting, yes you are learning all kinds of systems but you build nothing; in software engineering we are actually creating stuff to make others’ life a bit better each day.

Saying no was a super easy decision.

Frankly speaking, it was nice to dive into my accounting/finance friends’ world a little bit. I sort of understand how/why they need to talk, work, dress and perform in certain ways. This was also learning ;)

Collapse
 
thefern profile image
Fernando B πŸš€

One of my many duties was to support cisco switches, so I guess that qualifies as IT.

Anything from configuring switches to troubleshooting issues, to updating firmware, etc. Seemed pretty cool to me.

If I ever need to setup a managed switch at home, I am trained to do it lol.

By the way if anyone is interested in learning cisco stuff for free, just sign up for a free account, and then google for packet tracer labs.

netacad.com/courses/packet-tracer

Collapse
 
justsharkie profile image
/*Sharkie*/

Apparently, retail marketing is my JAM.

Currently I'm basically creating the marketing department at the store I'm at - this includes social media, graphic design, building a website, in house marketing, working on the floor... and everything changes week to week and its INSANE. But I'm good at it, and for some reason I enjoy it.

It's a weird one, for sure. But it's what I'm doing. :P

Collapse
 
eonuk profile image
eonuk • Edited

Abattoir - carrying pigs off hooks onto hooks in back of lorry, and pushing half cow carcasses on hooks down rails.

Some factory that made amongst other things wheelchairs. My temp job was sweeping floor and moving stuff.

Pie factory - putting bits of pastry into slots in a conveyer belt, injecting gell into pork pies and lifting trays from one rack to another.

After that, majority of time as a multimedia developer, technical designer and automation testing.

Collapse
 
syntaxseed profile image
SyntaxSeed (Sherri W)

I worked at one of my city's first ISPs (Internet provider). I did billing & customer service.

It was neat to be part of bringing people their first ever internet access.

But I also saw first hand how all the big companies bought up the little ones & the monopoly formed. In my case we were bought by Primus. A big payday for my boss... but not great for our customers.