Should I don the black ironic tshirt?

August 31, 2010 2:21 PM

Career Change: Graphics to....IT? Please tell me about the wide range of IT work.

I'm currently unemployed, after a 7 year stint at an environmental consulting firm where I ran a small graphics department. During those years I basically created my own position, as I was the only employee with any graphical background. I've been freelancing as a simple web & graphic designer for the last 6 months, without really enjoying it (although figuring out the html/css stuff has been fun).
According to the various job aptitude tests I've taken recently, IT manager type jobs consistently come out on top. I'm not too surprised, as I generally spend most of my free time noodling with my home network and love doing it.

So I'm 35, and IT curious, but realize that it's a broad field with many different skills needed and work environments. What can you tell me about your adventures or misadventures in the IT realm? What sort of technical training & experience do you need to succeed as an IT manager? What general salaries should I expect (SF bay area) as someone without formal training & experience? And what kinds of questions should I be asking to learn more about the actual life of an IT manager?

posted by gofargogo to work & money (4 answers total)

I'm not in IT, but I know mine manages server racks, data archival, communications, desktop upgrades, general software licenses, help desk, desktop machines, A/V services, etc. My organization is ~700 people in SJ. Starting salary here for IT manager is $100k/yr or so. Minimum requirements are a bachelors in computer science, business admin., or something related + 5 years of experience with that stuff mentioned above.

If your background is just managing a small graphics group and working on your home network, I think you will need more techie knowledge and troubleshooting skills. Our current IT manager came from the ranks, so he's already been through the battlegrounds. I know as a manager, you're mostly supposed to "manage" but it's hard to get respect if you don't already have a solid grasp of the basics of what your people are working with.
posted by Seboshin at 4:25 PM on August 31, 2010

I'd put the idea of being an IT manager out of your ind for a few years, if I were you. You're going to need serious training and practical experience in networking, infrastructure, systems software, servers, etc. etc. Some certifications wouldn't be bad, either.

You definitely won't qualify to be an IT manager for quite some time. If you get adequate training to land a job, you'll start at the bottom...the guy who sets-up PCs in the office and runs cable everywhere.
posted by Thorzdad at 5:39 PM on August 31, 2010

Sure, I don't expect to be hired as an IT manager, but that's where I think I'd like to be eventually, once I've gotten the skills and experience. I'd like to get a sense of both the position of IT manager, and the road leading to it, so I can decide if I should jump careers and basically start over. Maybe it's too close to chatfilter, but I'm trying to get a sense of what my potential career may feel like, by hearing how others have achieved it.
posted by gofargogo at 5:57 PM on August 31, 2010

You'd be truly surprised at the varying job descriptions of someone who is a "IT Manager". Clearly at smaller companies or smaller remote sites it would be expected that the IT Manager is pretty hands on technical with a broad skillset. At medium and larger companies you'll find that there are lots of IT people and managers that don't have a technical role but rather assign priorities, manage budgets and deal with customers. These people don't need to know that Sites A and B are linked with a fiber optic connection or how the servers are configured w.r.t. IPv6. What they do need to know is when they need to pull in their technical team to get a definitive answer for something.

In my company's outsourcing area we generally have these types of roles:
Client Manager - For a given type of IT service (network, e-mail, business process outsourcing, etc.) they work with the middle or upper management person at the client on this service. They talk about SLAs, service outages, costs, new business and strategic direction.

Service Manager - This is the person in charge day to day for an IT Service. They are the "face" of the operation to the customer. They are in charge of setting priorities, managing a budget, fielding ad hoc service questions and managing the service delivery people.

Service Delivery - These are the people that are trained in running the normal operations of a service. They know the typical requests that customer make and they understand the processes put in place to field these requests. These are often very inexperienced people that only know how to follow processes but the expectation is that over time some of these people will have the knowledge and initiative to do problem solving and outside the box thinking.

Engineers - These people develop the processes that Service Delivery people follow. They also work on problems that bubble up out of Service Delivery for whatever reason. They also work with the Service Manager to handle changes to the service that the customer wants as well as to implement new business or to add new capabilities.
posted by mmascolino at 8:23 PM on August 31, 2010