Four IT Careers You’re Probably OK Not Doing

Even if you love your work, there are days when you want to do anything rather than sit at your computer, drive around making sales calls, or do whatever it is that earns the weekly paycheck. You may even find yourself hitting Craigslist or the job boards, just to see what other fish are in the employment ocean.

At Techsperts, we’re all about IT, as you may know—especially managed IT. (What’s managed IT? Find out here.) And we’re willing to do whatever is needed to keep your systems running smoothly. Having said that, there are some IT jobs that are stressful, incredibly demanding, or just plain boring. With a view to making your day job look just a bit better, here are four IT-related jobs that you’re probably okay with handing off to someone else.

1. Search Results Evaluator. When you type “paperclips” into the box of your favorite search engine, you’re pretty sure that it’s going to return results that deal with paperclips. While we usually attribute this to a mysterious algorithm, there’s a human element—search engine results evaluators (or analysts). These are people who are paid to gauge the performance of sites like Google. While it sounds like a pretty good job, it does come with high expectations for productivity, a quick response time, and a high tolerance for tedium.
2. IT Troubleshooting/Helpdesk. Troubleshooting and help desk operations are often assigned to junior members of the IT staff. While the technical problems that these professionals handle are usually not too demanding, it’s often considered to be a stressful job. After all, how do you feel when your computer doesn’t do what you tell it to? Exactly. Now imagine that your job is interacting with people in that frame of mind.
3. Chief Technology Officer/Chief Information Officer. Big bucks. Prestige. Extensive experience and knowledge. What’s not to love? How about having to make big decisions and extensive plans, plus having to oversee the complete IT operations for an entire organization? It’s an important job, but not one that everybody can do. Best to leave it to the people who know how. (Do you need a CTO or CIO, but you don’t have room in the budget? Find out your alternatives in this post.)
4. Technical Writer. A surprising number of people think that being a writer is an easy, glamorous occupation. Okay, maybe it’s glamorous if you’re a best-selling novelist. But what if your job involves learning new software programs and writing out instructions for them? Step-by-step instructions. As in “start with turning on the computer.” You must also make sure not to miss any steps at all. (And if you’ve ever read a poorly written software manual, you know that this can be very difficult.) Well-paid? Yeah, usually. Glamorous, easy, interesting? Not really.

As you can see, there are many jobs that somehow relate to information technology. And aren’t you glad that you don’t have the responsibility, stress, or just pure tedium that these jobs often involve? But, as the saying goes, somebody’s gotta do it.

Hopefully, that made your own career choice look just a bit better today.

How's your IT doing? Does it need some help? Not quite sure what your options are? Contact us at Techsperts Services and find out what we can do for you.