This reminds me of a quote from Neal Stephenson's epic Snow Crash novel:
“When it gets down to it — talking trade balances here — once we've brain-drained all our technology into other countries, once things have evened out, they're making cars in Bolivia and microwave ovens in Tadzhikistan and selling them here — once our edge in natural resources has been made irrelevant by giant Hong Kong ships and dirigibles that can ship North Dakota all the way to New Zealand for a nickel — once the Invisible Hand has taken away all those historical inequities and smeared them out into a broad global layer of what a Pakistani brickmaker would consider to be prosperity — y'know what? There's only four things we do better than anyone else:
music
movies
microcode (software)
high-speed pizza delivery”
― Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash
I'm OK physically, not Homer Simpson or Mr. Six Pack. I walk all the time, play with my kids outside, but a purely physical job doesn't seem like the right thing for me. Unless I lost my job and had to take on a less-than-desirable physical job to make ends meet, I doubt I will ever leave IT.
I like IT work, I love being in the command line building servers, instances, writing shell scripts. Quite a few of my friends have moved up into management and to a man, I think they are miserable--what with dealing with multiple personalities every day, plotting peoples' time off, ensuring on-call coverage, living in meetings. I fancy none of that.
My fear is that within a couple of years I'll be 50 and still a sysadmin. Now, having said this, I don't find the work belittling or "less than". My wife, thankfully, is in full support of whatever I undertake as long as I do my bit to provide financially to the household. She has encouraged me more than once to strike out on my own and do my own thing. Like most people, I'm terrified to fail, so I sit and do nothing, wondering why the status quo sucks.
I've been in IT for 20 years next year. I've been a sysadmin this entire time. Back in Virginia (Silicon Valley East), I made great money, but here in Texas, I make a pittance.
I'm in my mid 40s and have been looking to get into something else, but building on my existing skills. No one is even looking at me.
I'm toying with the idea of maybe going it alone. Start a small IT consultancy. Not sure what angle to look at this from.
I'm not trying to put out a "woe is me" here, but rather appeal to the others in here that are toying with the idea of maybe going it alone in some capacity.
I've put out literally tons of resumes/CVs in the last couple of years and nary an interview. It's not like I don't have skills, but it seems that employers now want sysadmins to also be programmers and network engineers and coffee monkeys all at the same time.
I've also entertained the notion of getting out of IT altogether, but it's all I know. A guy I know bought a small cleaning company and he now cleans houses for the wealthy at 150-200 a house x 4 houses a day. He splits this with one other person. Not quite sure. But in my mid 40s, I don't think my body could handle a purely physical job.
“When it gets down to it — talking trade balances here — once we've brain-drained all our technology into other countries, once things have evened out, they're making cars in Bolivia and microwave ovens in Tadzhikistan and selling them here — once our edge in natural resources has been made irrelevant by giant Hong Kong ships and dirigibles that can ship North Dakota all the way to New Zealand for a nickel — once the Invisible Hand has taken away all those historical inequities and smeared them out into a broad global layer of what a Pakistani brickmaker would consider to be prosperity — y'know what? There's only four things we do better than anyone else: music movies microcode (software) high-speed pizza delivery” ― Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash