Past installments of Career Opportunities for the 3rd week of January.

2000 Start now on your retirement planning

It is never to soon to start thinking about retirement, especially for computer careerists

2001 Make a difference

Many people make New Year's resolutions and most of them are already broken by this time. I would like to challenge you with a different type of resolution this year. While others may worry about making more money, making that big promotion or even starting their own company, I would challenge you to make a difference, instead.

2002 More than computers

In your high-tech career it may seem that your job is merely making computers work or helping others make their computers work. In fact, your job can be much more. Your clients, especially the smaller companies, could use a good source of business information, as well as computer savvy. You could expand your career by becoming the source for this information, especially at the point where business knowledge and computer knowledge intersect.

2003 High-tech Hybrids

Reader letters over the last year have had me thinking about the exact definition of a high-tech career. Just a few years ago it would have been easier to describe. If you worked in high-tech you were either a programmer, in network management or tech support. Today, though, as technology has crept further and further into our everyday lives, high-tech workers might show up anywhere in a business, with titles not necessarily reflecting their high-tech work. These "hybrids" have combined their technical skills with other talents and created an entirely new group of high-tech workers. Even more, these new hybrid jobs might become the future of all high-tech work.

2004 Simplicity

It is easier to buy a computer today than ever before. For your average user, any computer system they buy will have more power and more software than they will ever need. In fact, the biggest problem most users will face is learning how to use all the power they are given without getting hopelessly confused. This is where you and your high-tech experience come into play. With thousands of people buying new computers, or upgrading their existing systems, every day, they need your expertise to help them from going astray.

2005 Totaled

Just as a car can be “totaled” after an accident, I am running into more and more computers that should be “totaled”, as well. A piece of Spyware can have infected someone’s machine so badly a complete rebuild is in order and the cost of my time to do that is simply more than the computer is worth. While I can understand this with older systems, running Windows 98 or 2000, I am starting to see this effect even on computers that are only a few years old. Even in our current “disposable society”, I still have major issues with telling my clients to “throw it away and get a new one.” That said, I understand that the clients would
be better off spending their money on a new computer, rather than paying for my time to fix their old one.

2006 A Tech in Every Meeting

I am sure you have all experienced it. Some department comes up with a great project and now, only when they are ready to implement it, they come to you to figure out how to make it work. They want to know what computers to use, what software and, by the way, this has to have some custom software written that has never before been created. Once again, you as an IT worker find yourself in the unenviable position of giving these people 100 different reasons why the project is infeasible, exorbitantly expensive and perhaps even counter productive to the goals of the company. In many cases, they will accuse of you of being an obstructionist, a technology dictator and sometimes, even worse. You must be lacking in vision to not see the elegance of their plan. In reality, though, much of this conflict and strife could have been avoided, if the department had included a high-tech worker at the very beginning.

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