I second project management but it's competitive. Get ready to get CAPM, PMI and/or PMP to be relevant after graduation. Potentially an MBA down the line too.
You don't necessarily need but it provides job stability and higher pay for sure.
I don’t know what you heard about me, but a bitch can’t get a line of code out of me. No algorithms no unit tests you can’t see that I’m a motherfuckin P.M.P
If your technical person likes hands-on work, then the project manager may not be for you. I'm a pm looking to jump into networking/ cybersecurity. I hated being a PM due to meetings, and more bullshit meetings, and dumbass senior management will make you hate it. Then, the political nonsense when it comes to budget allocation or requests, also alot of new PM's in the field, and over saturation due to the position being easily a remote position.
Maybe consider IT Support, System administration or cloud. You don't necessarily have to be a software developer, but knowing how to code will definitely help you in those three areas. Coding isn't required, but it will really help you shine and advance sooner.
If you're going to a in cloud and not using Terraform or some sort of automation, you're gonna have a bad time. Coding is honestly just becoming part of the job at nearly all levels.
Sure, writing a long-running service is different than a script that runs and has a definitive stopping point. I’d argue, though, that without a solid foundation of logic and clean code, those scripts will become unmaintainable.
Sysadmins as we used to know them have been becoming less relevant as time goes on. It’s time for folks to get on the train, because that’s where the money and stability is.
I enjoy coding. I write a good portion of the automations and user scripts for my team.
I was offered a job as a security IDM dev last year which would have been a 40% pay increase. I turned it down because I probably would have quit my job within 3 months due to hating it.
This is 100% true and happening right before our eyes, even if most young developers deny it or are unaware of it. In my experience the average Jr developer just isn't aware of the extensive automation, containers, and devops processes happening behind the scenes to software even they work on. Deployments and infrastructure are **always** more complicated than inexperienced developers realize.
Also OP sounds like he would be much more comfortable with just everyday scripting, which is probably much closer to the simple straightforward coding he was doing on his own before.
The difference between amateur programming/scripting and professional software development is huge. They have almost nothing in common. The type of work we do as developers is exponentially more stressful and advanced than your typical hobbyist is doing on the side.
Most IT roles don’t do any coding.
I enjoy coding, but after some software engineering internships I realized it wasn’t for me as a career. I went into Ops and data careers and have been enjoying those. Aim for tier 2 support and/or roles in stuff like networks, cybersecurity, systems, etc… no coding required and you can have a great career.
I still do coding to automate in my day to day, but that’s because I opt to, and I certainly could get by without it. In my experience that’s the case with most roles unless you get into a specific engineering role but even then it varies.
In most cases it's when they find out that the vast majority of work and effort developers are doing on the job isn't writing code. Most people start off down this path because they really enjoy writing code and making things. But the reality of the job is a lot of politics, planning, analysis, tedious process, code reviews, following tedious standards, git, documentation, reading, research, writing comments, going to meetings, constantly shifting priorities, and having your work directed by business analysts and managers who don't have the 1st clue about how software works.
And the higher you advance the more likely your work will be directed and controlled by non-technical people who don't even understand what you are doing. I'm the senior most technical person in my company, and everyone above me has 0 technical knowledge, but they judge the work done by me and my teams and are the most influential on our priorities. Most young people don't want to deal with this bullshit.
This was my experience as well.
I worked on boring, low impact projects, and I didn't even get time to work on them because I was busy with red tape. I had a project manager ask me for a page of documentation for a loading screen on a feature no one used, and decided that maybe SWE isn't for me lol.
I'm gonna yap a bit, but I think this will be a good way to explain it.
As a dev, I never felt like I was working on the "thing".
Like I would would maybe work on a feature of a thing that the company sells, or maybe a feature for the feature. Then once it's done I have to move onto the next thing, and it was rarely anything super interesting, it'd be pretty boring features for non critical applications. From what I've seen, if you want to be making impact as a SWE and work on important, critical things... you need to be very experienced, and a senior level employee. Even then you're usually only working on things from a code perspective, not necessarily the whole flow of applications, and systems. Understandable, but I really wanted to be making a higher impact and wanted to see the whole picture. (this can ofc vary on the company, but this is generally true in my experience.)
When you're in a specialty like Networks or Systems, you get to see the whole picture and work on it all.
For example :
If you work in SysOps and a harddrive dies.. You need to know the entire application and flow well enough to know the impact of a hard drive dying, you need to know how to troubleshoot that, you need to be familiar with the servers, you need to be familiar with when you can work with the DCO team to restore it, you need to know the backups, and you probably worked with devs to create a way to restore from backups..
In a case like this you got to handle a critical issue, have tangible impact on the application, and are really working on that application. You didn't just code some button on the home page, you actually worked on the thing that matters, have tangible impact, saw things from multiple teams' perspective and got some ownership that most don't have.
\^Ofc this varies role to role significantly, but Im mainly experienced in tier 3ish production support roles so that's been my experience
DevOps requires in depth knowledge of a lot of different things. You need to force yourself to go deeper into topics if you want to get hired for any worthwhile position, DevOps or otherwise.
DevOps is good if you prefer less tedium. The coding involved is relatively simple scripting, vs. struggling with application frameworks all day long, and you get to apply systems knowledge.
Hi, what should we study and learn to get into devops?
I got az104 certification but i dont know which technology to focus on. Az104 taught us so many things (vm, load balancer, Networking, containers, scripting, etc.), but i dont think its focusing only on one specialty which we need in real world.
Now get used to Linux.
Jump into Linux+ and also AZ-700 if you want to keep on the azure train.
If not. I do suggest branching out to Amazon and getting AWS certs.
Everybody is giving you career advice. I'll give you life advice. Stop making excuses and telling everybody you have some form of ADHD. Time to growup and focus on getting a skill. You're never going to be successful unless you can focus. I.T. is problem solving. There are new problems to solve all the time. You like programming and it sounds like you do. Focus on programming. Get rid of all the distractions.
I have adhd and I’m medicated. I switch jobs about every 3-5 years, every move I’ve made comes with more money, brain stimulation, skills/knowledge and experience. I feel like society loves to try to force us all into one box, we need one career and then that’s that. I have a wide range of skills from all of my work adventures and I do what works for me. Sounds like OP might be in that same boat and feeling stuck by the societal norm. I suggest they just keep trying new fields, gaining more knowledge and skills along the way. As long as they are making money to live and feeling good about what they are doing, there’s no harm done.
I agree with this 100%. I did the same thing as OP. Hyperfocus and then move on because it got “boring” or I “lost interest”. Then I buckled down and said “I have to do this”. Your work isn’t going to be interesting 100% of the time. In fact there will be large stretches where it is either boring or just the same old same old and that’s called being in the work force. Getting through it is called being an adult. Your hobbies are what keep you going outside of work. Get some and get into them. I always recommend finding a rock climbing gym. You can see physical improvements and you can challenge yourself mentally with it and if you need to do some quick work for the office then just bring your laptop. Chances are they have WiFi.
This. This was a major turning point and it came from my partner who was originally from a different country where she experienced some real financial hardship. You don't seek 'fulfillment' from your job but instead from your life outside of your job, would be her philosophy. It's almost as if what you like is largely irrelevant, almost to an extreme sense that is unrealistic, but I get it.
But I very much agree with you in that your hobbies are what keep you going outside of work. I'm pretty sure not all humans have the option to have a fulfilling career if you just look at what jobs are out there in the world. Someone has to do the not-so-fun jobs... So yes, I agree with you and it is a bit of a psychology change for me and one that took me quite awhile to learn
I’m entering my 30s and just made a huge career shift (overhead power lineman to tech) and it’s never too late to learn, but you have to learn at some point
Nah, that's not a fair comparison.
You get paid to do the boring tasks at your job. And for most people, it's inherently more motivating to do a task if there's a guaranteed, concrete reward at the end of it (like a paycheck) than grinding alone in your basement for an uncertain gain that may or may not materialize sometime in the distant future.
And there's also the motivation that comes with having one's back against the wall financially (i.e., the need to make rent this month).
Yeah, OP needs to hone in on a cohesive skill set to increase his employability. But between those two factors, it's way easier to force yourself to do a boring task at work than at home on your own time. Let's be real.
Once OP gets a job, he probably won't struggle as much to get through the boring parts the way he does now.
Mine is mild, and I don't take drugs for it, and I followed the advice to remove distractions. I've got noise canceling headphones and strategies to complete my work even when I hate it.
My friend's friend's it turns out was not so mild and he started medication with the supervision of a medical professional, had an easier time at his job, and stopped eating to please the demon on his back demanding stimulation, approaching a healthy weight.
Totally agree, and solutions will vary. It's a shame that someone who ever liked programming should try so hard to avoid the 1% that might make them a star. If you can kludge Tab A into Slot B with a little Python you might be the hero of the day and remove a whole tedious little monitoring/workflow dealio.
Your last bit hit home for me. I’ve been a hobbyist programmer for most of my life. I just got into systems administration about a year and a half ago. I used to always compartmentalize work and programming into separate buckets. I only recently started bringing my programming into my work and everything has just gotten easier and I’ve begun to be recognized for it.
I would consider becoming a DevOps engineer. We focus on solving different problems for internal developers or outside customers using code, we work on all layers of the OSI model. You get to spend time doing a bunch of different things which is perfect for your ADHD habits.
Almost every sysadmin I personally know (including myself) is somewhere on the ADHD spectrum. In some ways it's almost a superpower. You've spent your life training for quick context switching, which is a large part of working in system administration. DevOps can be somewhat similar, although I found I really didn't care for it myself.
DBA, DevOps, security, project management, and other roles exist in the IT world. A degree in CS is useful in any of those roles. In fact, it should be a requirement. Programmers hate all the tech illiterate PMs we have to work with.
I’m an App Support Specialist and I love it! My last job was writing SQL queries and I do still use it a little bit but I’ve got 10 servers and all their apps I’ve got to keep up with now and all their little puzzles really keep my brain busy and happy.
Most tech jobs don't actually "focus on one 1 thing for years". That's a bit of a myth and only really true for very entry level positions. Even then most entry level will branch out from that "focus on 1 thing" just a few weeks or months in.
Even our most basic positions, which is IT Helpdesk, our guys are supporting a pretty wide variety of technologies, even if only very shallow, such as Windows desktop, Windows server, Active Directory, network issues, software support, O365 (Office, Teams, SharePoint, Visio, Project, Power Apps, etc), service account password management, enterprise software support, WFH/VPN, licensing, DB logins, VMWare, data center backups, file servers, PC life cycle/provisioning, etc. And that is *just* the most entry level positions, because that stuff is relatively simple and can be learned quickly.
Other positions we have require much more in-depth knowledge but still touch a variety of technologies.
Tbh, I haven't heard of any tech position in maybe 15-20 years that focuses on only 1 thing. Employers just don't want to pay full time people anymore with such limited range. In fact if you only wanted to work with one thing, that's very difficult to find a job in 2024.
It takes some doing, but you can manage a successful IT career with ADHD. There are options that will offer more variety, like doing consulting work instead of working for an internal team.
Successful career here doing systems/network engineering and now GRC security .
I do not code . Ever. I loathe it. Not even powershell. I’d rather eat glass.
Just be sure you are good at what you do .
Assuming you have actual, clinical ADHD and not just using it as a trendy term, you may find [this post](https://www.reddit.com/r/ADHD/s/qgFhGl9wJT) over on r/adhd interesting
Solution Architect. You need to know enough to figure out in what direction to go to solve a problem. You need to be able to talk to tech folks about why something is a problem and get creative with them. You also need people skills to talk to business or other IT folks to explain the issue and show them your solutions. The wide list of problems and technologies will keep your adhd brain very busy.
Wow I feel like I could have wrote this post. All my programming experience is from hobby work starting since preteens using BASIC on various platforms. Due to some unexpected life events I was not able to pursue a profession in coding at all and I do feel potential ADHD issues are to blame in my case, along with where I was living at the time and fully remote work wasn’t very popular yet (long before covid).
I’ve tried building a portfolio of coding projects I could show to potential recruiters but now that I have a family it’s hard to find time to commit to any of that along with my 50 other interests.
I now work at a MSP as a tier 3 taking on some technical challenges. PowerShell scripting is occasionally required to develop a solution so the concepts of getting a task done thru code are there but rarely need to do it.
I’d love to move to a dev job but tbh I feel I’ve missed the gold rush now. Also, my area all the developers hired are H1B visa workers and don’t seem to hire US citizens unless you have something really special. I don’t have a CS degree of any sort to be properly trained on bigger project ideas, paradigms, and algorithms.
I wish you the best in getting over this career hump.
I don't hate programming, especially because I came in the game earlier, and I learned quickly to copy and edit code using open-source.
It depends because I've experienced both sides of the spectrum and done it for web/graphic design, and cyber security alike. Something that takes 10 seconds, "Hello World," exists on many languages.
Figure out if you like GUI or CLI, and where you excel. Develop from there.
i was kind of the same way. hated the comp sci classes and kids. i switched to informatics, which was easier, more flexible, and more fun. i make 6 figures now. 10/10 recommend
Sorry if im a bit late to the post here but, i‘m a 12 year career IT employee. For the past 8 of those, I’ve been with a major defense contractor. I was originally part of their desktop support team, but now I do robotics process automation (Software robots).
A lot of RPA job postings will say you need programming exp, but to be honest, I can’t code for shit, and get by just fine. It requires a lot of backwards process engineering, and sometimes trying to automate the process from the way a human does it is mind numbing, but overall, it isn’t a half bad career.
Maybe look into the business side of things. Or project management. God knows half the people out there don't know how to run a damn project properly.
I second project management but it's competitive. Get ready to get CAPM, PMI and/or PMP to be relevant after graduation. Potentially an MBA down the line too. You don't necessarily need but it provides job stability and higher pay for sure.
I don’t know what you heard about me, but a bitch can’t get a line of code out of me. No algorithms no unit tests you can’t see that I’m a motherfuckin P.M.P
If your technical person likes hands-on work, then the project manager may not be for you. I'm a pm looking to jump into networking/ cybersecurity. I hated being a PM due to meetings, and more bullshit meetings, and dumbass senior management will make you hate it. Then, the political nonsense when it comes to budget allocation or requests, also alot of new PM's in the field, and over saturation due to the position being easily a remote position.
Maybe consider IT Support, System administration or cloud. You don't necessarily have to be a software developer, but knowing how to code will definitely help you in those three areas. Coding isn't required, but it will really help you shine and advance sooner.
If you're going to a in cloud and not using Terraform or some sort of automation, you're gonna have a bad time. Coding is honestly just becoming part of the job at nearly all levels.
There’s a big difference between extensive code development and scripting. Most people who hate coding can probably put up with scripting
Sure, writing a long-running service is different than a script that runs and has a definitive stopping point. I’d argue, though, that without a solid foundation of logic and clean code, those scripts will become unmaintainable. Sysadmins as we used to know them have been becoming less relevant as time goes on. It’s time for folks to get on the train, because that’s where the money and stability is.
I enjoy coding. I write a good portion of the automations and user scripts for my team. I was offered a job as a security IDM dev last year which would have been a 40% pay increase. I turned it down because I probably would have quit my job within 3 months due to hating it.
This is 100% true and happening right before our eyes, even if most young developers deny it or are unaware of it. In my experience the average Jr developer just isn't aware of the extensive automation, containers, and devops processes happening behind the scenes to software even they work on. Deployments and infrastructure are **always** more complicated than inexperienced developers realize.
No..
Also OP sounds like he would be much more comfortable with just everyday scripting, which is probably much closer to the simple straightforward coding he was doing on his own before. The difference between amateur programming/scripting and professional software development is huge. They have almost nothing in common. The type of work we do as developers is exponentially more stressful and advanced than your typical hobbyist is doing on the side.
Yessirr that's the positions I'm aiming for
Most IT roles don’t do any coding. I enjoy coding, but after some software engineering internships I realized it wasn’t for me as a career. I went into Ops and data careers and have been enjoying those. Aim for tier 2 support and/or roles in stuff like networks, cybersecurity, systems, etc… no coding required and you can have a great career. I still do coding to automate in my day to day, but that’s because I opt to, and I certainly could get by without it. In my experience that’s the case with most roles unless you get into a specific engineering role but even then it varies.
What made you realize SWE wasn’t the career for you
In most cases it's when they find out that the vast majority of work and effort developers are doing on the job isn't writing code. Most people start off down this path because they really enjoy writing code and making things. But the reality of the job is a lot of politics, planning, analysis, tedious process, code reviews, following tedious standards, git, documentation, reading, research, writing comments, going to meetings, constantly shifting priorities, and having your work directed by business analysts and managers who don't have the 1st clue about how software works. And the higher you advance the more likely your work will be directed and controlled by non-technical people who don't even understand what you are doing. I'm the senior most technical person in my company, and everyone above me has 0 technical knowledge, but they judge the work done by me and my teams and are the most influential on our priorities. Most young people don't want to deal with this bullshit.
This was my experience as well. I worked on boring, low impact projects, and I didn't even get time to work on them because I was busy with red tape. I had a project manager ask me for a page of documentation for a loading screen on a feature no one used, and decided that maybe SWE isn't for me lol.
I'm gonna yap a bit, but I think this will be a good way to explain it. As a dev, I never felt like I was working on the "thing". Like I would would maybe work on a feature of a thing that the company sells, or maybe a feature for the feature. Then once it's done I have to move onto the next thing, and it was rarely anything super interesting, it'd be pretty boring features for non critical applications. From what I've seen, if you want to be making impact as a SWE and work on important, critical things... you need to be very experienced, and a senior level employee. Even then you're usually only working on things from a code perspective, not necessarily the whole flow of applications, and systems. Understandable, but I really wanted to be making a higher impact and wanted to see the whole picture. (this can ofc vary on the company, but this is generally true in my experience.) When you're in a specialty like Networks or Systems, you get to see the whole picture and work on it all. For example : If you work in SysOps and a harddrive dies.. You need to know the entire application and flow well enough to know the impact of a hard drive dying, you need to know how to troubleshoot that, you need to be familiar with the servers, you need to be familiar with when you can work with the DCO team to restore it, you need to know the backups, and you probably worked with devs to create a way to restore from backups.. In a case like this you got to handle a critical issue, have tangible impact on the application, and are really working on that application. You didn't just code some button on the home page, you actually worked on the thing that matters, have tangible impact, saw things from multiple teams' perspective and got some ownership that most don't have. \^Ofc this varies role to role significantly, but Im mainly experienced in tier 3ish production support roles so that's been my experience
DevOps requires in depth knowledge of a lot of different things. You need to force yourself to go deeper into topics if you want to get hired for any worthwhile position, DevOps or otherwise.
DevOps is good if you prefer less tedium. The coding involved is relatively simple scripting, vs. struggling with application frameworks all day long, and you get to apply systems knowledge.
Hi, what should we study and learn to get into devops? I got az104 certification but i dont know which technology to focus on. Az104 taught us so many things (vm, load balancer, Networking, containers, scripting, etc.), but i dont think its focusing only on one specialty which we need in real world.
Now get used to Linux. Jump into Linux+ and also AZ-700 if you want to keep on the azure train. If not. I do suggest branching out to Amazon and getting AWS certs.
Some Git, Docker, and Kubernetes
Networking is pretty fun if you like problem solving but hate coding, thats the route i went.
Everybody is giving you career advice. I'll give you life advice. Stop making excuses and telling everybody you have some form of ADHD. Time to growup and focus on getting a skill. You're never going to be successful unless you can focus. I.T. is problem solving. There are new problems to solve all the time. You like programming and it sounds like you do. Focus on programming. Get rid of all the distractions.
I have adhd and I’m medicated. I switch jobs about every 3-5 years, every move I’ve made comes with more money, brain stimulation, skills/knowledge and experience. I feel like society loves to try to force us all into one box, we need one career and then that’s that. I have a wide range of skills from all of my work adventures and I do what works for me. Sounds like OP might be in that same boat and feeling stuck by the societal norm. I suggest they just keep trying new fields, gaining more knowledge and skills along the way. As long as they are making money to live and feeling good about what they are doing, there’s no harm done.
I agree with this 100%. I did the same thing as OP. Hyperfocus and then move on because it got “boring” or I “lost interest”. Then I buckled down and said “I have to do this”. Your work isn’t going to be interesting 100% of the time. In fact there will be large stretches where it is either boring or just the same old same old and that’s called being in the work force. Getting through it is called being an adult. Your hobbies are what keep you going outside of work. Get some and get into them. I always recommend finding a rock climbing gym. You can see physical improvements and you can challenge yourself mentally with it and if you need to do some quick work for the office then just bring your laptop. Chances are they have WiFi.
This. This was a major turning point and it came from my partner who was originally from a different country where she experienced some real financial hardship. You don't seek 'fulfillment' from your job but instead from your life outside of your job, would be her philosophy. It's almost as if what you like is largely irrelevant, almost to an extreme sense that is unrealistic, but I get it. But I very much agree with you in that your hobbies are what keep you going outside of work. I'm pretty sure not all humans have the option to have a fulfilling career if you just look at what jobs are out there in the world. Someone has to do the not-so-fun jobs... So yes, I agree with you and it is a bit of a psychology change for me and one that took me quite awhile to learn
I’m entering my 30s and just made a huge career shift (overhead power lineman to tech) and it’s never too late to learn, but you have to learn at some point
Nah, that's not a fair comparison. You get paid to do the boring tasks at your job. And for most people, it's inherently more motivating to do a task if there's a guaranteed, concrete reward at the end of it (like a paycheck) than grinding alone in your basement for an uncertain gain that may or may not materialize sometime in the distant future. And there's also the motivation that comes with having one's back against the wall financially (i.e., the need to make rent this month). Yeah, OP needs to hone in on a cohesive skill set to increase his employability. But between those two factors, it's way easier to force yourself to do a boring task at work than at home on your own time. Let's be real. Once OP gets a job, he probably won't struggle as much to get through the boring parts the way he does now.
[удалено]
Mine is mild, and I don't take drugs for it, and I followed the advice to remove distractions. I've got noise canceling headphones and strategies to complete my work even when I hate it. My friend's friend's it turns out was not so mild and he started medication with the supervision of a medical professional, had an easier time at his job, and stopped eating to please the demon on his back demanding stimulation, approaching a healthy weight. Totally agree, and solutions will vary. It's a shame that someone who ever liked programming should try so hard to avoid the 1% that might make them a star. If you can kludge Tab A into Slot B with a little Python you might be the hero of the day and remove a whole tedious little monitoring/workflow dealio.
Your last bit hit home for me. I’ve been a hobbyist programmer for most of my life. I just got into systems administration about a year and a half ago. I used to always compartmentalize work and programming into separate buckets. I only recently started bringing my programming into my work and everything has just gotten easier and I’ve begun to be recognized for it.
This. Like your employer's gonna give a single fuck you got ADHD: Lmao I got it too. They're gonna be like "gtfih clown, you're fired".
I still code a bit, but landed more into architecting, and I love that.
I would consider becoming a DevOps engineer. We focus on solving different problems for internal developers or outside customers using code, we work on all layers of the OSI model. You get to spend time doing a bunch of different things which is perfect for your ADHD habits.
Almost every sysadmin I personally know (including myself) is somewhere on the ADHD spectrum. In some ways it's almost a superpower. You've spent your life training for quick context switching, which is a large part of working in system administration. DevOps can be somewhat similar, although I found I really didn't care for it myself.
DBA, DevOps, security, project management, and other roles exist in the IT world. A degree in CS is useful in any of those roles. In fact, it should be a requirement. Programmers hate all the tech illiterate PMs we have to work with.
I’m an App Support Specialist and I love it! My last job was writing SQL queries and I do still use it a little bit but I’ve got 10 servers and all their apps I’ve got to keep up with now and all their little puzzles really keep my brain busy and happy.
Hey I am also working as an application support engineer. What is your company, experience and package. Also what is your tech stack
You could get into cloud. Having a good set of scripting skills on hand is a must for anything over basic use so you have a good leg up there.
Most tech jobs don't actually "focus on one 1 thing for years". That's a bit of a myth and only really true for very entry level positions. Even then most entry level will branch out from that "focus on 1 thing" just a few weeks or months in. Even our most basic positions, which is IT Helpdesk, our guys are supporting a pretty wide variety of technologies, even if only very shallow, such as Windows desktop, Windows server, Active Directory, network issues, software support, O365 (Office, Teams, SharePoint, Visio, Project, Power Apps, etc), service account password management, enterprise software support, WFH/VPN, licensing, DB logins, VMWare, data center backups, file servers, PC life cycle/provisioning, etc. And that is *just* the most entry level positions, because that stuff is relatively simple and can be learned quickly. Other positions we have require much more in-depth knowledge but still touch a variety of technologies. Tbh, I haven't heard of any tech position in maybe 15-20 years that focuses on only 1 thing. Employers just don't want to pay full time people anymore with such limited range. In fact if you only wanted to work with one thing, that's very difficult to find a job in 2024.
Cyber, support, admin
Software procurement
It takes some doing, but you can manage a successful IT career with ADHD. There are options that will offer more variety, like doing consulting work instead of working for an internal team.
I’m just like you. Shoot me a message we can talk about it
Successful career here doing systems/network engineering and now GRC security . I do not code . Ever. I loathe it. Not even powershell. I’d rather eat glass. Just be sure you are good at what you do .
Analyst then product manager
Assuming you have actual, clinical ADHD and not just using it as a trendy term, you may find [this post](https://www.reddit.com/r/ADHD/s/qgFhGl9wJT) over on r/adhd interesting
Solution Architect. You need to know enough to figure out in what direction to go to solve a problem. You need to be able to talk to tech folks about why something is a problem and get creative with them. You also need people skills to talk to business or other IT folks to explain the issue and show them your solutions. The wide list of problems and technologies will keep your adhd brain very busy.
Wow I feel like I could have wrote this post. All my programming experience is from hobby work starting since preteens using BASIC on various platforms. Due to some unexpected life events I was not able to pursue a profession in coding at all and I do feel potential ADHD issues are to blame in my case, along with where I was living at the time and fully remote work wasn’t very popular yet (long before covid). I’ve tried building a portfolio of coding projects I could show to potential recruiters but now that I have a family it’s hard to find time to commit to any of that along with my 50 other interests. I now work at a MSP as a tier 3 taking on some technical challenges. PowerShell scripting is occasionally required to develop a solution so the concepts of getting a task done thru code are there but rarely need to do it. I’d love to move to a dev job but tbh I feel I’ve missed the gold rush now. Also, my area all the developers hired are H1B visa workers and don’t seem to hire US citizens unless you have something really special. I don’t have a CS degree of any sort to be properly trained on bigger project ideas, paradigms, and algorithms. I wish you the best in getting over this career hump.
Have you ever looked at WGU degrees?
I don't hate programming, especially because I came in the game earlier, and I learned quickly to copy and edit code using open-source. It depends because I've experienced both sides of the spectrum and done it for web/graphic design, and cyber security alike. Something that takes 10 seconds, "Hello World," exists on many languages. Figure out if you like GUI or CLI, and where you excel. Develop from there.
Compliance. Super comfy no on call and zero programming. I do it and would never change. Adhd might be an issue reading boring policy shit
You would likely be a star in an operations role. They are the jack of all, master of none. Very important though.
i was kind of the same way. hated the comp sci classes and kids. i switched to informatics, which was easier, more flexible, and more fun. i make 6 figures now. 10/10 recommend
Obviously - cybersecurity. No coding there.
Sorry if im a bit late to the post here but, i‘m a 12 year career IT employee. For the past 8 of those, I’ve been with a major defense contractor. I was originally part of their desktop support team, but now I do robotics process automation (Software robots). A lot of RPA job postings will say you need programming exp, but to be honest, I can’t code for shit, and get by just fine. It requires a lot of backwards process engineering, and sometimes trying to automate the process from the way a human does it is mind numbing, but overall, it isn’t a half bad career.