It’s that time of year again when many are rebooting their brains, getting ready to level up their knowledge, and powering up for the quest known as back-to-school.
Which brings to mind that while many IT professionals in our community actively pursued a degree and career in Information Technology, we also know many of our members stumbled into it. It was often simply because they were the most computer-literate in their organization (and knew to reboot three times, always three times!).
When we asked this question a few years ago, around 36% of our members knew they wanted to be in IT. In contrast, the other 40% accidentally came into the profession, and 24% knew they wanted to be in tech but were unsure what their career would ultimately be.
Vote in the poll below to see if that has changed. You can also share your story about how you ended up in IT, so post that below.
Did you intentionally pursue a career in IT?
- Yes, I specifically studied for and pursued a career in IT
- No, I stumbled into IT by accident
- Sort of as I knew I would end up working in tech but nothing specific
34 Spice ups
As you say, I was the only person in the building who wasn’t afraid to open the case and install more memory, or add another hard drive. Mainly because my dad used to design printer circuit boards in a CAD program in the late 80s/early 90s, and he’d always built his own computers, and I was with him.
Also helped that I turned out to be a massive nerd too 
16 Spice ups
Rod-IT
(Rod-IT)
3
A Q&A with Rod-IT, Spiceworks’ newest Pure Capsaicin! - Spiceworks Originals - Spiceworks Community
17 Spice ups
Yes, I knew what I wanted to do with my career when I was 12 and first started playing with computers. I managed to get in to IT almost at the very start of IT being a thing so I’ve seen it grow.
20 Spice ups
Yes, I knew in HS I wanted to do something with computers. I did HR for awhile after my deployment and chose an IT career after my buddy recommended I apply for an opening at his organization.
8 Spice ups
No, I dd not plan a career in IT. When I graduated from HS in 1985, computers were just starting to be used. The fall of 1985 I still hand wrote all my papers for college. I almost dropped out, I was miserable. Over Xmas break the college installed computers in a lab for general use/word processing. Later in the spring I was elected to be student government treasurer and was able to use the new Mac’s that the school paper purchased. I quickly became an expert in Macs and PC’s, was hired to work summers and during the school year the rest of my college career by the college, supporting the administration and faculty’s desktop computer use and started dabbling into networking. I was going to go into science research and was not sure which way I wanted to go, plus I was trying to see how far I could go with my XC ski racing, having raced Div 1 in college. After college I worked several temp jobs as a scientist to see what real world work in the fields would be like. I worked as a cell biologist for Bausch & Lomb, then as a quality control chemist at Kodak, then back to B&L in microbiology. I then decided working in a lab setting was not for me. The initial work was interesting, learning all the new lab skills etc. But. No access to the outdoors was a huge problem. Working in inisolation for whole days in an aceptic environment was taxing. I decided to go into teaching, so I started grad school taking courses towards teaching certification, and ultimately student teaching. I continued working a fulltime microbiology job with a private firm while taking my classes at night. After finishing my student teaching a year later, I moved to Vermont trying to find a perm teaching position. I bumped around on one year contracts until stumbling into a good use of my skills: integration specialist. I was hired to teach the teachers how to integrate technology into their classrooms and the curriculum. Those colorful iMacs had just been bought by the district in the elementary school as well as a new computer lab full of PC’s running Windows XP at the middle/high school and they needed someone to teach them how to use it. Windows server 2000 had just been released. I arrived mid summer to the highschool to find it was having ethernet cabling installed to all rooms, a mix of Novell 3 and 4 servers, and a sysadmin coworker to work with the build a new network from the ground up using Windows 2000. I learned so much that year. It totally changed the trajectory of my working life. I went on to be the director of technoloy at a private school, then a network/sysadmin for a non-profit healthcare company with 800 users in locations in 6 states (lots of travel), to working for the state a decade ago doing similar work for two different agencies. Last year I needed a change, getting away from supporting end users, and now I’m a continuity of operations coordinator and an enterprise architect for the state’s IT agency. I lived through a huge change in the IT field in a very unique way.
22 Spice ups
jeffnoel
(ghijkmnop)
8
I didn’t study for it–I’m a classically trained artist–but I definitely pursued it.
13 Spice ups
novatoast
(Novatoast)
9
I was actually originally planning to go into auto body work or automotive repair of some kind due to my love of classic cars and anything mechanical. I also had a hobby of messing with computers and figured it would be more lucrative than automotive. I think I made the right choice, as I would probably hate cars now if I worked in a mechanic’s shop 
15 Spice ups
Although I had intended to have a computer-related career, there was no such thing as IT at the time. Well, at least IT as we understand it today. You could be a programmer or system analyst. I headed into programming and my first gigs outside of the University data center (where I functioned as a system analyst) were in programming. Over the next few years, IT as we know and love it came to pass and I got pulled into the stinking, gruesome, and glorious mess and have lived in that swamp ever since. Sort of like Shrek.
17 Spice ups
ode2joy
(Ode2joy)
11
I intentionally pursued a career in IT, but in a completely different area than I am in now. I went to school to be a programmer, but then one summer between my junior and senior year, I ended up working for a VAR helping the owner rebuild his accounting files. It was supposed to be simple data entry to get his lost data re-entered into the system (he of course had no backups), but the job morphed into helping him rebuild his file server, Exchange server, Active Directory, etc. and I was hooked. Never did a lick of programming (except for the occasional PowerShell script) after that.
15 Spice ups
I went to college for programming but I haven’t done any since school. After school got a warehouse/IT job. Then promoted to PM/IT. Now just fully IT Generalist.
So not what I planned but that the way it goes sometimes.
13 Spice ups
Knew this is what I wanted and didn’t know where to start. Started Computer Engineering, knew I’d hate it, didn’t see a major called IT or Network Engineering so moved past it. My friends in my hall were in the Computer Network Systems Administration major. Little known and tucked away, but it has grown a lot since. When I started I knew this is what I wanted to do and it has been working somehow so far.
10 Spice ups
Did a theatre degree thinking I’d do backstage stuff for a few years. Got the degree and fell into an IT role. Almost 9 years later still doing IT, and have ended up being responsible for our theatre anyway haha
10 Spice ups
shnool
(SHNOOL)
15
I know I’ve answered this a few times here, so I will give the Cliff’s Notes version.
I am an Electrical Engineer by Degree, graduated in 1993.
Early in my high school days, I wanted to be an engineer, knew computers were important. I taught myself to program and took every computer course I could in high school (wasn’t much Apple IIs).
While my first career job was with an engineering title with the Telco, that lasted 5 years, after that I took a job as IT Manager, and I’ve been in IT ever since. If you are bored you likely can search this site and find my whole story.
But point is, I did not pick IT, IT picked me.
8 Spice ups
I probably would have been an auto mechanic if I could have taken Auto’s or shop classes when I went to High School. No women allowed!
8 Spice ups
craigrrr
(CraiGrrr)
17
My two chosen vocations were Jazz Saxophone and Neuroscience. IT is just the result of my propensity to follow the path of least resistance.
9 Spice ups
ich
(ICH)
18
I discovered Computers at the age of 11 in 1971. By the time I was 13, and programming was being taught as a class, I was ahead of the teacher. I used to write the code that the teacher taught to the class.
When I was 16 I was supporting the school’s head of Biology for their doctorate, writing code performing statistical analysis on their data. I was also loosly connected to a mainframe hacking group, which resulted in the issuing of international arrest warrants. I leaned that I had an affinity for hardware and systems rather than straight end user programming. i also leared a lot about social engineering, before it was even an expression.
At university I did three other student’s programming projects as well as my own, as IT was not their main subject. Being a nerd (and being well versed in social engineering) was definitely an advantage then, they were all female!
After university I joined the UK government (sort of head hunted. I had to follow the usual recruitment procedure, but a couple of men in dark suits suggested I took that path, and mentioned the arrest warrants. Once I was in, I was lifted from the intake group and specially assigned) working on Police systems (and the arrest warrants disappeared). Poacher turned gamekeeper. I did a lot of work on systems interconnections, This was prior to TCP/iP making it easy.
Been working in support or consultancy one way or another since then. So yes, it was a choice I made during my early years at school, backed up by what could have been a bad choice of associates that ended up being good for me.
13 Spice ups
dwo1064
(dwo1064)
19
Started as an Autocad operator at a small engineering/consulting firm. They wanted to Network their 5 PCs rather than sneaker-netting back and forth, office to office.
Not too long after I found myself loading 5-1/2" floppies of Netware 2.x-something, and stringing coax.
10 Spice ups
No, it’s just what happens when you have a law degree and realize you don’t want to spend your life working with lawyers.
14 Spice ups
