Career Paths, part 2

In my last post…

This time around, I’m going to look at a few paths that are a bit outside my current career path – however, all of them are ones that I could see myself in, eventually.

I’m going to summarise each career path here in the same manner as I did in Part 1, using the same four criteria:

• How much do I want to work in this career?
• How easily can I change to this career?
• What is the reward for working in this career?
• How easily can I change from this career to something else?

There is a strong possibility that I will be off the mark a bit with my analysis of each of these paths – reason being, I don’t have a great knowledge of them.

Which career paths do I have?

Game Design and Development

This career would involve me working with a game development house, of course. I am not well suited to visual design – therefore, any employment that I would gain within the games industry would be either in programming or gameplay design.

How much do I want to work in this career?

While I started out wanting to get into game development, I am not a big gamer anymore – the time
for me to get into game design and development has passed, more likely than not. And I really feel that more than most fields, genuine enthusiasm would be required.

How easily can I change to this career?

To get myself noticed, I would have to work on developing either my own games, or mods for existing games. The major problem is that it’s more fun to play games than it is to write them, and it’s unlikely that a game will be as fun to play when I’ve written it and the game doesn’t hold any surprises for me.

Also, judging by the amount of job ads for game developers, work would likely be harder to find in game development than in most industries.

What is the reward for working in this career?

I would be able to work with people that had a very wide range of skills, but then the same could be said of most careers.

While I like the idea of working in the industry and imagine the pay would be good once I got there,
I just don’t think that there would be enough work in the industry – the game development industry in Australia, whilst growing, is small compared to many other software fields.

How easily can I change from this career to something else?

I’m not sure how applicable the skills that I would gain would be in other fields, though software development positions would be easy to get with experience in the games development industry.

Business / Requirements Analysis

In a nutshell, business analysis would involve liasing with clients to determine the business processes that they use, the requirements that they have of a new software system, and how that new system would impact their business processes.

This career path would require more “soft” skills (i.e. people skills), as the majority of the work would involve working with clients, and determining their needs and desires. For this reason, it would be easier to move away from the IT industry from here than from software development.

How much do I want to work in this career?

I am not sure – I have the feeling that a lot of the job would involve reporting and client meetings. This is something that I would have to discuss with business mentors of mine.

How easily can I change to this career?

Once again, I’m not sure – while I do have some experience with the gathering of requirements and the analysis of the needs of a business, but most likely the employers of business analysts are looking at business education and experience as much as they are at IT experience.

I feel that it would take at least two years of self-education to get into a position from which I could move into this area.

What is the reward for working in this career?

The financial rewards are excellent, as is the job security (judging by the job listings). In addition, I would be working with a very wide range of clients, which opens networking opportunities.

How easily can I change from this career to something else?

There is excellent potential for moving outside of IT, because the skills that are used in business analysis are transferable. With good client facing skills, a business analyst could easily move to different industry sectors.

Potential within the IT industry may be limited, however.

Project Management

This path would involve working with software development teams to ensure that they know what tasks they need to perform within their project, to ensure that projects stay on track time and cost wise, and to know which parts of the project are the most important in the event that the project is running over schedule.

How much do I want to work in this career?

I’m ambivalent – whilst I am sure I would be able to adapt, project management seems to be a very non-creative field. I may miss the software development tasks that I am used to.

How easily can I change to this career?

I have some contacts through which I would be able to perform project management work as a volunteer. After a year or two of devoting time to it, I would be in a good position to begin interviewing for project management roles.

What is the reward for working in this career?

As with business analysis, there is good money available, and little shortage of work.

How easily can I change from this career to something else?

Out of all the careers that I have mentioned, project management is probably the easiest to move from – management skills are required in all industries.

Next time…

Watch as I start considering careers completely outside of IT! I’ve always talked about the possibility that I won’t always be working in IT, but now I’m going to examine some careers that are totally unrelated.

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