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Kevin87

Pre-takeoff checklist
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Kevin87
I'm not sure if this is the right place to post this, but here it goes.

I always wanted to be a pilot and fly for a living, but unfortunately that did not work out.

I work in the IT industry, and I can't stand not being around airplanes or airplane talk. Every day it is getting harder to go to work.

Does anyone have any advice on a career move that would get me around people who also love aviation?

I would like to stay in IT, but I don't even know where to start.
 
Becoming a flight instructor might be an option. Instruct part time, teaching aviation, being around motivated people and keep your paying job. By the time you build enough time to move on you might have a more clear idea of what you want to do.

PS. I am 55 and I still don't know what I want to do when I grow up.
 
Kevin not sure how old you are but IT can be a rewarding Career and you can make good money. Sure it has its bad and good days but isn't that with any Career. There are days that I wish I was a professional pilot but I think Piloting any airplane mostly on Autopilot would get boring working for the airlines. I have been in IT for 20 years and I enjoy it most of the time. Everyday is a new challenge.

I suggest you work Hard at your IT job and Expand your career field so you have enough time and money to enjoy flying for pleasure.
 
If I could somehow get into aviation as a job and make what I make at my IT gig, I would make the change in a heartbeat. I am good at what I do and I don't dislike it but I didn't realize just how much I love flying.
 
Do freelance SAP "installs". I think there is a guy over on AOPA flying his own Corvallis around doing just that.
 
Thanks for the advice guys. N35 I shot over a PM.
 
jhausch said:
Do freelance SAP "installs". I think there is a guy over on AOPA flying his own Corvallis around doing just that.
Click to expand...

:rofl: depending on the size of the organization, it takes 50+ people to do that. Most of the aerospace industry is already up and running on SAP. At least all the ones big enough to justify an installation.
 
SAP stands for: "You bought really expensive software that won't ever truly fix your problem because the consultants will never leave and it'll never be finished." Ha.

I like IT but claiming someone who gets better at it will have *more* free time, isn't how it usually works. You'll have more money. But you probably won't have more time.
 
Free time comes from getting promoted. My developers work a lot harder than me. I haven't seen my boss in weeks. Can't wait to get that job.
 
denverpilot said:
SAP stands for: "You bought really expensive software that won't ever truly fix your problem because the consultants will never leave and it'll never be finished." Ha.

I like IT but claiming someone who gets better at it will have *more* free time, isn't how it usually works. You'll have more money. But you probably won't have more time.
Click to expand...

I thought it meant "Send Another Payment" or "Scare Another Programmer"
 
Stay with IT, invest wisely and fly for fun.

I'd like to fly for a living, but realistically, the travel would be hard on the family.
 
Consider the IT department in an aerospace/aviation company. Where are you located?
 
I had a friend in Seattle that was a IT tech support guy for Paul Allen and got to fly around with him in his 757 everywhere he went making sure his systems always worked and he had secure connectivity. Don't think there are a lot of jobs like that out there though.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
 
SixPapaCharlie said:
Free time comes from getting promoted. My developers work a lot harder than me. I haven't seen my boss in weeks. Can't wait to get that job.
Click to expand...


So you're saying you're overhead? ;)

I am the new boss. Of a two person IT department.

Such fun things as, "Anyone actually have a copy of the contract for this circuit?", and "Why did you guys a) Let the sysadmin run Production stuff from his desktop machine and b) Why did you let him buy his own machine and walk out with it when you fired him?"

Let's not bring up the "plan" to cut a call center over from two carriers to one (nice business continuity plan, there...), using an unsupported 15 year old phone system designed to run a car dealership for said call center, no plan at all for inventory control or patching, no standard company OS or even a couple of them, critical business applications running on PCs under desks, half-finished migration from shared cloud services to private cloud services creating a crisis of non-use of public IP space so it can't grow, zero cohesive backup plan, numerous critical business software packages that are two major revisions down rev, and almost every service contract expired on all the critical infrastructure.

And that's just what I feel like typing! LOL. Well, at least they fired him...

Today's planning meeting was, "How to properly build a Production Environment 101".

Should be a fun year if I survive it. CenturyLink can't even find our account number for a 30 Mb/a Metro Ethernet circuit across town.

Oh and, "Can we get a new e-mail system and phone system, too? We've been asking for over a year."

I suspect after I get done documenting what we *should* be doing, let alone moving things forward. I'll be hiring.
 
jsnapp said:
I had a friend in Seattle that was a IT tech support guy for Paul Allen and got to fly around with him in his 757 everywhere he went making sure his systems always worked and he had secure connectivity. Don't think there are a lot of jobs like that out there though.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
Click to expand...

At first I thought this sounded cool but then I thought, uhh no thanks. I have been in IT for 22 years and I am not sure I would want the pressure of being Paul Allen's IT guy.
 
denverpilot said:
So you're saying you're overhead? ;)
Click to expand...

Sort of. I have a ton of info in my head and nobody seems to care to propagate that info to other peoples' heads. They are screwed without me whenever it hits the fan.

The downside to being that guy is my phone rings in the wee hours when there are urgent issues.

As far as actual work getting done, if cuts were needed, I would be 2nd to go. 1st being my boss.
 
I work for Raytheon on the STARS program. We hire IT guys to help develop and install Air Traffic Control systems for the FAA.
 
SixPapaCharlie said:
Sort of. I have a ton of info in my head and nobody seems to care to propagate that info to other peoples' heads. They are screwed without me whenever it hits the fan.

The downside to being that guy is my phone rings in the wee hours when there are urgent issues.

As far as actual work getting done, if cuts were needed, I would be 2nd to go. 1st being my boss.
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I think my predecessor thought he was irreplaceable. They had enough of him being the only person with the info. It's downright strange hearing the stories of how he denied everything the business requested and they have no idea what he was spending his time on. He only showed up three days a week and had nothing measurably done on his other "work from home" days. Talking to one vendor he had apparently been bad-mouthing the company execs to them constantly.

Sorry dude. There are people out there who know both telecom and Linux. Wow. I think he really thought they couldn't dump him.

All it took was money. ;) ;) ;)

And I'm a hell of a lot happier being busy up to my eyeballs than sitting around waiting for some exec in Florida to approve a DNS change a week after I submitted a request, and then did it anyway so we could get some work done. :)
 
denverpilot said:
So you're saying you're overhead? ;)

I am the new boss. Of a two person IT department.

Such fun things as, "Anyone actually have a copy of the contract for this circuit?", and "Why did you guys a) Let the sysadmin run Production stuff from his desktop machine and b) Why did you let him buy his own machine and walk out with it when you fired him?"

Let's not bring up the "plan" to cut a call center over from two carriers to one (nice business continuity plan, there...), using an unsupported 15 year old phone system designed to run a car dealership for said call center, no plan at all for inventory control or patching, no standard company OS or even a couple of them, critical business applications running on PCs under desks, half-finished migration from shared cloud services to private cloud services creating a crisis of non-use of public IP space so it can't grow, zero cohesive backup plan, numerous critical business software packages that are two major revisions down rev, and almost every service contract expired on all the critical infrastructure.

And that's just what I feel like typing! LOL. Well, at least they fired him...

Today's planning meeting was, "How to properly build a Production Environment 101".

Should be a fun year if I survive it. CenturyLink can't even find our account number for a 30 Mb/a Metro Ethernet circuit across town.

Oh and, "Can we get a new e-mail system and phone system, too? We've been asking for over a year."

I suspect after I get done documenting what we *should* be doing, let alone moving things forward. I'll be hiring.
Click to expand...

Your company has issues. Not all IT shops are like that.
 
evapilotaz said:
I have that job of the boss. Lots of hard work and long hours got me there. now I'm 40 hours a week mon - fri.
Click to expand...

I wouldn't say I have that job yet, but I can say that we are not really that way. The higher yoyngo, the more they expect as far as accountability goes (obviously). Build the right team, and it becomes a lot easier.

I happen to have a really good team of teams under me which is helpful. Some if my peers work harder than they should because they either don't trust their teams or their teams aren't that good.
 
evapilotaz said:
Your company has issues. Not all IT shops are like that.
Click to expand...


Well of course they do. That's why they hired me to fix it. I also didn't come cheap. ;)

But the idea espoused on the thread is that one would both make a bunch of money and also have enough time to fly a bunch in IT.

Neither are necessarily true.

"IT" is pretty broad, as are the salary ranges and benefits.

I happen to like tackling big messes and cleaning them up at smaller places, but when I'm in that mode, time is not on my side. The wallet enjoys it but I have to wrestle the personal time back.
 
That is where PTO and Flex hours come into play in a well organized IT shop. We are all salary in my dept and anything over 40 we do not get paid. Instead of overtime pay which I cannot give, I give my staff time off instead without counting towards their allotted PTO time.

Sure I wanted to become a professional when I was in High School but my parents talked me out of it. They said "flight school cost to much" and instead the thrust me into the Army and that is where I got my IT career started. Do I wish I was a professional pilot. Yes some times but with my IT career I'm home at night 90% of the time. I do have to travel to our remote sites once in a while which takes me away from home.

I have spoken to a few airliner pilots and asked them do they still have the love of flying like they did when they first started? Every one of them says its just another job like any other.
 
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