Career Transition Advice

[25b30]

Originally Posted by Fredesch

I worked in a SCIF for 9 years doing IT and software development as a government employee. I left that community about 17 years ago and haven't regretted the move.

There are two things I think you should consider. I think there are 6 or 7 schools that have a course on using IBM's Watson and IBM is spending $100M to expand partnership companies using Watson. So folks that learn to use Watson should find well paying jobs or be able to start their own company. The other area I would suggest is accessibility. The US, EC, Canada and even China have standards based on W3C WCAG2 and entire industry verticals such as education and health care will be forced to comply since access for the disabled will be enforced. Good luck in whatever you decide to do.

Watson seem interesting. Unfortunately, the concepts of AI and neuro-network are above my head. Thanks for the suggestions.

[va_lucky]

Originally Posted by zxbane

This is an interesting thread to me, I have a clearance and work in IT as well and have had no shortage of job offers paying well, especially in DMV area.

I am confused as to why you guys say keeping the clearance is so difficult, any employer I've worked with will retain it for you and having it opens up a lot of job avenues. It doesn't seem too difficult to keep it either, simple don't run up debt, have shady foreign connections and don't get in trouble with the law. Seems like simple things that most people would do anyways regardless of having a clearance

Count your blessings. Doing all of the things that you say won't necessarily allow you to keep your clearance if you are working for an employer who can't or won't hold it (In my case more than likely doing this an attempt to retain me).

Every cleared position that I have looked at so far requires me to take a few thousand dollar pay cut and I have TONS of connections. My employer pays rather well, and I am at the upper area of what the area will generally pay, so that might have something to do with it. In the contracting world it seems that recruiters have caught on to the idea that many will do just about anything to keep their clearance and exploit you for pay if time is running out. I am not going to let that happen to me. That is why I took a part time internship to make sure that I cannot be exploited.

I cannot believe how many IT people they have laid off at the Pentagon recently and how much salaries have dropped over the past few years for the same jobs.