[kayodelycaon]

I chose to make a career out of #3, specifically logistics. I know how stuff gets from vendor to customer.

This isn’t something you can buy out of a box. It’s usually heavily customized and made out of multiple systems were never design to work together. Every company does this differently.

I enjoy this. I’m good at thinking through whole systems across a company’s many departments. This requires knowledge of internal politics to navigate through problems. This is were I’m valuable. As a programmer, I’m good, but can’t match the expertise of someone who makes a career out of programming.

[ptsneves]

I am in the same camp. I also don’t think it is bad in compensation terms because lots of this maintenance work is often called devops and devops is well paid from my point of view. I do the logistics for embedded or SaaS. It has been good and it is often cool to login to devices that are seen as a black box by any other person in the world. I also know that when something is on fire the maintenance guy is the one being begged by the sales guys and higher management. Maintenance people end up being debugging gods.

[ted6767]

Brother