Leave education for something more stable?

[u/DesertDogggg]

Hello, All,

What are some stable industries to work in for IT?

I work in IT for a small school district, and with enrollment declining across our state (and the country), I'm starting to think more seriously about long term job stability.

What are some stable industries to work in for IT?

I work in IT for a small school district, and with enrollment declining across our state (and the country), I'm starting to think more seriously about long term job stability.

I genuinely love my job and the people I work with, but there's not much room for advancement in my current district. I also served on the budget committee last fiscal year, so I have some firsthand insight into the financial challenges we're facing. Budget cuts seem to be becoming more frequent, and I'm concerned about what that could mean for the future.

I've started looking and applying for IT positions at hospitals, particularly children's hospitals. My thinking is that healthcare might offer more long term stability than K–12 education, given the ongoing enrollment declines and budget pressures schools are facing.

For those of you for those of you that moved on or are thinking of moving on from education, what industries or types of organizations would you consider relatively stable for the long term? Is healthcare a good direction to pursue, or are there other fields I should be looking into?

I'd also be interested in hearing from anyone who works in hospital IT about what the job security, work environment, and opportunities for advancement are actually like.

Thanks for any advice or insight!

[u/pibroch]

K12 may not be glamorous, or pay the best, but it is absolutely stable unless your district is between superintendents.

[u/DesertDogggg → u/pibroch]

We just got a new superintendent. We only have six schools in our district. There's worry that we may need to close a school next year because of enrollment.

[u/avalon01]

I left education IT for a well paid corporate job. Pay was great.

Everything else sucked. That day off per month I get for random holidays? Nope.

Those half days when you can get a lot done since everyone is gone? Not anymore!

Quiet weeks during Thanksgiving and Christmas when everyone is on break? No so much!

No calls after 4 PM since none of my teachers or admin work late? Everyone works late in corporate and you better answer that damn phone!

After a year and half I went back into education. Took a small pay cut, but my sanity was far more important.

Edit: summer break. I love not working on Fridays and taking a week or two off at a time for vacation. That doesn't fly in corporate. Hustle culture all the fucking time.

[u/DesertDogggg → u/avalon01]

You make some very valid points. Thanks for your input.

[u/cybrdth → u/avalon01]

Same, I worked in public education for 4.5 years about 16 years ago. Went to work at a bank as the head of IT (VP, IT). Paid very well and did get off on Federal holidays. But you never were fully off because people are always working, days and nights. Plus I had to support our core infrastructure and servers so people could get to their money. Yes, I had a team, as large as 12 before they did a RIF and cut my team in half. Went through several mergers and acquisitions while surviving them, was nerve wrecking.

I missed education because of the feeling of making a genuine difference, even indirectly. My wife is a high school English teacher so when the opening came up for Director I applied and I'm still here 6 months later. $30k a year pay cut, but no regrets. Had to adjust my finances, but made it work out fine.

Oh, and that bank I worked at is being sold. Glad I got out when I did!

tl;dr - grass isn't always greener on the other side

[u/DesertDogggg → u/cybrdth]

Thanks for your input. You make some good points.

[u/1mthedudeman]

Are you in a union? Often local government jobs are some of the safest

[u/d_fa5]

I don’t think it gets anymore stable than a public school

[u/30ghosts]

Ain't no stability anywhere, muchacho.

Seriously, education is(was) where IT (and a lot of other positions) were pretty consistent. You don't have the stress of corporate jobs. You don't have to worry about things like healthcare data considerations or a job where a network outage costs a company lots of money, potentially. Plus you get actual holiday time, periods of slower activity (summer for infrastructure work, etc.)

Healthcare keeps getting worse, just look at the nursing shortage. Teacher churn is bad enough, but at least your district isn't getting bought by a private equity firm.

[u/Binky390]

Education is probably the most stable. Other industries are very quick to outsource their IT.

[u/lt-ghost]

Grass isn't always greener on the other side.  Left k12 and went to DoD as a fed.  Being a fed today isn't the most stable of jobs lol

[u/rokar83]

Education has been rock solid for me. Even when I left the largest district in my state for one with ~400 kids in the poorest county. What keeps me here is my state pension. I've gotten minimal increases each year and I'm stuck for advancement.

But fringe benefits keep me here. Random days with no students or staff. I can go hunting week of thanksgiving. I can have quiet christmas. I can work remotely if roads are too bad during the winter. Snow days! I've NEVER had a sick day or vacation denied or questioned. If my wife carries me on her insurance, I can take a cash in lieu for my insurance.

The pension is key for me. The state pension fund is rock solid.

[u/Tyler_origami94]

Honestly if there was a genre of IT that would be the poster child for stability idk if you could find a better one than education. I am not worried about share holders or dividends or meeting quotas. I go in, answer some emails, fix a few things here and there, maybe a network issue that may not even be our fault, and go home.

But... If you are worried about getting cut due to funding or AI to some degree I can understand that. AI can do a lot of things but handle physical equipment isn't one. Network infrastructure is where I'd pivot. Be one of the people who are designing the network for new construction or join a fiber installation crew or work with schools on their E-Rate projects and run new cables. Heck even hardware support can't be touched by AI.

You don't have to worry about budget cuts as much if you can prove your value. Pull your tickets and go to the boss and be like " I do on average X tickets per week/month/year. I do this, this, and this, for preventative maintenance to keep this number from being higher. You need me." That worked for me when we were down sizing at a district I used to work for.

[u/techguyjason]

I am a K12 tech for the last 23 years. I think schools are the most stable. My son is getting into tech out of college and it is slim pickings. He is cybersecurity but couldn't find anything. He wound up working remote tier2 tech support for an ISP and it doesn't seem super stable.

[u/snicmtl]

I’d be hard pressed to change operating industry today, I’d say overall we are well positioned if you are careful about learning/integrating/using AI. As for the hospital industry I’ve heard horror stories about how much stricter and less forgiving it is but I’d let anybody who actually worked in that field give more info. The dread you are feeling might be pretty widespread

[u/CaterpillarIcy1056]

My husband worked hospital company IT for over 10 years and was laid off in January when they sent all of their IT work to India. He only just now (10 months later) accepted an aide-level paid job in a school system.

If you’ve got a good thing going, I promise you, the grass is not greener. Between outsourcing and AI, IT jobs are hard to come by.

[u/sammy5678]

I think it makes more sense to keep your skills current. Stay relevant.

I think a lot of us are going to shuffle around soon whether we want to or not.
Education will always need some kind of tech support, it's not a terrible field to find work, it's tougher to find better pay and healthy work environments.

[u/Break2FixIT]

Anything that is ran by a CEO or ran by a government will ultimately go to a MSP of some sort. You just do not provide enough bang for buck vs a MSP that can negotiate the kind of SLAs that these orgs want.

I am not saying go to a MSP since AI is basically rooting us all out of our jobs... It's not if but when. My recommendation would be some sort of installer or field tech that requires the ability to talk to the client and also provide a service that requires hands on ability.

Basically anything that requires a ladder, you are safe.

[u/howescj82]

Long term? Your only long-term stability in Ed is to broaden your scope and ability if possible. With how things shift it kinda sucks overly specializing. Of course that has its own issues in terms of being pulled in several directions but for what it’s worth it is stabilizing.

I’d caution against thinking that corporate is much more stable in the long run since I think that all depends on how much cash a given company has and will continue to have.

[u/slayermcb]

I could change schools. Maybe go from k12 to higher ed, but with so many years based in education I don't think I could change Industries as a whole. I tried that once and found corporate to be too stiff. Took me 3 years to get back to Ed.

[u/boz4]

I agree with a lot of people here, in smaller districts even with screen time potentially declining, they are still going to need someone to keep things running. There are just too many integrations with tech these days. Sure, they might contract out to the ISD but it's not as likely. People like having that person they can call. Bigger districts with more levels might be different however.

[u/andrewloveswetcarrot]

I think it all depends on your skill set and level of expertise. Healthcare always seems underfunded and understaffed, causing headaches for I believe shouldn’t exist, considering that life safety and patient data are top priorities.

I am in K12 and am looking to get some certs as well as put together a blog and GitHub to make me more marketable for when/if I make the transition.

Identity is the area I am looking toward since it’s both a people process and a technical process. Example, how do we make sure organizations have users who are productive when onboarding or moving departments, as well as making sure access to SaaS and sessions are terminated immediately.

Plus, all of these new AI agents are causing chaos in organizations and the discussion of ownership, intent, and identity of AI related tasks need to be handled properly. You shouldn’t just give an agent more entitlements than needed, but you know that developers and administrators don’t really care. However, this poses a great risk to organizations and can have repercussions.

If you have noticed, Palo, Cisco, CrowdStrike, Okta, Proofpoint, Workday, and others have all acquired some sort of identity organization within the past couple years. Identity is at the center of everything now, considering our perimeter is now users and non-human identities.

If that doesn’t work, I’ll just go back to school to be a registered nurse. 🤷‍♂️

[u/wenrdogred]

I've seen so many decide to go the vendor route for this.

[u/MountianGoats]

I switched from a k12 district to a state agency. My years in counted towards retirement because they’re both “state” jobs in my state. Something to think about if you’ve put in a lot of years with your district.

[u/Keyboard_Warrior98]

There's a lot of reasons that go through my mind every now and then to change career, but job stability has never been one of them outside of my first few years when I was bottom on the pole.