Career ideas...

I do my own geek squad. 100 /hr + tax. I need more clients, but the ones I have keep coming back for new stuff. How the F do I market myself?

But seriously, zero overhead if its an established account and i can remote work.

W4RH34D_sl said:

I do my own geek squad. 100 /hr + tax. I need more clients, but the ones I have keep coming back for new stuff. How the F do I market myself?

But seriously, zero overhead if its an established account and i can remote work.

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Out of curiosity how do you manage validating that fee? I see literally hundreds of people doing their own pc work around town and its just a who can undercut who fest. Shit around here goes for like $25/35/hour. This is in atlanta.

sticktastic_sl said:

Out of curiosity how do you manage validating that fee? I see literally hundreds of people doing their own pc work around town and its just a who can undercut who fest. Shit around here goes for like $25/35/hour. This is in atlanta.

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I work in a small town and get to pick and choose who I service. I charge $65/hour, and I could easily get away with more. Do quality work, avoid residential (anything less than a home office isnt worth your time, let the $35/hour people take that), print money. Residential is a nightmare. Handing someone a $150 invoice for a $400 computer is going to make them unhappy. They will have follow up calls if you changed their background picture, which you cant really bill for. They will call asking if you backed up their pictures under C:\Windows\Christmas 1998\. They will call you when their wireless mouse needs batteries (side note: dont support wireless peripherals).

W4RH34D_sl said:

I do my own geek squad. 100 /hr + tax. I need more clients, but the ones I have keep coming back for new stuff. How the F do I market myself?

But seriously, zero overhead if its an established account and i can remote work.

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Word of mouth. Offer a referral credit of some sort. Try to land a client who is in the business of servicing OTHER businesses - accountants, law firm, marketing firm, etc - They will talk

Dont waste your money on advertising. You wont get anyone at those rates.

I just finished my master's degree in nursing and I am taking the certification test next week to be a psychiatric nurse practitioner. I am going to make 115k at my new job once I get my license. If you think you would enjoy nursing, go for it. I've spent the past 5 years working as an RN in inpatient psychiatry and i loved it. Nursing is great because you can get an associate's degree and make a decent living.there are many different employment and educational opportunities available in the field.

My dad is an accountant and he has suffered the short end his entire adult life. He made me swear to not follow his profession. And he likes accounting. Even after working long hours he would do the paperwork for church.

I am in smalltown, and everybody seems to be a nurse. Fairly easy to get into and good relative pay. I haven't even tried because I imagine with that many people in the field, it would be a frustration to penetrate.

Don't let calculus and chemistry scare you from becoming an engineer. Those are just the weeding out classes. Once you make it, depending on your engineering major you can basically print money all day

Noodleface_sl said:

Don't let calculus and chemistry scare you from becoming an engineer. Those are just the weeding out classes. Once you make it, depending on your engineering major you can basically print money all day

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Engineers definitely make good money... when they can find a job. I went to a big engineering school (Clarkson University) and am friends with a lot of engineers. It's gotten a bit better the past year or two but the economic downturn had about half them working "fuck off" jobs while looking for a career in the field their degree was in. A lot of them had found work after graduating and were subsequently laid off. Some of them are still struggling to find real work. Others are genius level and never had an issue and make a lot of money all while having a shitload of fun because they love the engineering field they are in.

A handful of them went to Punkin' Chunkin' a few years ago, said "Yea we can do this". Made a catapult and won the catapult division in their second year (this past year). They are some of the smartest people I know, but goddamn you'd never know it if you hung out with them. You'd think they were high functioning retards.

Experience trumps everything in every field I've ever worked in or heard of.

Vanderhoof_sl said:

I just finished my master's degree in nursing and I am taking the certification test next week to be a psychiatric nurse practitioner. I am going to make 115k at my new job once I get my license. If you think you would enjoy nursing, go for it. I've spent the past 5 years working as an RN in inpatient psychiatry and i loved it. Nursing is great because you can get an associate's degree and make a decent living.there are many different employment and educational opportunities available in the field.

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Is there a way to get into psychiatric nursing from the beginning or do you need to finish your nursing degree/diploma and then specialize?

lindz_sl said:

Is there a way to get into psychiatric nursing from the beginning or do you need to finish your nursing degree/diploma and then specialize?

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Kind of. Yale offers a 3 year program where the first year you basically become an RN and the following two years are spent learning whatever specialty you want. This way you don't have to go to school to become an RN and then try to find another specialty program at a different school and go through the application process again. I'm sure other universities have similar programs:

Graduate Entry Prespecialty in Nursing | Yale School of Nursing

Not to mention a lot of places are preferring an MS now, seems an MS is the new BS which was the high school diploma before that

Khane_sl said:

Kind of. Yale offers a 3 year program where the first year you basically become an RN and the following two years are spent learning whatever specialty you want. This way you don't have to go to school to become an RN and then try to find another specialty program at a different school and go through the application process again. I'm sure other universities have similar programs:

Graduate Entry Prespecialty in Nursing | Yale School of Nursing

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My sister is in nursing school in Canada currently and she mentioned that her school has an entirely separate program for psychiatric nursing. Do you know if schools in the US offer programs like that as well?

Need to get into research mode, but I figured I'd ask first. I'm probably looking at schools in the SLC area in the next few years once kids are all in school and I can finally go back to school myself.

edit: Sister also mentioned that it may be better to get an RN first rather than go directly for a RPN because while an RN can work in mental health, a RPN cannot work in general medicine. Of course this is from a 3rd year nursing student in Canada so I have no idea how accurate it is for the US.

The reason I know about the Yale program is because I was dating a girl who was in the program for psychiatric nursing, so I know that, at least at Yale, psychiatric nursing is part of the group of specialties you can choose from in that 3 year program.

Deathwing_sl said:

Maybe this is true with any field, but I've found my job security as an engineer(measured via interest in my LinkedIn profile) has risen considerably once I got ~5 years of experience. Before that, I was expendable as hell. I probably still am, but at least I know my job prospects are much better should that ever happen. Getting laid off in your first 5 years is a great way to setback or even reset your career.

I don't know why it is, but it doesn't seem companies aren't that interested in training and investing in just out of college hires. Great way to sabotage your own industry in the long run. Just look what's happening in IT and their inability to fill experienced positions.

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I've got about 5 years running an IT department for a smallish company now. Make shit for cash. Please, point me at these open experienced positions. Cause I've looked casually and haven't seen much in Dallas.