Mae Said:

How to get out of Web Design/Development?

We Answered:

I feel your pain. Even when you do get a good, interesting project, your client changes everything enough that your design goes down the drain and looks like cr@p. There are still a steady stream of businesses just now getting on the web, but if you don't build an interface for them to update the site, then you're stuck doing all their updates forever. With the thousands of templates available for $50-60 it can be hard to charge what your time is worth to design smaller sites. You get the people who say, "my nephew can do my site for $100!"

I think the best thing to do with your web skills is work on projects of your OWN. Build an affiliate site and sell someone else's products or come up with something that will enable you to sell advertising on your site. Working for yourself on your own projects is a lot more fun. I know you still need something that pays the bills, but you can easily do your own stuff and maybe a few outside projects from home if you are disciplined to work at home.

Maybe you can go more toward graphic design, which goes hand in hand with web skills. Or find a fun company to work for and work on their site. After about 6-7 years I'm turning down web projects right and left just to work on my own stuff for a change. Good luck!

Alfredo Said:

How can I start a successful career in IT?

We Answered:

When I was 13, I got my first computer from my parents, and I was so interested in computer programming, because I really wonder how those computer games were made.
I started to study computer programming at that time by myself, and I didn't understand a word in the programming books, but I just kept reading it... Until one day, I suddenly realized that I totally got it... (by the way, I was learning PASCAL at that time)... then I also learnt C by myself and I beat all the adults in a progamming contest, and I was only 14.
I kind of stopped further programming learning afterwards due to school work and when I was in college, I was called "invisible man" because I never went to classes and I just played around for 4 full years. Due to some incidents, I applied to gradute school in computer science and got approved, and I was called "the man" because I could help programming homeworks for my classmates... The graudate degree was so easy for me to finish...
Then of course, I started my career as a computer programmer, and now it has been over 8 years and I am leading a software team... I've been earning quite well due to the nature of programming jobs and the point is that I only devoted 10% of my time to the work and I still got appraisal from my bosses... I always wonder what if I devote 100%? But I won't, because I have other interest to pursue and soon I will change my career path.

Hope my story answered your question...

Be a nerd in one of the programming languages, and you will be just fine!

Brittany Said:

How to get out of Web Design/Development NOW!!!!?

We Answered:

It can easily be worth a full time day job.
Of course that depends upon the level of experience you have, and the project you are working on.

As for "trying to go into other fields (like sales, or finance, or even customer service)".
No matter what job you have, you are in sales, and in customer service. Why? You have to sell the fact that you have certain skills to someone, even if it's in a large company. And you have to provide a customer service as in providing feedback and keeping managers up to date with project(s) that you are working on.

You want to try yourself out in sales, then try to market your skills on the open market (freelancer.com, web2coder.com, templatemonster.com, etc.) and see if folks pick you up and great customer service skills will provide a key to having folks come back to you time and time again.