I began migrating from network/hardware/IT work and into marketing after nearly 2 years of heavy lifting getting ready for Y2K. In the end, "nothing happened," so all that time and money was wasted, according to nearly every company I worked with. Even had one demand a full refund. I agreed as long as I could revert all the work that I had done. They agreed, and the next day after that their entire system collapsed.

I couldn't even get my own dad to pay for network support for his company since he would never pay my rate for anyone no matter what. After 2 other people failed to solve his problem I fixed it in 15 minutes and then he "really" didn't want to pay because it only took 15 minutes.

I was very good at what I did but got no appreciation for keeping things from breaking, only for fixing things after they broke. Marketing paid better, and I could point at real world numbers daily and justify my pay. I don't like it anywhere near as much, but at least it gets more respect than any other IT work I did.