Mostly harmless, conspicuously useful
Hitchhiker's Guides to IT careers
Comic, accurate career guides for every IT role — from the engineer who has never touched a server to the architect who has touched too many. Six levels each, from novice to guru, written in the voice of a travel guide that knows the way and the pitfalls.
34 guides · 34 careers mapped
Software development
9 guides
Backend Engineer
Builds the services no one notices until they stop working, which is the whole point.
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Blockchain Developer
Writes code that cannot be patched, only replaced, and ships it to a ledger that remembers everything.
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Embedded/IoT Engineer
Schedules firmware for a device with 64KB of RAM and strong opinions about timing.
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Frontend Engineer
Builds interfaces for humans, browsers, and the human who is not on Chrome.
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Full-Stack Engineer
Responsible for both ends and the gap between them, which is where the bugs live.
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Game Developer
Convinces a physics engine to disagree with reality in a fun way, sixty times a second.
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Mobile Engineer
Ships to a device whose lifecycle event will destroy your state at the least convenient moment.
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Quality Engineer
Guards the gate that blocks the release it was supposed to protect, and automates it.
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Software Engineer
Writes the code that has worked for fifteen years and must not be touched, then touches it.
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Data and AI
7 guides
AI Engineer
Teaches machines to talk, then patiently explains to them why they are wrong.
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Analytics Engineer
Turns raw events into tables someone can actually trust, which is harder than it sounds.
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Data Analyst
Counts things carefully, then explains why the count is not the answer.
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Data Engineer
Arranges for facts to arrive where they are needed in a state fit for use, which they rarely are.
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Data Scientist
Asks the data a question and then argues with it about the answer.
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Database Administrator
Guards the stored facts from corruption, deletion, and the well-meaning developer.
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Machine Learning Engineer
Deploys a model that was correct in the notebook and opinionated in production.
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Infrastructure and operations
7 guides
Cloud Engineer
Rents other people's computers for a living and is surprised by the invoice.
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DevOps Engineer
Automates the path from laptop to production so no one has to hold their breath.
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Network Engineer
Keeps the packets moving through seven layers of opinions and one BGP announcement that changed its mind.
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Platform Engineer
Builds a platform for developers, a difficult customer who constructs unsupervised footpaths around it.
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Site Reliability Engineer
Treats the pager as a small electronic device whose principal product is interrupted sleep.
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Solutions Architect
Draws the diagram that survived the steering committee with the most arrows intact.
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Systems Administrator
Operates the cron job that runs as root because someone in 2008 decided it should.
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Security
3 guides
Cybersecurity Analyst
Watches the alerts until one of them matters, which it always does, eventually.
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Penetration Tester
Is paid to break things within agreed scope, which the client interprets differently.
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Security Engineer
Designs least privilege, a decision that is never the default and always the right answer.
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Product and design
5 guides
Business Analyst
Translates what stakeholders said into what they meant, in writing, before anyone builds it.
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Developer Advocate
Writes the demo that worked on the laptop and not on the stage, then debugs the community.
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Product Manager
Decides what to build and why, then disappoints someone deliberately rather than accidentally.
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Technical Writer
Documents the API that changed but the example did not, in version control, where it can break the build.
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UX/UI Designer
Designs for the user who does not read the labels, and fights for the pixel they never notice.
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Management and support
3 guides
Engineering Manager
Holds the one-on-one that produces no artifacts and all of the value.
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IT Support Specialist
Resolves the ticket from the user who changed nothing and the printer that is somehow a network device.
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IT Project Manager
Keeps the Gantt chart, a work of optimistic fiction, aligned with reality's paperwork.
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