Up until the start of 2021 I used to be a physics and solid-state materials chemistry researcher for a couple of years after finishing my PhD - I didn't make a huge impact overall but I made some discoveries that might move things forward in spintronics in a few years and I was really good at it tbh. There is long hours, short contracts (6 to 12 months with having to move each time), low pay for the level of education and the fact that if you don't find new work immediately and publish 3+ papers each year then your career is essentially finished - all of these really messes with your confidence and if something like covid happens, then funding dries up and a whole swathe of talented people essentially end up out of a career. This happened to me, so 10+ years in university down the drain and as I've found out over the past 2 years, HR people in the simple type of technical jobs you should be able to do asleep as a former researcher deeply resent people with masters and PhDs so you can't really find your way back into science once you're out or at least I haven't found the magic words to let the HR people know I'm not a threat.
So, here I am trying to make a decision, I've always been interested in IT and as good as I am at administration/office work, part of my life plan is to immigrate to Canada and leave Australia for good. I recently completed a course that is like a 3rd of the CCNA course and quite enjoyed it, the final assignment was a little tricky because I didn't do as much practice with some of the lessons as I should have but I really enjoyed it nonetheless. So I think I'm gonna at least go over the full CCNA course and see how I feel about that before making a decision as to whether I should pay to take the exam.
I dunno if I have much of a community thru here but has anyone here done something similar or have friend(s) who made a career out of basic networking tech (I dunno if I have 5+ years and tens of thousands of dollars to become an engineer before finding work) and/or was able to emigrate using a networking qualification? I don't really have a plan set at the moment, but I have been saying to my partner for a year that I'm a pretty smart woman who should be able to do anything I set my brain to, so I would really like some perspectives on the industry or if there is some other area I should maybe look at?