Some IT advice

[Sivtec]

So this is for all you IT people. I need some help in what I should do next that makes sense in the real world. I figure there are a ton of you on here so I thought I would get your opinion.

To make a long story short,

I have been doing IT for about 5 years. I've done everything from Help Desk, to Web Development, to IT Infrastructure (which included running/terming cables, setup of servers, server maintenance, virutalization etc.). I am currently part of the IT Risk Remediation team for Honeywell Aerospace. I have about 115+ credits toward Information Technology, but no degree (kept changing majors, go figure). I have my A+ Cert, as well as a CCNA subject Certificate as well. I love my job so far but the downside is it is far less hands on than I would like. A lot of the job is communication based. This is a downside because I feel I am not learning anything fundamental. So in my spare time (as a backup plan or a potential career change) I am trying to figure out what I should do next. I have even thought about doing Mechanical Engineering! But the schooling, time, and money involved to do that would not work for me.

So my question is, what would you do with today's job market?

I figure I will stay in IT as going back to school and starting with something else would not work out well. Might as well stay with what I am good at and what I know. I have been looking at Network Admin, Security Admin, and Programming. Something else?

What do companies value most in the market today?

[Sonolin]

I program for a living. Pretty cool job if you like that sort of stuff. My current job is pretty boring (web developer) but there's a lot of cool programming jobs. Right now I'm in the position of trying to find a better paying job, with more programming related work.

Cool thing is, if your good enough at programming you have a huge array of job opportunities. Bad news is, if your not good enough, you have a lot of competition.

It started out as a hobby for me, and I've been working in the field for 6-7 years now. Currently make $40-50 an hour but am looking for $60 an hour. Not too bad, especially since I don't have a degree (yet...).

Systems Administrators also make some good money, but that job is pretty stressful and you need to know a lot of hands on experience. I just got out of that rut, not my cup of tea . Since I work with "smaller" companies, I'm usually stuck with the task of helping our sys. admins when the system gets hacked. Thankfully, my main employer just got a more experienced administrator because I hate being called late at night...

[naikaidriver]

I am the IT Services Director for my company and have been doing IT for 20 years now. Unlike most other IT Executive Management, I do not have a degree yet either. I started out like many others in the trenches as Help Desk, Network Administration, (NT 4.0 days), Systems Engineering and worked my way up though the ranks most recently from Cyber Security within the government.

If I were to offer any advice, it would be to identify what, within IT you REALLY enjoy doing. I have seen too many talented IT Professionals that were very good get burned out because they didn't truly enjoy it. Also, if you still like being "hands on", delay moving up into management until you're ready to pass the reins to someone younger without micro-managing them. I made that mistake once and it was a disaster.

Be careful of the "grass is greener" trap. It seldom is "greener" especially if your schooling will put you in debt. DON'T DO THAT! If you're not getting your degree for a specific purpose, you're better off not getting one at all and saving the money for something else to further your career.

Best of luck to you.

Scott

[Sivtec]

Originally Posted by Sonolin

I program for a living. Pretty cool job if you like that sort of stuff. My current job is pretty boring (web developer) but there's a lot of cool programming jobs. Right now I'm in the position of trying to find a better paying job, with more programming related work.

Cool thing is, if your good enough at programming you have a huge array of job opportunities. Bad news is, if your not good enough, you have a lot of competition.

It started out as a hobby for me, and I've been working in the field for 6-7 years now. Currently make $40-50 an hour but am looking for $60 an hour. Not too bad, especially since I don't have a degree (yet...).

Systems Administrators also make some good money, but that job is pretty stressful and you need to know a lot of hands on experience. I just got out of that rut, not my cup of tea . Since I work with "smaller" companies, I'm usually stuck with the task of helping our sys. admins when the system gets hacked. Thankfully, my main employer just got a more experienced administrator because I hate being called late at night...

Yea, definitely looking at the programming a bit more... I've always like coding, which is why I got into Web Development, the only problem with that is everyone and their mom is doing that now. My thinking if I go down the programming road is to do C and Java, seems like there is a lot of need for that. And yes, Sys Ad's is very stressful. I would have grey hair in no time.

[Sivtec]

Originally Posted by naikaidriver

I am the IT Services Director for my company and have been doing IT for 20 years now. Unlike most other IT Executive Management, I do not have a degree yet either. I started out like many others in the trenches as Help Desk, Network Administration, (NT 4.0 days), Systems Engineering and worked my way up though the ranks most recently from Cyber Security within the government.

If I were to offer any advice, it would be to identify what, within IT you REALLY enjoy doing. I have seen too many talented IT Professionals that were very good get burned out because they didn't truly enjoy it. Also, if you still like being "hands on", delay moving up into management until you're ready to pass the reins to someone younger without micro-managing them. I made that mistake once and it was a disaster.

Be careful of the "grass is greener" trap. It seldom is "greener" especially if your schooling will put you in debt. DON'T DO THAT! If you're not getting your degree for a specific purpose, you're better off not getting one at all and saving the money for something else to further your career.

Best of luck to you.

Scott

Agreed. On all accounts. Especially the schooling. I have taken so many credits now and still all are useless at this point. Lots of time and money wasted. Since I already have a ton of experience in IT I believe its the best way to go. I definitley think programming would be a good job, but agree with the whole competitive deal.

[xcelir8brz]

I'm an IT Infrastructure Architect and Engineer with tons of certs and over 20 grueling and in the trench years of experience. Been there done that. Money is good and bullshit is everywhere you go. What you learn is typically not taught. On the job and personal training on decisive areas of interest is where its at. I've done and seen it all.

Whore yourself out at what you are good at. Change will present itself in time.

[TemeCal]

My recommendation (if you don't already have the skill set), is to move towards Unix/Linux administration. A good linux admin can make 100-150k easily. I started out as a Windows admin 20+ years ago, then Netware Admin, then a SCO Openserver Unix admin, then Solaris, then into Linux...now I'm purely in software development.

A good linux admin is harder to find than a windows admin (just my opinion, hiring hundreds of admins over the years). You will be challenged all the time. You will learn to program. Every good linux admin knows shell scripting, perl, ruby, python, etc... They say a "lazy admin is the best admin", because the lazy admin tends to automate (script) everything. You will also have plenty of opportunities to program for and work with relational databases.

I went to college in Computer Science, so I was very familiar with C/C++. As a linux admin, you will get plenty of opportunities to learn how to program should you choose to go that route later on.

Buy yourself a raspberry pi ($35), and start learning linux. It can only help you down the road.

Best of luck!

[Sivtec]

Originally Posted by TemeCal

My recommendation (if you don't already have the skill set), is to move towards Unix/Linux administration. A good linux admin can make 100-150k easily. I started out as a Windows admin 20+ years ago, then Netware Admin, then a SCO Openserver Unix admin, then Solaris, then into Linux...now I'm purely in software development.

A good linux admin is harder to find than a windows admin (just my opinion, hiring hundreds of admins over the years). You will be challenged all the time. You will learn to program. Every good linux admin knows shell scripting, perl, ruby, python, etc... They say a "lazy admin is the best admin", because the lazy admin tends to automate (script) everything. You will also have plenty of opportunities to program for and work with relational databases.

I went to college in Computer Science, so I was very familiar with C/C++. As a linux admin, you will get plenty of opportunities to learn how to program should you choose to go that route later on.

Buy yourself a raspberry pi ($35), and start learning linux. It can only help you down the road.

Best of luck!

Ah yes, that is an awesome idea. My last employer said that is where the jobs are is Linux based IT work. Looking into RP as I speak!

[bcj]

Don't need raspberry specifically, though it is an option.
linux will work with nearly anything. You can dual boot (triple, quad...) lots of distributions.

got a cheap emachines laptop and stripped it of windows right away.
Ubuntu has been working very well on it.
Started with Red Hat back in '95 though on a built up desktop.
The employers gave me other *nix boxes to play with in the '80s.

[Sivtec]

Originally Posted by bcj

Don't need raspberry specifically, though it is an option.
linux will work with nearly anything. You can dual boot (triple, quad...) lots of distributions.

got a cheap emachines laptop and stripped it of windows right away.
Ubuntu has been working very well on it.
Started with Red Hat back in '95 though on a built up desktop.
The employers gave me other *nix boxes to play with in the '80s.

Yea the RP looks very intriguing tho. I've already taken a redhat class. I think I will start there. What are your thoughts on the LPI certs

[Sonolin]

Originally Posted by Sivtec

Yea the RP looks very intriguing tho. I've already taken a redhat class. I think I will start there. What are your thoughts on the LPI certs

Redhat based OSes are definitely the most popular server OS'es (in my experience). Particularly CentOS as that is free.

I'd recommend installing either CentOS (server OS), or Fedora (desktop OS). Fedora would be fine and would give you a nice GUI with it as well. All these desktops are based on the same platform, so you should be able to switch between them with ease (there are minor differences, but its good to know multiple distributions).

Linux admins are paid well and its free to get started learning, it just takes a lot of trial & error. If you do choose to practice on a linux OS, make sure to force yourself to use the command line as much as possible as SSH is the way 90% of work is done as a Linux Admin.

Just my .02

[TemeCal]

Originally Posted by Sivtec

Yea the RP looks very intriguing tho. I've already taken a redhat class. I think I will start there. What are your thoughts on the LPI certs

If you don't end up using the Raspberry Pi to learn linux/development on, you can always convert it to an XBMC system. It does an incredible job running as a media server (DLNA/uPnP, Icefilms, 1Channel, Project Free TV, etc...).

http://www.raspbmc.com

It's the size of a credit card. Once it's up and running, you can SSH into it from your desktop and start learning. For $25-35, it beats running a dedicated system if all you're doing is using it to learn on (or as a media server).

[bcj]

Never got any certs myself, so not really up on them.
I was always out on the bleeding edge and on to the next thing before any certs were developed.

edit: Proficiency is the most valued attribute. Memorize as many regex (regular expresions) as you can.
Get a handle on the ' vi ' or ' emacs ' editors. You can set the shell to recognize those inputs on the commnad line.
I load the ' vim ' editor ( vi variant ) everywhere I can. Even have vim-touch on my android tablet.

edit again: Working with M$ always felt like being demoted to a razor scooter. But that's just me.

[Sivtec]

Originally Posted by Sonolin

Redhat based OSes are definitely the most popular server OS'es (in my experience). Particularly CentOS as that is free.

I'd recommend installing either CentOS (server OS), or Fedora (desktop OS). Fedora would be fine and would give you a nice GUI with it as well. All these desktops are based on the same platform, so you should be able to switch between them with ease (there are minor differences, but its good to know multiple distributions).

Linux admins are paid well and its free to get started learning, it just takes a lot of trial & error. If you do choose to practice on a linux OS, make sure to force yourself to use the command line as much as possible as SSH is the way 90% of work is done as a Linux Admin.

Just my .02

I will say it is a bit difficult just because there are no paths to go down. Not really a degree in Linux administration. Just alot of trial and error. I did see the LPI cert tho. Curious if that is something to strive for. Do employers look at this?