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self taught
Good to hear things work out for most people that are self thought after all 
I'm a physicist by background. I did a bunch of comp-sci/eng courses while in university. I'm interested in both science and tech and have been working as an IT admin for the last year and a half.
The trick seems to be getting in the door. It took me 2 years out of school to find a company that would take a chance on my. Now I'm going to be moving to a new company (I only have 1.5 years experience). During the application stage I had ~20% success rate (ie. I got at least one interview for every 5 places I applied for). I had two offers on the table before picking one.
I guess where I'm going with it is that IT can be hard to get in, but then after that your judged by your success which I love. I also love the diversity of people and projects. You can definitely get your interests meet in the field.
If you like people than you can spend time with end users trying to train or find out how to help them with their problems. You can know more about the business than most managers(your the one that ran the report you know where the data is how it gets entered what can effect its accuracy etc).
Finally: I think the field has some of the most passionate people in it. You don't see accountants going home and reading tax manuals in their spare time. But IT geeks go home and play with their home computer, read software manuals, code for FOSS projects etc. People that actually like what they do, not do what they do because it pays well. There's a concept
I'm a physicist by background. I did a bunch of comp-sci/eng courses while in university. I'm interested in both science and tech and have been working as an IT admin for the last year and a half.
The trick seems to be getting in the door. It took me 2 years out of school to find a company that would take a chance on my. Now I'm going to be moving to a new company (I only have 1.5 years experience). During the application stage I had ~20% success rate (ie. I got at least one interview for every 5 places I applied for). I had two offers on the table before picking one.
I guess where I'm going with it is that IT can be hard to get in, but then after that your judged by your success which I love. I also love the diversity of people and projects. You can definitely get your interests meet in the field.
If you like people than you can spend time with end users trying to train or find out how to help them with their problems. You can know more about the business than most managers(your the one that ran the report you know where the data is how it gets entered what can effect its accuracy etc).
Finally: I think the field has some of the most passionate people in it. You don't see accountants going home and reading tax manuals in their spare time. But IT geeks go home and play with their home computer, read software manuals, code for FOSS projects etc. People that actually like what they do, not do what they do because it pays well. There's a concept
Posted by MikeGall
14th Feb 2008
