Entering IT with expertise

just a curious query...why didn't you set up your own car repair shop...instead of going into IT?

regards

aj

I appreciate your wit in that last statement, and I'm sure that it's true most of the time -- but I think the case of a Seminary is an exception.

Since the goal is to become a priest, and it's a matter of "is God calling you or not", it's not up to the man who shows up. (It wasn't up to me, for instance). Some guys leave because they can't handle the intense studies, the discipline, etc. but I stayed there 3 1/2 years until they told me "I didn't have a vocation to the priesthood". So basically I had no choice.

If I had "finished" my education there, I would be a priest and wouldn't need to work an IT job :)

Unfortunately, while I am very pleased with the education I got there (I'd prefer it to that of ANY other college that exists), it's not an accredited university (where you can transfer credits and such)

Matthew

I started out working with computers about 23 years ago, and the first one I ever built was a sinclair ZX81. I tried to go through an EE college degree, but did not have enough to sit down and study. to make a long story short, I managed to get my foot in through an IT door, in a totally unrelated field, knowing where I wanted to go. meanwhile I got a few minor certifications on the way (no ccna/ mcsa) because by the the time I had close to 15yrs experience, I could kick any of those guys @sses and even mentored a few of them. in my mind, certification is good, get it becasue you have atleast a reference, and explains "why it happens that way". but the most important thing is experience. just because one puts together a pc at home, or loads linux at home does not make one a tech expert. the real world experience, taking care of day to day workloads and problems is the only way one can truly understand the the complexity of firewalls, e-mail servers, VPN's, and load balancing and management. Get an internship, and impress whoever.

Only if tip-toeing through a puddle will help you swim.
Try learning and holding a full time job while doing a correspondance courses and bringing up a family. That's maturation , not tossing about working out some new lyrics for phi-beta-kappa's initiation song and sussing out how to sneak a six pack onto campus.

You're current level of knowledge, I'm sure, far exceeds that of many who are already in the workforce. Some people irritate me to no end with how much BS they can throw at somebody and still get hired for a job they are not qualified for. Anyway, my main point is be patient and get through college. College does a lot more for your career than just teach you skills that relate to your major.

Also, in terms of what college you attend, I would recommend a school that requires only a minimum amount of general education work and where you can focus more on technology. A school like DeVry, if you're close to one, would fit the bill nicely. Make sure you find a tech school that is nationally accredited or you'll be wasting your time.

Being one of the living dead - working 12 hour shifts in a vegetable canning factory matured me a lot more than college ever did.

Get some friends together and start your own company. You might starve for awhile but you will learn a lot. You are young with no committments, you can take lots of risk now and you can create your own pain-in-the-neck HR department.

look you have completely misunderstood.. all i am saying is there are other paths.. and some of us did not have the cash to spend on a degree. if you consider what it cost to pay for college and every other expense during the course of a year, such as, rent, food car, gas, clothing, books, tuition, basically everything you need to survive and continue your education, then 20,000 a year is a reasonable figure. unless you have parents that are rich enough to afford that, then you must seek other paths to improve yourself. and the very fact that you call college grads "the educated community" implies that you think the rest of us are uneducated. and if you think that "All the military service can give you outright is respect for serving your country and more assurance that you'll be dedicated. Other than that, you might get some focused experience in a field" then you have a very limited understanding of the military which provides you the very freedom to call us uneducated. you no nothing of critical thinking and deductive reasoning. it is easy to figure out any problem in a class or dorm room. try it when you are fighting to save the life of your friend and your unit by taking the life of another human being. doing everything right in that situation is much more difficult than in a classroom. and when you make mistakes it usually means someone goes home horizonally. so call us uneducated. i am proud to have provided you the freedom to think that way.

Good points.

For me, I had no rich folks or anything like that, so I put myself through a 2 yr local college stint via student loans. But while there, I volunteered everywhere I could to work in the comp lab, data entry, anything to get me work exposure. I also signed up for co-op opportunities with local businesses, and when the time for graduation came near, I made sure I was available to be interviewed by those businesses.

I landed an entry-level comp operator job doing report printing & data entry, but hey I had a foot in. From there it was using my job to pay to advance my degree, along with some minor certs.

Hey, I just finished my 4 year degree in tech mgmt at age 38, after already having moved up quite a bit in rank to sr level tech person at my job, and have absolutely no current certs. I got where I'm at today with drive and a 2 yr programming degree from a local college, not too darned bad! ;-)

It IS drive, PLUS education, PLUS real world experience even if it seems minor, and what you DO with opportunities that come your way. Am I as high as I want to go? No, but I'm a good ways from the basement and see opportunities ahead of me yet. I have left money as a prime motivator behind, which is a good thing if you really want to be happy. (Of course you gotta get your salary to where you can say that first!)

Good luck to you!

Deb

with your capabilities at such a young age, you would be better to focuse your energy on software development. Goto university and do comp sci/comp engineering, have some fun and then you'll be well set. IT support/admin is interesting but you'll likely find more potential in development

I guess I didn't come off as clearly as I had meant to. I was trying to wrap up for the day. I didn't mean you couldn't get anything out of the military beyond the dedication thing. I meant that that part is more of a guarantee. The rest of what you get from the military is objective based on the person. If you have the aptitude to advance further and focus your skills, then the military will help guide that. They will educate you where they deem it is worthy to do so. I think that's great. You can get a great deal of experience and education from the military, but what I meant was that there is no guarantee. If you're a rock, you're not going to be placed in the nuclear propulsion division. With all types of people entering the military, there is little guarantee that the person applying for my job can actually do it simply based on a military background. I don't care for the fact that you speak down to me as if I don't know what the military does for me and my freedom. I did not make a blanket statement regarding an uneducated military, I merely said your enlistment does not mean you can think. I don't want to bash the military, I didn't mean for it to sound that way.

The reason I commented was that your message seemed to say that a college degree wasn't worth the time and money it took to obtain. You called a degree an $80,000 slip of paper. I'd argue that, as would many of my colleagues. Look over what you said about it: Memorizing text, re-wording quotes, same education with certs and real world experience (I guess I forgot about the bubble I lived in, no real life happened there when I was pulling a baby from an overturned vehicle in -10 degrees). I think my reading comprehension is fine. Putting a disclaimer at the end doesn't mean your message wasn't loud and clear. I think you have some misconceptions about attending a school of higher education (btw, college is referred to as higher ed, my reasoning for using the words "educated community", again, no offense intended, it's a common term). $20,000 a year is quite a bit higher than I used during my college years. It wasn't quite 10 years ago that I started, without parental aid of any sort, so costs don't necessarily fully reflect today's economy. Then you have to consider that you'd have the other expenses regardless of your attending school or not. You'd have rent, food, car, gas, insurance, clothing and others just the same. Most students will get a part time job during the school year to pad expenses and work full time in the summer to get a little extra cash. There are also various financial aid options available to help out.

If you think a college education can't give you critical thinking or deductive reasoning, then you're being very short sighted. I was merely trying to point out that an education is very valuable. You're right, there are many paths. You directly belittled an education, I defended it. Sorry if I sounded as if I did not value the military or the experience it can give. I didn't mean for it to sound that way. I realize what a person can accomplish through the military. I have family in the military. However, speaking of freedom this and freedom that doesn't make you a valuable candidate on my team. Anyone can say that. If the military gave you the experience I'm looking for or your experience shows you can do the job, then you become more interesting to me. Just having enlisted at some point doesn't mean you can do the job. That's not a knock at the military, just reality.

Malcom,

Congratulations on knowing what you want to do. When I was in HS, I had only vague ideas, and those were changed in University. Here are my thoughts on your situation:

1. Start on post-secondary education. Is it absolutely necessary? Probably not in many cases. Can it help? You bet.

2. Look for opportunities for practical experience. Volunteer at non-profits doing tech work. Try to contract out for tech work. Take part-time jobs.

3. Diversify: don't limit your IT scope. You've already dabbled in several areas. Keep being a generalist at this point, but get as deep as you can. Document it all both by function and by job role. I am a ten year technical support veteran, and putting that on a resume doesn't carry as much weight as citing by the various functions of my career over the last decade.

4. Build a portfolio. If you've done anything you can take away as a sample (website, program code, etc.) to show a prospective employer what you've done, and can do, you may have a leg up on others who can only talk about accomplishements.

5. Network, network, network. Get to know people in many areas of the IT field. Find what you can do to help them out. Don't go up "Hi, I'm Malcolm, can you help me land a job?" Get to know them, what they do. See if you can learn from them, if there are things you can help them with. DO NOT hit them up for a job. Do things that will keep you in thier minds. If opportunities they think you might be interested in or a fit for, they will let you know about them. If you find out about a job, and they can give advice or a reference, then that's fine. Whatever you do, keep in touch with them after you get your job. Build that network like crazy, you'll never know when you'll need it. I landed my current job (with a former employer) because my manager knew I was out of work and they had an opening she thought I might be interested in.

The more you can do to show you're able, qualified and committed, the better off you are. Research every company you approach. Know what they do, who's who, have some good, intelligent questions for the interviewers, and be able to sell yourself.

2 Years ago I was in HS, managing the school network (then novell/win95 mostly) of about 80 computers. Basically, what I did was see the careers advisor. She was useless... but while in with her, I saw an ad on her wall for a CCNA course, and told her I wanted in.

I got into the course, passed with no trouble, and that is the sum total of my certifications (I also have the HSC - equiv to the US HS Diploma?)

I finished school 6 months ago, and got straight into a job with a small onsite repair firm. Its certainly not where I want to be, but the pay is decent, its great experience, and the work is actually enjoyable.

From here, mcse seems to be the way to go, then I shall be looking to join a larger firm where my networking skills can be put to use.

The CCNA is absolutely worthwhile. It gives the fundamentals of how a network and the internet work, understanding of all the factors effecting network performance, how to deal with problems when they arrise etc... Anyway my point is its useful as more than just a certification to get you the job, you do actually learn from it, and what you learn can be put to use in many circumstances.

Alex Chard

Sorry but I think your opinion is wrong.

I am a CCNA and trust me, as a MCP in five disciplines the exam I passed is nothing like the "point-and-shoot" approach of Microsoft. If you don't kow the subject, you will not pass!

On the positive side, I have found that the in depth knowledge afforded by my CCNA has made me a better MCP. The one thing Microsoft did wrong was to remove TCP/IP and Networking Essentials from the list of exam objectives.

My personal advice would be to obtain an MCSE and at least the CCNA but CCNP would be better. After all, isn't integration the name of the game today?

I spent 6 months looking for a job through the job-centre and got no response to any adverts I responded to! And then I simply sent letters to companies and department heads and bosses and what would you know? Now I am the IT System Manager heading up a group of 7 diverse companies and directing their IT towards the groups business objectives!!

And I accomplished all of this by following the advice of a collegue that offered me the advice you have just given!

Thank the good Lord for intelligent advice!!!