computer careers

Chameleon

I made another thread like this, but it was specific to one career.

Personal experience; main point of thread in the last paragraph.

I'm 21, attending a community college for a networking degree. Subnet masking gave me some trouble, but other than that, I understand most of what I'm learning. I wanted to transfer to a university, but that would mean more years of pretending that I'm fine with being a dub, and I owe 30K to a tech school that didn't help me in any way, so I don't think I would be able to afford it.

If you're a network admin, or you deal with LANs from time to time, how did you get your first job dealing with networks? Internship? Moving up the corporate ladder? How much did you know about networking?

I wonder how I will get a job in this field if my only "tech" job experience has been as a computer lab assistant, which was just tech support for students?

If you work with computers, what are you, and did you go to school for it? Programmer? Network Administrator? Database Administrator? Web Developer? (Other)?

exwitless

Little Drummer Boy just completed his degree in this type of field, and is currently working on getting his CISCO certifications. I'll see if I can stir him up here to help you.

PaulJ

I work in IT, but more on the sales/marketing side. I think the best way to move forward career wise with it is to get a job that lets you do as much as possible, different areas of it. Simply get as much practical experience as possible and work hard at at, Obviously keeping up to date with things as they change.

Good luck!

Dune

Your current job will help.
I'm a student too and i work part time as a developer.
By the time i graduate i'll be able to say i have so many years of experience.(Even though i barely work 20 hours a week).
Its more about how you sell yourself. Once you get to a university, try to get an on-campus job in a related field or even an internship.

roflcopter

I have been a network engineer for 8 years. I remember my first job well, it was for a small company that didn't have a huge budget for IT. They tend to overlook lack of experience in the field for someone that is able to learn quickly. I'm not saying don't submit your resume to the big companies, but your best bet with the way the IT job market is right now is to find a small company that is hiring. You can do a couple things.... look in the newspapers like I did or monster.com.

The other great route would be to find an IT staffing agency in your area and meet with them. They can be a great help to someone looking to start a new career.

But in all honesty... the real money in this industry is owning your own consulting firm. I started that in 2002 and have never regretted it.

Also too, having a degree is great and all, but it is really worthless compared to hands on experience. I have no college degree and only 1 active certification and it has never been a problem.

Abandoned

If you're a network admin, or you deal with LANs from time to time, how did you get your first job dealing with networks? Internship? Moving up the corporate ladder? How much did you know about networking?

I was a network admin for ten years. I heard of the job from my landlady who was friends with the owner of a small training company in southern california. I started out as data entry and took over the computers when the old computer guy couldn't figure out how to move the company's database to a relational model. I'd never done it before, but I knew how to do it in theory. I designed and built their entire system.

I got burned out on computer work though.

SacrificialLoon

I started out on the bottom rung as a tape ape. The Mainframe would call for a tape to be mounted into a drive and I'd go to the library to fetch it. I worked my way up from there. My current title is Network Engineer, although I'm more of a technician than an engineer. I deal mostly with WAN technologies like IDNX, and ATM, also Cisco routers. I also do circuit testing, T-1s(E-1s) and the like. Most of my training has been on the job training. I really should be studying for my CCNA, but I'm a big procrastinator.

DanTheMan

I started out in customer service at my current employer, and I gained a reputation for being a fairly business intelligent and computer savvy guy even though I didn't have a whole lot of formal training. Along the way our company decided to go with an ERP system, and I got involved in some testing of the new software. That led to my current position as a "Data Quality Analyst" and in this position I've managed to develop a pretty decent ability to write SQL queries, I think I've done some that would challenge a lot of DBA's even. Not sure where to go to next, hopefully move up in the company but so much has been outsourced.

done4good

I'm not entirely sure where you are, but the IT industry in the US is still basically strong, despite resourcing and offshoring trends over the last few years. It is more like where it was in 1994, (when I started), as opposed to 1998, but still not bad, by any means. Networking still offers some very good jobs, but CONVERGENGE is very imporatnt these days. You know, the voice and video stuff. Many "data only" guys either don't care about this or just refuse to care, so if you spend your time learning these things, you will do well, in all likelihood. Knowing VoIP technolgies and related stuff really matters for most "cool" jobs.

my $.02

Jason V. (never been without a good job in IT yet).

Chameleon

thanks, everyone. my plan is to find an "ok" job so that i can move out, and then see if I can continue studying to transfer to a university. done4good: thanks for the advice. I'll probably look into that in my spare time. what about wireless?

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