Any of you guys have tech-related jobs? What do you do? How did you get there?

Any of you guys have tech-related jobs? What do you do? How did you get there?

>inb4 everyone here is an underaged dilettante.

yeah i gotta tech job.... in youre mom LOL

>What do you do?
"Big Data"
>How did you get there
Went to business school, became a programmer because talent, side projects and interest since 7 years old.

I work the drive thru at McDonald's

kill yourself

im 15 i cant get a job yet :/

Jesus Christ. This board is cancer. Please mercy kill it, Hiroshima.

i've worked in several fields of tech

i learned to program in my teens because i was obsessed with chat and wanted to be hackerman
first job out of high school was in layer 1 installation, back breaking shit
my stepdad was an architect so i learned CAD and read some books and took over his residential Electrical Engineering (residential doesnt require a license in CA)

Eventually took the IT Manager job at the print shop we always used because I wanted to go further into tech. Learned on-the-job, got my A+ and Network+ as part of the requirements for me taking the position.

Left to work at an ISP in Seattle as a NOC engineer. Was also responsible for our hosting environment. Worked in the Columbia Tower, single-handedly pulled off one of the longest vertical cable runs in the world to upgrade the infrastructure serving the 300+ corporations (including Amazon) that relied on us for connectivity.

Went contract, worked for IBM, Apple, Vanity Fair and others on infrastructure development projects.

Went to work for Isilon, a storage company eventually absorbed by EMC. Spent hours on the phone with teams of lawyers listening to my every word while I put out fires for companies like Pixar.

Mental breakdown.

Alcoholism.

Now I fix grandpas Dell for $15/hr and spend my evenings drinking as much cheap beer as I can to escape my crap life until I have to wake up at 7am to relive it all.

I'm a DevOps Engineer. I work a lot with build pipelines and configuration management tooling - mostly Chef. I got there by learning a shit ton of stuff outside of the classroom, and moving up to a better job when I outgrew the one I was in.

>im 15
Enjoy your three year ban.

>MacBook air
>Beard
>Cheap earphones
>This is a heading (level 1)
>This is a heading (level 2)
>This is a heading (level 3)
Imagine paying someone to do this.

I work as a level 2 helpdesk monkey/junior systems administrator. I purposely take the hard tickets for myself and leave the normal stuff for my colleagues.

I spend most of the day doing minor work in AD, creating new accounts, correcting old ones, amending security permissions. Because our documentation is so bad I will often be digging through old GPOs too. For one client over the past few days I had to calculate the BTU of their current rack so they could source an appropriate replacement aircon unit, I now have to investigate why the environmental sensors failed to alert us when the AC failed.

We had a meeting last week where we all pitched some ideas on how to reduce our footprint in light of a more targetted series of cryptolocker attacks

Also some work cleaning up disaster recovery led by senior techs to rebuild some exchange servers after the catastrophic failure of an old RAID5 system in a bandy dell server we inherited.

I got into this by working for a few years in other lower tier IT support roles, it all started after I "graduated" from a community college with an associates degree in computer science, I learned to program in Java mainly but went to work immediately after in my dads call centre. Got into a really minor IT support role there, then emigrated and worked tier 1 helpdesk, emigrated again and now I'm on this tier 2 support.

Currently studying for my MCSA in server 2016, want to also get a linux cert in the next few months

I am currently studying for the A+ exam, while taking courses at community college for IT + computer science.

Actually looking around for a beginner IT job, but it is hard since I have no professional experience. Only my experience breaking my own cumpter and fixing it a hundred times.

If you want to get a start in regular support then you'll need to slog it through a year or so of tier 1 helpdesk support. That's talking to people on the phone and doing password resets, helping them clear printer jams and very very occasionally doing something interesting for 20 minutes before you have to escalate the issue to tier 2

From 1996 to 2009 I worked as a Unix systems administrator.

Not having a BSCS had been holding me back, so in 2006 I went back to school at night to get a degree. From 2009 until now I had more time for class, and I also consulted part-time, and also did my own projects.

My advice:

Today, look to see what the local tech jobs are. Particularly desktop etc./ support or junior Javascript (framework) programmer.

Also see what is available for remote for Javascript (framework) programmers, particularly in San Francisco. They are hiring like fucking crazy, so if you can't find ten remote Javascript positions, you're not working hard enough.

I'd suggest these jobs. There are also jobs like network admin and such, you can look into those if you want.

I don't know what a desktop admin needs nowadays - A+/MCSE? Don't spend the money necessarily but definitely read the prep books if you want to do this. They might want you to admin Macs and Android/iPads also.

Or do Javascript programming work.

For Javascript, create websites on your computer. Look at free AWS tier, or paying a little. For $60 a year you can get a low-end Linode VPS. Learning to set up Centos on a VPS will be helpful to you. Or do all the Javascript web site framework stuff on your PC.

And look to get paid. If you live in Bumfuck, USA, you might have to move. Maybe to a local bigger city. If a big move, San Francisco would be the place, but it's expensive.

Things are so much easier now then they used to be. But you really have to learn the shit.

You also have to be clever about time spent. The mathematical foundations of computer programs stay around for decades (and probably centuries). Javascript will probably be around in 30 years in some form. Javascript frameworks come and go, and change as well. So know React 15.6.1 really well will only be useful so long. You want to be filling in at all levels.

>So know React 15.6.1 really well will only be useful so long. You want to be filling in at all levels.

95% of what you learn about React 15.6.1 will be useless in 10 years. Maybe even in 5 years. Learning about React's Model-View-Controller architecture will not be useless in 10 years. So you want to spread around your knowledge - if you spend one third your time learning about how tree data structures work, and one third your time learning how model-view-controller architecture works, and one third your time learning how React 15.6.1 works, then in 15 years your tree knowledge will still be 100% useful, your model-view-controller knowledge will be 50% useful (maybe you will be on model-view-viewmodel or model-view-presenter then, or maybe something even newer), and 5% of your React 15.6.1 knowledge will be useful.

Also - React 15.6.1 will be mostly useless in 15 years, but Javascript knowledge will not be. Although it's very possible Javascript will be old hat then, because everyone is writing in Kotlin, or C#, or Swift, or god knows what.

Although understanding objects, recursion, variables, functions etc. will be useful for a long time.

Programmer. Program programs. Got here by learning programming, and applying to programming jobs.

It didn't start out that way.
>Degree in journalism
>Spend a lot of time outside of class studying other stuff that I'm interested in
>Get certs in a lot of stuff like Google Analytics and Inbound Marketing
>Get employed by my University's marketing department as a researcher
>Learn webdev on the side
>Now am part of web support

It's breddy guud for not having graduated yet. My BA is still going to be in journalism, but I like marketing and webdev much more

Work in QA, I do e2e testing and scripts. Got it by knowing someone and passing interview. I've tried being a dev/programmer but it's not for me, can't stand working at the computer for more than 4 hours, my eyes hurt and my health went down the drain. Now thinking about other healthier career/job choices.

Work@Apple

Yes. Data Engineer, my focus is Elasticsearch, I do stuff involving:

- tooling; writing tools for us to use, monitoring stuff for our stack, libraries to improve reuse of code
- work with ELK stack, graphite, grafana, MySQL (though I'm very green operationally with MySQL), Kafka, Docker/Kubernetes, puppet, etc
- Work on data pipeline for internal use, e.g. my job is to help get data from the physical servers in our DCs or from the application into the stack so people can search and aggregate over it
- setup and improve our elasticsearch clusters, we're in final stages of deprecating our massive 50+ node legacy 2.x cluster with a shit ton of data, we've been indexing the same data to the newer clusters and my god, it's fantastic. The newer ones are a fraction of the size but so much easier to work with since they don't break and they have the allocation explanation API, rollover API, and task cancellation API, not to mention we're keeping them much more manageable, soon we won't even have to manage any of the rollover/index junk, the tool I wrote automates a bunch of stuff and replaces curator for rollover

I got my job by starting as an intern. The internship was basically a probationary period for a full time position. I did great, had an immediate impact, and set the golden standard for interns (verbatim from my manager on my review). Work is pretty chill, pay is good and everyone is nice.

Ask whatever, I'll be up for a little bit I spose.

Im 23
2nd year in computing BSc
Never done any internships or jobs
My CV is empty
There's no future for me

Taco bell and college. I love tech but I'm going into biochem, possibly biomedical engineering as a masters. Considering getting some certs and maybe working at the local isp so I can get out of the fucking service industry before my degree is done.

jesus fucking christ dude kys already

>jobs
Jobs are for idiots.

I don't have a degree but I put so many hours into teaching myself to get a "good but shit for what I had to put through myself" job. I really should have became a plumber like my dad told me to.

What job do you have?

full stack enterprise java developer.

Javafx and spring. Working on ERP/CRM apps.

Then why do journalism?

I'm a Software Engineer at a tech unicorn.
I went to college and got degrees in Computer Science and Computer Engineering.
I work on several micro services, one in Python/Tornado, one using Node, and one in Go. It's pretty cool/easy and it pays a lot. Plus free breakfast lunch and dinner and all the "healthy" snacks I can eat.

Full stack PHP dev.

Picked webdev up in my spare time while at secondary school, only went to college, no university degree.

i'm a "software engineer" at IBM

i write code

got a comp sci degree, did tech support for three years, then finally got a programming job

you've still got 2 years to do something worth putting on your resume

if you can't get an internship, work on open source or come up with your own project

if you don't have something outside coursework on your resume you're fucked

Lol fag where do you work

I meandered my way to were I am.

Went to school for CS dropped after year due to family issues. Went to work as a mechanic for 8 years, was one of the best diagnostics in my area. Eventually I started having breathing and skin issues from chemicals in the shop. Tested with the local Railroad to join as an Signals Engineer Apprentice, politicking in the Union meant I got fucked out of the job two days before start for what amounted to a diversity hire who died on the job a year later.

While I was waiting for the ER job to start a friend of the family had me working per diem as handyman for the Property Management company she worked for. When they found out I lost the RR job they offered for me to stay.

Spent the first year working the phones as acting as in office Level 1 tech support. Buddied up to one of the mid-ranks and started shadowing him on the accounting side. Then since my office is the she-woman man haters club, they hired someone else's niece to take the job I was carving out.

Back to the salt mines for me, until a year later when she took her training and jumped ship to another company. Jumped right back in and was able to offload a lot.

Eventually I started writing scripts in Ruby and spooled up a Rails app for coordinating our field staff. Once I pulled that off, I now mostly develop and maintain scripts that poll data from the various software packages we use and check for errors.

Looking now to make the jump to a full time development position now that I have a portfolio of successful projects.

pahjeet please

Would you rather I use NodeJS?

currently an intern at microsoft

shit's chill

On my last year of college, but I have a full time job lined up, at a small (12 person) company. Interned last summer and they liked me.

Thanks to people like you posting depressing shit I am trying to take a different approach at life
Studying automation in uni while working as a technik in the same uni part time

Going to community college next semester to finish out an Associates degree but I want to choose a tech related degree. Currently stuck between programming(Java since that seems to be the only thing they teach) or web development and possibly design. I like to fart around GIMP in my free time but it's mostly when posting pics here on Sup Forums.

Is it easier to build a portfolio for web design vs programming? Also do employers look to that or do they test you in the interview and decide then? I'm 25 now so I'm not some hot-shot young prodigy.

23. Worked in IT since 16 (lol high school student managing at 240 computers part time).

Got into a IT support company right after high school. After two years, realized boss was not going to pay me more, left to work for a software company. Was fun but no direction after 6 months.

Begged IT support boss to come back, they matched my software company salary and got me off help desk duty. Working in infrastructure now. Managing, automating, etc.

Starting school soon, want to get comp sci degree as a back up since I'm realizing I already hit the ceiling as being sysadmin and only way to grow is to switch jobs. Not interested in being sysadmin, want to get into DevOps, then pursue management (C-level positions).

>midlife crisis at 23, wtf life

How much time did you spend learning all that?

Network engineer. Doing designs in Tier-1 provider. Started as NOC while I was at university and from there job-hopping every two years or so. Not a bad job, pays good but being 10 years in the field makes me tired of it. Looking to switch into OpenStack or penetesting position soon. The trick is to do so without pay drop

i work in a network operations center for an ISP
monitor all routers, switches, optical, etc for the network
worked my way up within company from tech support

>What do you do?
Contractor doing glorified IT support.
>How did you get there?
Knew people. Got an interview, got in.

Finishing PhD in ECE

Then I will work in a DOD lab as a researcher related to aerospace systems

Linux/Unix/VMWare/Openshift Architect. Typically it's RHEL/CentOS but periodically I get Solaris or AIX gigs, on rare occasions HP/UX. Had an IRIX gig some years ago, that was fuckin sweet. VMWare shit all the time and more recently it's been Openshift/Kubernetes/Docker stuff.


I do handle Windows shit too but I'm not too proud of it.

was a data engineer, cleaned shitty data, lots of python work, some web api stuff.

went to school for stem, learned programming in high school on my own

my path to success

>high school visual basic class
>start computer science degree
>learn to make apps
>learn data structures and operating systems
>use app experience to get internship
>use internship skills to do a senior project
>finish computer science degree
>fail a fuck ton of interviews
>get jr engineer job

>tfw too late to switch out of Chemical Engineering
>hate it
i can't even apply for tech jobs

Thanks for the advice m8
Ill do my best

>security and privacy researcher.
> self taught

How is it i dont really like apple or know much about them but just got a thing through uni for applecare at home support 20 hours a week 40k/year have to do like an extra 7 week course tho

lots of CS majors waiting tables.

I'm a drop out, currently the "thought leader" for Amazon's container API ( formerly RackSpace Sr. Architect ) and I'm only 27

It's not that hard.

I work as a NOC Engineer supporting 3k remote servers and their associated hardware. The environment is all linux, but our contract is very complex/we don't own any of the equipment so I rarely use CLI. I'm getting rusty because of this but the pay is too good, and it's a great place to just chill and spend 10+ years (everyone on the team has been with the company for over 5 except me).

I fucked around a lot until about 23. I then went back to school and worked at Target for 2 years. I landed a Help Desk job at a small company doing internal/external client support. They only hired me because they liked me....my boss at the time didn't even look at my resume (which was shit). I learned a fuckton at this job because my boss was a bro and taught me a lot about linux. That job prepared me for the NOC Engineer position.

Game developer + part time full stack web developer
Ez life

>bored of NEET life
>learn javascript
>now I am code monkey
It's not rocket science Sup Forums

Everyone here is an underaged dilettante.

I got a CS degree and got hired at IBM for my first job 10 years ago. It was a different time. I didn't have to white board or memorize algorithm brain teasers, they just wanted you to have good grades and internship experience.

The past few years I've been doing "QA" which for me just means setting up CI pipelines and automation that the developers can't figure out how to do themselves. I work in an unglamorous but profitable niche of companies that still haven't figured out what DevOps is. I'm not at IBM anymore.

Linux sysadmin.

Started with tech support, basically self taught.