Freshman IT major here, is an IT degree really necessary or should I just go the certs route? I already have a few years of work experience and an A+ cert. Thinking of just dropping and cutting my losses so far. Then I'd go the cert/job route right away. I've read that IT degrees are only really important for becoming a manager down the line, and job postings seem to allow a few years of experience as substitution for a degree.
Any advice appreciated Sup Forums
Get fake certs. Not as common as fake degrees so they'll go overlooked and you can start working asap.
If you want a job at a Fortune 500 company or anything Enterprise type work be smart and get atleast your bachelors. Then stack them certs. MCSE, VMWare, Citrix, CCNA. Also some cloud based cert from MS or Amazon
Degree is extremely useful, because if you don't know anybody then you have to apply with 1500 other people to a single job and they immediately filter out whoever doesn't have a degree, which leaves like 800 candidates.
Right now, you think it's not needed because you don't consider the future. When these jobs begin to be automated away, or the economy crashes then you won't be able to get any job in "IT" without a degree as that will become the new benchmark.
Even if you have 12yrs exp writing kernel mods and apply to a job, there will be a dozen other guys applying to the same job but they'll filter the one's who have credentials first. news.ycombinator.com
Unless of course you know people, then it doesn't matter
I'm a bit of a brainlet when it comes to anything outside of IT. General ED classes are fucking me in the ass. Is there any hope for a decent job? Becoming a sysadmin at a high school even would be fine with me in the future. I don't really need a Fortune 500 job really.
>really,really
Sorry, it's been a rough day anons
There's almost no sysadmin jobs around anymore, everybody is now a 'Site Reliability Engineer' or "Cloud Architect" and they're spinning up apps on Azure, AWS, ect.
Get a sysadmin job now but don't stand around waiting to get replaced by automation, learn the fuck out of Azure if you're a microserf guy and get that certification/learn to code.
I've been looking at jobs in my area and sysadmin jobs are still around. I guess they could be replaced but I don't think that would happen too soon.
If you mean "too soon" as in within the next 2 years then you guessed right. See news.ycombinator.com
>IT degree
whut
Yeah, they exist but they're just a piece of paper/ resume check. That's why I'm looking to just go the cert route.
Well that is a little anecdotal don't you think? Automation is a little overhyped
what's your plan if it takes as much as 5 years? you're starting a career user
it's not automation it's a shift in how IT is being done. no more babysitting machines and networks.
the cloud is extremely expensive if you look at just compute but businesses are looking at the savings they make by slashing their IT department down to 5 people who write YAML and some services to bind auth/gateways to on prem-services.
learn how to be a "sysadmin of the cloud" if you're fixated on the term. learning how to install windows updates and run apt-get upgrade isn't a long term career.
source: am working on the cloud to get rid of these type of jobs
>Is an IT degree necessary?
no
>automation
I run a fleet of servers that doesn't require anybody to monitor, it's 100% self running using GuixSD and packages/startup scripts I wrote for it.
I have scripts that react when a node goes down, automatically looks for updates and applies them, and they run probability of what jobs are needed and rent their own Azure time. It's literally a turnkey server system and if the place I work for ever discovers it's completely automated they'll just fire me in a moments notice.
I learned from this book cs.cmu.edu
I replicate images using a text file, which is a data dependency graph containing no state. This is what you will need to compete with if you're going to be a sysadmin.
Azure isn't permanent replacement for an actual DC, or anything pertaining to servers. Sys admin positions will still be around. Also, most businesses will still have on site servers to handle important shit.
Wow great source dude! xD
The cloud is just a fancy word for off-site systems and applications hosting. Anything mission critical is still going to be hosted locally, especially if its commercially sensitive.
>I'm working on the cloud
Wow, so eloquently put
He's too retarded to understand. Probably a street shitter.
thank you i am computer not english
that is not what I am seeing in the businesses I work with who are moving business critical pieces like in store payment processing to the cloud. you have a better chance of a cloud provider staying up then the cleaning lady not tripping over the power to your vsphere cluster.
Not when lattice crypto is mainstream, which DJ Bernstein and Tanja have been working on for 6yrs now with a research grant and are almost finished. It's literally the reason why most data aren't completely off site
Not to mention cost certainty. These corporations like to project budgets for X many years, having a bunch of unruly hardware blow up and cost $50k+ to fix makes that budgeting impossible whereas paying Microsoft $5k/month to run your entire intranet on their cloud is something you can predict.
good point, but make sure those few IT people left remember to set the quotas on your code monkeys.
Do data centers run on magic? You act like there aren't a cluster of servers that are still prone to these hardware failures. The Azure solution isn't fully developed yet and it still cannot compete with an actual server on site for a company. Also, most company unless they are fortune 500 will not be able to afford all this advanced technology that no one is using. JP Morgan is still using fucking mainframes on premises
You also literally sound like a 3rd year CS Major who is just spewing shit he heard from bullshit sources or from his uni professor
You also forget how much money MS is racking up with there Server 2012 R2/2016 licenses and they will not make Azure perfect and will be gimped. You don't seem to understand how money works pal
> 1 core running windows: $0.005/hour
> 1 core running linux: $0.003/hour
This, I think I can have some job security for a while at least.
>I make up numbers: the post
JP Morgan runs their own PaaS and has so since 2013, no 'mainframes' on premises, they have a datacenter like AWS/Google/Azure does and their banks all remotely connect to it. There still does exist some servers for certain things, like ancient SWIFT. In a few years they'll all be gone.
Let's see the Linux one.
Not all business have the funds for that. You think most of the businesses in America are Enterprise class? It's build on medium to large businesses that will not afford the shit you speak of. So no idea why you are still going on about it when OP clearly isn't motivated enough to do all the shit you speak of.
so hard to imagine how dev ops could automate your job when you can't find the drop down at the top of the page
IT is so shit, you're just playing virtual nanny to programming, when the software goes down and the company that makes it doesn't give a shit, your client is just going to freak out and go full luddite and go back to paper. in 10 years IT is literally going to be gone because everything is web based now.
>degrees
>experience
>certification
It doesn't matter if you have 500 years worth of time put into all three because the client is just going to flip shit when their shitty proprietary software stops working. No amount of those 3 things are going to help because you're an entire level down. You're just going to end up being the guy who has to make the phone call to the programming company and they won't talk to you either and then you'll get blamed. IT is literally shit because of this.
Sounds like you need better clients
This guy gets it
They are still around asshole. IT isn't dead yet
In India maybe, for $3/hr.
>Tfw missed out on the 90s and early 2000s IT boom where you could sit in a room playing video games until someone needed to update flash or Adobe
Born too fucking late :( according to an older former IT guy he made 60k a year during this time. Just hanging out in the server room
If you have the means to get a 4 year degree right now, you should do it. It's a job seeker's market right now but more and more people behind you are going to go into this field and you'll be happy you have a degree in the future when things turn around.
If you want a secure non-developer job, become a consultant.
You'll need to be way more skilled and knowledgeable about every system in use, but it will pay off both in job security and in your pay check.
What is a versatile language to learn, mostly centered around analytical work? Like teradata, sql?
Yep sure missed out, best part about IT was attempting to help clueless shits over the phone and every 3 seconds hearing "I don't see that button".
>according to a guy
who lied about the money he was making because he knew he was too much of a failure to be a programmer
Late 90's, Silicon Valley companies were regularly paying Solaris and Cisco admins six figures up to about $200K plus pre-IPO shares. Couple of friends of mine left town and bounced from start up to start up between '96 and 2000 and came home with enough money to buy a house with cash and several nice cars to go in the garage.
No
Following off of this, the degree gives you four years to suck as much dick as possible.
Snagging an internship or part time job is easy when you tell people that you're actively pursing a degree while stacking certs.
t. MIS major who's interviewing at the botnet now
An IT degree is a meme.
You should get the certs instead.