/itcg/ - IT Career General

#2: Humble Beginnings Edition

Previous thread: At any given time there are usually 3+ threads on Sup Forums about IT careers, steady jobs and freelancer work. They are usually varied and encompass many aspects such as ranting, dickwaving, crying about shit bosses/employees, career advice, "the chinks took our jobs!" and other work-related shitposting.

This is my attempt to unify those threads by making a general where we aim to talk about our previous, current, or soon-to-be IT careers. Anyone who has, is, or will be working in technology is welcome to share experiences, give/ask for advice or take a load off ITT.

If this works out, I'm hoping we'll find something more interesting than this to put in the first post, but as of right now all I can think to put here is an invitation to discuss you're career and get some feedback/advise if you want it.

>why not make this thread on /adv/?
Have you met those people? There's not one poster above 100 IQ there.

>how do you define "IT career"?
Any career where technology is at the core.

>so monkeys only then?
Nope, administrators, coordinators, project leaders, techies and anyone else that considers their main field technology are welcome here.

>what if I'm in college?
If you want to have a career in IT, this is the place to ask your questions.

If you want some nice meaty answers, or really good advice, include as many of the following answers in your post as possible:
>what sector do you currently work in and at what level?
>how long and what experience do you have in IT?
>what education do you have if any, and at what level?
>do you have any certification?
>where do you want to be in 10 years?
>what motivates you, or what do you want out of a potential workplace?

If you want to contribute, or you got a good answer and you know your way around photoshop, we'd love to have you shop the general logo onto some cute office-employed anime sluts like pic related for our first-posts.

Other urls found in this thread:

mapt.io
twitter.com/SFWRedditVideos

I manage to point to the wrong previous first chance. Amazing, clearly I know what I'm doing.

Real last thread here:

Cute slut OP. I'll be happy to help advice if anyone has questions.

Reposting this for posterity:
Look into discrete math and computational theory, since those are usually much more relevant.
For the record, there are plenty of people who are terrible at "math" (AKA school up to standard calculus) because it's a bastardization of math that only teaches you how to crunch numbers. Of course, you're making the computer do that for you, so who cares? What's more important is that you can connect concepts together through predefined and agreed-upon rules, which is fundamentally what both math and computer science is.

So much this. I always recommend college students take formal logic courses over direct math as that tends to be a lot closer to what you will actually be doing as a dev.

It focuses on making abstract systems do what you want in a logical rule-based way and that's far more important than some algebraic concept.

Posting that other nice image we go in case OP wants to spice things up next thread.

Is college really necessary? Or is it just a box to tick when employers look at your resume?

...

Good thread OP. Here's another boat in a suit to use if you do it again.

Here's a design, now with more computers

Not too good though

Box to tick

You don't learn anything that you can't find online for free

A lot of employers (especially big ones like banks or IBM) will auto filter you out for lacking university

cryptoposting/shilling has completely ruined /biz/

Can I make up for it with experience and certs?

Though honestly I don't want to work with big employers. I don't feel like that kind of environment is for me anyway.

Oh that's hot! Saved!

I really like these. Thanks for taking the time!

Experience is more valuable long-term and certs might help you get an entry level job - I have no clue about that though.

I know that the A+ certification makes you over-qualified for a lot of the very bottom of the barrel IT jobs (Geek squad, help desk, etc.) and could help you get an office support role (helping boomers with Excel or something)

Guys how do I explain 3 neet-years in an interview? I got a sitdown next week and I have no idea what to tell them if they ask about this gap.

Well I already have an A+ and have my foot in the door for two years. I'm just trying to figure out what my next move should be. I'm kinda interested in cyber security but there are so many job titles and roles.

Tell them you had a job but didn't include it on your resume because you thought it wasn't relevant

You can literally just lie. Especially if you're in a city. If they ask just tell them that you worked in retail/at a gym/grocery store whatever but that you left if off because you didn't think it was relevant. You're supposed to leave irrelevant experience off anyways and 90 percent of the time they don't even check

You can get into web dev without even having certs. You just need to have a portfolio and a sound grasp of data structures and algorithms for interviews. If you want to go the systems route you should look into the CCNA as it's pretty much the standard. Also RHSA is a good one I hear. You will be expected to pursue and obtain a degree in _something_ however before you can move into a senior position.

weebs

anime website

Thanks guys. Lies it is!

It depends on the country.
I assume US/Canada so no, not really.
It is a HR filter - however, depending on what area you go into, HR will ask for idiotic requirements. Computer science for a network engineer, for example, is literally fucking retarded.
Just find the career path you'd like to go with and get some certs and set up a homelab.

What area in cyber security? Reverse-egnineering malware? Network security? Pen testing? Consulting? You need to narrow it down.

Do not lie saying you had a job. It will come back to bite you. The goto thing is "I was taking are of a family member who was in need of daily care for the past X years". And just give some generic "they were old/disabled/etc" story.

How do I get an entry level IT job?
>no experience
>no certs
>getting an associates soon

Wot do

Why do the general logos look like my JAV dvds?

>Do not lie saying you had a job.
So much this, lying on a resume or during the interview is grounds for firing at a lot of places.

I'm about to "graduate" (are 2 year non-Arts degrees worth the word graduate?) with a AAS in cybersecurity from a community college. The degree has a transfer path to a state university but I won't be transferring right away.
I live in a small town and there aren't many options for tech-related jobs: if a business has an "IT" position its a single person doing essentially everything that relates to a piece of technology from the workstations to the copy machine.
I have two questions: what sort of certs should I pursue (besides A+,Network+,Security+ obviously). I also really enjoy my studies in information security, I don't find myself to be much of a software developer at least not yet. A security analyst or consultant seems like a really great and interesting career path. What would be a good entry level position that would parlay into one of those careers?

Associates in what, user?
Also get certs, what are you interested in with IT since certs depend on the area you like.

You'll also do volunteer work. If you do have some ability to build a computer and troubleshoot issues, you can always say you were doing computer repairs/setup as a oneman shop.

I can't give you advice on what to study but I would recommend you take one of those "do it all" jobs - it'll give you a look into how businesses operate with IT, which depending on your security path, would help, particularly with social engineering - you'd be surprised at how easy people let you do whatever when you claim you're IT

I'm a CS major dropout. I have a some questions:

1) Is there any job prospect for me?

2) Would an internship improves my chances of getting a job?

3) Should I be honest to interviewers about my education? If so how much detail should I give them?

Thanks.

>The goto thing is "I was taking are of a family member who was in need of daily care for the past X years". And just give some generic "they were old/disabled/etc" story.

Lmao, I did exactly this once to explain gaps in my job history. It worked.

This may sound crazy but trust me, if you are sure you know your stuff hit up a company that does contracting. I used to work at a company called CTG and got contracted out to IBM to work on their blade servers. And as said. Certs..

Some big ones are RHCE(Red Hat), CCNP(Cisco), MSCE(Microsoft), and what ever the VMWare ones are(Not sure their name)

Getting an associates in IT
Btw, where do I find volunteer work? It's not like it pops out at me. Where would I first start

Local LUGs are normally a good place to start(help them with their infra), any FOSS project, maybe a local 503(c)(3) that is just starting.

Why'd you drop out? Then we can decide if you say it to interviewers or not.
But yes, internships would help with a job as would certs.

I used to work at a jobclub (think unemployment agency where we help people get jobs) - every person there dispised me because I encouraged the clients to lie and every one of them handed to me (apart from the foreigners who coud barely read/write and were like 60s years of age) got jobs easily enough and never got fired.

No idea what that entails. What's the stuff you learn?

And you ask. Generally charities are a great place. Schools too. You just go in and explain the situation: you'd like to volunteer to get some experience in IT and you have experience doing like... computer repairs yourself (assuming you built your own PC or the like) and that you have experience with computer maintaince from helping family, etc

Going in Monday to negotiate for more money and stock (I make basically nothing now). 1) What sort of questions do I ask to determine if the options are better than the money?

I just got into this industry (was a scientist for five years), and I'm learning a lot at the startup I've been at for ~6 months. I'd like to move towards Haskell and C++, currently I'm mostly working with SQL. 2) How do I get from here to there (so I can work on weather modeling someday)?

3) Wow do you prove to the industry at large that you're not a code monkey, and are capable of managing large projects?

Nice to see a consolidation.
AMA - 0 certs sysadmin who knows his shit

, here. Thanks user. I've been applying for all of those do-it-alls that I can see. Competition is surprisingly stiff in the area (NW Washington, not Seattle metro area).
One thing that stuck out from the interviews I've had is experience with Active Directory. While I'm familiar with AD from an educational standpoint, do you have any suggestions for additional AD reading/watching? With that said, the job likely didn't take me due to my schedule restrictions: I told them finishing school was a priority, so I wasn't available full-time until June.

Thanks a ton for the answer user.you're a lifesaver!

Currently in an it janitor shop where the boss does almost everything and is on the verge of shooting everyone in the mouth and going solo.

Data recovery is interesting to me. I don't know the first thing about forensics.

I don't really have a question here. (Phone poster)

Input welcomed.

how did you get to where you are? what do I need to learn starting from 0 to become an entry sysadmin?

>1) What sort of questions do I ask to determine if the options are better than the money?
If they are RSUs nope out. It basically means that they only give you X every year until you are fully vested, if they fire you or you quit you don't get them

>2) How do I get from here to there (so I can work on weather modeling someday)?
You know your weekends and shit? yep.. Check it mapt.io

>3) Wow do you prove to the industry at large that you're not a code monkey, and are capable of managing large projects?
For the industry at large? Patents, yes they are evil but they are also a personal marker for saying I was the first to think of this.
For the company you are at, when they are talking about something getting done, volunteer for it and deliver it on time(early if you are good enough and give yourself a wee bit extra room in the planning steps)

Anyone know of any websites that give you volunteer tech jobs from charities, non-profit etc. in your area.

I struggle to find such websites

If you need to schedule yourself because of school I would recommend learning how remoting into computers works and leverage that ability - IE if you were at home for example and there was a major problem, you could most likely remotely fix it. But do be careful - you don't want to make it so you're on call.

AD is interesting. I would recommend you download it and play with it. I think the evaluation still has 180 days, might be less. The basics are things like making/creating user accounts, etc. I'd recommend learning a bit of scripting, powershell, to automate some AD things.

In general, I would actually advise (assuming you understand the basics of what AD is and how it's used which I believe you already do understand) looking up people's problems and seeing if you can either solve them yourself or else understand how they happened and why the solution given works the way it should do.

You... you'd have to give the area you're in, user. There's a difference between say, Queens, NY and Sticks, KY

You need people skills, look up a list of local charities and call them up. Even after you are done with this step you still need to be able to talk to people instead of just looking at a list online for exactly what you want.

>remoting into computers
one step ahead of ya, we remote into our school's workstations frequently to work on projects and whatnot. Additionally one of the courses had us build a virtual network at home including an Active Directory domain, a webserver, and workstation behind a pfSense firewall. Various projects we did with that was add nonfirewalled workstations that could reach the website hosted from within, set up an OpenVPN server on the router, SSH in and edit things, etc. The professor did a good job setting up what we'd see in the enterprise.
I suppose what I'm getting at is with that experience in hand, how can I let employers know?

faggots

Keep in mind I'm from Ireland and the first bit of advice might not be 100% useful, so apologies in advance.

I would put down you have build a VN before and have active experience with the stuff you did

With that said, the simplest way is to just make a note of it on your resume and actively bring it up during the interview. Ask them if they use AD. If they have any remote workers, if they have a VPN, etc.

I'd also probably pay the 5 dollars or whatever it is for a GSuite account to play with that too so you can have some experience there as a lot of businesses use GSuite instead of MS and obviously, a lot still use MS stuff

how old is too old to make a career in IT?

I appreciate your feedback user. I've been planning on really hitting the bricks for jobs because delivering pizza is getting old.
How is Ireland for tech jobs anyway, my wife is 2nd generation Irish and has a bunch of family in Cork.

Every thread from now on in, huh?

You know how people say you've gotta know about computers before going into systems administration? Most might choose to work in a small computer repair shop or do their own freelance working their way up.

I chose to go in for the gold. I applied to work at an MSP telling them prior that I had no formal education on anything Wintel related, but I have a flair for tech and I am not gonna be disheartened if shit goes south. I promised them I'll keep up with my seniors for a proper pay and I even gave them a timeline on when I can be an independent engineer.

True enough after 2 years, I left the company with the knowledge of windows servers administration, cisco switching and routing, and fortigate administration.

Only fault I made was that I didnt actually take the actual certifications themselves.

Choose a Managed Service Provider (MSP) or a Systems Integration company to work for. Most reviews will be bad, because basically it's the bottom of the IT path. Don't accept internships, say you want a proper pay and give them a promise.

60. At that point don't bother. My uncle started at 50 though and he turned out okay.

I'd say 55ish. Anything after that would usually give you less then 10 years and 10 years isn't a lot for a career to take off in.

But if you mean in terms of learning: maximum age isn't relevant.

You're welcome. Realistically, the main thing that people mess up on with interviews is forgetting they're selling themselves. You should make it clear that you have good experience with the stuff you do know.

Ireland's actually fairly good for tech jobs. You've got a few main cities, Dublin being the "main" one but it's pretty expensive. On the other hand, salaries go down by about 3-6k a year outside of Dublin as a downside but rent is insanely cheaper outside of Dublin.
Cork's not bad overall.
The biggest issue with tech here is that it's a degree first idea - which, depending on your degree, is useless. IE, 4 years learning theory with about 3 months internship = bad. As opposed to your degree where you actually did work = good

If any of you faggots actually think you're getting hired in IT start thinking again

How do you figure? A lot people have been hired on much worse advice than what's being passed out iTT.

Not the user you responded to but: what the heck is switching and routing? Because I did see a (I think?) server with like 30-40ish ethernet cables/phone cables before that went up through the celling but no idea what it was other than obviously giving the company internet/phone access

Also why is Cisco the kinda go-to for networking stuff? Do they have a monopoly alá Intel or is it something else?

>a degree first idea
I wonder if that's why we get fliers to study abroad at University of Dublin so frequently. I don't know how they found our sleepy little community college.

Because it's fucking over.
companies their want pajeets or actual code monkeys.
Either way you either need an H1B or a compsci degree for even the most basic shit out there. And even then the field is stupid saturated.
If you think getting certs and shit like the good old days will get you employed think again.

What if I want a part time job in IT as opposed to a career? College kid here

>t. unemployable

How about you tell us a bit about your situation instead of being such a bitter asshole? Maybe we can help?

Help desk or call center

I'm in that same boat and its delivering pizza for the time being.

I'm in med school dude, I'm just sharing what my friends are telling me.
It holds up too, go on glassdoor or whatever else and a compsci degree is almost always required.

The only company where I actually needed to provide any sort of credentials for my education was Google. Otherwise I could have been lying about my degree for years and noone would've been the wiser.

lol what

is that really true?

Was true for me. YMMV.

its sorta true but I wouldn't try it. Some companies do check though.

Would life really be easier if I was a cute girl?

Yes. If you were a short-haired office-cutie with large D-cup breasts and wore tight skirts to work I guarantee your life would have been easier.

I just got a job as an eDiscovery Specialist in an IT department which starts on Monday. Does anybody know anything about that role and if will be a good starting place while I teach myself how to program?

What does a professional software developer do on a day-to-day in a large company?

I ask because in an intro to software development course we're writing methods that do math, manipulate text strings, and simple stuff like that. What does advanced software development entail? How do you go from creating a question and answer console-based "game" to, say, creating an operating system?

Ah, this is very nice of you, OP. Very nice indeed. gonna lurk for a bit and ask my questions in a little. Lord knows I need some advice now more than ever.

>/adv/

/adv/ is 90% relationship advice bullshit. the only people who will see your thread are people waiting around for their own relationship bullshit thread to get replies

You'd have a way easier time getting laid and going through social interactions in general and could get hired into various token female and diversity positions, but otherwise not really (as long as we are talking about IT careers, at least).

I've been a software engineer for about 3 years now at a very large international company.

A vast majority of my work is information manipulation, as I work no the backend as a server dev. That means that it's my job to make sure the front-end guys and the design team get the information they're going to present to the user in an effective mater.

It is my job to maintain our in-house API and make sure that the REST calls they're making reach the information that they want, all the while making sure that they have the proper clearance.

A lot of it comes down to implementing new functions to provide new information, manipulate old functions that don't provide enough or too abundantly, or debug shit that's broken.

That and we get "issues" from the service desk when something no longer works, or when something needs to be modified or added.

It's quite relaxing to fire on some tunes, sit back and solve problems with code, and you suck in experience and knowledge as you go along.

Is CCNA worth getting? My company will pay for it, they want me to be the network guy.

Yes. Cisco certification holders actually get their company discounts with Cisco equipment. Cisco dominates the network equipment world and thus have many programs like that setup.

CCNA and above is like the gold standard in company eyes.

Thanks for the detailed write up user!

You're very welcome. That's what this thread is for!

If you have any questions about what the front-end devs do, or what the database specialists contribute or any more about what I do I'd love to help.

I have a BS in biology and have been doing stuff with that for 4 years post grad, but am sick of wet lab bench work. I'd like to switch to software development/programing. My undergrad had an "elements of computing" certificate that I got for taking a few programming classes, stuff like beginner programming, object oriented programming, networking, and data analytics.

Do I have any real prospects without a CS degree? Maybe something like bioinformatics so my biology background is relevant.

The fuck you doin' in biology nigga?

High school graduate, college dropout as of right now.

Certificate suggestions to get my feet wet?

I have plenty of Windows troubleshooting experience, "linux experience", and some handy programming knowledge (albeit I'm not """good""")

I just want a foot in the door, essentially

i was gonna go to grad school but i've spent time around people in the business and it seems like you work really hard as a grad student with high stress and shit pay just so you can become a phd who works really hard with high stress and just decent pay, doesn't seem like the life for me.

i've been a lab technician/lab manager, which is reasonably stress free but the pay isn't good and there isn't much opportunity for advancement.

It's long but I think these are the reasons why I failed college.

I entered college and chose a major under pressure from my mother, without taking career counseling, not on my own terms. Since I did not have any goal and did not know what I'm supposed to do in college, I neglected my studies and ended up failing many courses. I felt alienated and did not trust my peers or teachers, so I did not communicate with them and, again, did not take any counseling. College was a miserable experience for me. I felt incompetent, hopeless, directionless. It wasn't until I chose a thesis and was unable to do any work on it for half a year that I realized that I can no longer drag this on. I simply did not see any chance of me completing college, so I decided to dropout.

I know that I was an idiot, the whole thing was my own fault and I can't really blame any one on this.

You do have some, but no one will hire you as anything interesting without a CS degree. Like you might get to do helpdesk, or perhaps service, but if you want to code and build interesting shit you might want that degree.

However there is always the portfolio route, but as some user above said, big companies are gonna' look at your resume, see a degree in biology and throw that shit right in the bin.

Either start building stuff on your own free time until you've got something cool to present, or go back and get a CS degree.

A+, Linux+, Net+. Those plus some actual talent to get you through an interview will be enough to get you started. I went that path and got hired as a datacenter tech, and leveraged that experience to eventually get a sysadmin gig.

Any networkfags here? Wouldn't mind some anecdotes and advice/pointers for my current position right now.

Alright, thanks. I like the concrete and simple answer.
About how much did you spend going through the process?

alright, thanks for the advice, man

CompTIA certs are cheap. I spent almost nothing because I was living with my parents for the duration.

>no one will hire you as anything interesting without a CS degree

That's not strictly true. We have people in engineering where I work with lib. arts degrees and with no degrees at all. However, applying anywhere without relevant education means you'll have a much harder time passing the initial resume screening and will need something else that works in your favor, like a referral, a very impressive work history, some high profile project you took part in etc.

Radical. I'll probably go for A+ out the gate.

How do I transition from monkey into management? Are there courses or certifications for that crap?

Get an MBA.

Is that really my option? Take a fucking 5-year masters degree?

Most places want at least a BA for managers.

How should I present this to interviewers?

>>Certificate suggestions to get my feet wet?
A+ and Network+, if you dont want to do helpdesk for long, try for CCNA