/itcg/ - IT Career General

#7: Feeling Lucky 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 a general to encompass all that and thus clean up the board a little.

>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.

Usually people come into these threads asking for something they can do without a degree/cert/ect.

The usual answer will be any company's helpdesk. One perk of being the IT guy is that you can slot yourself in nearly any company for desktop support. If you're any decent with computers, you'll get a hang of googling literally every error code and getting paid for it.

Personally, I've managed to grow into my company's system admin position from helldesk and gaining a shit ton of job security managing all their Windows computers and shitposting on Sup Forums.

>secretary Mutsu
DELET THIS

If you watch anime, you are a pathetic loser, and will never get a girlfriend.

I have an A+ and experience, but nobody is hiring me. What do they want to hear in phone/in person interviews?

OL botes are fantastic, friend. Embrace it.

A+ by itself means dick all. Get Network+ or CCNA, and Linux+ or MSCE.

As long as its not my wife I'm ok

How do you go through college without being rich/living with parents? Go for the half time, 6-7 year degree instead?
Literally working full time is actually more like 10 hours of your day gone, 8 + lunch + commute * 2

Ming-Lee, pls!

student loans + working part time. I'm in Canada so the tuition isn't bad the US might be more. I'm finishing my degree this term and I'm only 22k in debt

What is being a sysadmin like and is schooling to become one hard if you've never done anything sysadmin related before?

There is no formal education that can adequately teach you to be a sysadmin. Most people start as helpdesk or datacenter techs and move up, or get a degree and get thrown in completely over their heads.

In terms of what it's like, imagine being a Sup Forumsentooman managing your homelab of desktops, laptops, servers, routers, switches, etc. but with an actual operating budget and getting paid for it. It's pretty great most days.

who is this phemail

The WWII Japanese battleship Mutsu.

Any tips as to what I can do independently to gain some experience with that?

How do I get some money on the internet?
freelancing? is there any hope or too many indian niggers competition?

Build a homelab, practice with it, and get certs.

I like the idea of this thread. I am currently a system admin. I was a junior system admin for a few years after getting a few certs in high school. I will most likely go into development eventually as I am getting tired of dealing with disgruntled clients all the time.

I wanted to go back to school so I took a part time system admin gig while I take some classes and finish up my degree. Ask me anything.

>Build a homelab
Yeah, I was thinking of doing that. If I build another PC, I'll probably turn this one into a media server/seedbox.

I'm the user from a few threads ago that was looking for a job in fast food.
I had one interview and I sent out 5 other applications
I never heard anything back despite most of them having help wanted signs
I have $7 and no food
send help

I wrote this post

The best piece of advice I've read in this thread is this if you do this you will be way ahead of most people.

I can give money in BTC. I don't know where you live but where I live I have a few restaurants that take BTC.

I don't have a wallet
but I'd rather take a job than money

Second Leaf here. I'm a full time student, work a part-time job for 8 hours a week during the year to help pay for miscellaneous living expenses, tuition and rent are covered by a combination of internships and student debt (referred to as OSAP where I am).

Living with parents definitely helps though. I lived with my parents for the first two years, but transferred to the University of Toronto because the university in my hometown was a joke and I basically recognized that I was not going to be hired with them on my resume. Living expenses when you're away from your parents, and in a large city like Toronto in particular, are absolutely ruinous. I went from being $2k in debt for my first two years to being $20k in debt, graduating in May. And this is after part time job and internship money. It's tough and you just need to decide if it is worth taking on debt to start working sooner, or pay as you go and getting your career started later on in life.

Military always needs more grunts

If your PC is powerful enough you could create a virtual network inside some hypervisor and practice remotely administering the virtual machines.

It's better to have separate hardware for your homelab. Even if you run most of it virtualized, have a separate hypervisor rather than just shit on your PC.

Or be like me and start working first and finish school slowly.

I'm an SAP "consultant". I accept tickets for configuring application settings all day. I'm planning to quit and apply for a programming job, but it's back to square 1 since I dont have any prior work experience in that field. Is it worth it?

I have a j-pouch
doubt they'll let me through

From a moneymaking perspective probably not. If you've got a family to feed consider sticking it out and doing open source programming work between tickets.

How much do you hate your life?

Any chance of changing job assignment while staying in the company?

comfy jobs to seek for when i get CS degree?
is sys admin comfy?

traditional sysadmins, or server babysitters, are being replaced every day. dont be fooled by everything saying it on here. they are on borrowed time.

Sysadmins are still around and will be for quite some time. It's just an ever increasing load of servers managed per admin. Back in the day you had a single bigass computer that the staff managed, then it was an office's worth of workstations and a few servers in the corner, now it's dozens or hundreds of physical hosts with thousands of VMs. Back then it was unix shell scripting, now it's config management tools and other devops stuff, but the job is still the same - translate between what developers provide, management buys, and users/customers need to create working computing infrastructure. That's always going to exist. What you're talking about is the babby tier junior Linux or Windows admin, which is in fact on the way out.

Infosec op

yeah there is a programming team in the company, but it takes a year to fully transition from my old team

Have you considered DevOps?

It's some fancy meme title that mixes development with system administration

would you put Agile on your skills section of your resume if you followed Agile/scrum principles for some capstone project?

I'm applying for some IT related business analyst positions and i wouldn't know what skills to put on. I basically did all the UML, documentation and requirement eliciting bullshit for the project.

I have but most places hiring in my city want someone with a degree.
Thus I am going back to school it get it or finish up rather.

>no professional working experience
>lots of personal projects going for me
>it's all low-level C++/C/Asm and reverse engineering stuff
>everything in my area is legit just app-dev and web-dev
should I just give into the soylent life and use javascript
every job for low-level stuff wants 5+ years of experience

original version without the mspaint text overlay?

...

many thank of you today

Poor as fuck kid in the States who has to deal with AMERICA tuition constantly fucking me over

>Student Loans
Meme but I gambled that I'll use this shit to get a job. The fact that I'm pursuing a STEM degree gave HR hard-ons when I applied for internships and part time jobs. While in school I was a part of my university's IT team. Used that previous work experience and my in-progress degree to apply to every internship around me. My pay tripled with my internships and now working on getting a full-time position while having half a year of leeway to start paying back my loans.

In the end, the loans are completely manageable and I'm in a good position to travel America for my graduating job. And if nothing else works, the easiest way for loan forgiveness is just offing yourself!

Im a tech at Frys who wants get a job doing C/C++ development on linux systems(or any osrt of programming really). I have my A+ and am currently in school for computer science any tips on moving from a helpdesk position to a developer?

Reminder CS and IT are different areas of computer technology. Programming fags aren't IT.

so this is for people too retarded to program?

not technology

That said if you're a CS fag it gets pretty hard to remove the mark of IT if you put help desk on your resume

I've haved programming people who couldn't even fix their own internet issues or tell me parts of a computer.

we plug shit in and it just werks also tech support

Working a shitty job in the meantime to save for the CISSP and a new car.

I have been applying to some security analyst positions and get interviews here and there but no offers yet.

Have a home lab, security+, a portfolio, hack the box account, and 3 years Sysadmin experience.

Possibly just a bad job market but it is hard finding an entry level or tier 1 or 2 infosec job

>Implying you know python and java and you can actually fix machines.

Good lukk buddy.

I never said that? Just call me when you need tech support buddy. 1-800-000-HELPDESK :^)

Speaking from experience?

nah from my ass

Get on LinkedIn, start reaching out to IT supervisors in local companies. Let them know you're young but eager to learn. Should make a good impression, at least have them considering you. Don't EVER intern for free, you're not an art major.

Ask a data engineer (more data warehousing atm to be honest) anything.

Stupid question but how different or hard is it applying for out of state jobs?

>tfw ywn get a job and dress like this to your tech job

Is working as a datatechnician worth it?
Mainly asking cause is seems easier than working as a sysadmin and cause i'm retarded and never listened in class :^)

>mfw mtf and I go to my lectures and classes like this but with heeled, knee-high boots except for casual dresses and vans fridays.

I'm a fucking joke but goddamn you can't touch me these shades is gucci boy.

>see job ad
>looks like a perfect fit
>read last line
>"CS degree required"
fffffffffffffffffff

what are some good networking events to attend for developers?

...

“It is a mistake to think that the practice of my art has become easy to me. I assure you, dear friend, no one has given so much care to the study of composition as I. There is scarcely a famous master in music whose works I have not frequently and diligently studied.”

- Mozart

Yo user, why dont you have a CS degree?

i have a degree in a different field but got into programming when i was in my senior year

Hi,baguettefag here,near Lyon.Any compatriot to help me find a decent school?All of the schools in the ares have a mix of excellent and horrible comments,and I have no idea how to know if the people who post em are school shills, or shitposters trying to ruin the other schools reputation.God damn,post highschool education sure is a fucking jungle.

Anyone here working remotely?

I recently left the employment of a big IT corporation because I had enough of their shitty culture, and I want to travel. I figure I could get a remote work for half time and be able to easilly travel where I want to. But I never did that before.

Any tips or suggestions on how this works? Is it hard to get people to agree on something when you have to talk to them over email/chat?

you left your job without having another one lined up?

that's a rookie mistake.

Why? I wanted to take a longer break from working(like 6 months or so) anyway, to travel mostly. Why is that bad?

you're likely not skilled or valuable enough to do so without taking a huge hit to your chances at landing a decent job the next time you are actually looking for and in need of such employment

>falling for the travel jew
look at these anime girls. you disappointed the anime girls.

I find that hard to believe. Why would an employer care if I take a break?

And to be fair, I'm decently skilled. I've lead development teams and mentored engineers for 3 years are one of the biggest IT corps form USA. I think I'm in good shape.

>travel jew
What the hell are you on about?

You do realize that makes you unemployable, right? There are plenty of other candidates for companies to choose from who are just as experienced as you and didn't take a random break to let their skills atrophy.

>You do realize that makes you unemployable, right?
Maybe marginally. Though truth be told I'm more eager to start my own business rather than be a corporate slave again.

how do you write a cover letter for vague job descriptions written by staffing agencies? there's no name for the company or any info that might hint at which company it is that is hiring.

You don't.

Or you write one that says "I want this jobe because it allows me to exchange my skills, experience, and effort for money.".

whats the best way for a foreign dude to get in the it world somewhere where the pay is good? Here most of programmers or it dudes are payed like a fucking street sweeper if you have less than 10 years of experience. Most of the university regarding it here are also pretty bad so I doubt they will be considered by most people. What do? I was thinking about getting a bunch of certs like comptia or cisco and boosting my github in order to cop a low tier remote job to get some money and the move to america or where the pay is good, but I dont know if its enough

I love the IT babes in OP of these threads. They're so enterprise.

lemme smash

Full CISSP requires years of experience

Really? Do you want me to disprove this right now?

What does Sup Forums think about working at Amazon? It sounds like the kind of place I would despise working at. However it might be somewhat profitable.

I worked there for the past 3 years before I left.

I liked my coworkers and the pay was good(sys dev eng), but the corporate culture is dogshit. I was passed up for promotion 3 times because of harmless jokes. Pic related is one of the jokes.

If you want to climb the corporate ladder you have to be a nice quite obidient drone worker and not stand out too much.

I would be interviewing for the Amazon Go team. I personally think it is a terrible idea, however I suppose it would be amusing to see how it plays out.

To be fair, it will look good in your CV, even if you hate every second while you're there. Just be sure to stay at least 2 years. Anything lower than that is gonna look dodgy to future employers.

Good luck.

I'm a Jr web developer who only has experience in front and back end technologies. Been studying for about 2 years, but the past year has been more serious. I'm thinking of moving to NYC with some friends who are also web developers. Any advice for a newbie to the work field of IT moving to nyc?

Wondering if anyone else has run into this problem early on in their career:
Got a tech consulting position in a large corpo operating in a relatively static industry. The position is awesome including location, benefits, and the fact I can work from home aside from being on site with clients. However, worried that it's too early in my career to settle for a comfortable "going through the motions" job. On the other hand I'm afraid I will work like a mule and keep hopping around if I pursue anything in emerging fields. The corpo I got the job in also offers really easy upward mobility and is starving for younger talent that can comfortably play around with emerging tech so I suppose that's a plus.

Don't, unless you already have something lined up and an apartment you can afford.

Ask yourself what you want form life:

Do you want to build up a real career and be regarded as an expert in our field?
Or do you want a comfortable and stable life?

Depending on which you want you might want to start looking for something more challenging and risky.

>Amazon Go
What are the chances they don't actually have all their tech down? That their Seattle store is just to save face for the public? That they have people monitoring things behind the scenes?

This should be called Smokes general, since literally every person in IT will eventually begin smoking due to stress.

I have a place lined up. I will have a roommate. I'm more looking for advice on the job search for new Jr devs. Startups and such

I have ~10 years of experience in IT and my advice is:

Apply everywhere you can for every position that remotly looks like something what you could do.

Another piece of advice:

Looking for a job is a job in and of itself. If you're not sending out at least 50 CVs every day you're not working hard enough.

>If you're not sending out at least 50 CVs every day you're not working hard enough.
How did the job search process even get like this? Is the economy still in the fucking shitter, or was job hunting always this demoralizing?