AZ: Working in IT

Raging Deadstar · #1 June 23rd, 2006, 07:19 AM

Quote:

Imperator Fyron said:
Don't ever get into tech support...

Seconded. Although I enjoy working with computers and learned most of it "from the trenches" (And sometimes it is like the trenches, the explosions, the smoke, the sight of charred components

)

I do Tech Support for several charities on a voluntary basis, sometimes it's good and everything works out but a lot of the time it's a job I've found leaves you cursing most of the day and isn't too fulfilling. Round these parts "Dell" has become a curseword.

Suicide Junkie · #2 June 23rd, 2006, 08:02 AM

Be thankful if you have never seen or smelled a poorly-wired cubicle-block clusterbomb.

Slynky · #3 June 23rd, 2006, 08:17 AM

Before you decide, you should look into all the IT jobs that are off-shored to India (et al). IT jobs aren't so safe these days.

geoschmo · #4 June 23rd, 2006, 09:00 AM

Quote:

Slynky said:
Before you decide, you should look into all the IT jobs that are off-shored to India (et al). IT jobs aren't so safe these days.

Actually, while off-shoring certainly sucks if it's your job moving, it's not really affecting that large of a percentage of the industry. There are still a lot of jobs out there. If it's something you are interested in and enjoy, I wouldn't let the fear of offshoring scare you away from it.

RonGianti · #5 June 23rd, 2006, 01:55 PM

I started in a small firm working on an NT 4 / Novell network with 15 PC's. Took a Microsoft 9 month part time course after I was able to take a PC apart and put it back together on my own.

I read lots of books for a couple years, rode the tech wave of the late 1990's and double my yearly salary twice in 5 years (it wasn't much to begin with, say $9 / hour).

I was willing to learn something new and read on my own time, ended up at a company that supports 800 PC's on an international network Canada to US to Mexico.

Took a Cisco PIX (firewall) class in 2005, just took a VMWare class and rolled out 6 ESX (VMWare) servers attached to an EMC storage device. Most of the time our company will hire a specialist for some new piece of equipment, let them set it up, document it and then we learn it in and out ourselves and no longer need to pay $300/hour to a vendor. Because we save the company money this way, they are more than happy to pay for our classes and take them on company time too.

I'd say if someone wanted to get into the field on the hardware side, you could take a 10 month part time PC / Microsoft course then start in tech support, with the goal of getting some exposure and moving up. Its still a great career in the US if you concider that you don't need a 4 year degree to get into it.