Slashdot Mirror
Moving Up the IT Ladder in a Poor Economy?
Andy asks: "As almost anyone who joined the IT industry on the tail end of the Dot-Com boom can tell you, trying to move up in the industry for the past couple of years has been like jogging up-wind in a hurricane. I have sent resumes to countless numbers of employers only to still be working in the same $13/hr. low-end outsource support job as when I started (and $13/hr. doesn't get you too far in Boston these days). Learning more and more languages/technologies/protocols has merely resulted in a larger skill set on my resume, with pretty much the same level of experience, and no new interviews. Has anyone else been able to get out of this sort of slump, either during this economic slump or a previous one? Should I just continue the path of learning as much as I can and applying for jobs? Would getting a cert (maybe an RHCE or some Cisco certs) help? Would it be worth it to get a degree in MIS or CS?"
The economy is still slow without a doubt. It's hard to find constant work even for those who are skilled and experienced. I was fortunate enough to make connections near the end of the dot com boom, and recently those connections have begun to pay off. My income has more than doubled in the last 6 months, although work is still inconsistant. If I didn't have the experience beforehand, or I didn't make those connections, I'd probably be flipping burgers right now.
I doubt many employers want a mediocre jack-of-all-trades kind of guy. You're better off selecting one or two specific areas and focusing on getting experience within it. Most of the technicly adept and smart employers know that tech certifications are pretty much a bunch of BS, but some still require it if you want to get your foot in the door. The same goes for degrees. Either way, couldn't hurt to have it.
And btw, FP bitches!
The downside is that you have to leave Boston. Well one of many downsides......
Would getting a cert (maybe an RHCE or some Cisco certs) help? Would it be worth it to get a degree in MIS or CS?
Holy fuck, hate to break it to you, but the fact that you're making twice the minimum wage is just unbelievable, you must have some guardian angels following you around. IT is finished as occupation. I don't mean programming or research or product development. IT as support is finished, it's either outsourced, or the product itself is such an easy thing to use, you don't need a monkey to tell you "Ok, now go to File, then click Open, and that will open a file for you?"
I mean seriously, what the hell are you thinking getting into industry with no certs, no education, no experience and no visible products that you've yourself developed. IBM just fired 5K not too long ago, Sun fired 3,000 people, so there are hundreds of engineers out there who have certs, experience, big-name company recognition competing for the same jobs.
I'd say be thankful for what you have, since I am surprised you have that much as $13/hour.
Master of what? Failing it maybe.
I only got a good job going through the "front door" approach once in my life. I was 14 years old.
20 years later, everything worth getting came from being aggressive with marketing myself and finding unexpected leads. I would recommend possibly getting a book about Cold Calling. There's one especially good called Cold Calling for Women that's really good for men or women. There's also a classic book called What Color is Your Parachte. It's geared toward people who maybe want to switch careers, but it's got good discussion of finding jobs as well.
It seems to me that going the "normal career route" in the I.T. field is inherently problematic simply because our field changes so rapidly, and few employers want to keep up with constant retraining. So we've got to think differently from other workers, even if we're slogging through the office right next to them.
The way you get the big payoff is you think outside the box. Become your own entrepreneur. If that's too much hassle, enjoy your $13/hr wage.
Murray Todd Williams
I was able to get out of that trap by doing volunteer stuff at night to get experience and references.
to find a rich woman to live off of. I don't know where to get certified for that though.
I currently have a decent paying job and am relocating to the south where I have been unable to get a single interview. Where my wife will be working, the IT manager said they could get 2 of me for the pay i am currently making. Definately not a good thing for me. I am currently thinking of learning some programming languages to maybe start in that field as i have a growing interest in that. But who is gonna hire a programmer with no skill who needs a certain set of income just ot make the monthly bills?
Networking.
As in, expand your personal contacts, not connecting together computers.
You probably shouldn't click this.
Seriously, if it's about the cash, find a new career. Make it something you enjoy, because you'll be spending a large part of your life doing it.
You think it's bad not being able to move up after two years? You better enjoy your $13/hr support job while it lasts because those are prime candidates for Indian outsourcing.
If I were you I would look into some other field. (Hint) Remember that no matter what the economy does, people still have to eat.
You kill your boss to move up the ladder. I suggest this for a poor economy, too.
If you don't have a degree, and you can't seem to get anything better than entry-level and dead-end jobs, going to college would probably be a good idea. The degree alone won't solve your problems, but not having a degree gives the overworked HR drone sorting resumes an easy way to categorize yours... as a NO. Which could explain the lack of any interviews. (By the way, picking up a book on resume-writing might be a good idea as well.)
Furthermore, if you're going to go to college, the best time for that is during a weak economy (like now). You don't want to spend that occasional window of 4-5 years when everyone else is making money, by sitting in classes and paying money instead.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Learning more and more languages/technologies/protocols
In my opinion, a mile wide/inch deep skillset gets you nowhere. If a resume passed my desk with 50 million skills and 5 years total experience, I am going to question that resume right to the circular file. But maybe that's just me.
Move out a Boston.
Big cities think in big company ways. You have management and underlings.
Get to some smaller city where you can work for a smaller business, learn the entire business and move up from there.
At aim for smaller companies ones without a set corporate structure that has no room for you anywhere but the bottom.
t
You'll never find it in this economy. What I can suggest is to find something you really ENJOY doing (i.e. programming/games/support/whatever), and work hard to get that job, and then sit tight and wait for the economy to pick up. At least then you'll get some enjoyment out of your job. If possible look for something with a future for moving to a place where you want to go (or pay scale you want to go) so when the economy picks up, at least you'll be first in line..
Mod +5 Drunk
If you want to work in the field, it would be very good to have one of these degrees. The better the school you can get it from, the better your future career prospects.
Don't get me wrong: it's still going to be tough with a degree. I've got a BS double major and an MS in math; I went from AI development pre dot-bomb to COBOL development post dot-bomb. But it gives you an edge you didn't have earlier.
Finding God in a Dog
No wonder you're making $13/hr. We're hiring like mad but won't touch someone without a degree. Even if it's in a related field...I don't have a CS degree but have a couple in physics. Don't bother with the certs...get an education in the field you're trying to get a well-paying job in. I interview candidates in my current job and I can tell you that a degree is worth more than the cert (as well it should be).
I have an MS cert which I will never, ever, EVER use, yet its listed proudly on my resume next to my Solaris and other tech certs. Why? Because HR drones OCR your resume and do text-searches on it. If you don't have the magic words, you never even make it to the real decision makers.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Would it be worth it to get a degree in MIS or CS?
I really hope this isn't serious... how exactly did you plan to get very far in a field you have no formal education in? Trust me, I am a firm believer that "clues > certs" but in the case of a university degree, it's a no brainer. I really hope this was a troll submission...
We pay our cleaning lady $50 to clean the house once a week, which takes her from 3 to 4 hours. She is 25 years old, doesn't know how to move a mouse or type on a keyboard.
At $13 an hour and a bunch of certifications, I think you are probably in the wrong company or doing the wrong stuff.
Stop jogging during hurricanes!
Why does it feel like the wind is in your face whether you are coming or going?
Unfortunately, experience is still paramount to HR drones and upper management. Even in IT, upward mobility is only a function of age and ass kissing.
Boston is a dying area for techies, like Silicon Valley, less jobs every year. Beefing up your resume won't help much if there's insufficient need in your environment.
You have to find yourself in a big enough organization where you can prove you're as good as you obviously think you are.
Hit up your local temp agencies for temp IT work. Once you get a temp job make yourself indspensable and the job will follow.
This guy is way out there
Start your own business, risk it all and gain experience. Or, go to school get paper certs and keep plugging away at the HR departments. I followed the first path. While a degree will be useful in getting some jobs (certs too), real world experience will help with actually doing any job in IT.
The industry is mostally at a stand still. I have my RHCE and my CCNA, and still no jobs. I send out resumes through Monster and HotJobs(Yahoo), call companies, and appear in person with no avail. It seems all hopeless right now.
I'm a Macintosh (mostly) sys admin and there is plenty of demand for my skills. Windows sys admins seem to be a dime a dozen. Find a specialty -- even my dog has his CCNA and MCSE.
Keep computers in your basement as a hobby. I am wrapping up my BS in Business this spring, likely startting MBA next year. Why be Dilbert when you can be the Pointy Haried Boss?
My biggest problem is I am too good at what I do (I build Oracle/MS-SQL DB's for health care facilites). I also make enough money that the ROI on the MBA doesn't look that great. I'll have to work hard on forgetting what I know to be an effective manager. "I heard Mauve has more RAM". heh. Can't wait!
JON
As a previous poster mentioned, 'who you know' can be as or more important than what you know.
The other question is whether or not you are willing to relocate. If you are, then its pretty easy to move up (speaking from experience). If not, then you are severely limited in your choices.
My $0.02.
I currently have no clever signature witicism to add here.
You ask whether it's "worth it" to get some more training or a degree. In return, I'd ask what you're trying to accomplish. Do you want to be a software engineer, given you don't have a computer science background? I've known a few excellent people in that situation, but they are VERY rare.
Also, before blaming the economy: is your resume excellent? Please post it online and I'm sure you'll receive some constructive criticism from the Slashdot crowd....
im only 18 but im finding easy to find IT work in small town usa, i dont have any certs, but i know my shit. people will pay outrageous sums of money to have a comp know it all in their office.
In these times, being on a employment comittee myself recently, I can tell you that your skills get your foot in the door, that is all. From then on out, its all about how you present yourself.
Dont hold your breath for the IT industry to come back either, you need to start consulting work and keep yourself busy.
Try applying for jobs outside of Boston. I work in IT in Madison, Wisconsin and I graduate with a 2-year tech degree in May, and make about $35k a year starting (about a year ago). I dont have any certs and no prior experience. There are jobs out there, you just might have to move for it. Otherwise I would think about getting out of IT.
As a child in the 70s i remember drinking powdered milk and driving decades old cars... everyone we knew was broke. Are we really doing that bad?
love is just extroverted narcissism
It's you or them.
If you don't have a degree and have no certs, what the heck are you complaining about? $13 an hour is more then enough for unskilled labor. BTW, without that degree or certs that ALL you will be to the eyes of a hiring manager.
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
Certs mean nothing in reality but get them if you want to move up.
I have no certs and know more than most people that I work with, but they were all hired because they had a stupid little peice of paper. I only got in because I had a friend on the inside.
As much as I hate to say it Certs are your friend.
that would be 13 rupees instead of $13...
Think of computer and programming skills as an enhancement to other, more marketable resume items (your future employer will). Such expertise might be just the thing to get an edge up in management, though, if you can stomach to "do" management.
/.'s played the Wheel of Fortune and lost. Now it is time to pick up the pieces, dust ourselves off, and retrain. Unless you're 45, overweight, and married a rich broad .. like me.
Let's face it.
Save your money. I know CCDPs/CCNAs that have been outta work for over a year. Recently, I interviewed several folks for a networking position. Over half of the responders were cisco CCIEs, who were not working.
Maybe this will change when I finish school next year, but damn, I would kill for a salary of $13/hour at the moment.
Currently, one month's pay at that rate that would pay my rent, food, utilities, cable, phone, gas, and 6 months of car insurance, with a sizable chunk left over.
Probably couldn't support a family on that amount, granted, but for anyone (single or splitting costs) not living right near a giant city, $13/hour would be awesome.
Just forget what you learned and switch to something that won't be outsourced. that's just the way it is and it's not going to change. IT will never come back in this country.
Learn about a specific industry and become proficient with the tools that they use.
For example, learn about sales/marketing and learn how to code with either IRI or AcNielsen or both. Learn about finance and Bloomberg APIs, etc.
You'll do MUCH better if you come across as someone who understands business but also knows how to code as opposed to someone who's just a god at coding.
Jesus used to be my co-pilot, but we crashed in the mountains and I had to eat him.
I took my $10/hr job at a call center for the insurance and to be with " structured friends" (ie to have co-workers and regular personal interaction). I work there a few days a week (mostly weekends), I have half decent health care, and I have plenty of time T-F to do what I want with my time. I realize this isn't an answer for someone who has a wife and kids and expects to keep them in primo jeans and caviar, but I honestly don't see how ANYONE with a decent skill set in this world today could spend their life a pauper unless they WANTED to live as a pauper (which I have done, as I said, by choice).
You've got a world of connecitons at your fingers. Find a project and become an expert, tell everyone who will listen about it. Eventually someone will pay you for your expertise, and they'll do it on your terms.
Volunteer to potential future clients. I've even seen pc support ads in the yellow pages work. Be flexible. See no paying job as beneath you (even if the dreaded service and support).
Cut back on expenses. Dump the center city lifestyle and move back with the parents (not forever!) Can make the slow startup periods or job search more workable.
Degrees. I've found on-the-job experience and the real-world network it builds to be more valuable. Most of what you can get on a campus is available to be self-taught to the entrepreneurial learner.
all your knowledge of 'protocols' and 'languages' .. if you're .. nothing
.. employers are realizing more and more
..
probably amounts to little or nothing
still working tech support you probably aren't
talented enough to do anything else
wrong with that, tho you might want to change
your line of work
honestly, folks - how long did you expect this
stupid situation of all us kids making beaucoup
$$$ just for knowing how to design a web page to
last?
lately that these 'skills' aren't really skills
at all - they're just collections of trivia
i hate to be the one to burst your bubble, puppy,
but you're making $13/hr because you Deserve it.
make a play for management - become one of those
bright-eyed bushy tailed assholes the rest of us
hate, do nose-candy in the elevator and go home
and kick your dog at night out of frustration just
because you refuse to see it
or, maybe computers aren't the thing for you
they always need folks to do drywall work
to sum up : "post-dotcom-boom gen-blech kids -
grow up, learn to work for a living, and quit
fucking Whining. go ask your grandparents what
it was like to live during the depression, and
listen to what they have to say if they don't
slap the taste out of your mouth first"
Above and beyond all get experience and know the basics.
:-)
I finally went "professional" with all my computer knowledge in '98. No degree, no certs, just what was in my head from being a computer geek for 15+ years. Started out being an intern (at 29 years old) for a local security consulting firm and from there have rose through the ranks, worked with some of the countries brightest, and am now in a 100+ a year job as a Senior Network Security Engineer. I credit it all to wanting to learn everything, experience, and picking a niche' (security) to focus on and to excel in.
The above wasn't an ego trip just hopefully a nugget of guidance.
been a programmer for 8 years.
im going to go off to Iraq to push a broom in a warehouse.
$110,000/yr tax free, cant argue with that.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Everyone is going to post how you need a degree, do your time, and experience.
But... what you really need is a niche. Something that makes you special. What currently separates you from the 1,000s of other people looking to advance in the IT field.
A couple of good examples of niche areas are video encoding/decoding, foreign languages, streaming media, strange languages, etc...
Lets face it, many jobs have special needs, find an area that you can excel in. A recent example of a niche that earned me a job interview was Python. Not too many people know the language(of course everyone of them will respond to this statement), and I was able to get an interview(sadly not a job).
For one stop sending out so many resumes and instead spend more time finding a job that is a perfect match for your skills.
A company who is looking for exactly your profile (11 years of experience on the Atari pong v2.2) will be willing to fork out extra cash for you. On the other hand, a company simply advertising for "C programmer" will be likelier to grab the cheapest person out of school.
Must look into outsourcing soon... -Andy's Boss
Employers want experience, not just book learning. However, they aren't (always) particularly picky about whether you got paid while gaining that experince. Need experience in Foo? Find an open source project using Foo that interests you, and start contributing. Something small at first - just a simple patch. After the project maintainers start getting to know you (through your code), they'll likely start letting you contribute in more substantial ways.
Learning to sell yourself is important. If prostitution isn't your thing, you can always learn how to make and sell crack.
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
I'd take a 13/hr IT job right now. I've worked for schools and some local businesses doing network consulting and maintenance since I was a freshman in high school (and I've had my MCSE certs just as long), but now I'm 20 and unemployed. I couldn't get a job as a help-desk 'tech' right now in Minnesota.
What the heck is a 'sig'?
Do a search on Dice.com or any related job search engine and see what pays well. Then beef-up your skills in those in-demand areas and try to land that nice gig.
;-)
This holds true regardless of how the economy does. There will always be HOT unfilled positions no mater what.
These days if you have security clearance, you can land just about any high paying 100k+ job. Just like in the good old dot com days.
Two years from now the next hot in-demand skill might be...VP of Janitorials - Those automated toilets will need someone to fix someday, especially if they are run on Windows CE.
Seek and you shall find...
What do you *want* to do ? You want to climb the ladder of IT jobs, fine. I hear you. But, higher up the ladder, you don't get an easier job. You may get paid a bit better than $13 an hour, but your expectations will increase accordingly. What are you happy doing ?
I often kicked myself for graduating when I did. I got out of university about an year before the dot-com boom died. This was in 2000. People who graduated a mere year before me were in positions like "architect" and "senior team lead", I was a lowly developer. You can take all the experience you want, but some (most?) places DO look for prior management experience and even if you did nothing except crunch code, you were called an architect, so you get your foot in the door.
I had to go about it differently. I was a lowly developer. I tried to vary my skillset and technology. No job was too controversial, too risky, too cutting edge. I asked for (and got) all the mad projects, with high risk and high gain (and an equally high chance of failing). I am not sure if this will work for you, or even if you want to, but if you're looking for experience, then think carefully about accepting risky jobs. At startups, underfunded companies and the like. Don't expect to double or triple your salary today. Just keep getting that all important project, real-world experience. Contribute to open source projects. Keep your coding skills fresh. Make an effort to learn some technologies in depth. Call me troll if you like, but for now, Java and .NET both seem to be fairly good bets. Each month, each year you spend building up your resume, you're also in contact with coworkers who work in technology. Network. Get a reputation for good work, for not being a slacker, for being a knowledgable, reasonable person to work with.
I've gotten 3 (out of 4) jobs so far purely because of someone I knew who knew someone else who had a vacancy.. or from old university contacts .. or from old coworkers who knew I was looking around for another place...
The difference between you and a lot of other people ? You've got less to lose.
Good luck
for (i=bottom; i<=top && ambition; i++);
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
Just watch out for Bernard Haldane, who will promise you the world and may cost you your shirt. Being sued by attorneys general in several states.
Search dejanews for more information, don't bother with google because all you get is the BH sites
Don't worry about it anyway...you'll be dead soon, so just enjoy life.
This advice may be scorned but communication/presentation/public speaking courses could help round out your resume. Have you done much of this?
.
There's a lot to be said for playing your strengths and developing your core proficiency. It's tough though to shine a flashlight into neglected dingy corners of your skill set. If what you've been doing isn't giving you the results you want, try something else
It could help across the board, such as at interview time. Or widening the spectrum of jobs, allowing you to be open to higher visibility jobs like teaching some of your core knowledge. Or taking a management/departmental head position. It could be an avenue to a successful career change.
You can go as a guest to a local Toastmasters meeting for free, or look into a Dale Carnegie course. There are many other programs, but you can't exclusively learn this online.
You sound highly skilled. Making it more visible would be a powerful addition and could make the difference you're looking for.
Esteem isn't a zero sum game
I admit, I am a bit worried about the need for a week job market to make room for the returning heros from the various US excursions abroad. Staying home and completing a CS degree and getting a low paid internship will not sound as good on a resume as fighting terrorism on its turf. That overseas experience just might become the determining factor in career success in the US for the next several decades.
Assuming US soldiers return in the next year or so; will they spur economic activity by increased domestic consumer activity, or will they re-enter a crowded employment market?
You can forget about more pay. The untold truth is that nobody outside of the top 10% of income earners has increased their income in the past 30 years. The bubble was your last great chance. It's pretty much downhill from here. On the bright side, Boston like NY, LA, SF probably is in the midst of a BIG housing bubble. Shortly that monument to optimism will come crashing down and your rent will fall, slightly.
I must agree with the others that say to start your own business. Find a business that you know something about and create an app that would help them. Market it for a low rate to that business, with the caveat that you will improve the product for them, but will also be shopping it. This will give you LOTS of experience and firm knowledge the of design, development, debugging, and deployment cycle.
As a previous post mentioned, network. When you are networking, market what you have done and what you are capable of relentlessly.
Did you watch The Apprentice? Market yourself like Trump. You didn't write a program, you wroted the best #$&^ing program ever. You solved the hardest problem in the history of mankind. Show enthusiasm. Make them believe everything you touch turns to gold.
Would it be worth it to get a degree in MIS or CS?
Uhhh, yes!
But while you're thinking about it, just don't. We've got enough morons in the computer engineering field as it is. Please just stay in tech support thanks.
1) Start going to church. Christian church. The more old-world the better. Baptist if possible.
2) Volunteer on the weekends. Do all the volunteering you can and maybe some you can't.
3) Start looking for people in tech jobs around the parish. There'll always be a guy that owns his own company, probably a successful one, too. Puritans rest after they're dead, remember.
4) Get to be good friends with a few of these guys. Find out about his company. Try and get a quasi-matching skillset.
5) Mention you're "broke" and want to get married or some crap and you need to find a better job but you like this church yadda yadda....
6) Profit!!!
Hey, if you're desperate enough it works, alright?
I'm in the same situation here. Same location, same job, even the exact same pay rate. The only difference I can see is that I'm making some secondary income from freelance work. I had a distant contact (old friend's college roomate's mother) with a consulting company that needed an emergency nerd. I've been working with them now for about two years, and I can count on at least an extra $500/month from them. Not much, but it counts. If you're not having any luck, I would suggest setting up a second income for yourself as a freelancer. If you have a portfolio use it. If not, make one up. Keep an eye out for contract positions, and apply like crazy. If you can provide a different voice, you'll have opportunities. Finally, whatever you do, stay the hell away from Craig's List. I don't need any more competit- uhh.. I mean, they suck. Yeah.
Ok so I'm not from the US, but jobs are hard in most places.
So (in approximate order of relevance):
- get the degree, or a degree, even if you have to do it via night study whilst working somewhere to build up the experience, and never use the degree in any way at work. It'll still pay off.
- don't get too attached to the city you're living with (or the country for that matter - plenty of good jobs abroad - and when you get back you'll have something that not many other people have on their CV's)
- try to pick small companies where you can learn everything, as those broad "overview" skills tend to pay off - I have interviewing skills, and some sales under my belt now - even though my job title says something more like "lead programmer"
- hire a firm to write your resume - because there's a such a difference in the typical case between one you did yourself, and one that somebody who does resumes all the time writes.
Best of luck.
Get a Degree, no matter what you end up doing the degree will open doors for you. Get out of Taxachusstes. Find a job you doing something you like, its an employers market right now, but that will change just become an expert in what you like and the rest will follow.
Oh come on, this isn't off-topic. I was offering a career suggestion. A funny one, but still.. :)
Josh
I graduated in March 02 from getting a technical degree in Java Programming(along with a few certs) and was in a very similar situation that you were. I finally had a brain storm and started sending in resumes to jobs in marketing departments that had internet marketing groups. I positioned myself as the guy who interface between tech needs and business needs. It's worked out great so far.
I've been keeping my programming skills sharp by freelancing when available and working on interesting projects for my website. In another 6 months I'll start looking for a programming job again but now I'll have 2 years experiance managing people, working out budgets, working on business strategy and an established protfolio of freelance work.
This approach probably isn't for everyone but for it's made this recession bearable.
With the support orle on resume you need some actual exp in yoru high tech area..
The best advice I can give is find some free or open source projects that match up with the new langauges/skills you have and contribute..
Once you do this list them as a real job with exp..Project and dev leads are very nice in giving full work references when you do this and it shows a future employer thatyou know where the technology is headed in your area..
Don't Tread on OpenSource
Hi Andy, Look at the top salaries in IT and you'll see a lot of those related to the banking industry figure. Better still, forget the IT part, and just qualify as a banker and handle other people's money. Generally this means you'll be mixing with the well off, and you'll get paid well for it. IT is moderately interesting at 50 dollars an hour. At 13 dollars an hour you are wasting your time in IT.
As someone who is competing with you in the job market, I would say the best thing you can do in your situation is watch TV and drink beer.
that I've noticed anyway, is that the percentage of people who are employed in IT and in over their heads hasn't really gone down a lot since the dot com bust. I still run into people all the time who don't know squat. Of course, I also work for a gigantic corporation...
Is your company hiring? I'd be happy to work for $13 dollars an hour.
P.S. I have a degree in computer engineering.
No matter what field people work in, the best people never blame the environment. Yes this sounds like Succesories fodder, but you have to see the goal, not the obstacles. Being smart in the right tech helps, but success in tough times is more about attitude.
... I do have a degree, just been in the industry 2 years, joined right after college. ... I am a jack of all trades, that's what my manager told me makes me valuable because, yes, in this industry things change so quickly, yet I can pick up the newest thing and do things with it.
You need to network. Find ways to meet the higher ups and build a professional relationship with them. People do a lot for people they know and respect. I recently got a job at $20/hr developing server acceleration software and I'm not even out of college yet! Whereas many CS grads I know still have yet to find a job even close to that.
Certain parts of the country have been hit much harder than others. So instead of being in competition with 200 resumes you'll be in competition with 5,000. Look for a job in alternate locations or be willing to relocate. Its hard and kinda crazy to leave your family and friends but since you're starting out the experience might be worth it. You can come back "the victor". I did this.
Or you could find some non profit orgs out there and offer to spruce up their systems and get them going - for free! It could wind up being more experience and responsibility than you might even get for money. Great references too! And a song in your heart. Proves to yourself that you know all you say you do on the resume.
The finaly point is to DO SOMETHING. Just sending out resumes and learning are not enough. Use some of it in creative ways or at least try to.
Good luck.
Beantown is expensive, too, so cost-of-living factors in. Also it's a feast-or-famine, thing. When tech started going south, the big tech centers, including Boston got hit. I fared a bit better being in the mid-west. I'm still a 25 year old college-drop out making $80k/yr and in the midwest, so it's like $100+k in NYC. Yeah, rah, me. *rolls eyes*
It's all about being in the right place at the right time and having relevant experience. If I didn't have dreams about Sun equipment or know all kinds of tricks with Solaris I'd still be flipping burgers. If there is a specific tool or equipment where you work, learn it and learr it well, and show an interest in wanting to learn and run more. Don't be pushy, but you can go far that way. Then, after you've leeched a fair amount of skills and experience, see if you can get a job elsewhere using the knowledge you've gained.
Yourself, your abilities, a product, your product, just learn it. A professional salesman is a hard employee to find and they're expensive once you find a real one.
This might sound trite but it's the truth.
My "order takers" calling themself's "salesmen" make 45-50k. My real salesmen make 80k+.
And no, it doesn't mater what you sell (see above)
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B - D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
If you don't feel your skills are worth money, then neither do I...
Lots of good ideas from someone whose been there:
1. Write your own software: even if you don't succeed you'll learn skills that make you employable gold. On a side note, people that code without hardware/networking skills are crap. I'd rather employ someone that has written his own shareware app then someone fresh out of college.
2. Be a "jack of all trades" that specializes in one or two key areas. I want people who know their shit in their primary job role, but also somebody that can help me print bulk mailouts/move furniture/make ID badges/asst Netadmin/etc...
3. You can prove yourself with or without an education. But it is a lot tougher to do and takes a lot longer without one.
4. You get in the door with a short/sharp resume. 99% of your employment is your interview. Dress well, yessir/nossir me and you'll probably be considered.
Management
I recently did a paper for a Human Resource Management class in which I interviewed two hiring managers in from two different software companies.
I asked how they would rank their candidates on based on education, experience, and certifications.
While one preferred education over experience, they both agreed that certifications were a distant third and worthless without the corresponding experience.
However, since labor is a commodity and we are currently in period of high supply and low demand, you aren't going to get as much as you might want to.
There are a lot of very experienced and very educated people going for the same positions you are. As one manager put it, "Right now I can get an incredible amount of talent for a third of their last job, simply because they need the check and benefits."
These days, you either need an impressive degree, an impressive amount of experience, or a combination thereof.
As someone said above, your social networking skills are important, too.
Good luck.
555-1111...ring...ring...
Hello! My records indicate that this number is registered to an eligible single female in my area code. As an eligible single male, I wanted to take this opportunity to extend a special, one-time off...*click*....
sigh...
555-1112...ring...ring...
Let's try not to let fact interfere with our speculation here, OK?
I agree. You don't want to be just a Perl or C++ programmer. You want to be someone who understands finance or direct marketing or XYZ and who applies their Perl or C++ skills. Much better prospects!
Once you get into a job, having varied skills will be a big plus. Being the go-to-guy is the best job security. Until then though, those little pieces of paper, the degree and the certs, are your best bets.
HR drones don't usually know jack about tech skills. They just do a match against the internal req. document they are given from whomever approves them. The first cut for anyone not already in the company is always the degree. Always! They are the union card for the salaried masses.
I'd also check the following for getting to the interview and beyond. "Knock 'em Dead, 2004" by Martin Yate. It was recommended to me by the career consultant who helped me with my resume. After three months of hearing nothing back, I sent this resume out on a Monday to three places and heard back from two of them Tuesday. Pure magic! Give it a read. Good stuff within.
When I'm feeling down, I like to whistle. It makes the neighbor's dog run to the end of his chain and gag himself.
If you go all the way to a masters, do a masters thesis.
Finding God in a Dog
So pick something that needs doing and do it. It could be shareware. It could be participation in an open source project. It could be something for your own enjoyment. But it should be more complex than an example program.
This will accomplish several things: 1) You will get more experience and confidence. 2) You will be able to demonstrate something tangible to prospective employers. 3) You may reap rewards directly from the project.
It's very simple. The IT industry in the US is largely now a low-paying, blue collar job. If you want to make more money, you're gonna have to do something else. Find a new profession. There's nothing that you can do about it. Get over it.
I believe that becoming a consistent member of an open source project is what made the difference for me. I was out of the industry for two years, but worked actively on an open source project for a majority of that time. My skills improved a great deal, and employers seemed to think it was about as close as you can get to "work experience" without actually having a job. I have a decent paying job now, and I think it is mostly due to this.
At the interview level, you need to be able to sell ANYTHING if you can get through an IT interview these days. Do some research on sales and marketing! Actually don't do some.. do a lot. Chances are, everyone else interviewing is just as qualified as you. You just need to be the one they like the most! Most of the time it comes down to.. OK we have all these great candidates, who would you most enjoy working with?
If you keep at it, you'll eventually get it. It took me two years, but it finally worked! That may not be comforting for someone who was recently layed off, but look at this way.. Do you want to server tables/deliver pizzas/*insert crappy job here* for the rest of your life or for two years??
This is the sagest of the posts. Applications and interviews are made to hire $13/hr people. You need a good solid niche, general smarts, and attitude.
Being a genius in a box does crap. Network.
Jim Weller
Get knowledgeable in something besides just IT.
Get to know the business that your IT infrastructure supports.
Then, you'll be able to come up with better ideas of how IT can benefit your business in ways that a pure IT geek cannot.
A friend of mine went the other way, coming in with a biochemistry background, picking up SQL database skills and ending up making good money.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
Gold, of course.
Some people completely miss over this option. There are a host of companies, big corporations out there, that hire IT people at good wages. These are the defense contractors, e.g. Lockheed, SAIC, Northrop. All of them pay well, the job is fairly stable (the most stable I have seen in this industry). If you are a US citizen with a clean background, I would suggest going working on your degree and get an internship with one of those companies. They usually pay industry standard for the job and the regoin which sounds about what you are getting now. This experience is priceless, you get contacts, experience, and possibly tuition reimbursement. Get out there and chase it if you really want it) -- I interned with a Defense Contractor for 3.5 years while getting my degree and recently recieved a full time position.
Schroedinger turned to his assistant and asked "Are you sure you put the cat in the box?"
There's a huge difference between tech support and rogramming/sysadmin/networking/whatever. Very few people working tech support are well-qualified to do much else, and unfortunately, that stigma will follow you as well.
Your largest hurdle is going to be to actually break out of tech support into the field you want to be in. Once you've done that, and prove that you *can* do more than just tech support, then advancements will come much more easily.
steve
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
Employers in Boston, I remind you that you can get workers of greater quality for much less in beautiful Des Moines!
Learn Hindi and Mandarin. That's where the jobs are.
If the reason you want to work in "IT" is for the money, find something else. Enough people with degrees will see through that attitude in short order and you'll find it hard to progress. Not because they necessaily disdain those that don't have degrees. But because often (but not always) people without degrees show a stunning lack of ability/willingness/effort. I'm not saying you don't have those things, but if you do, you might find it worth some willingness and effort to prove that you have the ability.
If you have a degree then I agree you must do a better job selling yourself. Most importantly is make as many contacts as you can with others in the computer industry. Hopefully these contacts can get you in the door. If you don't have a degree it's a tough place to be. I work for a large telecom/tech company and there's an unlimited supply of people with educations looking for jobs. Heck I ran into a guy with a B.S. in C.S. and a masters in Telecom working at the Home Depot. If you don't have a degree you're competing with many many people that do. I know a degree is just a peice of paper but it's a quick and easy demarcation line for employeers. A lot won't even look at your resume without an education. Either way, good luck in your quest.
"Would it be worth it to get a degree in MIS or CS?"
a ti ve_degrees/
_ fees.sh tml
Do you think getting a college degree would be worth it? You are currently, at $13/hr, making $27,040 per year (assuming full time, 40 hour a week work).
According to CNN, the average starting salary for someone with a computer science degree is $48,656 per year.
http://money.cnn.com/2004/02/05/pf/college/lucr
Tuition at UMass Boston campus costs $6,977.00 per year.
ASSUMING a 3% inflation rate on your salary in either job, and a 3% inflation rate on tuition, AND assuming you could only work 30 hours a week while going to school full time:
In 6 years time you would just about break even, and in 7 years time you would have made more money even AFTER you paid for 4 years of college. Your salary would be 80% HIGHER than if you continued on your current path.
So, YEAH, I think a degree is a good idea.
http://www.umb.edu/students/bursar/tuition
I am attending a University in the U of Texas system. I am a CS major and am only a semester away from graduation. And I've never had a better time in my life. I am currently working for the CS Dept's Computer and Information Technology Center. I make $13.50/hr just programming ASP and SQL 19 hrs/week.
A colleague of mine and I started our own web dev business doing hosting and programming for local companies and there is really nobody else in the area doing anything similar, so work is not hard to find.
I think I'm going to stay in school and work on a Math and/or Physics degree.. or maybe an MBA. School is the greatest.
'cuz you're gunna be suckin for foodstamps if you think you're going to get rich in IT with no education or skills.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Not sure where you are, but here in Canada, it's fairly easy to make just as much working the more technically inclined trades as it is the IT jobs. Yeah, you'll probably have to get dirty, and you'll definitely have to use your hands... but you'll be making just as much money as you are now, even in your first year... and your computer experience should help you land a tech-minded apprenticeship over some goof who just barely finished high school. As well, there's a shortage in those fields because a lot of older electricians can't upgrade to work with robotics, or are just flat-out retiring.
Just a thought...
Here's how I got a good paying job ($54k) for network admin.
1. Go to the library
2. Get the latest US Census book
3. Open up to the population drift map
4. Look for jobs in areas people are leaving
5. You will find a job there
Yeah, you can't live in the big city - tough.
Yeah, you have to move away from mom - stop crying.
Yeah, you run the risk of no Starbucks - think of the money you'll save.
But you'll get over it, knowing that when the economy improves, you can move back to the city for a much better paying job - if you choose to move back. I love it up here in Montana and enjoy the slower pace of small town life. It has allowed me to pay off the bills and continue working on my college remotely (continuinged.uml.ed). The work day is exactly 8 hours, the commute is 5 minutes at 25 mph, and we really do have high speed internet access out here.
Try it - you might like it.
to make 13 an hour. I make $8.80 an hour as a computer opreator. But again, I am 20.
I have 5 years in the industry ever since getting out of the Marine Corps. :( :(
I worked for a tech company who was just barely paying my salary and I had a friend who turned me on to a tech support job. At $22.00 an hour I needed the money. Now I am getting all sorts of reply's on my resume. This has just happened within the month of April. I just missed a 55K a year job because I didn't have an A+ cert. In fact I have no certs. Crap the dumb ass headhunter for the company who needed a IT person probably doesn't know what A+ is. But I couldn't lie.
Like who isn't A+ certified! I have built so many white box systems. But then look at what just passed me by.
So now I am on www.boson.com buying those cert practice tests so I can get a 55k a year job.
I live in Atlanta, GA by the way.
Not computer networking.
People.
Know the right people, and you're in (as long as you're at least competent).
And. . . get into the defense industry, get a Security Clearance. You're golden. They'll never outsource those jobs.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
I'm curious, does anyone have advice for a students (I'm a 4th year CE) seeking co-op jobs? My program, which is five years, consists of a year of co-op work, which I must find on my own. Finding co-op jobs has *not* been easy over the past few years for myself and students in my major. It's tough to market yourself toward specific job listings, as we have no real experience thus far. The approach has been the typical send out 100 resumes and cross your fingers.
Specialists who are true experts in their field get paid very well.
The risks are:
(a) being so specialized that you can't get work and
(b) having your skillset become redundant (cobol programming for VMS is not a good choice).
With that in mind pick a niche, and excel at it.
My 2 GP: I just graduated from UT Austin with an MIS degree and it DID help me (finally) get a great IT job. It's not that the skills I learned at college were all that fantastic but you gain a paper badge that, like it or not, makes a difference. I will also tell you that if you are trying to decide between an MIS or CS degree go for the MIS degree - the combination business and programming/IT skills are very attractive for many employers. I worked for a major coroporation for 6 months before finally giving them the finger and let me tell you that having an IT job in a large corporate setting with the economy in the pits will put you on a fast track to suicide. They know you don't have the luxury of quitting and finding another job in a week, and they will treat you as such. In my case, it was Dell that taught me that there really IS such a thing as an evil corporation that despises the human soul and relishes suffering above all else. Currently there is a HUGE demand for versatile IT proffesionals in small/medium sized businesses. You will find you can have great success getting careers of all kinds with with these companies if you proactively approach them an offer your services rather than just responding to adds in Monster.com and your local paper. Working for the small company has it's disadvantages just like any job but for me it's perfect. I make my own hours, am paid well (your results may vary here), and actually get to make a difference (*gasp*). ~Anyway~ The point: -Degree? Yes - it's essential. -Certifications? Meh - they didn't help me. Get your education up to snuff and then go sell yourself to employers.
And if you're aiming to be good, you might as well aim to be good enough to write the operating system.
Would it be worth it to get a degree in MIS or CS?
You don't have a CS degree? Well, there's your problem right there. I know I certainly wouldn't high someone "up the ladder" without a minimum of degree for any hardcore programming job. Not a diploma, or a "certificate" from one of these little private "schools" - but an actual university (or college for you Americans) degree which comes with a strong theoretical background.
During the dot-com bubble I remember all these people coming out who knew html or flash from these 6 month "schools" claiming to be programmers. And they got jobs because... well everyone got a job with stock options out the wing wang. Then when the bust occurred they all were the first to get laid off and couldn't understand why they couldn't get another job. Because you're not real computer scientists/software engineers! So you learned a few of the "hot" skills for this year, it won't help you learning new ones unless you have the theoretical background.
So go get a CS degree, but not an MIS or any other such flush certificate. Cisco is good, I hear they make shit good money. But until you get the CS degree don't expect to get anywhere unless you're really lucky.
For a second there, I thought this was a dating technique for lonely geeks.
Working in IT sucks. There is no "normal career route." Unless you mean:
1. Go to school to obtain sheepskin
2. Apply everywhere
3. Relocate across the country to the one place that took you
4. Get pidgeon-holed into an absurdly narrow field of work (like IBM DB2 Index Optimizer), get treated like crap for 5 years, and get laid off once your field becomes sufficiently obsolete.
5. Unemployment, Ramen, Plasma Donation
6. Lather, Rince, Repeat.
I think I'll become a college professor.
dinner: it's what's for beer
If you are a basic/level-1 dotnet developer in the Dallas area, there are plenty of reasonable jobs around here (50-60k starting).
If you are an uber/level-3 dotnet developer in Silicon Valley you might still have trouble finding a job.
Replace dotnet with some other area and it changes again.
So look for newer technologies and look for better geographic areas.
Natural != (nontoxic || beneficial)
He must be one of those guys who landed the rich wife ...
Certs are ornaments on a Christmas tree in July.
Sure they look real pretty, but unless you are selling them, they are a waste of money.
Same goes for going back to school (unless you really, really like school and miss college).
I was knocked off in a Dot-Com drive by and found far better paying gainful employment through a well winnowed and maintained list of contacts and mentors.
I now handle part of the hiring (about 50%) and have stacks of resumes with more abbreviations than a doctor's convention. Of eight recent hires, only one was a stranger found through traditional means, all the rest were friends, friends referrals or former workmates from previous lives.
Get off the sob story boards and start making phone calls and preferrably personal visits to people you have met and respected in the past - (Who you ask? Former professors and teachers, former classmates, friends of parents and other older relatives, and professionals like laywers, realtors, and business owners whom you know, frequent and respect).
Good luck and be thankful for what you have - you are employed.
I'd say if you're going to get a degree you might as well get out of the field.
I don't know how long you've been in computer support, but it's my personal suspicion that the market is going to continue to head downhill. Yes, by whoring and resume-padding, you can compete with the other whorers and padders. Yes, people and companies are always going to need maintenance work. But it's going to be a long time before the market looks like it did in the late 90s.
It's also my opinion that certs aren't worth the paper they're printed on. They're so easy to get, with the possible exception of the ridiculous ones (Cisco for example) and they're so common. There are also numerous ways to cheat on the cert tests. I know this because I worked in the industry for a number of years-- the cert industry was, in my opinion, corrupt then and getting worse. Back then, you could take a test as many times as you wanted to and could pay for. We were passing people who we KNEW didn't know squat, just because they showed up and took the test enough times, and I'm talking 7-8 times for low-level Microsoft tests. It's possible that salaries based on cert paper were one reason for the inflation of the dotcom bubble. People with plenty of paper were getting into positions they didn't nearly deserve from a technical standpoint.
Just about anywhere else you go, your computer skills will stand you in good stead. If you do stay in computers, go for coding of some kind-- unless some souped-up VB-alike thing comes out that doesn't suck, coding ability is always going to be worth gold. If you take the trouble to get a degree, make it in something that's not going to be redundant with your present skillset. I know a number of very intelligent computer people, some PHDs, who are looking for work right now. I don't see the market getting any better.
Intolerance for ambiguity is the mark of the authoritarian personality.
MIS: NO
CS: NO
Underwater basket weaving: YES
There are too many freakin CS and MIS people competing for MY job right now, so major in something that's not computer related, like Mayan History, Business, or Philosophy. Take my word for it, CS sucks.
A guy without a degree, in this or any not .com economy, is going to find it real tough to jump between companies and move his way *up* the ladder. Its a lot more difficult for a manager to say, "this guy's a support grunt, he wants to be a supervisor, and he has no degree or even certs". bzzzt. next!
If youre stuck in a $13/hr job, and been stuck there, maybe its time to start making some impressions. Start with the stupid stuff, IE dressing better, slacking off less. Make suggestions to make your workflows and processes better. Think like your manager- suggest new software or tools you could write to make things work smoother. Better yet, walk in one day and say "hey, I was tinkering around and came up w/ this cool new app we could use to streamline our support requests" If there is paper anywhere in your system, make it digital, make it a webapp or something (obviously, use your head here and dont get stuck in the hammer/nail syndrome). Essentially, act like your supervisor, or how your supervisor should be acting. Stand out from the crowd. Second of all, make friends. lots of them. Make all those people you help thrilled that you came by and not your coworker. shoot the shit w/ them as your reinstalling office or whatever. Talk to your bosses. Hes an arrogant prick? make off color jokes. If hes one of those stodgy old types then youll be better off by playing dress up and raising your professionalism level.
I dont know anyone that will make a coder out of a support grunt though unless they have a degree or have proven their ability. Your best bet is to go back to school. Coding grunts these days seem to be starting a bit above 40k. In 4 years when youre done, since youll have previous experience in IT, you will probably be able to start ~50k, but of course, your mileage may vary.
I don't know why the parent was modded as Funy, because his advince is very realistic. ;-)
Face it with Bush in office, there is NO WAY IN HELL jobs are coming back from overseas. The best thing to do would be to temp out work, and also start up your own buisness. Why not start up a linux buisness? there are TONS of applications and things that Linux needs to make its self more attractive to the average user, (don't get me wrong, linux IS at the point where your grandmother can use it, but it always needs innovation to keep alive, and make it better.)
Other than that get active in politics, to get Bush and cronies out of office. It won't do much good seeing that I belive the only way to return America to its former glory days is through a revolution as grand as that little war we had with the British ~200 years ago.
1) A certification can be taken away from you. Which is what happened when MS switched from NT4 to win2k. A degree from an accredited institution cannot.
2) A cert means your are familiar with a particular technology. You are qualified to be a code monkey or a hardware monkey. A degree means you understand more than that just where the buttons are.
If you want to move up the ladder, you need a least a 4 year degree. All but the lowest levels of management are out of reach to you right now. A degree shows that you
1) Have been trained to think critially.
2) Have a background in theory
3) Have been trained to communicate (English classes are NOT a waste of time).
4) Were forced to deal with people who do not think as you do, with other priorities and values.
5) Have the patience to slog through 4 years of work before getting your reward.
6) You know how to work independently and also as part of a team.
The best combo is degree + exp. + certs. But it looks like you have experience, and with a degree that should help. I assume that while in school you would let the certs lapse, but if you can keep up on them you would be in a great position. And you may decide that there is more to life than technology and go into a completely different field. Be happy at what you do.
In our situation, we hired a guy with certs but no degree and he had to work independently. He cratered out. THen we hired a guy with both a degree and certs and I *am* impressed.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
I was in california and could not find a tech job to save my life, so I moved to colorado. Same deal there. An offer from a family friend to move out to a small town in Arkansas turned out to be the best thing ever. There was a major shortage of knowledgable people here and finding work didn't take very long. My first job only paid $12/hr but consider that I also rented a 3 bedroom house in a nice neighborhood close to shopping and schools for $550 a month and gas was a good 50 cents cheaper than california.
I did my job, met people, tried my best to get known as a great tech and I now have a great job as a System Admin that I love to death. The cities are full of people looking for your kind of work. Get out of there and go somewhere that needs people that know the things that you do. Of course, you won't find any software companies in small towns but you will find TONS of businesses that have to use computers and networks to get their jobs done, and all those people need someone to work on their computers.
Most small towns have a few computer repair businesses that take care of the businesses but the days of walking in and fixing a computer quickly are over. It takes time to get to know someones network and software and you can't do a good job if you're charging an hourly rate like the small computer support businesses do. These areas are perfect for convincing a business that they will save money and get better service if they hire you as their admin. Show them all the things that need to be done on a daily basis like following security advisories, updating computers, checking security, etc.
The company I work for pays me quite well and they said their past 3rd party support cost them 3 times as much as I do, and more gets done quicker. Before they would have to wait to get something fixed, sometimes up to 3 days. Now things get fixed immediately and revenues are up because of it.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
Plastics.
But seriously, try something new. I mean with $13.00/hour you won't be taking a big pay cut doing something else. Try web design, volunteer as someone suggested, sell stuff on eBay or try pimping. Nothing says stable income as a bunch of crack whores.
I just had this same conversation with someone working on a PMP certification. The certification MAY help you get past the resume scanners in HR, but being able to demonstrate a history of successful projects is what will get you the position. I would recommend getting involved with some OpenSource projects as a great way to show that your ready and able to be successful in a field where team work is now 80% of the game.
My answer to my friend is below:
50% of all serious (those worth at least $3 million) IT projects still fail. Something that has not seriously changed since the 60's when Brooks wrote the seminal text on the subject (The Mythical Man Month). These projects are not failing due to a lack of in depth expertise or paper certifications, they fail due to basic issues involving interpersonal communications and a mis-alignment of rewards.
In my experience projects get into trouble when the staff is not fully versed in identifying complexity (a basic problem that the engineering profession addresses directly). In conjunction with a failure to translate that complexity into an appropriate risk assessment (usually the result of poor team communications and/or inexperience) which is where a well versed technical manager comes to play. Followed by an unacceptable delivery which is often times the result of a counter productive award system.
Having a PMP says that you are well versed in the lexicon of Project Management and communicating with other PM's. It does little in helping you effectively communicate with end users, line of business staff, or management. The same can be said for Oracle certified DBA's and MS certified software developers.
Andy,
According to the ROMNET website:
"RomNet's creative staff will develop a web site that correctly positions your company, including its products or services, in a compelling manner. "
You need to get these creative staff to write you a better CV so you can get a better job.
the Asshole of the Year award goes to...AC!
You might want to consider getting a degree from Northeastern (as I'm doing now). The co-op program there is supposed to be great (I just started in the Masters program, so I haven't had a chance to verify this myself). I know a lot of people who went there for undergrad and got their fulltime jobs with companies they co-oped with. As far as costs, you can pretty much borrow everything. Yeah, that's a risk (what happens if you never see the increase in wage to pay off the debt), but IMHO it's a risk worth taking.
This answer is going to cost me an arm and a leg in karma, but what the heck. That's what it's for, right?
Show some employer loyalty.
I just did a hire about 4 months ago. We chewed through resumes for about 6 months before we found someone that we felt would fit. Something that we noticed and ended up using as a filter rule was whether or not a person would stick with a job for more than 6 months. Generally as a rule of thumb, you really want to stick out a job, unless its absolutely hellacious, for about three years. I'd really recommend five, to be honest. That way you're not viewed as someone contaminated with the so-called 'Dotcom Disease.'
We really wanted someone that once we've invested time, money, and training in to make a contribution to our projects for more than the time an intern would. Most !Dotcoms are similar in their opinions.
Actually, upon considering it, what this really ought to be relabeled as rather than 'employer loyalty' as 'resume care and feeding'. Your career will live and die by it. Take care of it and it will take care of you. Taking lots of short gigs to try to climb quickly scares off a lot of hiring folk.
I could go on ponticating, but I am sure that you're sick of it already. ;)
Do you know why the road less traveled by is littered with the bones of the unwary?
If you have hard technical skills alone, then there's nothing you can do that an offshore worker can't do cheaper. But if you can leverage some soft skills you're much better off. Especially in small businesses, the owners don't want an aloof wizard -- they want a techie who is accessible and helpful, and who doesn't nake their head hurt. In a big company, you're much more versatile if you can deal with non-techies (like, say, project managers). And if you have that knack of "natural leadership" -- you're SUPER useful because you can be a team lead and get more bang for the buck from other employees. Lacking anything else, if the hiring manager just likes you, that will often be more decisive than your skill set.
Considering that it's not unusual to spend more time with your coworkers than your spouse, this isn't too weird. So... get out and meet people! Try to get good at social interaction. Maybe do a little public (small group) speaking -- that does WONDERS for your confidence and resistance to social anxiety. Pick a friend with really strong presence and charisma, and watch how he/she works -- and how people react. There's a lot to be said (and that has been said) for who you know, but it's more important to manager how they know you. Just having lots of acquaintances is not really helpful, but if you have lots of folks who have you standing out in their mind, you're really networking. Plus, you can make some new friends.
It's not being fake, by the way, to find out how to be liked. If you don't compromise your values or misrepresent yourself, then you're not breaking any sacred trust to behave in an appropriate way. In other words, you might have a totally different demeanor at the comic shop, than you would at a professional discussion group. There's just different types of acceptable behavior at each -- so they way you use your charisma on an upper management type you meet at a book club would be different than how you'd approach a techie-manager you run into at the local computer game store.
Look for companies which have strong relationships with big IT outsourcing firms. Their IT departments are full of novices a lot of the time. Since these large corporations usually promote from within, you won't really have much luck getting an IT job off the street. If you're willing to do some remedial work for about a year, though, your chances of hitting it big are pretty damn good. Internal job postings at huge corporations are quite plentiful these days due to all of the layoffs to cut costs in the past few years. The mostly incompetant IT departments at these types of corporations will snatch up a person with solid knowledge/experience in a heartbeat.
I've grown up in a small town (population: 2000), escaped to the city for a few years, but have found myself right back here just for the money/experience.
In Toronto I was stuck in the same rut you are. But back here in my home-town, I've been employed by the local Pulp/Paper mill who, in the past 3 years, has built itself a pretty nice network. I am one of two IT persons, have had the opportunity to learn many things (complex networking, fibre termination, PBX admin, any MS server/service you could shake a stick at, practical DR, security, patch management, version control, etc... experience.
Moreless, we're free to do what we want, so long as we can justify it. Currently, with the introduction of digital cell service (yes... we're just getting digital now, that's the price you pay for small town life) I've been given the freedom to build a network monitoring app that will notify the on-call IT person of any network issues (similar to 'Angel')
At $50,000/year CDN, and only paying $450/month in rent (utils included), I think things are working out pretty well here.
Anyhow, might be something to consider if you don't mind living in the middle of nowhere and possibly working as part of the manufacturing industry.
Economy's not going too well, find yourself stuck in a bit of a rut jobwise and would like to move up and out? Go to college and get yourself that degree. Seriously.
A college degree may not necessarily be your passport to riches beyond your wildest dreams but, at the very worst, you could end up exactly where you left off. However, take the time you spend in college to learn a lot of things that you never had the time to learn in 'real life', meet a lot of people, and chances are you'll grow to be a better person (I know college sure taught me a lot of useful life skills).
You're still young, you can still afford to take risks. Do it now so you won't have to regret later.
Been in the field over fifteen years. 36 YO, no degree, earning +80K/yr as a Sr. Admin for a nearby uni. No, I'm not naming names, and yes - I *am* worth the $$$
that's because of the outsourcing and work visas being issued. I am also from Boston, at the MIT flea market I heard of a guy who got laid off and they hired some guy on a year work visa from india to fill his job (This is HP).
time for a new labor movment, keep jobs here, keep money here (in Boston...all of you in India can fight globalization keeping WalMart and Microsoft out if you want, I have no problem with that)
I get sick of people talking crap about poor economy. Just because the .com bubble burst, doesn't mean you have a poor economy all of a sudden. The more people believe the economy is bad, the worse it becomes.
If you want a bad economy, go look elsewhere. There are plenty of countries in which people can't get proper food and education and the government CAN'T more than won't help them.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
If the 1998-2000 tech boom and bust taught us anything where you're either a driver or a passenger it's that we need drivers. Translation: new business models that make money in the short and long haul. "Nickel and Dimed" author Barbara Ehrenreich recently spoke at my school, saying: "You can't blame the poor economy on character defects alone. There's not enough money." In short, let's help the financial representation incorporate some good biz models (capitalism + sustainability + socialism = something short of outright greed) that bring in more money for everyone, not just CEOs, management and sys admins on a lofty perch.
... all that other advice:
/. ...)
Write Code.
Treat it as the #1 thing you do.
If you're not writing code, or computing some process, or having something run somewhere that does something, then move out of the way. A whole lotta code is still left to be written, computers still have a looooong way to go, there is an infinities worth of things to do with any single one of them, great and small alike.
So, like, write code.
(... what i should be doing instead of boing-nut'ing around on
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
So says an MCSE, CCNA, CCDA, A+, N+, Network+, WCSP, CCSA, and probably some others that I don't remember but are on my resume. Oh, and I haven't been without a tech job since just out of college in '98 . . .
I have none of that (well, I used to have the CNA, but that was back in '93). I have been employed every month since '90, making embarrassingly large sums of money (which I still manage to spend and remain broke-- go figure).
Everone has a story. Some are successful because of the number of acronyms on a resume; others (like me) are successful because... well, I don't know why I'm successful. I've been a damned hard worker, I'm good at what I do (programming, DBA, sysadmin stuff like email and web, and networking), but really there's nothing fantastic.
I think a lot of it has to do with you. Yeah, getting your foot in the door can be difficult. Me, I started my professional career as a student worker, first fixing media equipment (TVs, VCRs, microfiche readers, etc), then by running the library's LAN. I never got a degree; real work interfered, as I was hired directly from student work into the LAN position.
But, if you haven't been to school, go. Work as a student, make contacts in the area, build a reputation. Me, I'm one of those jack-of-all-trades that other people have said to avoid becoming. It's served me well: I can do anything at all.
But each person has a story. They are all different. Any advice we can give you worked for us; it might not work for you.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
First of all, depth of skill will come more from a large company than a small one. If you wish depth of skill, get your foot in the door someplace big.
If you want to learn something in everything, go with a smaller company. You'll have to deal with almost everything. During the last year at a small company, I've had to learn VB, Java, ASP, Magic, Crystal Reports, SQL Server 2000, Windows Server 2000/2003, LDAP and Active Directory, Red Hat, as well as plenty of hardware and software troubleshooting methods. The only previous experience I have is a CIS degree.
If you want to program or manage a network, this would be a great way to go. Go for the 4-year degree, pick up some systems analysis, some database work, and write a few small programs to build a code portfolio.
If you want to manage the department, go with the MIS degree and maybe an MBA (so you can deal with management types). Learn about systems analysis and especially design. Keep your programming skills up while waiting for that Big Promotion. Once you're sufficiently seasoned, go with a larger company, and pay your dues there for a year or two. Pick up some programming skills in your spare time, and try to get into a project leadership position. A successful project or two will go a long way toward the critical promotion.
The real problem with IT right is the dot.com boom.
During that horrid, ill-planned and even worse-executed expansion, every dog and his brother claimed to be IT, got promoted to an IT position and got paid obscene bucks to be an IT person, no matter how competent or knowledgable.
When the bubble burst everyone freshly out of work started applying for the same limited number of jobs. It created another bursting bubble that had nothing to do with dot.com except that dot.com created a huge demand for those resources, then went away.
This too shall pass. Companies simply cannot survive anymore without IT. The current glut in the market is chasing people away from IT as a career right now, which virtually guarantees a scarcity later on. On top of that, the current press about outsourcing IT makes it even less likely that anyone will consider IT as a career even when jobs start opening up again. Foolish! There are still things that need to be touched and handled and configured on-site to do a proper job in IT!
Continue working on your skill-set, hang tough at $13 per hour (that still beats McD's) and wait this one out. It's coming Real Soon Now whether you believe it or not!
Employers want someone who has more than 10 years experience with something they plan on funding for maybe one year and then laying you off. End of story. Nevermind the fact that some of the stuff hasn't EXISTED for 10 years, but try telling some suit that. Jagoffs!
"Working in IT sucks" I totally agree. Get out before you get in.. plumbers make mad loot. Probably handle less shit too.
This economy is seeing the strongest growth in nearly two decades, and most of the numbers are the same as when Bush took office (by which time the economy was already spiralling downward - the dot-com bust is like what Black Thursday was to the Great Depression). The bottom line for this kid - and most people in the IT industry - is that employers are getting wise to where their IT dollars are going, and they're expecting more for their money than some hack.
Well, you could move to India with all your skills and make $10K a year. Me, I currently work for AT&T as a support tech for voice messaging platforms in the local services division. It's a telecom/computer type of job, pays fairly well. But with the telecom and IT fields as bad as they are, I've enrolled in nursing school starting this fall. In two years' time, I'll have another associate's degree, but this one will guarantee me $23-$30 an hour, base pay, in a field guaranteed to have no shortage of jobs for the next 10-15 years, and a highly portable skill at that.
way too many people add technologies to their resume, when what we employers look for is some knowledge about our industry.
do you know what makes media companies different from grocery stores, or pharmaceutical companies? try to find an industry you like, then learn about it and maybe do some volunteer work, interning or something like that. it will get you much farther than another cert.
...and start worrying about who you know.
If someone knows you, respects you, and happens to come into a position to offer a job, it almost doesn't matter what your skills set is. On the other hand, if someone who is offering a job doesn't know you, you almost certainly don't have what they are looking for.
What are you doing outside of work? If you're not spending time getting to know your local colleagues (via users groups, seminars, book groups, etc. etc.), you'll have to rely on lucking into your next job...and luck is pretty hard to come by these days.
Four fifths of all our troubles in this life would disappear if we would just sit down and keep still. -C. Coolidge
Sometimes you just have to take the sorry job until you can prove to other employers that you're worth hiring at decent pay cause a) you'll stick around and b) you have a skill set and experience.
If you can't live off $13/hr, get a second job. I've said this before, if you want to get ahead, one job won't do it. I know guys from my time on active duty with the marine corps (which so far is limited) that were E-5s and E-6s who'd go into work for 12 hours 5 days a week, then work a 4 hr shift else where 4 of those days and an 8 hour shift on the weekend! And these guys didn't find it below them to work that part-time job at McDonalds or delivering pizza. I more than once ordered a pizza only to have one of my NCOs deliver it to me. Why were they doing this? Becuase they decided their pay wouldn't cut it and they wanted to get ahead. They were investing all of this extra money. Their military pay more than paid for their homes et cetera and they still saved some of it!
Derek Greene
bill gates doesn't have on either.
I've got 7 years commercial programming experiance and about another 11 non-comercial.
I'm currently earning about $95,000 and have never failed a job interview.
Even if your in a low paid job stick at it, staying with a company for several years goes down well on a C.V. and if you get a better job they'll be more willing to give you training.
If your in a programming job don't bother getting programming certification, unless it's free, it's not really worth shit compaired to experiance. Try to diversify e.g. if you want to get into HCI work then study scicology and work as a programmer. Interests other than computers and porn are very important.
Most of the companies I've worked for have reasonable training budgets, and they will train you in any area you have short falls in, progamming work is ofen dogs body work, they want good managers and designers, and they'll help train you up. (I wish I'd taken the english course now!)
Try your best, keep focused and remember a couple of years isn't really a huge amount of time.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
One thing IT tends to lack in many companies is a career ladder. Start by looking at your boss. If your only boss is the company VP or president, there is no up. If your boss is Senior Lead IT Supervisor, and his boss is the VP or president, the only way up is into his position if it is ever vacated - and that winds up a dead end as well.
You've mentioned a number of possible ways to train or get certified, but it doesn't sound like you have any real vision as to where you are trying to go. Earning more money or having a better job title are not the goals you need to move up a career ladder successfully.
I'd recommend starting by looking both within your company and without at those whose jobs you would like to have (or work up to). What are their qualifications? What do they need to know to do their job? Where did they start out? These things are best larned by actually talking to these people (here's where networking comes in).
I was taking one day at a time, but then several days got together and ambushed me. (from a Rhymes with Orange comic)
....and how you present it. GET SALES TRAINING. Can I repeat that? I did it in caps to be quite clear. All the tech skills in the world won't get you anywhere if you don't know how to market them. Do spend time brushing up on tech skills, but at the same time spend some quality time learning how to sell. Once you've done that, no HR manager can say, "no." (Or at least if they do, you know how to ignore them.)
The Kai's Semi-Updated Website Thingy
Not neccesarily meaning to learn more, but go for a position at a public school district or university. If public schools on the East coast are anything like those on the West, they are in dire need of competent tech staff. The pay isn't what you would be getting "in the industry" but there seem to be more jobs out there and there is arguably less pressure and stress as well. My situation is atypical, but I started in a public school district as a tech support monkey for a small district with 500 computers a little over 3 years ago, and now I am the "technology supervisor" at a medium-sized district with a 1000 machine network. My pay has gone up 300% and I have 5 tech minions and an "administrative assistant". Is it my dream job? No. Does it let me live quite comfortably doing work I like in a poor IT economy and rack up a bunch of high quality experience? Yes. Does it beat managing a video game store in a mall like I was before? You better friggin' believe it does...
I'd suggest working as a contractor in addition to continued study and skill improvement.
The adavantages to this strategy are : 1. By working a lot of different short term jobs, you make contacts with lots of potential employers. Even if they aren't offering a job, they may be a valuable reference for you in the future.
2. Doing short term contract work builds up a wide body of experience fiarly quicky, and without the stigma of 'having too many jobs' on your resume.
3. It gives you a chance to test out diferent fields in IT so you can figure out what you're best suited for.
4. As you do more jobs and get more positive references and increase your skills, you'll be able to request and get more money per contract.
The key to making this work is making contacts with the project managers and the IT leaders that you work for on your contracts. Having them as a positive reference on your resume or as a contact in your rolodex is far more valuable (in my estimation) than any cert will be. A certification is really only valuable for a finite period of time (until the technology becomes obsolite - which is pretty quick in this industry). A good contact, hopefully, will last you your entire career.
When I moved out to Salt Lake City, I had a terrible time finding work. The local economy was terrible (Novell and Caldera had just laid of tons of people, hoardes of techies were flooding back into the state, coming home from Silicon Valley, and not many jobs were available). Add to that the fact that I'm not of the locally predominant religion, nor did I have any job on my resume that had an address in Utah, and I was pretty well on the outside. I worked through agencies (and yes, there are both valuable and worthless headhunters out there), and worked a number of short jobs until I earned a good rep with both the placement agencies and many local companies. Now headhunters and old bosses regularly call me, looking to get me to work.
When I got here, I had to radically change the way I went about finding a job. I had to learn to network better and where to look for jobs. Markets change, and the doors which lead to opportunity change constantly. You have to keep up with this or else you'll end up getting shut out.
Need a simple, easy to use data tier generator? http://www.gryphinsoftware.com/
A working knowledge of the local language where much of the outsourcing is going couldn't hurt. Yes, I know most of India's IT shops speak english as their primary language, but I suspect farmers in southern california are at an advantage if they speak Spanish too. Knowledge of whatever is spoken in Bejing or Bangalore is valuable in corporate IT today.
And the parent article wrote. "An RHCE is worth more than a Linux+ because its a damn site harder."
If the original question was "moving up the ladder". More detail-oriented certs may give you a stronger base at the bottom of the ladder; but to move up, you need management skills, not "how to read the manual of another router" classes.
I think most managers up the ladder are generalists, not specialists.
You won't make more money compared to what you're making now, but you'll make more than your neighbors in India.
I run my own business so my resumé has been irrelevant for the last 5-6 years, but I'm quite confident that the following are important:
Networking is the key. Even if it's done online, hook up with the right people and you'll get work. This goes for job hunters, freelancers, you name it.
Concentrate on a few key skills. I get sent resumés all the time claiming that people are pros with about 10 different skills, and I don't believe it. Even if you *are* a wonderkid with experience all over the place, tailor your CV to each job and focus your pitch. It's about personal branding.
Be reliable. One of my clients keeps turning to me and paying me my full rates (rather than what I charge to get a contractor to do data entry) because, as he says "if I pay you, I know it's just going to get done properly. I can't trust x", where x is an unreliable contractor of his own. If you get a reputation for *just getting stuff done properly* with minimal fuss, word will spread.
'Thats they exact same thing a banana wrench monkey.'
while my degree has been of great assitance, more than anything my experience has been the real bargain maker. Questions about degree's last less then a minute in your average interview, do you have one or not is all they want to know most of the time.
But job and real world experience are the goods employers will really ask you about, this is where youve got to be able to say youve done good work in the trenches. Working for smaller companies in IT/IS will give you great experience, even if its for less pay.
lots of guys take grunt jobs with "impresive" big companies and end up with resumes that are less impresive... can you say you designed, implemented and supported a new and growing network? or did you just keep the system running? Have you designed, and built applications or key components of them? or did you just fill in code?
Youll tend to get stronger experience working in less attractive jobs but demanding jobs.
While many people will say a jack of all trades resume is bad, the skillset can be quite usefull in creating a new company or helping one start, which may be a better option for you. The main problem with just "learning" skills without truly using them in a real world application is that your unproven.
Stay up with your education, and use what you learn to make real programs, shareware and so on, create a full-fledged (ecommerce,security,flash,CMS, etc...) web site for a small company who may not be able to pay you.
If you take the risk, and the lower paying jobs (or even charity cases!!).. youll find your work oportunities increasing quite quickly.
P.S. ..... go to night school... get the degree... its definitly worth it...
--Idiots, Every single one of YOU, A flaming mass of conglomerated morons, hey wait a second, isnt that how RAID works?
It's possible you aren't as employable as you think. Based on your posting, I'd have to say your biggest problem is you not the economy or the employers. Not having a degree is a big problem. Your recent employment history is a big problem. Your complete lack of initiative over the same period is a big problem. I'm sorry, but it sounds like you are where you are for a reason. Consider your career during the dot com craze to be the exception, and your current earning potential the rule. Wish I had better news for you, but not every guy who posts on Slashdot whining about the economy and not being able to earn $60/hour doing HTML or Javascript has a legitimate gripe. Actually, I'd bet none of them do. Somebody has to do the job you're doing, why not you?
with the corollary that
shit floats to the top...
You'd most likely run into a lot of problems
:)
:)
:) :)
:)
with people's attitudes doing something like that
BUT, you would definitely get laid once a day that
way if you put in the requisite time calling.
Having worked in market research industry, I'd say your chances (depending
on personality and phone skills) are about 1 in 1000 calls saying yes.
Of course, you have to bear in mind the percentage of women and the mental state it would take to say
yes to a total stranger on the phone. Beggars can't be choosers, they say.
On the other hand, if you go to a club and just start walking up to women and ask if they'd like
to go home and sleep with you, you can get laid every night almost without question. You just
have to ask the right NUMBER of women.
Really though, if you want something in life you really need to speak up for yourself.
Unless you ask some girl in an offensive way with their boyfriend breathing down their neck, you'll most likely not get punched out
Worst case scenario is they say no. whooopee, big deal, MOVE ON lol, the faster you move through the
number of women the more of the evening you'll have to enjoy her
Yes, it IS that easy.
Hell, if I was female and even partially cute I'd probably be writing this from my private plane at the moment ROTFL
In the new IT paradigm with offshore outsourcing, there are new challenges involeved with climbing the management ladder. Major publicly-held, financial banking firms have a strategy which is to move current American employees out from their day-to-day , trivial production support (as they call it) positions into a more managerial position. However, techies-being-techies, kick and scream at this. But this is the game. Accept the duties of upper management, start looking at PMI, CMM, and Six Sigma green belt certifications. IT-oriented certs are great, a college degree is even better (GE used to cull based on educational levels - those with only HS, first to be let go, AS - next, ...).
However, a PMI and/or Six Sigma certification will allow you to "crossover" into other management positions, read non-IT related. If you are Six Sigma Black Belt, and were working in IT, you can go to a pharmaceutical company, and move directly into management based on the relevancy of the certification alone.
Many firms now base management promotion directly on PMI, CMM and/or Six Sigma certification. Look into these as well as RHCE, Solaris, HP-UX, etc.
Also, on the tech side, looking into LDAP and storage certs too. Big money is being spent on "single sign-on" and storage.
I can make more working at a grocery store right now than I can in any entry-level IT job in my area, and the grocery store job is full-time and includes health insurance that most of the prospective jobs lacked. And what's funny is, in the last couple years, all the "entry-level" jobs went from wanting an Associate's and no experience to a Bachelor's or Master's with at least two years experience....
...So perhaps it's time to ask yourself if there's anything else off-the-wall you wanted to try doing for a living, because if you're going to work for peanuts you might as well certainly have fun at it. I follow up internal leads when I get them, but I don't bother with the want ads any more.
And I have already decided, for my own peace of mind: I won't take any IT job at grocery-store pay.
" and to be with " structured friends""
You're saying you're gay?
I got involved in Software development at the very end of the dot com fiasco, and found it difficult for a while to get developlement jobs, once things went bust, until I learned a little secret. Lie, Cheat and Steal. Your resume says everything about you and as long as someone will back it up you're golden. Now I'm not saying make your self out to be more skilled than you are, but some ellaboration, and out right lies, can certainly help you get in the door as long as you have the skills to back it up. Being a self taught Developer (a.k.a No Degree) I have to over come many if not all the hurdels there are when it comes to getting work. Be prepaired to change, look for the next job before this one runs out, and use job hopping as your promotional path (my way, not necesarily the best way). Just be ready to back up your statements, and remember that you are not the only one out there and that you are competing with people such as myself who will say things that aren't true.
But it isn't everything. I know of folks who have more degree's than I (in the field) but couldn't program themselves out of a paper bag. My advise. Get your piece of paper, learn more than you could ever think of learning, and do whatever you can to make yourself valuable to the company. Then ask for a raise when you have proven yourself.
Do you have skills? Market them!!!
Find out what you're gooooood at and DO IT!!!
Otherwise do whatever you can to pay the bills
while you network to find work you really enjoy.
But I'm not long out of college at all, and I'm in a position now of sifting through resumes. When I look at them for IT positions, my first thoughts are:
* Do they have a degree? If not, and unless they have 7+ years experience, trash.
* Is all their experience in an LLC? I'm not dumb, I know lots of people try to strike it out on their own for a while, fail, and then count it as experience. While it is, I value it less than experience in a larger company where they answered to more than themselves or their best friend.
* Do they move around a lot? If they can't spend more than 2 years somewhere, why should I waste my time training someone who's just looking to constantly jump ship?
Finally, certs look nice, but right now everyone seems to have either certs or masters degrees, and honestly neither really make a resume stand out to me. I want to see real involvement in the SLDC, following at least several major projects that take a year to fully complete from beginning to end. It sucks, and I was in the same boat as you, but with so much supply and so little demand, everyone's incredibly picky right now.
Be very, very careful what you put into that head, because you will never, ever get it out. -Thomas Cardinal Wolsey
Not too long back I didn't have the benefit of being employed and looking for new work. I was laid off and getting as many interviews as you are: none. However, prior to being laid off I had been *stuck* as a sysadmin and was looking to make the Mgr jump, but without much luck. And no, learning more, gettig certs, and even getting my BA didn't help. So after being laid off for far too long, I started consulting. About 9 months later I took a full time job, again as a sysadmin, but kept consulting for about 20 or 30 hours a week for two reasons: 1 was to catch up on the debt I incurred while being without work and 2, 'cause I was afraid of getting laid off again. Then, about another year later, one of the consulting gigs made me an offer I couldn't refuse and brought me on as their Director of Technology. In my opinion consulting/moonlighting, etc let's you show people more than your resume ever will. And when that company you consult to grows or someone leaves... or someone who works there knows of an opportunity at theirs friends company, you end with a phone call. :)
There are plenty of "actual" schools that will claim to have a "strong" background. The word to look for is accredited.
A particular program (say, Bachelor's in CS) will receive accreditation only after being reviewed by national standards bodies (ABET, in the CS case, I believe). It's the seal of approval for that degree, basically. Non-accredited programs from good schools might be okay, or they might suck, and you'll note that the diploma-by-mail spam is careful to point out that it's a non-accredited "school", which gives you an idea of what non-accredited degrees are worth.
Claiming acreditation without having it is fraud at the federal level, so if you get diploma spam selling you an acredited degree, feel free to take them to the cleaners. :-)
BTW, America calls them universities too. Multiple colleges accrete into a university.
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
get out, it's over.
IT is over.
Well, Akamai seems to be hiring:
Check out Craig's list and their website
Try there?
Your best bet may be to find a med size company 1000-10000 employees with an IT shop of at least 100 and start in the help desk or ops etc. Get to know management and show them by taking on larger responsibilities and stay positive and focused. Apply for all upward positions that are more technical even if not a perfect fit. Get a lot of practice interviewing at other companies, and of course keep up on your skiils. That and having a can do 'tude not a pay me first then I show you, you should be in.
I must repeat what everyone else is saying about degrees. They show more than just an aptitude to code, which is what certs show, they show an ability to deal with large organizations.
However, for those that already have a degree and are otherwise in the same boat, try what I did. I was out of work for 8 months. I started with the temp agencies as soon as I lost my job and there were some responses, but no offers. Then I figured I should be doing something better with my time, so I started volunteering my computer services to my daughter's school. During a fire alarm I started talking to an admin who's brother does headhunting and next thing I know I am back at work.
Further because I had a former co-worker that worked for the same VERY LARGE client, who was able to give me a great recommendation, I bested out all the other candidates. (second lesson, NEVER burn bridges)
That's my story and I am sticking to it.
Never make yourself indispensible!
If you cannot be dispensed with; you cannot be promoted!
Here's a tip.
Write a paper for a trade or online magazine. It doesn't have to be a doctoral thesis. Just a simple "Hello World" article will suffice. Be sure it's a topic that hasn't been beaten to death and be sure it's a topic you know cold. "How to" articles are always in demand at places like IBM's DeveloperWorks or JavaWorld.
You will be surprised how impressive even the simplest article will make your resume look. Being an author makes you an expert in the eyes of your typical HR resume reader, especially when compared to your typical "C/C++/Java/Perl/VB/PHP/......" resume.
Good luck!
JoAnn
I've seen a few posts saying you should leave the city you're in, but I'll take it a step further and say you should consider options in other parts of the world.
I'm currently finishing my degree in Computer Engineering, and my program consists of six 4-month work terms as well... The ones I did in Canada were fine, but I did a couple in Denmark, and they were practically begging me not to leave. I don't know if this is a large tendency or not, but if you have any contacts outside the US you could consider it.
Working on open source projects will not only help you gain experience, but will also prove advantageous in other areas:
1. Your work is open to the public, and your future employer can see it and get the right(?) impression of it. Heck - your future boss may even know of it and be impressed by the fact that you have contributed.
2. Working on open source (without getting paid for it) says something about your character - at the very least it shows that you enjoy your work, and that you're willing to contribute to society. That's gotta count for something...
2001 laid off, 2002 unemployment ran out, got a job as a door man at a karaoke bar. 2003 said screw it and started my own consulting gig with my partner.
Against the advice of a lot of people, we did it legit, we got our business licenses in order, we incorporated, got company bank accounts, the works.
Now we may not be working 40hrs a week at $13@hr. We maybe get 8 hours here @ 75, another 4 or 2 here and there, but having the freedom too do what you want with your company (and it's credit) is more fun than slaving away for the full 40 hours a week.
Now after a full year and a first tax return, we've officially made it past that first year of business that most businesses fail in. (most businesses don't survive past 6 months, with a partnership they die even faster) I guess i'm lucky, my partner and I have been friends since we were kids, and we really compliment each other out on the job site.
Now going back to freedom to do what you want with your company, remember how I said "2002 got a job as a doorman at a karaoke bar"? Well, now we have that very same bar hooked up with DSL and we're streaming video of people singing karaoke every tuesday-sunday night
Sure its silly, but its fun, and I never would have been able to do a project like this working for somebody else. My advice, print some cards, get some business licenses, and promote yourself.
I've been reading the discussion about how you need a degree. I suspect that this is probably true. I have a degree from a University of California school. My official job title is "computer scientist" (as a friend of mine says, "yeah, I'm a big fucking scientist").
I did not particularly enjoy my college experience. One of the things that got me through it was an understanding that this bias towards degrees exists. But it's not clear to me that this bias has any relation to reality. Especially in computer science.
When I was in school, Pascal was the lingua franca of computer science. C was just starting to make its appearance. UNIX run on a PDP-11. Relational databases existed only in research. Computer science was so small that you could learn most of what there was to know.
Computer science is so huge that one can hope to master only a few areas in a lifetime. Of the topics I learned in school, only the math and algorithms and data structures are unchanged. The vast majority of what I know, I learned after graduation. The difference between the self-taught and those who have degrees is not very great ten years after graduation. After all, in the end, we're all self-taught.
I suspect that most hiring managers know this on some level. But the possession of a degree serves as a kind of barrier: those with a degree make it to the next stage. Like some kind of career "bootcamp" or hazing process.
So yes, a degree is useful. If this makes no sense just remember, the world is illogical and not of our making. In general you have to accept the world as it is, even when it does not make sense.
For example, why does a Harvard degree carry more weight with some employers than, say, a degree from the California State Polytechnical College at San Louis Obispo (Cal Poly) which many would argue has a better engineering department than Harvard?
I don't mean programming or research or product development. IT as support is finished, it's either outsourced, or the product itself is such an easy thing to use, you don't need a monkey to tell you "Ok, now go to File, then click Open, and that will open a file for you?"
Ahahaaha! Working phone support for Comcast has taught me that there will ALWAYS be people that need their hand held for the simplest tasks. Not even to mention basic education about the product and how it works. Anytime these people's computers break because the son installed Kazaa, I have to take a half hour to explain to someone the difference between their computer and the internet.
I hate my job, and also need a new one.
||:|::
Yeah you fucking "certified" fucks.
Get a real degree you god damn gheys.
Why do you expect to move up when your only experience is tech support and out of college 2 years? You get hired based on real skills, learned in the real world, from real businesses. Knowledge is useless without application. If you're looking for a programming job, then look for a programming job, and take what you can get. Then you'll build experience that you can point to and people will have a reason to hire you.
Its like thinking you'll become a video game programmer by being a QA tester.
Certs and degrees get you in the door for an interview, but they dont get you jobs.
.
My suggestion is to "know your shit". Chances are you are going to have several guys give you a technical interview, and that's where you really need to excel.
I myself do not have a degree. I have a few meaningless certs, but they are only for show. I have interviewed several people for 45K jobs that have MBA's and every cert you can think of. They were terrible in the technical interview. There is nothing more detrimental then having certifications, and then bombing the technical interview in your area of certification.
So my long winded advise is to pursue knowledge, and If cert comes with it...great, but dont go into it with the cert as your main objective. Go into it trying to learn everything you can.
Prepare examples of your work. Qualifications and experience are of course important but if an employer is able to access examples of your work somehow then you manage to cross from the theoretical to the practical.
Plus, you'd be amazed at the number of people who just like something pretty to play with...
Free iPods - now in the UK!
I know I'm probably coming in too late for this to be noticed, but I'll give it a go anyway. My suggestion is to upgrade your non-technical skills. People think of software as an antisocial field but, as practiced in the real world, it can be intensely social. I'm not saying you should go out and get an MBA, or that you should ever give up coding, or anything like that. However, if you really want your resume to stand out from all those other people who also have the requisite technical skills, there's no better way than to show some capacity for initiative, leadership, mentoring, etc. Open source can be great for that - not just writing something on your own, but actually coordinating a group of other people on a project. Just participating in such a project in a proactive and constructive way would set you apart from the hundreds of other technically skilled but socially stunted folks that every employer can find by the hundred.
That's just my two cents, of course, but it's the two cents of a guy who - unlike 90% of those commenting - actually has a decisive role in a lot of hiring decisions.
Slashdot - News for Herds. Stuff that Splatters.
With the economy still on the rocks and a bear chasing your ass, you've only got two choices:
1. Specialize in a specific element. Whatever that element may be, learn as much as you can about it. Certification is great and all, but hey, getting one takes some money and time... which any other john doe can do. The best example i remember is C++ programmers. Programmers make plenty of money, usually, but if you look around at job listings, those that are looking for high/expert skills in c++ are always unfilled but pay top dollar. Why? Cause there ain't many people that can qualify for those jobs. I know I can't. Same goes with Java. At the university I work for, there was a position open for a java programmer. That listing was up for over half a year, in the end they didn't hire anyone because none of the applicants were qualified enough.
2. Diversify, and I do not mean more cs. Your skills are far more valuable if you can relate it to another field. For example, bioinformatics. I have a couple of friends in that field and they've got cs classes up the ass but what sets them apart is the knowledge of biology, specifically genetics. Personally, I write code most of the day, not as a programmer but as a statistical analyst. When you branch out, your job possibilities open up.
Thats my 2 cents...
Firstly, the degrees offered by many schools are in essance worthless. The very best IT people I know and have known are not certified nor do they have degrees in any IT. This does not mean that anybody uncertified is good at IT, but I dont believe that the degrees in CS or MIT would help. IT is not about what you know, because learning is easy, but about HOW you think. I have started an IT business in the southeast and I have had to let some people go, although they had all the certifications, but they couldn't do the work without someone holding their hand through the process. Second, Learn about business. Far too many IT people who are fantastic at hardware/software get screwed because they do not understand business and how it works. learn the game then play by the rules until you can afford to break them.
Military certifications are even easier (from an academic standpoint) than correspondence-schools. Anybody with a good short-term memory should be able to memorize enough garbage to ace a military certification test. And as anybody with a real military background can tell you, test scores are not in any way, shape, or form indicative of real technical ability.
The Web is like Usenet, but
the elephants are untrained.
A CS degree, being tough minded, hard work, and recognization of your knowledge is good. It is expected. Things are tough these days when a lot of the jobs are being sent to India, China, Russia, etc. so it helps to have a little leverage, ...like some naked pictures of your boss.
Buffering your resume with skills, though helpful, isn't going to move you up the ladder, just move you around at the same height you're currently at. Doesn't matter how many languages I claim experience in, I'd still be entry level. Especially with languages, most companies are only interested in you knowing a couple anyway, the couple they use. What's best is to have experience, and to be able to list major projects that you have been part of. This tends to shine the most on a resume. And to move you up the ladder, employers want to see that you've done a lot, and really shined through doing it.
A degree would probably help when it comes to "Moving up the Ladder". Companies are more likely to promote individuals into areas of more responsibility and management if they have a degree.
Also, a lot of it depends on your personality, and your non-technical skills. You're not going to reach a Senior position as a good programmer. You'll reach a senior position as a good programmer and good outgoing, innovative employee. If you prefer to sit in a room and be fed coding projects, you're not going to move up the ladder at all. You need to be a little outgoing, innovative, and think out of the box a bit.
It's the go-getters that tend to be promoted up the ladder. Though they tend to look at the most experienced go-getters first.
Getting your MCSE and learning VB is all you need! Microsoft will be here forever, so why not have skills that will too!
i dropped out of the university (physics) because of a job offer. i did well, but the company sucked, and i had two choices: a) go back to the university or b) go on and seek another job.
.sig!
i took the latter choice. the secret is: do not write "resumes" or "CVs" in the common way. i do not mean that you should write or do anything extraordinary, just do not stick to the pattern of a typical bid. act like a human. when writing some kinda cv, write down the things you did and achieved till now. when you write your letter of application, say what you think. if you think the job you wanna hav is the job (like an osdn job or whatever), again, act as a human. if it's that important to you, do not write letters or mails, go there and convince them.
i think that's the secret: to not stick to comman patterns. ok, and you should have some common sense at hand. --
hire me, i have a
beer as in "free beer"
Everyone knows that a degree is invaluable; in that get your foot in the door kind of way. In addition, certifications like the RHCE do carry some weight in certain sectors. However, from what I've seen these days, its more important to know the business side of the technology that you implement or maintain. If you know technology AND know how it applies to everyday business from an end user and management perspective; you will prove yourself to be invaluable. This way, you're less likely to end up outsourced or laid off. Work on understanding how data flows as it applies to business in your area. Be able to diagram, manipulate data for decision makers, and suggest how technology could improve business functions. If you focus on a few technologies and know the rest from a high level perspective, you'll be fine. Also work on project management, dressing and presenting yourself as a businessman, and making some good contacts. This will ensure that you can always find a good position.
I've been in the IT industry since 2000. I went to the CEI (Computer Education Institute, HORRIBLE btw) and got my MCSE for NT 4.0. Bottom line is if you have a cert with NO experience they won't take a 2nd look at your resume. Gotta have the experience to back it up. I spent the first 2 years of my career supporting Linksys products. After that I got a better (but still phone support) job doing level 2 support for SonicWALL firewalls. I was there for about a year and a half. I'm now finally working in a IT dept at a small business supporting all users and the network. Its a very competitive market so you have to have experience, certs/degree, and get a little lucky in the hiring process. Thats what I've experienced anyway. Hope this helps. T
There are plenty of jobs, but they are no longer in Boston, or the Bay Area. Those places are wastelands, where there are 50 coders for every job. Get on a few job boards, and look in places you normally wouldn't go; Tennessee, Lousiana, Nebraska, Carolina, Arkansas, New Mexico, Iowa, Idaho, Montana, etc. They all have medium to big cities, but no one pays attention. Move somewhere cheap, get a decent paying job, and live like a king. If you miss the pax humana of the big city, buy a plane ticket and go there for a weekend each month. You can afford it with your new disposable income. Good Luck!
"Curiosity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect."- Steven Wright
...basically jobs here fall under two categories:
So as a university graduate this summer, I want to move above my current $10/hr, part-time, low-challenge job. But I don't yet have the experience for the jobs in that first category.
Any other areas of the country that are like this? Any recent or so-to-be college grads like me out there?
I'm definitely willing to broaden my possibilities to outside of IT, despite the facts that I love computers and have over five years of solid experience. I think I can still say: at least $9/hr and no call centers, though. Right? I hope.
Interestingly enough, there were even MS and PhD's that applied for the position, though they tended to be from non-computer fields.
I've never meet a hiring manager that doesn't move former military guys to the very top of the resume pile
I'm a network admin, and one step below the guy who does the actual hiring at my job. The last three tech support positions that we filled with ex-military applicants, because we once felt the same way about them, all turned out to be duds, and all three were just alike in personality and professional demeanor. In the interview, they all seemed very competant, yet humble and eager to learn and play on the team, but once aboard, all three had one and only one goal in mind: to see how fast they could push their way to the top and see if they take over mine and my boss's jobs. Rules and procedures be damned... those were just a hindrance to their goals. We had a constant mess just cleaning up all the unauthorized, unlicensed software they kept installing all about the organization and fixing all the network shared filesystem ACLs that they'd open wide up to full access to everyone because they thought ACL management was too big a hassle. One of them would deliberately install more unlicensed software on the users machines after each time my boss busted him for doing it. They turned out to not be team players at all, except when they got together to conspire against our boss and undermine his authority. My boss is an ex-Marine, and he swore he'd never hire another ex-military tech again if that's the way Uncle Sam is making them these days. Our two best, most productive, sharpest, and easiest to keep-in-line techs hired since then are a couple of typical total geeks. One is a complete Microsoft fanatic, and the other is a totally rabid anti-MS Linux & BSD fanatic. Thet get along great at work, no sh!t.
The less you know the more money you'll make....
Learn that or live the rest of your life waiting for a dumbass employer to hire you and be his puppet.
Education through universities and college is the biggest scam of all times, just think about the money everyone makes around the education hype.
At the end there will always be a dumbass willing to do your job for half of what you make and bitch about that for the rest of his life.
Go and establish a hotdog stand or sell bootleg movies, there is a whole world of opportunities out there without the burden of a "corporate" life and TAX free.
The rat race is just for RATS!!!!.
...like Urdu or Mandarin. Better still, do an MBA - there's little future in development for Westerners, sadly.
I agree that a degree doesn't matter much with people who have experience. It is not necessarily even programming experience, but business experience that can make them valuable.
One of the best DBA's I've ever worked with is Keith Grey, who up until his late thirties or early fourties was predominantly a welder who'd built up a good business doing custom signs. Then he got exposed to computers and got "the bug."
He's learned the skills to use the tools (mostly Oracle), but always from a business-need perspective. You have no idea how much difference that makes in the success of a project and the buy-in from the users -- he can talk to them, and honestly believes their problems are more important than the technical issues.
I've worked with other examples of stellar non-degreed consultants, and more than my fair share of "Masters" and "Doctorate" grads who couldn't program to save their lives. (The worst added "#include <stdio.h>" before every I/O function call -- stunning for "18 months" of C programming and a masters degree.)
A university degree tells you the junior candidate was able to not only put up with a bunch of coursework they weren't interested in, but that they did the job well enough to pass. If you've ever tried to get a prima-donna programmer to write documentation, you know how important it is that staff be willing to do the parts of the job they despise.
I find that a degree with 3 years experience is usually comparable to 5-6 years experience without a degree. I consider most certification and vendor-provided exams to be useless when selecting staff. Anyone who needs a cert to be confident in their skills doesn't know their stuff well enough.
Granted, that attitude won't get you past the resume skillset filters in an HR department, but they aren't the ones who'll be making a hiring decision. Better you should partner with a reputable consulting agency than try to pad your resume with certs -- a good agency gets candidates through the HR filter based on the reputation of their own screening process.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
The people kind, not the computer kind. Your next job WILL come from someone who knows you, and knows someone who wants to hire someone. It won't come from a blind resume.
Secondly, no matter how much experience you have, you will ALWAYS face the 'experience required' hurdle. You will never have the number of years they require in all the things they require. Years of experience in related areas rarely counts for anything.
Shakespeare with 5 years' Wordperfect experience couldn't get a job as a poet in a Word shop, unless he knew someone.
... it's taken the better part of a decade to accomplish, but I think his blood pressure is finally about to pop any day now :-)
As someone who had done that which you say has been hard to do, I say become a jack of all trades. Small business is a great place to really shine right now. If you can be the sole IT person in a company with 25-125 people, you can really make a career for yourself. Obviously 1 person cannot do it all, but know enough about a complete enviorment to maintain it. As new software/hardware is brought into an enviorment, take ownership. Learn about it and become the goto guy in the office. DO everything you can to troubleshoot in house. KB searches, FAQs, Google groups. As we ever so slowly climb outif this slump, those who can do the most will go the farthest.
We receive a pile of resumes when recruiting for programming type jobs. Resumes lacking a college degree don't even make it into that pile, even when it's for a junior slot.
On my first pass through that pile, I'm looking for reasons to discard resumes. This approach is typical among folks faced with numerous resumes. Don't give the person reviewing resumes a good excuse to discard it.
I've met many degreed peoplel that didn't know squat and many without degrees that really knew their stuff. And conversely as well.
What that means to me is what the person has done and their potential for learning is more important than whether some school gave them a gold star or not. You can apply yourself and learn a great deal in or out of school.
Sure, you can't judge recent grads too well by this measure, but they have little experience anyways.
A degree is more valuable in computing now than it was 15 or 20 years ago, mainly because coursework has caught up. But even so, 4 years in school doesn't beat 6 to 8 years real world experience if the person is sharp.
I chose a different path in the late 90's, but I'm afraid I'll soon have a similar problem. In '98, I decided to attend college part-time in pursuit of a CS degree. As an Electronic Technician for the government, I knew it would be tough to move to a new career that would make giving up the seniority, befefits, etc. worth it. At the time, CS was all the rage, and I really wanted to make a move to software. After 6 years, I've maintained a 4.0 GPA at Penn State, and I only have 6 more classes to go. But, man, things have changed quite a bit since I started.
I've enjoyed the education I've received, but I hate the idea of not being able to find another job next year, which is when I'll also have to deal with the enormous debt I've accumulated. At least I have the option of staying where I'm at, but I probably would have done independent study if that was the plan all along. And the thing is, because my time is so limited (work, family, school), taking all of the classes has actually decreased my ability to learn some things about computers. There are many things I want to study on my own, but I just don't have the time. It seems like the only books I have time to read are school books.
Oh well - I'm too far along to change things now. Maybe the outlook will be different next year.
Researching towards a PhD is ... hard.
Most of the time spent on your undergraduate degree is spent learning how to learn, and learning some of the basic nomenclature and skills that will help you day to day while doing your PhD. You will always have to learn more stuff while doing your PhD, and there will probably always be stuff that you learnt, that you never use.
It would be entirely possible to start doing 'PhD Level Research' after one or two years of university, but you might not be doing high quality. Certainly, I think you will be a better PhD candidate if you do a range of courses as an undergraduate, to give you more tools, and also do some undergraduate research programmes, ie 1-2 semesters. This will help you see how research works, and what happens on a day to day basis. It will give you some practice in directing yourself, and start teaching you how to solve original problems.
It doesn't take a 4 year degree to be a researcher. But to be a good researcher, it helps to have spent 3-4 years in a strong academic environment.
M.
M.
It's called a "jobless recovery" - this kind of recession doesn't see new jobs created because things are now more automated. At least, there won't be any jobs created that you'd want to work. Care for a job in the growing field of fast-food service, anyone?
Good luck "moving up" with only a bachelor's degree in today's IT market. When entry-level positions are requiring bachelor's degree + several years of experience, and they get filled by people with masters degrees and half a decade of experience on top of that, you should be fortunate to be employed at all - many of us are not, myself included.
On the upside, there will be a slew of baby boomers retiring in the next couple of years (provided they're able to, considering they've probably driven themselves into debt throughout their lives, not enabling them to retire). There will also be much less people graduating with their bachelor's in IT due to the slump. Combined, that means there will likely be more positions opening up in general, providing a management shortage (provided the positions don't get antiquated with their last inhabitant), and a decreased amount of "fresh blood" looking for work.
I'd say chances are good that things will improve - at least marginally - within the decade.
I doubt that's too encouraging, though.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Why not work on a project to keep your skills and mind sharp, make networking/people connections, show employers you can work on a project, successfully, without constant supervision, and at least let your next employer know that you were pro-active not re-active and that your attitude wasn't of bumming around wondering when your next entitlement was comming from. (Feel free to define "entitlement" for yourself. It could be many things.)
I was shocked when I started my present job, where one 4 year degreed CS graduate told me that he would never work on an open source project because he would never want to lose control of the code he wrote. The shock was not that he wanted control of his code, but that he would use little else but open source programs and that he was not very forward looking to his next job (which he wanted in software developement - talk about losing of control of code) nor the recoginition of open source's growing part in software use, and recipricating back to that which he so freely uses.
While I am currently unable to contribute code to any open source project, I have contributed my translating abilities to one: BibleTime - Spanish translation. Once I get better at C and C++, I will absolutely be contributing to open source projects. Heck, maybe I can find a niche to fill and start my own open source project someday.
At least they'll help cut down the number of inefficient employees in your company with great justice.
I think that people have to examine the total cost of a 4 year degree. Figure that a IT worker probably gets 25k a year at the minimum for a person with no degree, at an entry level job. Each year at a private University costs about 40,000 a year with food, housing, books, tuition, and misc bullshit. The average stay at college is now 5 years for a Bachelors especially for long programs like engineering, cs, and business mostly due to increasing credit counts and more required academic courses (as opposed to easier electives) which increase the likelihood of having to repeat classes. That is 200k for a private college degree. Add to that 5 years of missing out on a shitty 25k a year job and its $325k. The question is whether a person is really going to make 325 thousand dollars more over their working life with a degree than without. In most industries the answer is probably hovering around the just barely mark these days because so many college grad's still end up working shit jobs unrelated to their major for less than 50k and often less than 35k.
I am a person who does a lot better in working environments than formal education environments. I hate school. I cannot stand it. I am a habitual underachiever. At work on the contrary I quickly become well liked and virtually indispensible. My current supervisor pretty much flat out told the guy who hired me that I was not going to work out for her at all when I interviewed. Within 3 days she went back to him and told him she "loved me." Now a few months later she wants me to go with her to her new job when her contract is up saying that she does not know how she can work without me.
This makes not going back to school and doing another 2 years of college bullshit, a lot more appealing.
I am a tech generalist but I mostly focus on pc config/repair and networking. I am working on my CCNP through cisco academy which is actually a great place to network with other people cause a lot of the other students and the instructors work for big companies and government agencies. At this point if I had to choose between having my degree and having my CCNP with a security clearance I would definitely choose the latter.
I think that working for a couple years and then perhaps finishing my degree in business is much more useful since I will already be employed and experienced and I can parlay my degree directly into a management slot.
I used to enjoy CS, but that's changed. I left school during the dot-com boom, and fortunately got experience when there was a demand. I got burned out working insane hours. I was young and could run on caffeine and hubris. I worked long hours for the sake of experience and got paid pretty well, so I can't complain. I've taken the core CS classes, but they won't transfer anywhere, and there's no way I could [or would want to] plunk down the money to finish a BS at my old school. Plus, I found I could easily earn a professional CS in a year from a grad school with a teaching|lab assistantship to pay my way. On the plus side, I enjoy theoretical CS and my math background [algebra, logic, lots of rigour] is pretty good. I've gone back to school and decided to finish a Math degree (with advance course work in Physics and Chemistry).
I've noticed when dealing with other fields that use computers extensively, they tend to frown on lazy|innovative ways of doing things. I understand they aren't usually prepared to whip some perl and parse data in creative ways. They'd rather do more menial grunt work because they understand the system better. Don't even think of coding in VBA to tweak their spreadsheet. Are there any other fields where a solid knowledge of programming|algorithm analysis is valuable? What are your experiences?
Here's a couple more questions for the Slashdot crowd:
How would you view a person with over 5 years coding/DBA experience with a BS in Math and minor in CS? Would some sample code help? What kind of project would look best?
How would you view the same person with a MCS (professional MS)?
What if the person has a master's in EE or Engineering Physics (i.e. quantum optics) instead?
What kind of work is available in related fields? Say for a biophyscist|physiologist with solid CS skills or professional statistician with solid CS skills?
What do you mean my sig is repetitive? What do you mean my sig is repetitive? What do you mean....
The social solution to this is obvious. IT workers working nowadays are not working 40 hour weeks, they're working 50 and 60 hour weeks. Three IT workers working 40 hour weeks are doing the same amount of work as two working 60 hour weeks. If people working now cut back on the hours working, there would be more jobs. While the bosses and their sycophants always portray this as an individual thing between a boss and a worker, it is anything but. The bosses and owners have done massive lobbying as an organized unit to try to change the law so that the few IT workers currently eligible for overtime now won't get it any more. Since the organized IT worker force to counteract the well-organized, well-funded IT company campaign to to do this is weak and small currently, this law will probably pass and you will be worse off.
The IT bosses and owners are all acting as basically one organized unit and using their pull as such in Washington DC and elsewhere. The sycophants here are telling you that the hours of free work beyond 40 hours that you do is an individual thing between you and your boss that is your individual responsibility to be in a contract, and a union or the government should not come in and put pressure to help you out there. They also tell you to increase your skills (although, as you've said, it's done nothing for you), or to "network" more than the next guy to find the few job slots that open up - perhaps you can grab it faster than the next guy if you're quick enough.
Of course the real answer is you need to communicate and organize with other IT workers, and join or form some type of association, union, guild or whatever which acts independently but also puts pressure on the government. Otherwise you just have hundreds of thousands of individual little mice or birds running around trying to find diminishing pieces of food.
You guys are praisng college degrees like they're the best thing since sliced bread. I currently attend a Tech School. No, not the 6 weeks bullshit deal. Monday-Friday 8-2 for 18 months. We do everything ranging from web page design to networking, to programming, linux, cisco..you name it. We're also do free work for the city I live in..things like setting up wireless networks, LAN's, hardware repair, etc. I'm out there getting hands on experience while a university student is in a class room learning theory. I'm also A+, I-Net+, Security+, Network+, MCP and Linux+ certified.
Recently while I was at school working on a pc, a student from a large university (I won't say names) came in the class. He lacked about 6 months from getting his CS degree, and asked me how to do a virus scan. He also told me that the college won't let them touch a computer until they are almost out.
So while the certs may not look at good as a Bachelor in CS, I would rather hire someone that knew how to setup and troubleshoot a network then someone who doesn't know the difference between a LAN and a WAN.
Experience helps me learn how to put my book knowledge to work. Even proofs and fairly theoretical arguments can come in handy, but only with the perspective I have learned from experience. By the same token, through experience I have found new problems to investigate formally, and new perspectives for understanding things in an academic context. So neither one trumps the other!
Would getting a cert help? Would it be worth it to get a degree in MIS or CS?
To get a job in a competitive market you need to be better than your competitors. You need more experience and education than everyone else applying for the job.
I've got fifty resumes to read today. If all but yours show certification or education in the field, you're not going to get called in for an interview. Yes, experience is important. But if you never bothered in all those years to get a cert or degree, something's wrong.
I have a degree in literature, and no certifications. My chances of getting a job in this market are remote to none. Which is why I'm busting my ass off to get some certs behind me.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
Being a boston local, it is about getting the job done. At 19 I got hired to be a *nix sysadmin for an internet backbone. They didn't want to hire me because of my age or education. Until they found out their employees where asking me for advice when stuck in a tricky situations. I knew how to solve these problems because I knew the technology. the backbones HR wouldn't look at me, but the managers wanted me.
Now I am CTO for a small software company and I am actively deploying open source technology. Every day I go to work and get paid because I get the job done, and usually because I care more about it and putting the technology to use than most people with a college education and 'real' training care about getting paid.
Make sure and make it clear you love what you do, and the money is a nice, but expected perk. Or you will stay where you are. Every day you have to convince someone to give you the money you think you deserve, one way or another.
in I.T. who said, "I wish I never got my degree, it was a waste of time".
Considering the audience and economic environment, I'll keep my good advice to myself and have better chances at getting the job. Why help out all of you, the competition? I hope your resumes are miserable relative to my own! Want the easy way to fortune? Gather all pennies from your fellow unemployed geeks and form a lottery pool...
Would it be worth it to get a degree in MIS or CS?"
I have a degree in CS and still have the same kind of shitty job you got..
http://sourceforge.net/people/
Check it out, find a project. Show your skills, make a name for yourself.
I'm all for the environments. I think University is not much different from a Monastery. In Tibet, to get a certain Buddhist degree, you often have to spend 20-30 years of very, very rigorous study. Perhaps we can say it is a lot more rigorous than any study in any Western University. This is just one example. The thing is, when a person enters into a monastery, it is done as an act of renunciation and not as an act of self-aggrandizement with great potential for profit seeking. There is humbleness in the monastery, but only big fat egos in the University. It costs either nothing or relatively little to enter into a monastery, but it costs and arm and a leg to enter into a University.
;) And that's why I post it. I hope to create this condition. Because you can't agree to something prior to thinking about it. So, I hope people do think about this.
So what I am saying is this.
Let the profit seekers seek profit. Let them flow in their own way. Let the learners seek learning. Let THEM flow in their own way. There will always be people dedicated to knowledge and wisdom. If we took a University system away, this would not stop being so.
University system is confused. On one hand, it's like a Monastery because it takes you away from lay life and it requires your full attention. On the other hand, it is full of profit seekers, who don't care a rats ass about learning, but just want to get the paper. There are some people in the middle who want to learn a thing or two, but really are thinking of how useful it will be to make money later.
The problem is that mixing all these various motivations in one place produces bad results. Pure learners are very pissed at profit seekers who do anything just to pass a class. Profit seeking professors who do half-assed work just to get by day to day also piss off the idealistic students who want to learn for learning's sake. Idealistic professors are put off by students who just take their class cause someone said so and who otherwise don't give a rat's behind about subject matter.
It's a bad mix. It's an unnatural tangle. Business wants to be assured that a person is qualified. I understand that. There is also another set of people who know what Science is about, and that Science is not about profit or ego-promotion and that's why Scientists are supposed to SHARE their information and not hoard it for themselves. Business promotes and rewards trade secrets. I believe that a free market can untangle this, under one condition, and create environments that are good for various purposes. The condition is that people must agree, basically, to what I am saying here.
We can all get what we want. We do not need to step on each others' toes. Business influence is corrupting and ruining the Universities. Universities are very confused about what it is they are and what their goals are. Is it profit? Is it science? Is it sports? You can't always have all of the above. In programming, we always praise modular systems where each module is small and does one task best, as opposed to doing a hundred tasks in a mediocre way. Why wouldn't we praise the same concept again? I don't think Universities are awake and aware enouh to get unconfused on their own.
90% of recent college graduates are unemployed now, especially those graduates are in Computer Science major.
The reason?
Well, well, well, thanks to the outsourcing.
I hated school, but sucked it up and finished off my degree. As a hiring manager I get too many resumes to even think about looking at ones without a degree. Our HR department filters those out - I don't even see them. I'm probably missing a couple of good ones, but we just get too many and that is an easy filter. Pretty soon a related degree will be company policy here.
does this guy have a college degree? he didn't mention it in his submission. That can be the difference between finding a job.
I know on the whole the economy is in a slump, but personally i've moved up two jobs since january 2003. i graduated BS in CS 2002; took me a year to get a job developing, but now i'm there, and its not so bad
Reason, free market capitalism, and individualism
As a computer engineer your skill set is unlimited because you have a fundemental understanding of the basics. In fact most engineers work their way through school doing the same job as "IT professionals." Then they graduate and make 60k a year (even in this economy). I know this is going to start a flame war, but if your really looking for an edge forget about certifications and get the real thing, an engineering degree.
As long as you are working in a position where someone else sets the goals for the software then you are not much more than a very high level interpreter. Interpreters are subject to replacement. Go and think about that long and hard.
Software engineering is in the phase of becoming a regular engineering field. The glitz is gone. The big entry level bucks are gone.
The real money, security and future is figuring out something else: focus on fundamentally understanding a class of problems. As CS degree is, by itself, worth about as much as a degree in English Lit. Get a real degree that can solve real problems. Then you can use the ability to go off and code it up and it is worth something --- or worth enough for you to hire a $13/hr lacky to "code it up". Think of degrees that existed before say 1960.
For better results you should try numbers that start with 1-900.
Instead of using a
If the job requires java and javascript, vbscript and c#. Than I use those tech's to build a resume to show off my skill with those techs.
And I can honestly say it made the difference.
Not to mention I was able to get my foot in the door with a cdrom WAY before the call back a paper resume requires.
My current resume release has a video interview a friend helped me shoot stuck right in it. Comes right up when they stick the cd in the cdrom. Answers most of the common questions one is asked in the interview process.
Not to mention tech testing and the character reference portion of the interview process is already answered.
A cdrom put me at the top of the stack, and I don't even have a degree.
"What do you do with the mad that you feel when you feel so mad you could bite?" - Mister Rogers
Seeding honeypot, please ignore collector@honeypot.id.au
To do well in the IT job market IN GENERAL, you need as much of the following four things as you can get (to a point).
1) schooling
2) experience
3) certs (not for all IT jobs, but for sysadmin/network types definately)
4) contacts
Basically, learn stuff, do stuff, take tests, and meet people. Makes sense to me. And has worked for me so far.
One item I would add to that list is documentation. You write code for the computers and write documentation for the humans. Managers and higher-ups can be so far removed from the code that they need clear, well formed and diagrammed documentation. Have a portfolio of clean code and good documentation for your future interviews.
____
null
Certification programs are only slightly more worthless than degrees, if we're being honest with ourselves. Employers should really wise up and take into account the fact that any clown can drink their way through college doing the bare minimum and show up for the same commencement ceremony as the handful of students who worked their asses off. Because of their more specific nature, certificates can be more valid, but the only way to truly see if someone can do the job is to hire them and have them do it. You can probably tell who can't do the job without anything more than the conventional application/resume/interview, but even with that there are no guarantees. I know, life isn't fair, but fuck, we really need to fix shit like this. There are so many problems with how we look at things like hiring and education, and if we fixed those, I honestly believe that people would be happier and much better off in general. Not to mention everything could be more efficient in general, which would result in pay increases.*
*You thought I was some poor, naive bastard. Of course the pay increases would only be for executives because that is also how things work and that needs to be stopped now.
I am feeling fat and sassy
I keep my pron in a protfolio.
Although the typical IT job lasts about 3 years, a career is a very long time, so it doesn't make much sense taking a scattershot approach trying to find which fad will let you eke out a few extra pesos. Think long and hard about what you really want to do over the next several years, then decide on a course of action to get you to that goal. It could take a degree (and lots of intern work), or it could involve doing whatever it takes to get onboard that really interesting project you've read about. If you're not doing something you really love, you're just going to end up being a frequently laid-off, low paid, cog in some machine.
One piece of advice when interviewing a prospective employer: Take a look at the server room. The orderliness of that room is a very accurate indicator of the professionalism of the people you'll be working with.
Ask me about my vow of silence!
I'm 25, 3 years at present company (large company, over 1 billion in revenue), making just over 80k/yr
Working for a large Beltway Bandit firm I can tell you that the clearance thing is absolutely the path to glory in the IT field. None of the companies doing DOD contract work can hire cleared employees fast enough. I started out of college 9 years ago making $36K and am now well into the six figures, with a good solid Java and OO Design skillset (and I don't have to be a manager!).
FYI - Lockheed Martin (a former employer) is probably the best bet if you don't have a clearance - they have big rooms full of salaried people just sitting around waiting for the clearances to come through. Also the National Security Agency is hiring IT folks like mad, and they will bump you right to the top of the clearance queue. They also have a very good cooperative education program if you happen to be in college right now.
for the next twenty years just to keep up with the work we already have contracted. Aero, Electrical, Mechanical, Comp Sci, etc.
If you want to work in a technical field, GET A DEGREE.
So maybe I should just lie, and if they check and find me out the worst that will happen is I'll get fired (or not hired). And that's not any worse then it is right now!
As a hiring manager how often do you actually check?
-Ariel
Most of the posts will be advice about how to get a (better) job. That's fine as far as it goes, and if that is what you want.
There are other options. Make a list of what you get out of having a job - or would get from your ideal job. Most lists would include items like this:
These items are on my list, and I think they are good ones.
Now make a more general list, of what you want to have in your life. My list includes the above and some additions:
If, after reading this far, you sense something important here, do yourself a favor. Go to a bookstore and pick up any book written by Robert Kiyosaki and Sharon Letcher. "Rich Dad, Poor Dad", "Cashflow Quadrant", and "Retire Young, Retire Rich" are all good. Read a few pages from the intro or early chapters.
Here's a quote I keep on my wall, where I see it every day:
Warren Buffet said that. It pretty much describes where I would like to be. How about you?
Maybe this idea is a little deep. Any questions, post a reply or email me at redsymbol.com at amax (rotate around the @).
Aaron Maxwell - redsymbol.net
Software engineering is just portion of the computer science field. I have seen countless number of people with other degrees in engineering, etc and VERY few of them can hold a candle to the abilities of a classically trained computer scientist. A MIS degree is junk, get a real degree in Comp Sci from a decent school in this (Boston) area. I will not consider a resume unless the person has at least a degree in CS and I prefer a Masters.
I suggest picking a general industry of interest - deciding on your own what the problem is - coming up with a clean metaphor for attacking the problem - building a prototype.
Google is probably an example of this. HP is certainly. For me - it was in photography and the problem was making ID pictures line up in the image square automatically.
But in the final analysis, the natural course for large businesses is to stop hiring - this means their businesses are dead - and ready to be attacked by start-ups.
The problem is many businesses are still hiring - just they are hiring overseas - there is never a good time to make the point that unfair competition benefits the least fair people and leads to a corrupt culture.
AIK
time for a new labor movment, keep jobs here, keep money here (in Boston...all of you in India can fight globalization keeping WalMart and Microsoft out if you want, I have no problem with that)
Iteresting ideas. I take it your office is equipped with computers made in Boston, furniture made in Boston, all your documents are printed with locally-made inks on paper made in Boston from native Massachusetts trees, and that you commute to work every day in a car/motorbike/bus that was built in Boston, out of Boston steel, and it runs on oil pumped out of the ground under Boston. No? It's not like that? The local mom-and-pop coffee shop probably doesn't offer "grown in Boston" coffee either. Maybe trade isn't such a terrible thing after all.
0 1 - just my two bits
As a graduate from a 4 year Nationally known and acredited University that left me with a 20 thousand dolar debt and cost a total of over 80 G's, i can tell you in full confidence that all that theory didn't amount to squat. Yeah that diploma looks nice on my wall, but after searching for almost a year, i finally took a 9 dolar an hour job doing on-the-road tech support. Guess what - they didn't even care that i had a degree in CS. They highered me for knowledge that i gained sitting up late nights and experimenting. Now i run web servers at home do programming in Java, C, C++, perl. I do development in php, mySQL. I have about 5 years experience in all the items in that list, but none working for a corporation. So what help is that to me?? None. So here we go in the circular spiral of doom. I got the papers to prove i know what i'm talking about, but still no job. I got certs, i got a degree, i got experience but I got no job. What am i missing here....
I was at the end of a year-long contract doing technical support and earning $14/hr when, by chance, a friend of a friend dropped the name of a company I'd never even heard of and mentioned that they were looking for a sysadmin. Long story short, I'm now working there and making $19/hr, and the gig is permanent. So it's like with romance: the best things come from being in the right place at the right time and knowing the right people. You're probably not going to get that dream job trolling the postings on Monster.
'He who has to break a thing to find out what it is, has left the path of wisdom.' -- Gandalf to Saruman
So let's say that you go and buy another book and sit in your room and learn a new computer language. You now know another language but you still don't know anyone who will pay you to use it.
You need to spend just as much effort networking. The most important part of any career is the personal relationships that you develop. This is how you find opportunities. There is no substitute. You can't compensate by learning more technical skills. I'm not saying that you can ignore the tech skills. In geek parlance they are necessary but not sufficient.
For most of us geeks it is much easier to learn a new tech skill than it is to work on the social skills. To be successful you many times have to learn to do things that don't come naturally to you. I know guys who have finished their PhD's. They have tons of skills but they are sitting there wondering what to do now because they spent all their time being gear heads and avoided the social aspects.
First Alan Cox, then Dave Cinege (LRP), then that SuSE Marketing Guy, now D. Robbins. Next I'm guessing its either Andrew Morton or Linu(x) Torvalds.
Wow! Just wow.
Some really simple advice: do some hard projects with other people who are better than you are, and finish them. Make sure you can read CS research papers and technical writing, and produce work that others can read. Make a CV that shows you can finish what you start in complex environments. You'll get a job.
You can also be willing to make that same 13 dollars an hour doing what you _want_ to be doing. If you are willing to write code for 13 dollars an hour, or on a set bid which works out closer to five dollars an hour, you _will_ get the experience that shows you can follow through. When I have to hire (which is often) I am looking for people who are (a) incredibly smart, (b) perceptive and aware, and (c) understand how to surf the exingencies of a delivery environment so that the product, by god, _ships_. With those requirements in place, I will defend a hire from Princeton or the local community college with equal fervor.
If you do go to school for a degree, take just enough CS/MIS to get a minor, to read anything you check out of the library, and spend the rest of your energy on liberal arts. Learn to construct complex arguements and systems. Learn that most good arguements -- in CS, in English lit, history or biology -- are old arguements.
There are open source projects and internship opprotunities in abundance. I was genuinely shocked at the "degree a must" attitude from many here. Intellectual flexibility and research skills _are_ a must, and can be had at major universities (great places to spend time) but have almost nothing to do with a degree. If you cannot read what people in your field are writing about, and understand it, then you will be missing half the adventure of software development.
Background: I've been a software engineer for 18 years, and though I spent 8 years in college, I never earned a degree (I did finish a math and CS minor, and a bio major, as an undergrad, and have taken occassional 400 and 500 level 1 credit independent study classes, when something interests me and there is someone I wanted to work with.)
That said, if you are more company than project oriented -- if your rush is more from a steady gig with a big company in a variety of positions than actually making new things -- then a degree _is_ a must, preferably from a "name" school, and never mind the certs. People hiring up for engineering efforts are looking for very different things than people hiring via HR.
I am looking for beta testers for a job search bot. The key to using the internet to find a job is to apply first. The bot is designed to help you find newly posted jobs. It is free. www.jobpipeline.com Feedback is appreciated.
We're hiring like mad but won't touch someone without a degree.
Yeah, like this guy. He is totally screwed. He didn't even graduate!
Why do you need to work for someone else? You have spare time, a computer, and a compiler, right? Build it, and they will come.
So company X didn't hire you for postion Z. Do what I did. I went to their location, talked to their hiring manager and thanked them for allowing me to interview for the job. I said I was still interested in working for them in the future.
Two days later I had an email from them that an unexpected opening had come up and they wanted to talk to me. It turns out I was their #2 pick for the other job and I was the only person they were considering for this other position.
Show persistence! Some interviewing books say send a follow-up thank you note (which hardly anyone does). I say show in person to the hiring manager to say that. Then you become a face, not just a piece of paper. Sometimes the 2nd try is the charm.
Not that a degree is necessarily going to get you everywhere (lots of people with degrees in the field are out of work lately), but it shows that you have breadth of experience, can learn well, can work relatively hard, and have experience working with others, expressing yourself, etc. (At one point, just having a degree -- in ANYTHING -- could get you a job -- in ANYTHING else. Annoyingly, I know people who are programmers who have degrees in such technologically relevant fields as FORESTRY.)
Anyway, a degree will also give you broader technological exposure than any path you focus on in a career path. You'll learn fundamental concepts that you won't likely pick up on the modern career path (like the concept of assembly language, or microprocessor operation, or how to determine the optimization of an algorithm, etc.)
ob.anecdote.amusing:
A non-degreed co-worker who is a coder and former MS employee asked once what he would learn from a college degree that he wouldn't learn just from career experience.
I responded, "OSes other than Windows."
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
There is already a division, profit seekers have technical and community college. Academics have the Universities.
The seperation already exsists. If you want a php system for profit seekers seperate from pure academics then that will never happen. Neither party makes up the bulk of University student. Both groups are a sever minority. The vast majority of students are there either because it's their parents wish or they view it as a natural progression liek high school, and could not envision not going to university.
As for politics in science, when ever 2 or more people get together you'll have politics and greed and envy and back stabbing ect.. Thats the nature of people. There is austere learnign and it's in the church, you can still be a monk(cathalic/buhdist).
A brief history on education:
There are 2 basic school from which teaching/education has come. The greek model and the chinese model. We currently follow the chinese model more closyl although we don't have a pure form. The greek model is about learning as a goal in itself. Where asking the questions and discussing them was education. It was flawed, it was a nice past time for the elite but it's incredibly time and labour intensive and the quality of your out-put will be related to the quality of your teachers.
A teacher like Aristotle can do much, but he's once in a generation. Most teacher int he greek era were flakes. Self important and pompous without a original though intheir head and made their students into mental clones of themselves.
On the other hand the chinese system was oen where education was a stepping stone to a better life. Education fed the chinese buracracy which maintained china. It's ciriculum was standardized, and even if your teacher was bad an exceptional student could learn on his own.
Before 1900 The wester education system was based partly on the chinese(indirectly) but mostly on the greek. Most of the west except Germany which used their education system to power their industry. This lead to a gigantic lead time in science and a huge technological advantage over the rest of the world. After the world wars the other western powers started to adapt the German way(indirectly the chinese way).
The benifit is that it turns out more educated people per dollar then the older way and made education available for all.
To bifurcate the system now would regress it. You want to set up pure learnign liek the greek style for some and the chinese style for others. It doesn't work that way. Everyone would rathe rhave the mor eliberal, more fun, and often more productive (individually) greek way, but it's economically unfeasible. If you did split it the profit seekers would all claim to be pure academics.
Also Pure academic go on to Msc and PHd's while profit seekers ussually stop at Bsc. Ba are now next to worthless and MA and Arts based PHP's aren't much better.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
Dude? Get help.
Do whatever it takes to get yourself at least an interm secret us clearance. Join the Reserves, get a job with a temp agency that will sponsor you, whatever. There is a demand for govt contractors, but you need an existing clearance. go to jobsniper.com and search for secret clearance, you will be amazed. Also, start applying for GS jobs, the benifits are great, and you get retirement after 20 years, not to mention that it literally takes and act of Congress to fire a GS. check this link for federal jobs.
Funny that you say the education process should be sped up. One of the most important parts of things such as the design of software and complex systems is creativity, otherwise you are just following instructions hashed together from other sources instead of being innovative.
Creativity is usually learned through play when we are younger instead of focusing entirely on the "concrete" things such as science. By speeding up the education process, you take time away from that play by causing it to be used to learn those concrete skills at in less time.
Interestingly enough, the "cutting out" of a large portion of childhood by forcing children to "grow up" faster is, according to a few buddhist monks that I have known, one of the main reasons that people seem so unbalanced anymore; why they have so many problems with substance abuse, etc.
To be honest, I still have a small set of legos on my desk (sitting next to stacks of manuals) as a tool to clear mental blocks.
all things in moderation...
Everything I need to know I learned by killing smart people and eating their brains.
If I wanted to be a sales person I would have earned an MBA. I earned a BSCS to become Computer Geek not a Car Sales Person.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
No, someone with a degree is not (necessarily) more intelligent than someone without a degree. That doesn't mean a degree isn't worth it. The fact of the matter is that a degree gets you money. Granted, having an AS/BS doesn't guarantee you're going to clock 50k out of school - chances of that are slim these days. But it'll sure you get you closer. You can't expect to make enough money to support yourself for the rest of your life in(esp. in Boston) a field as fast-paced as IT without a 4 year degree. Many will try to argue that experience is worth more than a degree - and they're 100% correct. However, a degree plus experience is absolutely better than just the experience, period....how much better it is however will vary from how much work you put into your education.
It's not who you know or what you know at the entry-level so much as it's getting your a** in the door. Get an internship. There's no substitute for experience. Meet people and build references there. If you're good, they'll pay well to get you back.
Something that we noticed and ended up using as a filter rule was whether or not a person would stick with a job for more than 6 months.
So do you suggest that somebody with a BS in computer science from a reputable school but zero employment history and no ability to relocate because of disability and family issues (such as myself) should go work at a fast-food workaurant for a year just to demonstrate employer loyalty?
I have been desperately trying to hire smart C++ people with more than four years experience.
70% of the resumes I got had no professional C++ experience. Either college only experience or unrelated experience (network admin, web design)
20% lacked really basic knowledge. Had no idea what STL was or what a binary tree or hash table was.
The other 10% had a myriad of problems. I don't think I'm being too picky; these were real problems.
Hey, if you know some smart C++ people that want to work in Austin, TX, I'd love to be proven wrong!
I've read a millions sites and articles and forums like this that give you the impression that there are great people everywhere but that's really not what I see.
'nuff said.
IT is dead. Quit your job (or get laid off) and bitch about it on slashdot. Get an elite username (like mine) and troll on slashdot fulltime. Trolling is more entertaining and rewarding than an IT job anyway.
...and companies are always ready to implode. I jumped around during the 90s. I had to. Otherwise I faced companies going under, relocating to other states/countries, whatever. I looked out for me, because no one else was going to. And you're going to knock me for that? Who says corps don't have an unhealthy amount of power? Stick around if you want a nice resume, but just shut up if you get the pink slip because the company didn't synergize their IPO correctly. Idiot.
Seriously. Haven't you noticed that half of us with experience and skill and good resumes are already unemployed. It's a dead sector. Getting "deader" by the minute. It's a dead end leading to an abyss of pain and suffering. Okay, maybe it's not that bad. But it's a pretty bad profession to be in. Seriously. Go be a bike messenger or a bike mechanic or a concert pianist or something fun while you still have life left that they haven't milked from you.
Some of the comments I've read here make me think that I'm living in a parallel universe. But then all I have is my own experience to go on. I got into I.T. on the tail end of the dot-com boom. I'd been coding as a hobby since the days of Z80, but after high school went into the finance industry and worked my way up to become a stockbroker.
And no, I don't have a degree and have never felt that I needed one. Even though most of my colleagues in the securities industry, and right now in the I.T. business, had degrees, my lack of a degree has never impeded my career, simply because I refuse to let it. Yes, having a degree often provides a fast-track to getting good interviews (unless I'm the guy reading your resume), but it is no guarantee that a person is necessarily better equipped to do a job than somebody without a degree. I've had just as many problem employees who are graduates as those who are not.
Anyway, I became disenchanted with the financial industry, even though I was earning a ton of money and was running a department of twenty people by the age of 28. For a few months, I took some low-paying contract work just to get my feet wet in I.T.. This worked out great for me. I ended up taking a salaried job in the systems architecture area of a major financial services company. The pay was just over half what I was making as a stockbroker, but I loved the job. I soon discovered that I had a natural flare for systems architecture, and specifically for web security concepts. I have been with the same company for five years now, and have been promoted twice during that time. I run the security architecture group, which incidentally includes graduates of some of this nation's finest schools. Given the nature of the work we do, and the extremely diverse nature of our company's technology base, my staff have to be generalists. I have no room for narrow-minded individuals who are content to be specialists in a given technology. I need people who can understand, critique and architect complex multi-platform solutions using every tool from COBOL to C#, Assembler to J2EE and VB6 to C#. As a manager, I wouldn't look twice at a resume belonging to someone who had spent ten years specializing in the same discipline. But I would look extremely closely at someone who has a diverse skillset, although I would grill them very hard on how they acquired their skills if they only have a few years' practical experience behind them. As for a degree, that's completely irrelevant to me. I trust my instincts as a manager sufficiently to judge a person's abilities simply by using solid interviewing techniques. So far, that has never failed me, although I can certainly understand the bitterness of some graduates who have invested years of their lives and thousands of dollars in a degree. The bottom line is, if I had to choose between two 25-year-olds; one with an excellent degree and two years of practical experience, and one without a degree but with seven years of proven experience, I would go with the non-graduate every time, all other things being equal.
I don't know if there is a moral to my story. But perhaps there is a lesson or two to be learned. The relevance of a degree or professional certification is generally up to the individual manager or recruiter looking at your resume. I know from dealing with other I.T. managers that there is no hard and fast rule here.
My two star performers right now couldn't be more different. One of them doesn't have a degree or a professional certification to his name, yet I hired him on the basis of raw ability and enthusiasm. He has consistently delivered above and beyond expectations. My other key person is a Russian M.I.T. graduate. Both bring different qualities to the team, but both are equally indispensable.
Take from that what you will, but that's just my two cents as one of the evil managers responsible for scanning hundreds of resumes every month.
Several pieces of advice:
1. Learn *everything* you can about a real technical domain area that has nothing to do with computers. People don't care whether you can program -- they care whether you can program WHAT THEY NEED.
2. If you are a US Citizen, haven't sold (or consumed) pounds of cocaine, and believe that honest people on the inside of the system can make a difference, GET HIGH LEVEL CLEARANCES. There is a serious shortage of talented pepole (or untalented warm bodies, for that matter) in this area.
3. Present yourself, not as a computer professional, but as a business professional.
Supplementary info:
1. Seriously, who cares whether you know the latest object-oriented, distributed, web-based, googlephonic technology. What people REALLY want is someone who can bring those talents to bear on actual applications that they care about.
I have been a software engineer for a bunch of years, but the best projects I've worked on (and where I have been most valued) were ones where I had to actually learn something about what it was I was writing programs about. When I went back to graduate school in CS to get a Master's degree, I ended up working with people in Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics, working on algorithms for DNA and protein sequence comparison. Since then, I have spent *much* more time reading and learning biology than software.
2. Before I went back to grad school, I worked on military projects involving imagery compression and algorithm optimization. While checking the assembly code generated by the compiler was important, it was every bit as important to understand fundamental aspects of the imaging system involved, from the point of view of optics, error correction, and end-user (imagery analyst) needs. This was cool work, and important for our guys on the ground in the middle of nowhere.
There is currently an **extreme** shortage of dedicated, knowledgeable people with clearances in areas of national importance. Acquire these clearances, and you will never want for employment. Plus: CAN'T BE OUTSOURCED TO FOREIGNERS.
3. Somewhat along the same theme, be a provider of valuable services, not just a computer guy (gal). Right now, I have a contract with the Natinal Institutes of Health, doing research into diseases that affect millions of people. The reason I got this gig is not because I am a sharp systems engineer (which I am), but because I can *communicate* with the biologists and MDs who have very real and difficult biological and medical problems which can only be solved through an understanding of the problems and the shrewd application of computer technology.
I didn't have the resources for an degree of any kind.
I, too, engaged in "lateral mobility", hopping sideways from support job to support job, learning every step of the way, but eventually, you reach a glass ceiling and the realization that support is designed specifically to burn workers out so that advancement isn't necessary.
The only way out was to start thinking like a competitive businessperson, partner with other hungry compatriots also found in dead-end positions (although in different fields), and go into some tech business or other on your own.
I've only had one bon fide w2 "job" for a total of about 6 mos since 1999, and that was just because it was there. Nevertheless, I had to push hard entrpreneurially to get that position. It wasn't a job - it was a deal. Jobs, to me, are for making new contacts and raising capital for whatever business it is you're really supposed to be in.
It's hard, but unlike the job treadmill, there's a future that isn't dependent on someone else.
I'm not saying certifications aren't worth it. I just have no experience with them, and I've never met a client that asked me for one. Granted, my clients are small...
In a different world, back when big iron still ruled, I had that same low-pay job. I was the tech support for a bunch of PhD reservoir engineer types. I was the one who wrote much of the code to produce and help process their data. In those days in that place that made me slightly more acceptable than the cleaning crew. What got me out of that and jump started my career was writing something so useful and technically challenging that several sane managers refused to let me attempt it or to ask the "real programmers" to do so. When I delivered it, done in my spare time and over convalesence from an accident, and it worked and was hugely useful, the tune changed. I had a team built around me and my ideas. I took a couple of years and answering a manager's claim that I was not a real programmer without a couple of degrees by presenting him with an outside job offer claiming I was indeed a "real programmer" and for 60% more than he was paying "real programmers" to boot. To get there I read every manual I could get my hands on, force-fed myself theory and practice at the MS level and dared to hack big.
Go for it! Make yourself stand out. Don't just be another specialist weenie. Show them guts, skill, determination and spirit. Even in a down market that gets noticed.
...and I hire interns, trainees and juniors, as well as more experienced people. I don't want to see a newbie with a CV that carries a mile-long list of skills with zilch experience. It's plain unbelievable to me, as the potential employer.
Do some research, and tailor your CV to each employer's needs. If they need some specific skills, then skip the other stuff and make your CV concise and believable.
If the employer's advert isn't clear, look at their website, and call them up to find out what they use. Make sure you match yourself to their needs. A huge list of skills mean nothing other than potential, if there's no experience to back it up.
And only apply if you really do have the skills in question, unless the job is clearly asking for someone who is smart and doesn't look for specific skills (in which case, focus your CV on the smarts not the tech skills - the smarts are the skills we care about, sometimes).
You know? I've always wondered why job seekers didn't use some of the same techniques that marketing use? I know I've heard of some job seekers placing ads for their services.
I may have misunderstood... I was thinking along the lines of certification based on training and experience, not mail-order :) I've known a couple of army guys who could kick the shit out of most radio "engineers", due to experience running field communication sites.
"Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel." - A.B.
There are lots of volunteer and open source projects for you to get involved with and where you can show that you have skill, dedication and that you are productive.
No one's gonna care to hire you over someone skilled who also has prior experience, so your only way out of this slump is getting a track record for work completed.
Head over to SourceForge/FreshMeat and get your hands dirty, or start something up yourself.
Civilization is the process of setting man free from men.
I agree with it all. I've never made above $11.00 an hour in all my years, and I've survived. Barely in some cases but here I am. I would dearly love to have made $13 and hour, and at this point in the economy I really don't care what it is. Beggers really can't be choosers. Unfortunately the decent paying are hard to break into, and the low paying will break you, plus I'm in one of the states that has been losing jobs left and right. Ah well, if I start swimming now? I'll make India by March of next year.
I guess they didnt teach you the slashdot effect on emails in physics class eh? MOD: +1 Canadian
A morning without coffee is like something without something else.
"Certain parts of the country have been hit much harder than others. So instead of being in competition with 200 resumes you'll be in competition with 5,000. Look for a job in alternate locations or be willing to relocate. Its hard and kinda crazy to leave your family and friends but since you're starting out the experience might be worth it. You can come back "the victor". I did this."
Hmmm...OK. So what's your advice for the handicapped? I don't think my seeing-eye dog can go the distance. Maybe change his diet to Purina-Ho chow? The deaf are certainly going to be fun.
"What!? You say you want baby shoes in a row?"
"Oh, Twelve kegs aglow." OK.
Or the one-legged people.
"Yes folks, Mr Hip-Hop-Happening has set the landspeed record for hopping on one leg between Boston and New York. And the crowd stomps it's feet in appreciation."
How about the bladderly challenged?
[On the way to a new life]
"I gotta go.
You just went 5 minutes ago.
I gotta go, again!.
*grumble**grumble**grumble*
OK, but this is the last time."
Oh right, give it away. Yeah that'll work.
I'm sorry so you chaps wonder where all the jobs have gone?
So stop voting Republican already.
Deficit, War, 3 million American jobs lost.
I'm sure some idot foaming at the mouth, will blame, Clinton or those tax paying queers who want to marry... but, maybe... just maybe... it's something to do with Republican mismanagement of the Economy.
*sigh*.
On topic, just keep plugging away and sending out the CVs, if you're any good somebody's going to hire you.
I really want an employer that, once I invest time into learning their methodology and fitting it with the senior staff, will not ditch me at the first sight of the CEO not being able to pocket his multi-million quarterly bonus.
So, what really ought to be considered is employee loyalty: care for your employees and stop firing them for no reason. Otherwise, if you treat everyone as temps, YOU are the one forcing them to look for another job 6 months after starting.
Software is not supposed to be about how to work around a useability issue. - Ken Barber
Well see now that's all good. Now how does that scale to the seven Million plus unemployed?
Yeah I like the idea...on an individual basis. But I don't think that it will scale up that well.
Best wishes on your business anyway. See you in five years (the other milestone you must pass).
Dang, I used to make more money than that an hour for shareware. The $1 billion rule is, always learn the most valuable technology in the process of creating the most valuable software. When you finish, sell the software (unless of course you've signed a contract which prevents you from doing this, in which case I hope they're paying you REALLY well (that goes for you especially, Apple)). That way you're getting paid for your time and your on the process to starting your own company. Then you can pay yourself anything you want.
Who moved my sig?
Only networking will get you a job.
US Navy experience means nothing when the pile of resumes is so big yours is not even read.
Every employer I have talked to refuses to distinguish between a person with a university CS degree and a person that learnt Java in his garage. They are looking for smart people that get things done, not necessarily someone that has a degree! These employees prefer to ask simple mindbenders to determine smarts. Too bad they don't know about the few Universities who only allow smart people graduate; it could help them sort out the cruft much faster.
Finally, as you have heard already, those certifications mean nothing unless you are in a large corporation and required to participate in a "continual improvement" regime.
I would recommend working for the Government, either direct or as a Contractor. The demand for government IT is going up, and the number of good IT people is either static or falling. If you can get a security clearance, that is a big plus.
What helped me out by climbing the ladder is not climbing at all. Many people think that you got to work for the same company for a long time (seniority), back stab fellow employees to look good, go to the right colleges, etc.
What you only need 1 thing (A GAME PLAN). IT is really tough. Don't concentrate on the money, concentrate on what you like to do. Find your passiion, then learn everything you can about it (Become the expert). Either way at some point you will realize the following:
1. Cant always work in the same city,town and expect to get ahead
2. May need to travel frequently even overseas
3. May need to do consulting, contracting, temp, or direct employee work.
4. May experience periods of unemployment (have a financial plan)
5. Definately expect the worse and you will have no surprises. IF you don't take risks you may never find your opportunity for success.
Options
1. Technical classes, college courses, conferences,job fairs (networking)
2. Working for different companies and organizations that will get you the experience (if only temporary)
3. Clearances go a long way (ASK the "BeltWAY bandits")
4. Incorporate (if you think you got what it takes, start a business)
third to last job I had, I was told that "Programmers are a dime a dozen" because so many were out of work and willing to work for at less than half of the cost they were paying me. Someone earning $13/hr was able to replace me at $25/hr. I had been there for almost five years and was ready to draw a pension, earn another vacation week, earn more profit sharing, etc.
I was not promoted beyond my position because I only had an Associate's. I am now working on a four year degree, but in Business Management, because IT is dying out in the USA anyway. All the good jobs are going overseas or being paid a laughningly low pay scale. Imagine a Senior Programmer/Analyst or System Administrator being paid $25K to $27K USD a year? Way below the salary survey done a few years ago. So either work cheap, don't work at all, or find another line of work like I am doing. If you want to get paid more than that, you may very well be dreaming. Play the Lottery, you might just have a better chance. Management does not care, never did, and they just started to pay less because of the economy and conditions in the IT market.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
If IT is dead, whats next? What career field would you consider getting into?
Let me first state, that the situation in many Western countries has changed. GE, IBM, Honeywell and a host of other major companies have gone to India/China and other countries, Bombay and New Delhi for example. The reality is there are skilled programmers/workers there that will work for beans compared to your salary, perhaps even a lot less than a 13/hr salary. This is the new world economy/order we now live in, accept it and use try to use the knowledge to your advantage.
In the past workers would be horrified if US jobs were exported overseas, but today it's accepted as the new way to do business. (Go figure..)
A degree in an industry that has changed so much may be useful if you are young, when you hit 30, it is probably time to forget about a degree.
Let me also state that I believe that in todays industry people holding degrees are intended to be be out designing the systems, people holding certifications should be out utilising those systems in the real world.
That is the difference between earning a degree and not. This is not to say there aren't exceptions. However, going to University for 4 years to earn an honours degree, and then to become a full-time web designer or Javascript programmer is not what a degree is for, it is a waste. If you also think it's just insurance against flipping burgers, think again.
If you live in the USA today, I would be more concerned about the economy in general, and learning how to profit from the looming stockmarket crash expected within the next year or two, rather than expending too much energy in an area that has little future. Find an area that makes you money, make computing more of a hobby if you have a love for it.
HTH.
cragen
Try to find a job with the government. With a few years in industry you'll prob start at a GS-11/12 and move to a GS-13 in 1-2 years. In Boston, that's about $53k for a GS-11 and $60k for GS12, and $74k for GS-13 (including a 12% locality pay for Boston).
There are lots of non-profit organizations that benefit from help with technology. Find a non-profit that can articulate what it needs and is ready to adopt a new technology (most likely some kind of data-base driven website) and implement it for them. Keep doing this over and over again for diffferent organizations. What you get out of this is 1) a demonstrated list of projects that you can put on your resume; 2) lots of people connected with the organizations who can be part of your network, and someday may be able to help you find a job (just make sure that you know people really well and have demonstrated the value you add very clearly before you actually seek help from anyone finding a job). Some useful non-profit technology organizations: http://www.nten.org/ http://www.techsoup.org/ http://www.organizenow.net/ (located in Boston) Good luck!
What I wonder is the lever of risk companies have taken outsourcing their databases to another country. I read a government statistic that 90% of companies that irrecoverably loose their database are bankrupt within 18 months. A company cannot operate without their data. I'm incredulous that a company would put their database in the hands of a foreign entity. Just the matter of industrial espionage would cause me pause. It's a level of risk I would not take it were my decision.
I wonder if some catastrophe might happen that will cause companies to pull it all back in. Maybe they find that their financials have been secretly emailed to their competitors. Or that back doors allow competitors' access to their R&D. How much would it take to bribe a foreign employee with no ties to the company or accountability to install a back door or worse, maybe a worm. $5k? $10k? Cheep in the espionage community. Taking off my tin hat how about just plain mistakes? How can a foreign worker who has no accountability provide the level of dedication to preserve the company's assets? And data is probably the most important company asset it has. Outsourcing to me just seems to be a level of risk that's over the top. Who knows.. Maybe in a few years it will all come back.
Go back to colledge for a Psychology degree. God only knows there's an ample supply of nutcases out there to keep you busy for a long long time.
> Military certifications are even easier (from
> an academic standpoint) than
> correspondence-schools.
Um, yeah... that must be why I had to help half of my Ada Programming class through Quantico's Computer Science School (a quality institution when it was still located in Quantico). The fact that I was a 27 year old dropout from a top 10 east coast land grant univeristy, that had a well respected Comp. Sci. program, had nothing to do with it...
Of course we all know where Ada went... you either write rocket-scientist quality guidence systems with Ada or you don't use Ada at all.
Too bad there's nobody willing for force the DoD to fund apache mod_ada development and make *everyone* in the DoD rewrite all the military web to use Ada.
> anybody with a real military background can
> tell you, test scores are not in any way,
> shape, or form indicative of real technical
> ability
Fscking'A! I've seen everything from Truck Driver school ejectees (because they were smart (but unmotivated... he actually *WANTED* to be a truck driver!) to a Senator's sons (because that's where daddy wanted Jr.) end up in my MOS.
Going to college is nothing other than social currency, something that you can use to cite on a resume. Alot of the liberal arts courses you will take in college you will not need for your career. To do good in school you have to obedient and study, being smart and having aptitude comes second. The valedictorian of my highschool was exceptionally stupid. During Alegbra II classes I had with her, she would always at the beginning of the classes admit that she did not get it, and the teacher always told her, "I know I have not even started the lesson yet!" She frankly admitted that she studies over an hour for every test, more if the test is important. Getting good grades is about studying, memorizing, doing projects and homework, etc. If you are obedient want A's enough you will do good. Doing good in school is not about aptitude though.
Anything you learn in school you can learn faster on your own out of it. It is just nowadays apprenticeship is not available for so many jobs, so for social currency you almost have to go to college for certain jobs. It sucks.
Hello, I am a fellow Canadian and I am having the exact same problem. I also have a couple of guy friends, and all the guys are having the exact same problem. You know who is getting the jobs? The girls. You know why? Because of quotas, most tech companies have over 50% guys. The other reason is all of the girls who where in compsci, really wanted to be there, and kicked the guys asses with grades and hard work. One piece of advice, if you are intelligent enough to get a Ph. D. do that. At the University of Toronto, I have seen more than one BA teaching first or second year courses! So, that is what I reccommend. That is actually what I plan on doing, unfortunately I missed the deadline for grad school.... ;p
So good Luck.
Temp agencies suck, some of the jobs they call you for alot of very temporary, one time jobs, some ow which last as short as one day. The worst thing about working is getting adjusted to the other workers, learning the ropes, and with temp jobs it is horrible because of this. They call you with little notice, usually the day before. With temp agencies, you do not get paid from the employer, you have to drive to the temp agency to get your pay, and the temp agency takes some of your pay.
I'm graduating with a BSEE in a couple weeks from a Boston school. I already have a job that will be paying more than it sounds like you're making. It isn't in Boston or even in New England though. I'm going to be moving half way across the country for it. There might be jobs you may want to consider that are a little further away. If you really love MA that much you can always try to come back. Maybe you're already applying for jobs elsewhere but if not you should consider it.
Of all the resumes I've seen lately, the best were those with bulleted lists of tasks/jobs performed with the skills listed.
When you can look at a resume and immediately get a handle on a person's depth of knowledge of a subject - that's a good thing. Especially as the potential hire, you're promoting your ability to use the skills you claim to have. Examples might be:
- Setup CVS repository and configured secure access for windows and linux clients over ssh
- Configured and installed customized versions of RedHat AS 2.1 via kickstart over LAN
Too many resumes are vague about depth of knowledge. You need to prove you aren't BS'ing about the skills you claim to have, even before you get invited for an interview.
Thanks for the one of only 2 intelligent postings to this topic, and truly the most intelligent posting of the day. The people invariably doing the hiring normally don't know crap about what they are hiring for - I don't care what they claim their background to be!
It's my experience that most people just CRYCRY CRY about how they aren't getting advanced, aren't getting raises, aren't getting exposed to the experience that would make them a superstar.
.02.
WELL, it's ALSO my experience that once someone gets these opportunities, they are lazy about performing exceptionally. I have to tell you, advancement is predicated on PERFORMING EXCEPTIONALLY, UNLESS YOU KNOW SOMEONE. IF you know someone, then you can be as lazy as you want, and all of the crying that you can do usually gets you what you want. I know this sounds like a rant, but I'll elaborate.
I started in IT with 3/4 of an associates degree in Liberal Arts and all of the experience that having your own Compaq Presario with a dial-up modem will give you. OR, NOT MUCH. But you know what? I broke that Presario a hundred different ways, added everything that you could to it, and I ended up knowing quite a bit about PCs.
I got into the field as the lowest form of phone support that you could get. I made $13/hr and didn't get much of a raise for 2 years. Then I broke out by performing EXCEPTIOANALLY during one after hours project.
Everything was going wrong, the project lead was pulling his hair out, and before you knew it, it was 2am and everyone had left. But I stuck around, we had the problem resolved by 4am, AND I was back at work at 9am to do my menial task. From that moment on, though, I was respected.
And from that point in my career and on, I moved ever up the corporate ladder in IT. I went from phone support to helpdesk to helpdesk lead to Network Admin in less than 24 months...all because I had a hunger for doing and doing well.
I emptied COUNTLESS VOLUMES of books into my head...I put myself through Novell school, self-educated myself with the NT4.0 and WIndows 2000 curriculum, and saw a direct increase in salary of about 65% over 2 years.
And I never CRIED about how I wasn't getting a fair deal. A lot of people DID cry about my advancement, though...most of them were people that had put in the time but just didn't want to go that extra mile.
I now own my OWN company that is an IT Outsource shop. We work on projects, maintenence, Disaster Recoveries, new rollouts of complete networks, you name it. I even have employees....and you know what? They cry about advancement too...but when it comes to performing, I'm still the one that's willing to stay all night to get that disaster recovery done, that Exchange server MUST be up for 9am when the users walk in. They want that raise, they want that experience, but they don't want to put the effort in that it takes to get there. It's just typical of most people today. They want everything as if it were OWED to them by someone.
I never hated it....I love every aspect of it. So my advice to everyone reading this column is: LOVE IT. Treat it like you LOVE IT. Give it every ounce of effort IF you LOVE IT. In the end, it will end up loving you back, and you'll be a RAGING success. Oh, I also only finished my Associates Degree, never went for the whole BS thing....so I'm not sure that getting a degree is CS is exactly the thing. I don't know how much further I could have gone with it, but when I left and started working for myself, I was as Senior Engineer making in the high 70's. I hope this gives people some hope...and I hope it inspires you to work your ASS off to get what you want. Just my
Seriously, if you pigeon hole yourself as the [BLAH] guy and in 5-10 years [BLAH] is only for legacy apps, you may likely find yourself without a job. Sure, that can vary. Some legacy skills can turn into a gold mine when no one wants to touch that technology with a ten foot pool and the company has too much invested in the existing code base to start over. But that's a niche market and most developers of [BLAH] will have to move on to [.BLAH] or [pBLAH] to survive as programmers.
You could at that 5-10 point become a manager, but I know that's not always a very comfortable option.
You have to constantly be playing with another technology that interests you. And often that means doing it in your free time. Work projects often are cemented in previous technologies depending on your situation.
As a contractor, I have had to constantly be versed in new technologies. In fact, maybe someone could argue that THAT becomes your specialty over time. You have to know the languages being paid for which means being less of a master and more of a jack of all trades. Another thing to remember is that most languages solve a lot of the same problems in fairly similar ways. You can do Web, SOAP, XML, Graphics, Threading, Crypto, Network, SQL stuff in any of the languages we all love. Being a [BLAH] guru puts too much of your knowledge base in mindless details that might go away in 2 or 3 years when the next version comes out. Black box/Abstraction is supposed to help us. We shouldn't have to know the nastiest end details.
Also remember that personal experience can count just as much as job experience. Get your nose out of the books and write software that you're interested in. Pick and project and prove that you actually DO have the skills on that resume. Put the project on your personal website. (Or link to it's code at sourceforge. Whatever works.) Putting your software out there let's them take a look at your work and that can go even further that certifications in impressing them if you've truly got skills. It also proves that you have a genuine interest in the work because you invest time in it as a hobby.
Don't know if anyone's still reading this thread, but...
Your one glimmer of hope is to go the consulting route. The distinct advantages are that the people hiring do know crap about what they are hiring for, and you will build a diverse skillset - in fact, it is in the best interest of your employer to make you as hirable as possible, and a good IT consulting firm will invest in YOU, giving you the training and real-world knowledge that you need. You also don't get caught up in the office politics of your clients. You are simply there to do a job.
The downside to consulting is that when the economy sucks, the first people a business is going to cut are the consultants. And there's only so much time on the bench before your consulting firm has to let you go. But... a GOOD consulting company is still going to look for work for you even after they've laid you off, and try to hire you back when they find something for you.
dinner: it's what's for beer
I'm talking about the exams that get you advanced within your field of specialization. In the Army, it's called your MOS. In the Navy, it's called your "Rate." Advancement in any large bureaucracy requires:
The Military adds:
And for higher ranks, they add:
Real experience in real-world situations are not required, though they may coincidentally appear.
When I was in the Navy, our division was briefly run (yeah, right!) by a totally incompetent buffoon who had managed to reach E-6 without once stepping foot on a ship. But he had done his time, made friends in the right places, received high test scores, etc.
I know another guy who received over forty different electronics certifications during his brief military career. But he can't fix a broken TV set. He can troubleshoot on paper, but always screws things up when he gets his hands on the actual equipment.
I'd bet that even your army-guy friends would tell you that their advancement/certification and their technical ability were totally unrelated.
That's the edge that the military gives him. It's like the masons, or skull-and-bones, or a frat. You have a built-in network out there if you are wise enough to harness it.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
"Learning more and more languages/technologies/protocols has merely resulted in a larger skill set on my resume, with pretty much the same level of experience, and no new interviews."
If I was reading a resume and it had an enormous list of languages/protocols, I would be wary of a jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none.
Employers know that if you know the principles of programming and engineering paradigms, then you'll have no problems picking up whatever languages they want you to learn.
So, sure, mention mainstream skills such as C, Perl, Java, HTML, SQL. Don't bother listing Python, Ruby, Miranda, LISP, unless you happen to know that a prospective employer needs one of those. Just say "numerous other programming languages".
Get a couple high level certs, and get a mountain of low level certs. Even Brainbench certs work nicely to simply prove you have those basic skills. In my case I specialized in Groupware projects. You'll find 2nd - 3rd world countries have fewer folks who specialize in that type of development due to the overhead in setting up a test environment. Hope that helps.
(If at first you don't succeed, do it different next time!)
And not just become a contractor doing what you've been doing, but try producing something more substantial than what you've been doing. Then apply for higher level positions using what you've done on your own.
In today's competative job environment, being a specialist is the surest way not to get hired, especially in light of how rapidly software developement and IT continue to progress. Granted there are a few niche jobs for highly specialized professionals, but most job postings I see list required/desired skills that simply didn't exist, or were merely academic 5 years ago.
In addition, I've learned more since getting my degree and working as a software engineer than I ever learned during my formal education. This leads me to the belief that pigeon-holing your self as a (Insert Language Here) Programmer is BAD BAD BAD. The first Language I learned was ADA 95, then Modula 3, C, C++, Java, SML, Perl. Since graduating in '01 I haven't used any of those languages except for C, while learning a slew of new ones on the job. I've picked up Powerbuilder, XML, php, VB and C# as required as well as MFC and DLL programming techniques.
The process of acquiring programming skills in a new language was a painless process becuase a technical education is as much about learning HOW TO LEARN as anything else.
Also, the single most overlooked IT skill is written/verbal communication. If you're the greatest programmer ever but write worse than your average 3rd grader you'll find yourself in that $10/hour tech support job.
Writing a coherent, professional resume, cover letter, and correspondance are all pre-interview interviews. I've been in charge of some IT hiring in the past and when a piss poor resume came across my desk it was met with directional flatulance and a trip to the circular file. The content was virtually irrelevant. I should be able to read a resume and not still have major questions about an applicants skill sets or experience.
Why is offshoring computer-related jobs so much worse than any other jobs?
What's happening now in IT happened to consumer electronics in the 1980s, autobuilding in the 70s and 80s, to steelmaking in the 50s and 60s, and so on, back through industial history. It's a consequence of free trade, once the skills and captital to produce something high-tech become available to less-developed economies, production migrates to take advantage of lower labor costs.
Now, if you typed that post on a computer built from imported parts, or if you drive an imported car (that includes Fords and Chevies that are mostly built in Mexico), or own imported electronics then you have to ask yourself "What makes IT special?" Why should it be alright to listen to a Sony stereo (designed in Japan and built in Korea) and post to slashdot on a computer built in Honk Kong from Taiwanese parts, but unacceptable to buy software written in India?
Free trade is good until it takes *your* job, then it's slavery?
0 1 - just my two bits
That is true, but if i were you, I'd try to save money and develop another skill because the days of network administration being a cash-producing cow for people in small companies are numbered.
Adaptive, self-configuring systems are right around the corner. In a year or two, people will just plug the hardware together and it will configure, and even tweak, itself.
Don't say you weren't warned!
I agree with most of what you have said, but I don't see how applying free market theory to universities, will solve the problem you outline?
If Universities are to be run as economic units, then it is in their interest to offer low cost, high fee courses, for instance, law, which requires very few resources to teach, but charges high fees. Why are they going to run courses that require even more equipment, eg veterinary science or medicine? You could make those courses more expensive, as they have a higher earning potential, but then so does law.
I think universities need to be stripped down - most subjects could take place at a technical institute. I'd love to see Law and Medicine be taught as a trade, but realistically the first thing that needs to change is society's placing of prestige upon those fields. If the study of philosophy, for example, was regarded as prestigious, even though low-paying, it would still attract high quality students.
IMHO, Law and Medicine are trades - certainly medicine is mostly memorising symptomatic flow charts, ie if this, then this, then this, then this, and then experience having seen illnesses/ performed surgery. I think in theory it is the same as being an aviation mechanic or any form of repairer.
M.
[100% chance of troll mod I reckon)
M.
In response to your IT question, the only way to get paid more and stay with computers/networks is get out of configuring and installing and into designing. Be the guy that hires the IT folk. What do I mean by this? I mean learn. Forget certifications, there are a thousand other guys just like you that will, reluctantly, take the $13 and thus subvert your asking for $14. This is a no win situation. Go back to school and get a degree. Exactly what the degree is in doesn't matter. It only matters that you have a degree. So take MIS or CS or whatever suits you. Have fun with it. When you get out of school you'll be able to apply for the jobs that require a degree and therefore demand greater wages. Become an engineer. IMHO, starting a new business is too hard without a specific domain subset to focus on. So go to work for a company that does something similar what you really like. Learn the business. Over the long run you will either be promoted to higher pay (and headaches) or you'll discover that sweet spot you've been looking for and be able to develop a specific business plan that makes you rich. On your way to getting rich perhaps you'll discover that you can get more work done by paying $13/hr to some 12 year old to do what you used to do. Good luck. BTW, I started out as a Mac and network support guy. Today I'm a senior systems engineer for a large aerospace firm working to solve the worlds problems. Let me tell you, using a computer to help solve problems is a hell of a lot more fun that fixing one.
While it is great to have a broad background, employers do not care to see that when they are looking to fill a specific position. I personally have a strong background in programming several languages, but there is no way I'd ever be a programmer. However, my programming experience provides me with a logical way of thinking and I understand why an application or OS might have an error, thus I'm able to troubleshoot problems on servers, networks, desktop and just about anything else related to computers.
Decide what you want to do and present yourself and your strongest skills in that area on your resume. Not sure what you want to do? Make multiple resumes each one focused on your different areas of expertise and present the appropriate one when applying for a job. I was a jack of all trades, too, but I finally settled into disaster recovery and network administration, and I'm finally in a focused job with a decent salary that I hope will be the rest of my career.
Certification vs. degree? Degrees in IT are only valuable if you're looking towards management. Certifications do make a difference, but you need the experience to go with it. The paper alone will not land you the job you want, but it may get you in that job at a lower level, provide you the chance to get the experience, and allow you to work your way up.
Let's say you aim for CCIE. Do you know anyone that has their CCIE and/or is working in a job dealing with network configuration? While you work on your certification, ask them if they'll help you along. If possible shadow them while they're configuring a router or designing a LAN or WAN. See if you can find side jobs supporting small businesses with networks. Any work you do and get paid for is considered experience.
If I were re-starting my career right now, I'd aim for wireless technologies and security. Companies right now want wireless networks, but they also want them secure, unhackable and up 99.999%. I'm expecting soon there will be a certification in WLANs, if it doesn't exist already.
I did well during the past year while the economy was struggling and technical jobs were still being laid off. I quit my 5 year job with CSC and found my current, much better job 4 weeks later. It is possible, but sometimes you have to take a leap of faith. Of course, I couldn't have a complete post if I didn't promote my favorite group, Toastmasters (http://www.toastmasters.org) In a TM club you can learn communication skills (listening and speaking), gain confidence, practice leadership (management) skills, and network with hundreds of other people in a variety of fields. Who knows, you might find a connection that could lead to your new career. Find a club near you on the website.
Best of luck to you.
This might be true, but that only changes the kind of work that needs to be done. You still have to have someone administer the thing. You still need someone that can check security logs and look for strange things. You'll still need someone around that can help that clueless user that can't figure out how to log in.
As we've seen with windows, as the systems get more powerful and do more things automatically, the problems that can come up grow and grow. Windows 3.1 was very easy to fix when something went wrong and was very easy to reinstall if you had to. The knowledge base of problems for win 3.1 is quite small compared to XP or server 2003.
It's kind of like replacing auto assemblers with robots. Yeah those assemblers might be out of work, but you still need someone to service the robots. Just make sure your skill set stays current and you keep track of what needs to be done, as that is what changes the most.
When I was working for one of those 3rd party support companies, most of the computers we worked on were win98 or dos and this was just 2 years ago. Businesses keep their old systems around for a very long time, especially in small towns. We even had a few clients that were still running their databases off of 486's.
Hardly anyone keeps their mod points that long. :)
I never thought of Medicine as a trade, and it was an interesting way to see it. Admittedly, it is one very complex and very risky trade.
I don't know what the ideal solution would be like. But anything that would make Universities more affordable (or free), and anything that would make take the rote boredom away from them, I'm all for it. When I was at a U. I wanted to participate in research and I asked about it. They told me I cannot, because I don't have a prerequisite class. Blah. I knew everything that the prerequisite class had to offer (heck, I helped people do homework for that class), and if not, then why not let me bump my own head on it, and let me quit on my own or let me learn it. I just hate artificial limits. Or homework. How much of it is just rote garbage? I mean, if you need to be skilled in applying integral transformations, you'll learn that skill as the need arises. What's the point of drilling ppl on doing these transformations quickly (as opposed to slowly) when you will forget them all anyway and never use them again in your field? Here I much prefer the Russian way to teach Mathematics. Russians focus on proofs and understanding and not on the speed and memory skills. There is a lot of rote exercise in Russian Math. too, but it shocked me that even at U. level no one learns proofs and no one learns how to construct their own proof! Shock! That's what Math is about. I guess grad students get to do it, but in Russia kids do it in 5th grade already.
Education can be so much fun if done right. But it's plagued by professors who don't care (or openly hostile) about students, students who cheat and get away with it all the time (which lowers morale for honest students), endless beurocracy, and military type discipline where learning is best encourages by gameplay-like mentality. I want an environment where cheating is irrelevant, or where learning is so fun that no one even thinks to cheat. We learn best when we play, but many U.'s regiment of homework is like a whipping stick, all boring, all work, 100% chore and no learning or play is involved, but usually all memorization and other kinds of rote.
I somewhat enjoyed my English and Philo homework in those rare cases where I had to think about something interesting. There is way too much garbage being studied in English. Who cares if it's considered 'classic' by some crusty old farts from 100 years ago? Is it interesting and relevant today? Why not let me discover it on my own and not shove it down my throat?
I think it could be so much better, but unfortunately, I don't think there are any U.s or Colleges like what I envision. I've been to more than one, and I've heard accounts from many friends of the others, and my opinion is that they all suck, more or less, or if they don't suck, I can't afford it, or I can't get in perhaps (gotten in everywhere I applied last time). Oh well.
I hereby propose a brand NEW fancy sounding acronym - GEHHUH - what does it mean? I don't know but any aspiring IT guy should know it AND get certified.
He should also know BLEH/SAYWHAT/BLIZM (regardless what proc)....
Commenting code should also be kept to an absolute minimum.
~mantis
Whilst I think this is prevalent everywhere, I think in particular it is a symptom of university in the US.
My experience in the US was that there was weekly homework, and the whip was constantly cracked. Longer assignments, and self-pressure from the student was mostly absent [in undergraduate study].
However, things are different in different countries, as you pointed out with Russian education. In UK/Aus/NZ there is a lot less emphasis on homework, more emphasis on exams, and perhaps 2-3 assignments in a semester. It's why nearly every american exchange student who comes to one of those countries can't believe no-one is forcing him/her to do work, so does almost nothing until the last minute. The other problem with the US system, is that it encourages students to believe there is always an answer if they just work hard enough, which may not necessarily be true.
However, US students on the whole, after 4 years, have a far better grasp of the skills, and imho it's very hard to learn maths without having done a shitload of problems.
There are certainly universities in the US where undergraduates construct proofs and learn proofs. In fact, I can't believe there are Tertiary mathematics courses that don't have some course in analysis/algebra that involves proof.
The thing is, if you choose to study a course on John Donne, then you have to expect them to shove John Donne down your throat. This is not a good example, but I guess the point of a well taught course is to show the inherent worth in the subject, and to arouse interest in the students. So if something appears useless and 100 years old, hopefully, if taught by a good prof, not by those, as you say "who don't care", then they should show you why the study of that 100 year old 'classic' is worthwhile.
It is unfortunate you have had such a shit run of the college experience. All I can say is that even if you are at a shit institution, you get out what you put in. The research you wanted to do, but were told you didn't have the prerequisite, perhaps if you went back and put your case forward, like you did above, namely that you feel you have the necessary knowledge, and are willing to pay the financial and academic cost of failure, they hopefully would see reason and let you in.
M.
People of our era like to be reductionist and imagine that all of these insanely complicated issues can reduce down to simplicities, like the employer/employee relationship you mention, or imaginary 'laws' like the invisible hand.
In reality each interaction between people, and individual choices exist in a roiling sea of interconnectedness. The consequences for each choice, or for system wide impositions like guilds, government, common practice, etc are multifaceted and complex.
So my question to the world is, when are we going to get over out 'vietnam complex' that expects failure from any attempt at social enginneering, while keeping faith in fantasy 'laws' that only seem to predict the world accurately less than half the time, and get down to the real work of at least trying to build a better world in everyone's interest?
The Victorians had much less fear of doing this, and considering where they started and where they ended, they accomplished a fuckload more than the current era seems to be able to do.
Whether is be through widespread collective grassroots activism, through focusing on the basics like getting philosophy education in public schools, or through forming something similar or different to unions, something needs to be done.
Anytime you try, you win some and you lose some, but to give up and act like it's all beyond us as a society will surely get us all fucked in the ass sooner, or later.
"I don't know" is an important answer, if it is followed by a clear understandng of how to clear up the gap in knowledge and get things done.
----
Open mind, insert foot.
I may have mentioned this in a post many months in the distant past, but I once spoke to a headhunter who asked "do you have any database development experience such as X?" I spent a minute or so explaining that I had done X, Y, Z, and $foo in environments such as Access (yes, I know, I'm doing penance for that), SQL Server, and MySQL. Her response?
"Yes, but have you actually done any development?"
Reminds me of a webcomic (Userfriendly? dunno) I read once where one of the guys tells a headhunter that he knows Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Access, and the dude says "but you don't have any MS Office experience, do you? Hm, too bad, because we really need you to have that."
"Linux doesn't exist. Everyone knows Linux is an unlicensed version of Unix"- Kieren O'Shaughnessy