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What Would You Recommend for IT Training?
ITPhantom wonders: "It is that time again and my supervisor has been coming around and asking what training and conferences I would like to attend in the upcoming year. I have recently been put in charge of the management and security of a few dozen machines in our department, and our internal network (simple as it may be). While most of the machines that I am responsible for are running Windows, there are a few Linux machines in the mix. I am fairly proficient with Windows, but have not had any real experience managing Linux machines, though I have been a casual user for about a year. With all of the options available, from online training to extensive boot camps and seminars, what would you recommend for training in the areas above?"
I've been a general programmer for 10+ years. I didn't think I'd get much out of a CCNA class but I really enjoyed it. Many things that were hazy before (subnet masks, switches vs routers, etc) are now crystal clear.
I'm now using my new knowledge of the UDP protocol to do some cool broadcasting stuff in some of my client-server apps.
$7.95/mo, 200 GB disk, 2TBxfer, MySQL, PHP, RoR.
I don't know about the rest of the slashdotters, but from the experience i got from college i would get some books on the matter before attending any kind of training. I know this is not the quickest way out, but is the thorough way, and believe me sometimes in IT doing it right is much more important than doing it quickly.
There's so much good stuff available for free on the internet that i can't even point out where exactly you can start, that depends on what you want to learn first
But, anyhow, if budget is not a problem in your job, as it is in my, you could still benefit from some by-yourself studying before you face some formal training.
What is best in life? To crush your enemies, to see them driven before you and to hear the lamentations of their women.
books are important.
however, two of the things most overlooked about classes are a) the ability of the instructor (hopefully) to help you build the picture that makes you understand something. books have a hard time doing that. b) let you see a different perspective from your classmates. the people around you have different way of looking at things that is very similar to why programmers sometimes find it helpfull to have other people look at their code for the sneaky bug.
eric
I recently attended a SANS course, and I agree, they did a great job of general security concepts, as well as applied networking, windows, and unix applied security best practices.
I didn't get the disneyworld trip though.
Donald Roeber
Generating 2048 Bits of Randomness...
I'm assuming you're more then capable in the desktop support arena. The above recommendations are things I've had to relearn over the past 10 years in managing a system that started with 50 and has since grown to 5500 nodes. The more adaptable you build your fledgling network today, the more you'll thank me down the line.
If you're half as beautiful naked, you'd be 4 times as beautiful with twice as many clothes on.
What most programmers would like:
Give each programmer a $500 per annum budget they can spend on tech books, let them keep the books, bring em home, read in their own time.
Total cost: $500 each for any employee who actually bothers.
What most managers do:
Spend $3000 per head on a 3 day seminar, send several employee costing the company 3 days work from each person.
Total cost: $3500+ per employee whether they bother paying attention or not.
Where do you want to be in 5, 10, 15 years?
Where does your boss think you should be in 5, 10, 15 years?
If these align, work on a plan that has you trained appropriately with what is useful today, next year, 5 years from now. A wide range of jobs makes your life more fun and you more valuable, IMHO. I've been an IT professional for 20 years now and never would have guessed I'd be an independent enterprise technical architect from where I started as job title "Programmer A" writing Space Shuttle GN&C code all those years ago.
For lack of knowing anything else, here's the path I took:
- Programmer A (Real-time development in HAL/S)
- Systems Analyst (added 20+ languages, still GN CMM Level 5)
- Senior Developer (switched to commercial languages C/C++ and publishing)
- Senior Developer (Cross platform development UNIX, Windows, Mac)
- Lead Developer @ a startup (employee #20!) Ran development teams, servers, and did everything for customers
- Consultant (to publishing company migrating from MVS to UNIX) mostly worried about security and good development practices
- Consultant (telecom - large scale systems that can never go down; *NIX, Windows and really strange telecom-only protocols) mostly worried about security and good development practices. Basically, if people can be replaced by a computer system and the money works out where computers can do the job better, then replace the people; humans have more interesting work than what a computer system can do anyway. We aren't hiring enough replacement workers for all the thousands that will retire in the next 5-10 years.
The final frontier for me is retirement in a few years. I plan to donate my time and skills to non-profit companies in need of automation.
Formal Training - almost none. I've always had a healthy curiousity and desire to learn. Books and a little data center at the house. Labs at work or production systems at prior jobs. I'm amazed at how real companies with critical software does development and testing when compared to most development shops out there. It is a scary world. I wish I'd stayed current with Java & J2EE training over the years. I wish I'd taken some formal Solaris, HP-UX, and AIX admin classes. Where I work, we have Lunch and Learns constantly - I always go whether it is EMC, HDS, MTI, Sun, IBM, HP, Cisco, Nortel, Lucent, BlueCoat, Microsoft, Bearing Point, Accenture, EY, NCR, Security Training or Oracle doing the training. During my commute, I listen to books on tape. A mix of computer podcosts, novels, and self-improvement (1-minute manager anyone?) At this stage, my position is as CIO. Knowing what each technology can provide, what the pitfalls are and how to integrate them into our overall strategy is important. Oh, and how much next month, next year, and 5 years from now will cost to implement - that's really important. Making all my people feel wanted and challenged. Helping them find a path up for their career and earning their trust over the years has been some of the most important lesson's I've learned. I'm nothing if my team doesn't work with me to solve real problems. We're all in this together and yes, some days, your boss is an idiot with pointy ears.
Look ahead to your ideal job in 10-15 years. What skills will serve you the best when you are there? Make a plan and take the first step in that direction. Learn Chinese, or Java, or Solaris admin, or begin a practical security certification program. The worst that will happen is you learn a lot. But the best that will happen is you get where you want to be, live a fun life, and absolutely love your work! Not too bad for a "Programmer A", huh?
Yup, they sure do. And then they deny a request for a $50 book, claiming they don't "have it in the budget" which they pissed away on the seminar.
This really is a good idea. $500 could buy you quite a few good books, and would give employees an incentive to go and read them. I've never known an organization to do that though. I was a coop student once and they sent me on a week long course, because they still had a bunch of training vouchers left that they hadn't used. It was a nice course, but probably nothing I couldn't have learned from buying a $75 book and spending the week reading and doing my own learning. No matter what level of course you take, from beginner to expert, you'll probably spend about half your time going over stuff you already know.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.