Career Decisions (IT Professionals please read!)

Aaron445

Aaron445

Aaron445

Associate
Joined
10 Dec 2010
Posts
6
Hey guys first time posting here.

First off I'm 16 years old and doing level 3 IT in college at the moment. I'm hoping to go to Uni once I'm done with college (if it isn't 100k a year by then). I'm having real trouble deciding what I want to specialise in and chase a career in. I know I prefer the hardware side of computing in general to software, however I do enjoy programming.

Long story short, could you guys fill out the little questionnaire below for me, I'm trying to get an idea of what the job market is like in IT at the moment. Thanks all


Job Title/Description:

Typical day-to-day work:

Highest qualification (GCSE/Diploma etc):

Job satisifaction (do you enjoy your day-to-day work):

Job security(do you feel you are at risk of having your job outsourced to india?):

Salary(optional):


Thanks again
 
I'll bite.

Job Title/Description: IT Officer

Typical day-to-day work: Looking after server farm, checking backups. Working with AD etc

Highest qualification (GCSE/Diploma etc): BSc (Hons) Degree

Job satisifaction (do you enjoy your day-to-day work): Very much so!!

Job security(do you feel you are at risk of having your job outsourced to india?): Don't think im going to India, but working in the gov't at the mo isn't 100% guaranteed.

Salary(optional): £20k+
 
Job Title/Description: IT Support

Typical day-to-day work: Dealing with hardware and software faults, Active Directory administration, testing and installation of new equipment, minor programming (though this is not something I should really be doing - I just want to) etc.

Highest qualification (GCSE/Diploma etc): BTEC Level 3

Job satisifaction (do you enjoy your day-to-day work): Lacking. :(

Job security(do you feel you are at risk of having your job outsourced to india?): Quite high and the team leader for our area seems to have plans for me, so it looks good on that front.

Salary(optional): < £10,000. :( :( :(
 
Job Title/Description: Hosted Services Analyst

Typical day-to-day work: Looking after server farm, checking backups. Working with SQL, 3rd line Support

Highest qualification (GCSE/Diploma etc): A levels

Job satisifaction (do you enjoy your day-to-day work): I do shift work. Can't beat getting paid £10/hour + for watching TV :D

Job security(do you feel you are at risk of having your job outsourced to india?):

Nope, we're an NHS contractor with over 50 % of the market share and healthy turnover. Because our services are bought with public money, cost is of no concern, only quality, and if the expense can be justified.

Which as long as we deliver good service, it can. Our director and his wife (who doesnt work) have matching his and hers Aston Martins. So they've blatantly no need to start looking at the margins and cutting corners by using cheap labour.

Salary(optional): £20k+

Same job as above basically, but different environment.

My biggest piece of advice ? Experience is everything. Employers are bewildered by a massive influx of candidates who've seen TV adverts for IT recruiters who say "you too can earn 30k a year in IT" and have studied from home, or been on university degrees that offer them no real world experience.

More than anything, you need that first rung on the ladder. Somebody to give you a shot and to trust you to work hard, and learn hard. I found that somebody. Which is why i Got into IT with nothing but A levels.
 
Thanks for the advice, one of my biggest worries actually was that after getting a degree or whatever, would I even get employed without prior experience.
 
You can just as easily as you would without a degree as it takes somebody to have a bit of faith and give you your start. Interview technique is crucial here too. You have to appeal to them to make them want to give you a chance. And accept your first job the pay is going to be crummy. When i started in 1st line IT doing support, i started on 13k a year :(

You could go for degree, and hope to get straight into somewhere that pays higher. But you generally don't go straight into something like 3rd line support with no prior experience, degree or not. You'd be more likely to go straight into a development role or something similar to get higher wages. But do you want to do development ? I don't. I blummin hated programming which is why not going to uni worked out best for me.

I actually got offered 2 jobs at once and had to choose !! that was after attending about 4/5 interviews prior that i got turned down for not having enough experience.

You just keep trying, and hope the break comes along. Once you're in the job, you can then look at taking up specific qualifications that may be of interest to you to help you further your career. Eg CCNA if you're into networking.
 
Last edited:
Job Title/Description: Support Analyst

Typical day-to-day work: 1st / 2nd line support. Citrix support, Active directory, exchange, blackberry management, phone system management etc

Highest qualification (GCSE/Diploma etc): Degree
Job satisifaction (do you enjoy your day-to-day work): On the whole yes.

Job security(do you feel you are at risk of having your job outsourced to india?): No

Salary(optional): 20k+ (includes on-call)

Get your foot in the door, maybe a placement if you go to uni. Go to uni and have a great time, dont work too hard but hard enough to get a good grade. My placement wage was 9k! IT support isnt great money but its a 'jack of all trades' job. This gets you a massive list of skills though for other jobs so you should be pretty safe getting a job in the future, you will also build up to 3rd line support, IT manager or self emplioyed / contractor. You could branch off to sales, or supporting a certain area e.g. cloud computing, sharepoint admin etc, or you could do support then do some SQL type stuff and later branch off down the SQL / database / .net developer route if you want. It opens up lots of doors

Personally I'm happy at the moment (due to being in a good team) and am learing a lot, many new project coming up like learning Xen App 6, helping out with building domain controllers and setting up exchange, learning Comms hardware...
 
Last edited:
MrLOL said:
Which as long as we deliver good service, it can. Our director and his wife (who doesnt work) have matching his and hers Aston Martins. So they've blatantly no need to start looking at the margins and cutting corners by using cheap labour.
Click to expand...

Just lol at the niavity - I'm sure the owner of Norwich Union has a nice car..
 
Aaron445 said:
Thanks for the advice, one of my biggest worries actually was that after getting a degree or whatever, would I even get employed without prior experience.
Click to expand...

It depends entirely on who is giving you the job. I had no prior experience when I left college, but I had a lot of knowledge that I could demonstrate in the practical interview. I succeeded with every task and could name all but one thing that I was asked about (I'd never seen a SCSI cable before in my life!). My boss saw the potential I had for development and that I could be moulded to work his way. In this case, that wasn't a bad thing - we've frequently had comments about the IT systems at our place being some of the best in the area and the support given to staff beyond excellent.

I've been made aware that cases like this aren't too common, though. Getting a part-time job working with IT in some way whilst you are at university, or doing one of those courses with a placement year, would probably give you a far better chance.
 
Job Title/Description: Software/Systems Engineer

Typical day-to-day work: Producing technical solutions for bids, reaching agreement with clients about changes to the system and delivery schedules, planning, coordinating, and tracking work done by team and reporting to project management.

Highest qualification (GCSE/Diploma etc): Degree

Job satisifaction (do you enjoy your day-to-day work): Highly variable, some times it's great while other days I descend into the absolute pit of despair.

Job security(do you feel you are at risk of having your job outsourced to india?): Yes it's absolutely a risk. The company can and do bring Indian colleagues over to the UK for around half of what they pay me. Most people who have been replaced with an intra company transfer have been able to find other roles for themselves within the organisation, however I sometimes get the feeling we're standing on the edge of a cliff. It's noticeable that there are hardly any junior staff joining the company these days, so where are the technical architects, project managers, safety engineers of tomorrow going to come from I wonder? If we don't have those, where is my next role going to come from?
 
Job Title/Description: Systems Administrator
Typical day-to-day work: 75% Mundane (low-end) active directory, systems maintenance and fault fixing 25% interesting project work

Highest qualification (GCSE/Diploma etc): Advanced GNVQ IT

Job satisifaction (do you enjoy your day-to-day work): Its OK. I work with some good people but the job is fairly boring generally. Too much time spent bodging ancient infrastructure into working

Job security(do you feel you are at risk of having your job outsourced to india?): Job security is pretty good. Work for a company on a government contract. The job will never go to India but they could always get another company in eventually or there might be cutbacks. So not completely safe.

Salary(optional): £20k+

My first IT job was in 1998 and paid me £10k a year. You may well need to get a job that pays peanuts to get inital experience whatever part of IT you are looking at doing.
 
Job Title/Description: Desktop Environment Officer (basically means, Servicedesk Manager)

Typical day-to-day work: I run a team of 10 (including myself) as part of a wider ranging IT dept for a local further and higher education college. My team support all the college's staff and students in their use of the IT systems. This is across 10 sites in the area (takes about 1.5 hours to drive from each further point site to the other) and covers approximately 2800 PCs/laptops. I keep customers happy, do all the managerial admin, hire staff, rota the site cover, organise the yearly replacement of a quarter of our stock and generally keep the support side of the IT team running smoothly.

Highest qualification (GCSE/Diploma etc): A-Level. No real formal IT qual unless you count ECDL Expert! Closest is the Service Desk Manager course I did with the Service Desk Institute.

Job satisifaction (do you enjoy your day-to-day work): Most of the time. It's usually fairly varied and I get satisfaction from it. Can be highly stressful though too.

Job security(do you feel you are at risk of having your job outsourced to india?): I feel secure yes, education is likely to always be needed and it's unlikely a college of this size will outsource.

Salary(optional): around the £28k mark currently. Rising to just over £30k by the time I've worked up the increments to the top of my scale. Just to give some perspective there, my team members (Network Support Analysts) earn around £22k, my Apprentice Analyst a lot less; approx £15k I think and my Administrators (1st line) around £16k. Personally, I started in IT 12 years ago at £13,500pa

Not sure if that helps you too much, I'm aware it's a perspective from perhaps a different angle to that you may have already considered. So hopefully it will help in that way at least?

ETA - in my opinion, experience in the IT field is one hell of a lot more important than qualifications. I know several people who have quals coming out of their ears, but they have no clue as to how to actually apply that knowledge to the real world. That is true both on the technical side and on the touchy feely customer focussed side too! My advice would be to get some experience if you can, ask your local colleges if their IT team could use some extra unpaid help here and there for a start. Anything is good and shows initiative when you do come to look for a job in the future.
 
Last edited:
Job Title/Description:
Software Developer (C# Contractor)

Typical day-to-day work:
Varied, can be anything from writing build scripts through to sitting in front of traders and attempting to explain why the system told them they had an extra $500mm of stock to lend to hedge funds when it actually wasn't there (always fun!)
Currently I'm off for a bit doing some freelance stuff from home along with a few other guys and will be looking for a new contract next year.

Highest qualification (GCSE/Diploma etc):
BSc (Hons) Degree, wasn't in computer science though.

Job satisifaction (do you enjoy your day-to-day work):
If working for a decent client then yes, I enjoy it very much.
Each day has different challenges and I'm always learning something new.

Job security(do you feel you are at risk of having your job outsourced to india?):
Not really. There's always a risk of stuff like that, but I'd like to think I provide something a bit extra over the standard code monkey type role and hopefully that will keep me in work for a while.
I generally work in banking and having a bit of business knowledge in that area is always pretty valuable.

Salary(optional):
Enough to be comfortable.
 
Aaron445 said:
Thanks for the advice, one of my biggest worries actually was that after getting a degree or whatever, would I even get employed without prior experience.
Click to expand...

Everyone currently working had to start somewhere with no prior experience.

Getting a degree from a decent university opens more doors for you - last time we had an intake of grads the starting salaries were around 33-37k depending on where they came from/whether they had a masters etc..

I currently work as a business analyst at a software vendor, I enjoy my job and the pay isn't too bad. Flexible working hours, pool table in office, private health care, free gym, casual dress code etc...
 
Job Title/Description: Customer Engineer/Team Leader

Typical day-to-day work: Hardware ( thought often goes beyond h/w ) support on enterprise level servesr and SANs

Highest qualification (GCSE/Diploma etc): A levels

Job satisifaction (do you enjoy your day-to-day work): Most of time though process and emasures often get in the way

Job security(do you feel you are at risk of having your job outsourced to india?): been here 20 years so no too bad

Salary(optional): )! )! )!^ I get by
 
Job Title/Description: Test Lead

Typical day-to-day work: I manage an offshore team of between 4-8 people depending on the project. We work with developers, BAs and the business to create test suites for SIT and Regression testing.

Highest qualification (GCSE/Diploma etc): MA Hons in Music (:D). I have been put through a lot of training by my current employer though and now have my ISTQB Advanced Testing certification.

Job satisifaction (do you enjoy your day-to-day work): I do enjoy it, but it can be hard work with long hours at times. I work for a major investment bank and the work ethic means they do expect long hours from you at times, particularly as we often end up dealing with people in different time zones all over the world. The upsides are that they are pretty flexible about the hours that you do work (can also work from home when you like), they really push for you to keep on learning and advancing your career and you get good financial rewards if you're doing well.

Job security(do you feel you are at risk of having your job outsourced to india?): My entire team is outsourced to India! That tends to be the case with a lot of testing and support roles. But they do have a policy of maintaining the 'lead' roles in Primary/Secondary sites, so I feel pretty safe for the time being.

Salary(optional): £35k+ plus bonus
 
Job Title/Description:
Senior IT Advisor for the NHS.

Typical day-to-day work:
Managing IT involvement in projects, building/repairing servers (software and hardware), managing small IT team, advising on projects and developing our use of software, improving IT infrastructure (network/servers/software). Responsible for ~90 servers, 1200 desktops over 75 locations. Co-manage team of 6. Control procurement of software and hardware.

Highest qualification (GCSE/Diploma etc):
HNC Electrical Engineer (actually a qualified electrical engineer, have no IT qualifications other than a few MS certs).

Job satisifaction (do you enjoy your day-to-day work):
Outstanding, love it.

Job security(do you feel you are at risk of having your job outsourced to india?):
Rock solid, no chance of this happening.

Salary(optional):
£30k +
 
Job Title/Description: IT systems/Network manager

Typical day-to-day work: Server admin, software deploment (currently manage in excess of 40 apps) exchange, internet filtering, backups.

Highest qualification (GCSE/Diploma etc): Didn't do Uni, but lots of MS courses taken.

Job satisifaction (do you enjoy your day-to-day work) its ok, but we a small team that is constantly fire-fighting and are at the mercy of over 1000 users. Not much thanks or appreciation in this role. No ovetime pay, even though i am constanly over my weekly hours.

Job security(do you feel you are at risk of having your job outsourced to india?): Not india, but education budgets are being caught, and managed services are always a threat

Salary(optional):£28k

Now 12 years into this career. First post was IT recycling company then first level, second level etc..
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom