IT Professionals- In here!

Shamrock said:
What are people's opinions on being a jack of all trades, master of none type of IT professional or alternatively heavily specialising in one area?
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Being a jack of all trades rarely get's you anywhere... except a small pay cheque.

I specialise... but to a degree. My subject area is rather broad, and it's tiring keeping up to date but you do what you do to earn what you earn.

I love what I do and the pay is great, and can only get better.
 
NiCkNaMe said:
Being a jack of all trades rarely get's you anywhere... except a small pay cheque.

I specialise... but to a degree. My subject area is rather broad, and it's tiring keeping up to date but you do what you do to earn what you earn.

I love what I do and the pay is great, and can only get better.
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And what do you do?
 
Teledude said:
Pre-Sales with an architecture focus would generally command 70-90k dependent on firm and location - a lot of adverts I've seen want the relevant technical experience (MCITP/VCP/CCA/CCNA etc) as well as TOGAF etc :)

My career path without earnings -

Helpdesk - 3rd line wintel support - field and project engineer - 3rd line contractor - 3rd line wintel support - 3rd line contractor - pre-sales/vmware consultant - lead infra architect - infra tda contractor - now where I am a lead architect for HP Enterprise Services on contract :)
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HP ES? Ergh, what a let down they are ;)
 
Wynthorpe said:
Started at NHS 7 years ago, not been "pally" enough with the managers, so even though i have more experience and qualifications than others, I have stayed at the same pay grade and not got any further as im not the mate of the bosses. Most corrupt IT dept ever.
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Move company then, I was in that situation and walked into a more senior post elsewhere - if you have the skills (and I'm not talking qualifications here) people will snap you up.

It's better than sitting in your job bitching and moaning about it - which frankly just annoyes people around you, not matter how much they nod and agree to your face.
 
2007: Graduated
2007-2010 £19-23k: junior developer, very non-industry standard languages/processes, so left.
2010-2011 £22-26k: mid-level dev, doing asp.net and sharepoint development. Rubbish little company going nowhere.
2011-now 30-35k: mid/senior level dev for a company that invests a lots of time and money in its staff training. Working on asp.net/mvc projects. Earned around £40k this year with bonuses.

Hoping to get into contracting in 1-2 years when I have a little more experience under my belt.
 
sigma said:
Hah, yeah it's alright when you get gifted your first job in IT and know the person who signs off your training forms. ;)
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Gifted my ass. I was up against 66 other people in that interview process. It was all me. Hater can hate all you like, but it's me that's got me here and I'm damned proud of that. ;)

Also, I've got a week of ESI Project management training 1st week in March, which is all courtesy of work, which is nice since I'm contract.
Going to do my CAPM (Certified Associate in Project Management) - with the view to aim for the PMP. I would like to possibly do some Six Sigma too, as I like things on my CV :p
Pay me more, please. Always got to be increasing your knowledge and learning. That's the key.
 
Shamrock said:
What are people's opinions on being a jack of all trades, master of none type of IT professional or alternatively heavily specialising in one area?
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It entirely depends what the company is, whether you have other skills to complement it too - such as managerial skills so you can run a small team but still be the "tech lead" for most of it, if you can then it can pay well with the right employer.

On the whole though it's a specialists market, generalists who don't grab responsibility and make themselves valuable in some other way are unlikely to ever have the same earning potential.

It's entirely down to the person though, on the whole I see a lot more happy jack-of-all trades than specialists in permanent posts or contractors.
 
Think it got buried in the last page but what do people think of testing? Is it just a step before development or can you make a career from it?
 
There are levels of specialisation as well, for instance you could choose to specialise in security, which you could then further specialise in a specific area of security.

Jamie23 said:
Think it got buried in the last page but what do people think of testing? Is it just a step before development or can you make a career from it?
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I've worked with people who've made a good career out of testing so I would say it's something you could do rather than dev but again depends on the person/opportunities you get.
 
Jamie23 said:
Think it got buried in the last page but what do people think of testing? Is it just a step before development or can you make a career from it?
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I used to be a user acceptance tester at a bank. You can make a decent career out of it, that's for sure. However, I sometimes felt it doesn't have the same prestige as being a developer (I have now taught myself web development). You also need to perfect your testing methodology, as I found it easy to worry about covering all eventualities, which meant I upped my workload, but this is not necessarily recognised. You can put a lot of effort in, but providing nothing crashes in production, your addtional effort may not be recognised.

I guess it depends on your skills. If you are gifted at development and find it easy, you'll probably enjoy that more, but if you can perfect testing methodologies, then it's a fun area, and it's sometimes fun to point out bugs to developers. However, I always felt slightly inferior to the developers.

Rgds
 
Probably had a query like this in the past... But here we are!

I want to break into the IT sector, start at the bottom and work my way up of course. At the moment I'm working a dead end job which doesn't interest me in the slightest... only there for the money.

Currently 18 years old, got a merit in a BTEC National Award level 3 IT Practitioners, which I studied for A-Levels. As well as a range of other mediocre GCSE results.

What would my next best bet be to do? I can't get into Uni I don't think due to nowhere near enough UCAS points. Seriously want to grab the bull by the horns and start doing something I love and get my life going on track!
 
2008: Graduated with a 2:1 Master in Computer Science and no idea what I wanted to do
2009-2011: Got a job as the Network Manager at a local secondary school on around 28k/year. Learnt a huge amount and even got to work directly with Citrix writing the XenServer 5.6 exam
2011-Now: Now the Director of IT at an academy earning 55k+/year.
 
Have to say speaking as a complete starter to IT starting next week that the progression of some of you guys is madness. Hope I can follow suit down the years.
 
BoonMonkey said:
I want to break into the IT sector, start at the bottom and work my way up of course. At the moment I'm working a dead end job which doesn't interest me in the slightest... only there for the money.

Currently 18 years old, got a merit in a BTEC National Award level 3 IT Practitioners, which I studied for A-Levels. As well as a range of other mediocre GCSE results.

What would my next best bet be to do? I can't get into Uni I don't think due to nowhere near enough UCAS points. Seriously want to grab the bull by the horns and start doing something I love and get my life going on track!
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If you feel the grades you got do not reflect your ability, then you have to have a way to prove your ability. I recommend a website with project logs, e.g. how you installed some free software like linux, hardware rebuilds, etc etc. If you can create videos then all the better.

If you have specialist interests, e.g. car design, share trading, or cars, etc etc, try and think of IT areas that will incorporate them as that will make life more interesting.

Rgds
 
radderfire said:
If you feel the grades you got do not reflect your ability, then you have to have a way to prove your ability. I recommend a website with project logs, e.g. how you installed some free software like linux, hardware rebuilds, etc etc. If you can create videos then all the better.

If you have specialist interests, e.g. car design, share trading, or cars, etc etc, try and think of IT areas that will incorporate them as that will make life more interesting.

Rgds
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Thanks for the fast response! I definitely like the idea of using a website as a portfolio, I'm quite fond of web design also so I could have some fun whilst doing that too, and hey, it all goes towards showing my abilities at the end of the day. :)

Definitely going to do this, hopefully I'll get some pictures and videos of my build and such like when I get my new parts on Thursday!

Thanks again :D
 
If your going for dev job, pics of computer build won't help...at all.

You will need to get into algorithms, data structures, good software engineering practise and methdologies, software projects, the latest apis etc
 
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QuickLink said:
Gifted my ass. I was up against 66 other people in that interview process. It was all me. Hater can hate all you like, but it's me that's got me here and I'm damned proud of that. ;)

Also, I've got a week of ESI Project management training 1st week in March, which is all courtesy of work, which is nice since I'm contract.
Going to do my CAPM (Certified Associate in Project Management) - with the view to aim for the PMP. I would like to possibly do some Six Sigma too, as I like things on my CV :p
Pay me more, please. Always got to be increasing your knowledge and learning. That's the key.
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Gold star for you, you're amazing. :cool:

Edit - perhaps you should request a course that teaches you how to be less of a moody ****?
 
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Not really much of a career yet...

1) Degree - BSc (Honours) Computing (2 years so far).
2) Placement Year – IT Lab Support Analyst – Pharmaceutical Company 17K.
3) Next step – Complete final year at university and get graduate Job.

Matt
 
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