A move into the IT sector

Royal Chewn · 18 May 2013 at 06:06

I have been considering a carrer change over to the IT sector.. I am currently in the creative sector and do Middleweight Graphic Design, Web design & Art-working.
I love technology hardware more than trying to be creative. I used to build PC's back in the day (for small businesses, friends and family) so feel I would be suited to anything that involves replacing hardware or fixing computers.

My questions :

What is a good sector to try and get a foot in, with good career furthering prospects?
What are the minium global diplomas or certs that companies look for? Any online Microsoft courses?
A friend of mine mentioned IT sales.. but am unsure I want to sign-up for the 'boiler room' type of BS'ing... Anyone in IT sales?

Any tips and help would be greatly appreciated. Looking forward to hearing from some of you seasoned IT professionals.

TIA

RC

craptakular · 18 May 2013 at 07:51

Would it not be better to learn programming like php, python or java? Build on your design skills and shift into web programming stuff for the same company?

Kiyoshi · 18 May 2013 at 07:53

Service Desk/Help Desk is usually the easiest way to get a foot hold and experience you can put on your CV. I would start looking at Microsoft MCITP qualifications and do them via self study (just be aware that many of the Windows 7/Server 2008 qualifications retire at the end of July). I have no experience in sales, you may not find it interesting if you say you're interested in the hands on side of the technical aspect.

asim18 · 18 May 2013 at 08:22

Royal Chewn said:
so feel I would be suited to anything that involves replacing hardware or fixing computers.

Mate, anyone is suited to "replacing hardware". It's mind numbingly repetitive work. Moving from design to IT Support because you're good at replacing hardware sounds very foolish.

eatcustard · 18 May 2013 at 08:30

Stay with your Graphic design, its far better than IT, (trust me Im a designer as well)

Rotty · 18 May 2013 at 09:41

asim18 said:
Mate, anyone is suited to "replacing hardware". It's mind numbingly repetitive work. Moving from design to IT Support because you're good at replacing hardware sounds very foolish.

depends on what you are replacing hardware on, if you work your way up there can be decent money to be made

sports_brah · 18 May 2013 at 09:54

I would personally get more into web development esque things. Would complement your existing skill set nicely.

neil_g · 18 May 2013 at 10:02

Royal Chewn said:
I used to build PC's back in the day (for small businesses, friends and family) so feel I would be suited to anything that involves replacing hardware or fixing computers.

My advice, have a better goal than desktop support as it gets mind numbing very quickly, its poorly paid and is completely over populated compared to the amount of jobs out there (think of support as the Far East of this world) as everyone who's ever "fixed a computer for a mate" thinks they can do it.

Totality · 18 May 2013 at 10:13

Don't do it. I went from 1st line many years ago through 2nd, 3rd and now solutions architect. The more you get involved with Microsoft products the more you realise just how poorly they are designed and patched. A new patch gets released and it breaks something else and MS in their ivory tower are useless about it - ever tried logged a premier call to MS early in the morning when an Exchange system has failed and 3000 people cannot log in to email? Things don't go as expected for no reason. Each migration has problems different to the last and you are up all night for problems caused by software, etc. It really is a thankless, never ending job and you are just expected to be available for problems out of hours all the time. No-one cares when it works, but as soon as things go wrong blame is sought and someone has to be blamed.

On top of that you are expected to stay motivated and keep doing exams all the time when MS decide to release a new product, change everything about and generally make a mess of things.

As you can guess, I hate the career

tribz · 18 May 2013 at 10:22

Totality said:
As you can guess, I hate the career

Know what you mean, for me its turned from something I was really interested and enthusiastic about to just being a job.

agnes · 18 May 2013 at 10:59

I enjoy my career in IT. It has somewhat sped up progression wise in the last 3 years.

Don't be fooled thinking it will be all fun playing with fancy toys, tweaking and playing with things.

It's nothing like your hobby at home, nothing. Young people have this idea that the IT world is just a bunch of gamers who spend all day browsing the net and talking about geek stuff. Whilst this is partially true. The naked truth is it's political and repetitive.

Have you ever used Active Directory? Ever actually ran or looked after a server? Know how VMware works? Understand basic networking? All of this and more is nothing to do with building machines.

Building machines is a small, if any part of a 1st/2nd line role at all.

Chances are, the company you go with will have a vendor, such as Dell or HP that ship pre built machines to your company. You simply plug it into the network, boot up a image and leave it running. Do this a bunch of times and it becomes a chore.

Most of your time will be spent fixing random issues. Nothing to do with hardware. Most companies have a 'just replace it' mentality now.

Mr-White · 18 May 2013 at 11:22

Most places just buy in desktops or servers from places like Dell and HP, so the only time you'll get to "build" anything is when they needs parts replacing and even then they can send engineers to replace the parts for you. With servers being virtualised these days you'll end up building servers from templates and just customizing them.

MW

Basher · 18 May 2013 at 12:03

I work in IT sales. The game is changing a little in the software world in terms of how people buy which makes things quite interesting. Pretty decent money, too.

Nate--IRL-- · 18 May 2013 at 13:02

agnes said:
I enjoy my career in IT. It has somewhat sped up progression wise in the last 3 years.

Don't be fooled thinking it will be all fun playing with fancy toys, tweaking and playing with things.

It's nothing like your hobby at home, nothing. Young people have this idea that the IT world is just a bunch of gamers who spend all day browsing the net and talking about geek stuff. Whilst this is partially true. The naked truth is it's political and repetitive.

Have you ever used Active Directory? Ever actually ran or looked after a server? Know how VMware works? Understand basic networking? All of this and more is nothing to do with building machines.

Building machines is a small, if any part of a 1st/2nd line role at all.

Chances are, the company you go with will have a vendor, such as Dell or HP that ship pre built machines to your company. You simply plug it into the network, boot up a image and leave it running. Do this a bunch of times and it becomes a chore.

Most of your time will be spent fixing random issues. Nothing to do with hardware. Most companies have a 'just replace it' mentality now.

Pretty much my experience after 9 months in. That said I'm enjoying it, lots to learn.

Nate

Totality · 18 May 2013 at 13:27

tribz said:
Know what you mean, for me its turned from something I was really interested and enthusiastic about to just being a job.

I wouldn't mind doing volunteer work in IT to be honest. I just find that everything in IT is just overly complicated and costs far too much as everyone wants a piece of the pie. Users just take it for granted and don't even think about how much effort goes in to keeping everything running smoothly - they just see you as an IT guy and don't give two hoots about you during the day but then want you to immediately fix stuff when it goes wrong and suddenly you are important. In the first couple of years I loved it, but it just wears you down. "OMG my new version of Outlook looks different - its rubbish, why did you have to upgrade to the latest version as the old one worked fine - we hate IT - OMG IT why did you introduce the policy to block exe files - OMG IT we have a virus why didnt you introduce a policy to block exe files?" No winning these days!

I applied to the UN a while back to do some volunteer work as I would much rather use my 8+ years of high level experience to do projects where people actually really appreciate the work that goes in to them and it isn't all about the money and self-important end-users :mad:

Ev0 · 18 May 2013 at 15:01

Kiyoshi said:
I would start looking at Microsoft MCITP qualifications and do them via self study (just be aware that many of the Windows 7/Server 2008 qualifications retire at the end of July).

I'd be careful wading straight into the various MCITP tracks fresh to the industry, these are meant for people who currently have experience in the different areas.

Totality said:
Don't do it. I went from 1st line many years ago through 2nd, 3rd and now solutions architect. The more you get involved with Microsoft products the more you realise just how poorly they are designed and patched. A new patch gets released and it breaks something else and MS in their ivory tower are useless about it - ever tried logged a premier call to MS early in the morning when an Exchange system has failed and 3000 people cannot log in to email? Things don't go as expected for no reason. Each migration has problems different to the last and you are up all night for problems caused by software, etc. It really is a thankless, never ending job and you are just expected to be available for problems out of hours all the time. No-one cares when it works, but as soon as things go wrong blame is sought and someone has to be blamed.

On top of that you are expected to stay motivated and keep doing exams all the time when MS decide to release a new product, change everything about and generally make a mess of things.

As you can guess, I hate the career

There is a world of IT out there that isn't Microsoft centric, maybe look to move into those areas (and one away from these 'users' you mention)

Mr-White · 18 May 2013 at 15:43

Totality said:
The more you get involved with Microsoft products the more you realise just how poorly they are designed and patched.

Unfortunately this is the case with everything, if it all worked perfectly most of us would be out of a job.

MW

Kiyoshi · 18 May 2013 at 17:52

Ev0 said:
I'd be careful wading straight into the various MCITP tracks fresh to the industry, these are meant for people who currently have experience in the different areas.

MCITP Desktop Support and Desktop Administrator are perfectly suitable for entry level qualifications into IT in my opinion.

JonJ678 · 18 May 2013 at 18:27

There are still UK jobs for code monkeys. You might find that more interesting than graphic design, or perhaps a lot worse.

I worked in a small repair shop, pulling desktops/laptops apart and replacing bits. It was fairly interesting for a few months, but killed all desire to mess around with my own computer back home. Too similar to my hobby

neil_g · 18 May 2013 at 18:34

Totality said:
ever tried logged a premier call to MS early in the morning when an Exchange system has failed and 3000 people cannot log in to email? Things don't go as expected for no reason.

Yes, did exactly that on Friday. Within 90 mins of troubleshooting "Jeebu" had successfully found the cause of exchange 2003 smtp based services to spontaneously restart every 30 seconds. And it wasn't ms fault

A move into the IT sector

Thug