How to get into the IT Industry

[Ev0]

Route I went down was Uni (non IT degree) with a non grad job afterwards.

9 years and a few jobs on and I'd say I'm where I want to be with decent progress along the way, in an area of IT I enjoy working in (not support ) for a good company in a good role, and important for me at a decent level.

It definitely depends on the person as to what it is you do and where you end up, I was made redundant from a place around 18 months ago and there's a big difference in roles where my old team mates have ended up. Some shot for the moon, some didn't.

Feel I've been a bit lucky along the way, but I think I maybe underestimate myself if that makes sense as can't all be luck.

This. I done IT support for 9 years. It is soul destroying. I done support via the telephone.

Again sitting in telephone support for 9 years, did you not want to move up/out of that?? My wife took 3 years to move from a purely first line role over to being a DBA.

Genuine question to all those saying I've been in support for x years and hate it, have you actually tried moving up or out of support?

 

[Dimension]

Chip? I left food laying around? Where?!

But in all seriousness, you're right, upper management shouldn't need to know. But when you constantly tell them something isn't going to work no matter how much you massage it, and they completely ignore you and tell the customer no problem, it gets a tad irritating.

This was a three letter company starting E and ending S, that is now a two letter company starting H and finishing the letter before Q.

They decided that Citrix was a good idea, which I have no problem with. Until the point, that is, that they decide to use a farm of three servers to host Oracle development tools that about 80 developers are going to use to compile applications simultaneously on.

We kept getting calls saying it was really slow. I was shocked (not), as were my colleagues (not). E something S told us we had to make it work. We said "sure, put the Oracle tools back on the developer machines and it'll be fine".

"Can't do that ... licences etc"."

"Don't expect it to get any better then".

"You HAVE to FIX IT".

*cough*

They even brought in H letter before Q specialists. They were their brand of servers after all. Strangely enough they couldn't make them work any quicker either.

Anyway, rant rant rant, apologies for derailing the thread

Ohh my. Nothing changes, I work for H letter before Q ES and the same thing still happens daily. They sign up to contracts with clients that agree to deliver solutions that have no hope of working how the client expects and just refuse to listen to the technical people when we try to explain why. too late just fix it!

 

[Sin_Chase]

Again sitting in telephone support for 9 years, did you not want to move up/out of that?? My wife took 3 years to move from a purely first line role over to being a DBA.

Don't take this the wrong way, but DBA is not that big of a jump from 1st Line unless it's very high level DBA stuff, and that's less administrative and more design.

I got out of IT after nearly 10 years. Did some project work, hardware, networking, telephony, 1st line and every line in-between and am glad I am out. That's coming from someone who had a large exposure to many different aspects of corporate IT from telephone support to implementing business continuity and server solutions.

The only parts of IT I considered moving into was forensics and security. I chose to get out of the sector entirely though.

The question you need to ask yourself is "Ideally what do I WANT to be doing in IT and how should I go about getting there?" Any degree of support work will always help but it's not a great stepping ladder as inevitably you will get stuck in it, that is unless the company you work for provides generous training opportunities and other roles become available.

You really need to know where you want to take an IT career and set about specialising. I think support is great for getting a good grip of user expectation and actually understanding HOW and WHY higher level work/decision making/project planning affects your user base but the day-to-day is mind numbing.

 

[Hades]

DOn't join IT. And if you're in IT then find a way top get out. Truely awful industry (been there, done that, 25 years).

 

[LizardKing]

Get an IT job i a small organisation, you'll find it allows for better self discovery than going the 1st line helpdesk soul destroying route.

 

[Stellios]

Start at the bottom and work your way up.

Ive just earned myself my first promotion in I.T. after starting with 1st line support and its been a matter of having a positive attitude and obviously knowledge. Ive worked for the company for 6 months and got the promotion over people who have worked there for 3+ years so the best I can advise is get a crap job and get yourself noticed.

I went to college and uni to do a comp sci degree which in the long run have made little difference.

 

[Sin_Chase]

I went to college and uni to do a comp sci degree which in the long run have made little difference.

That's because, in my opinion, it's a diluted course with no real focus and everyone does it.

The coding stuff is a nice to know but the rest? Not going to help you much in the real world - certainly not in a foot-in-the-door role, customer service skills and ITIL will give you a better chance than a comp. sci degree in most big corporates. Once you start moving up experience, professional qualification and focused courses will be your bread and butter.

 

[Housey]

IT has given me a great life and those criticising it seem to be people who have been stuck in support roles for many years, telling the world where it's going wrong, without really having a clue about the big stuff that goes on above. Whilst no company or industry is perfect, HP certainly has its challenges I know well, but IT can provide an exceptional career and earnings potential, not like it was when I started back in the 80's, but still a career full of opportunity if you are up for it.

OP you need to review the types of roles you believe you would fit best and then seek education to help you in achieving these roles. A job in IT isn't really the way it works unless you want to stay on a support desk for 10 years telling everyone above you that they are cretins. What are your skills? Sales?, Tech?, Customer Support? Creative Stuff? Give me a clue and I can perhaps provide some guidance.

 

[Stellios]

That's because, in my opinion, it's a diluted course with no real focus and everyone does it.

The coding stuff is a nice to know but the rest? Not going to help you much in the real world - certainly not in a foot-in-the-door role, customer service skills and ITIL will give you a better chance than a comp. sci degree in most big corporates. Once you start moving up experience, professional qualification and focused courses will be your bread and butter.

Now im at the point im at, I totally agree.

SO far I cna happily say that very little of what I learnt on my degree has had to be applied, most of the relevant stuff has been self taught.

 

[kbc]

Getting into IT often does start with support roles, that doesn't necessarily mean standing by a telephone and telling people how to use Windows. It could be first line, second line, server/network maintenance, project support etc...

If you're lucky enough to get into a large IT corporation, no doubt they're going to have a dev dept, sales dept, training dept, consultation dept, list goes on. You often actually learn more from the ground up and have the opportunity to diversify internally... then jump ship (if you want to).

 

[SoundsGood]

What are the best routes out of support?

 

[pingwing]

The only advice I ever got from dad was "don't for the love of god get a job in IT, do anything else, anything! IT moves faster than you, no matter how hard you try you cannot win"

Overall I doubt my dads opinions on 100 different things (he was very wrong and we never told him) but on this I think he probably was right, especially after seeing a few friends experiences...

 

[Housey]

The only advice I ever got from dad was "don't for the love of god get a job in IT, do anything else, anything! IT moves faster than you, no matter how hard you try you cannot win"

Overall I doubt my dads opinions on 100 different things (he was very wrong and we never told him) but on this I think he probably was right, especially after seeing a few friends experiences...

What did your dad do?

 

[JayMax]

I usually just observe these threads - but this one has encompassed the black and white of the pro v anti IT career ethos.
There's a whole bunch of people out there who like to complain and moan about their IT career going nowhere. I always wonder about what jobs these people do..... And why they don't move on?
There's a few of us who make a good living and enjoy their work - but the key is to look after Number 1, and I personally run the 2 year rule. I could ramble one more and digress, but a career in IT is exactly what you make of it. The more you put in the more you'll get out of it. In fact, it's probably a decent gig, as there's so many moaners who don't look after their own career and sit there whinging - it gives you an advantage!

 

[UK-AL05]

I usually just observe these threads - but this one has encompassed the black and white of the pro v anti IT career ethos.
There's a whole bunch of people out there who like to complain and moan about their IT career going nowhere. I always wonder about what jobs these people do..... And why they don't move on?
There's a few of us who make a good living and enjoy their work - but the key is to look after Number 1, and I personally run the 2 year rule. I could ramble one more and digress, but a career in IT is exactly what you make of it. The more you put in the more you'll get out of it. In fact, it's probably a decent gig, as there's so many moaners who don't look after their own career and sit there whinging - it gives you an advantage!

The problem is it depends on the company. I mean if you've been doing I.T for a small street corner business, it's gonna be hard to "move up" to bigger and better things because you don't have the experience in the relevant corporate technologies. Therefor you get stuck. It's a big problem and that's why people get frustrated getting nowhere.

Basically "working your way up" is a big lie, and where you end up in your career is highly dependent on where you enter it.

It's why I also vote against the vocational approach in I.T, and vote for learning the general principles in computer science that you can apply to almost anything in life. Therefor if your job is outsourced, replaced by a different technology and so on you always have the general computer science principles to fall back on.

 

[sja360]

Would getting a computer science degree then doing ms/cisco etc courses as well as some home study allow you to get straight into network support? I was thinking of doing a degree at glasgow uni for 4 years but if your telling me its more important to get experience then is it better to not go ???

 

[UK-AL05]

If it's glasgow, and it's what you want to do. Defiantly go.

 

[Housey]

But IT isn't the land soley for the support and technology experts, in fact I would suggest the genuine technologists within the space are less than the multi skilled. If all you are good at is a certain area of tech then don't be surprised when your job gets outsourced, replaced and redundant...ised or you spend your life going nowhere. I can appreciate why a forum like this will be made up of many in the techy subset but typically people of that nature don't carry the skill sets that get them further. Sure, they are often exceptionally clever but other aspects of their skill set are lacking hence why they don't go up the ladder. Having said that there are several superb technologists I know who have made exceptionally good careers for themselves, but usually they only start seeing that when they learn how to do other stuff that doesn't involve code, circuits, wire or telling other people why their mouse doesn't work.

 

[HangTime]

Don't take this the wrong way, but DBA is not that big of a jump from 1st Line unless it's very high level DBA stuff, and that's less administrative and more design.

"DBA" means different things to different people/companies I guess.
Where I work, the difference between 1st line support and a DBA is like night and day - 1st line support probably being on around £15-20k (guess) whereas the DBAs are on £40k+ and some considerably higher.

I guess maybe there are some firms where a DBA is doing little more than maintaining a few simple databases but round here their role would be considered at least on a par with a developer (similar in my previous company too).

Stick "DBA" in a job search engine and look at what pops out (generally £30k+ with a lot much higher), then compare with "1st line support" where you are getting £10-15/hr and £17-23k or thereabouts.

 

[Housey]

Just because you are an expert or have solid knowledge of a certain aspect of tech, stop thinking it makes you special (not aimed at anyone specifically here) or much cleverer than the people around you, an incredibly common flaw within IT techies makeup, not least the less broadly skilled ones ironically. I started as a cobol programmer and then became an IT Manager but soon realised my talents lay elsewhere and in the area 'tech' there were people better than me at that thing. I remember the very same chip on my shoulder about the 'stupid people' around me too who could not do what I did but seemed to earn more and make all the wrong decisions.....and then I became one and understood why I was wrong.

Your value to a business as a service person is nowhere near as valuable as a business generator for example unless you are very very good and in my experience the vast majority of techs (me included) are nowhere near as good as they think they are. The art of good leadership is putting the right people in the right place, so if you have sat in support for 10 years its probably because that's all you've shown yourself to be capable of and if you don't stand out as capable it isn't usually the businesses problem when you stay in the same role for multiple years, it's yours. You have to own your career and make it happen, not rely on your own perceived skills to simply see you grow and this is where so many people go wrong both within IT and any other business. If you have done the same thing for 10 years plus and never feel recognised then go find a mirror and look in it for there you will see the reason why I'm afraid.