IT industry has changed....

[bigredshark]

id happily take that sort of pressure for 120k a year

You'll find that your regarded as the problem, rather than the network itself, in most support roles anyway.

I figure I might do it for a couple of years at some point, it's easy to say I'd take the stress for 120k but it's something else to actually do it. It's another level of stress, even beyond the usual 12 hour days in the city. I figure the better bet is do it as a contractor (so even better money) but do it for 9 months and then take 3 months off.

 

[Scottly]

Now here is the thing, I don't have an MCSE. Never have had - was doing the job long before MCSEs were thought of and was always a member of the school of thought that disliked the idea of people reading a few books and gettting a bit of paper that got them into my chosen line of work at the same level of pay as my - but with sod all experience.

And this is why you fail. Qualifications like an MCSE prove to a potential employer that you have been trained to a specific, well-defined and openly published level. If you tell someone that you have an MCSE with X, Y and Z modules, they can check the syllabus for those modules to see exactly what you claim to be able to do, and they can check your certification to make sure you actually passed what you say you passed.

If you just say you have 3 years experience with Exchange, for example, who's to say what that experience entailed? Creating and deleting a few email accounts? Setting the odd mail redirect? On the other hand, if you say you have 3 years experience AS WELL AS the MCP certification for Exchange, they know exactly what your expertise level is.

Plus, certifications show you have a level of professionalism. I mean this in terms of understanding the standard Microsoft/Cisco/ITIL/whatever path to problem solving, and also in showing sufficient commitment both to the industry and to your chosen career because you have a demonstrable willingness to invest time and money into improving yourself.

That is why certifications are important. If you want to reach the upper echelons (ie City jobs, positions high up in banks, £100k plus salary) this is the sort of professionalism you need to show.

 

[intellix]

Sounds like a tricky place you're in, and I wish you luck if you feel that's the right route to take.

Like yourself, I'm mostly self-taught and had to learn things the hard way. I'm not an expert in any particular field. I'm currently trying to get more 'real world' experience, so I'm not limited to technical roles.

I do feel there are a lot of incompetents in the system who abuse the term 'IT Professional', just because they've attended a couple of courses.

Everything I know to do with computers has always been self-taught and can honestly say i've learnt just about nothing on my IT course... Just there to get the paper that says I can do it.

But yeah there are loads of people on my course that have absolutely no clue what a computer is, never used one, dont have one but constantly get Distinctions because they hit criteria... you look at their practical work and it's always shoddy bare minimum to get the grade.

This isn't computer tech that im talking about though....

 

[Moley]

Well what an interesting collection of replies to my original post!

I'm in the middle of going through the MCSE books at the moment, rebuilt my spare server (anyone remember contoso.com?) and getting on with what needs to be done to get the qualification.

I was interested to read the comments about "lack of ambition" due to still being a Senior Engineer, and think a little clarification might be in order. Perhaps

In the role I've just left I spent a lot of time customer-facing, on their sites evaluating their IT systems and producing hefty documentation recommending best-practises change, producing board-level IT Security Policies and also working on tenders for business. All successfully - this wasn't the area that I was weak in and lot my job as a result of.

In the past I have worked as a Service Delivery Director for the uks first ASP - a position with a lot of responsibility and managing other people.

Believe me I have no lack of ambition and yes the business side of things (the larger picture) is of more interest to me now than the technicals. In fact it was the business side I was most successful at and apparently the technical side I failed at that lost me my job!

Anyway. I'm working on improving my "sellability" and may swing for a move back into contracting - I like being my own boss and earning ridiculous amounts of money.

 

[dantheman213]

I don't understand that Gord, doesn't the CCNP entail a practical exam as well?

Nope, CCNP is just 4 written exams, practical is only involved for the CCIE/CCDE qualifications (in the Cisco world)

I think this thread really goes to show the differences of what people want out of life, whilst some people may never entertain the idea of working for a bank in the City, which is high stress, high reward, others would love to work in that environment.

I think the comment about working in IT for over 20 years and not being in management shows little ambition, is a little wrong, not everybody wants to achieve that, and working in IT, I don't feel that's the route you need to go down. I work with a few contractors who have been in technical positions for a No. of years, and still have valuable skillsets, as long as they keep themselves up to date, they have no reason to go into management. I wouldn't say they were un-ambitious either

I, for one, know I could spend the next 5 years in an engineer/senior enginer role and continually learn and develop over that period of time. The idea of man/project management is really not very appealing!!

 

[daz]

I was perm not contractor but am seriously thinking of going back to contracting.

Not sure you could have been sacked in that case... How long you been working for them?

 

[dowie]

Of course the big upside is banks will pay £100k+ for infrastructure architects if they're good enough and contractors will make more still...
The keys in my opinion are to avoid spending too much time in support, you can only go so far and there are some good support positions around but they are few and far between and most people get pushed into team leader roles in the end if they want promotion.

Yep - second that - guys who are experts in unix, citrix and general technical stuff can earn a packet once they've proved themselves. Though I disagree about spending too long in support (depending on what sort of support you're doing).

The best guy I knew at my firm got poached by a client (a bank) for at least 200k - he was a techie + a team leader/manager

fact is he wasn't a bulls**t artist manager who practices 'soft skills' and 'delegation' he was simply a very good techie who didn't take cr@p form anyone and was very competent at his job and the jobs of the people he managed - he pretty much did the same job as the people he was managing in addition to his 'team leader' role and the clients recognized that - basically he had offer from several banks and has ended up in a decent position at a very nice bank.

 

[JudgeC]

And this is why you fail. Qualifications like an MCSE prove to a potential employer that you have been trained to a specific, well-defined and openly published level. If you tell someone that you have an MCSE with X, Y and Z modules, they can check the syllabus for those modules to see exactly what you claim to be able to do, and they can check your certification to make sure you actually passed what you say you passed.

If you just say you have 3 years experience with Exchange, for example, who's to say what that experience entailed? Creating and deleting a few email accounts? Setting the odd mail redirect? On the other hand, if you say you have 3 years experience AS WELL AS the MCP certification for Exchange, they know exactly what your expertise level is.

Plus, certifications show you have a level of professionalism. I mean this in terms of understanding the standard Microsoft/Cisco/ITIL/whatever path to problem solving, and also in showing sufficient commitment both to the industry and to your chosen career because you have a demonstrable willingness to invest time and money into improving yourself.

That is why certifications are important. If you want to reach the upper echelons (ie City jobs, positions high up in banks, £100k plus salary) this is the sort of professionalism you need to show.

Qualifications are a good step into a job when you first start out and don't have a lot of practical experience. After that, they take second fiddle to real world experience.

I do not have, and never have had, an MCSE or an MCP in Exchange, yet I installed, configured and managed our companies NT4/Exchange 5.5 environment.
When the time came, I co-designed and built our AD and migrated the company over to AD / Exchange 2003.

But by your argument, 'I fail', because I didn't learn parrot fashion, the official 'Microsoft Way' of answering a few questions (Like the OP, I was around before MS stumbled across this particular revenue stream).
What 20 years of dealing with Microsoft has told me is that the 'Microsoft Way' and the 'Real World' don't always meet in the middle.

It's out of context but it reminds me of the great quote from the movie 'The Caine Mutiny' -

"You may tell the crew, there are 4 ways of doing things on board my ship, the right way, the wrong way, the navy way and my way. They do things my way and we'll get along"

 

[^^Gord^^]

I do not have, and never have had, an MCSE or an MCP in Exchange, yet I installed, configured and managed our companies NT4/Exchange 5.5 environment.
When the time came, I co-designed and built our AD and migrated the company over to AD / Exchange 2003.

But by your argument, 'I fail', because I didn't learn parrot fashion, the official 'Microsoft Way' of answering a few questions (Like the OP, I was around before MS stumbled across this particular revenue stream).
What 20 years of dealing with Microsoft has told me is that the 'Microsoft Way' and the 'Real World' don't always meet in the middle.

Whilst I agree that what happens in the real world does differ from the classroom on pretty much all certification paths (especially Windows 2000 / NT MCSE paths) but isn't that true of all qualifications? Most undergraduates leave university will a degree that should prove they can learn to a certain level rather than being able to do a particular job.

Without that MCSE certification we don't know how well you have configured your AD / Exchange environment (no offense meant). I've worked on a lot of different Forests in my time setup by different people. All of them worked but all of them had problems ranging from minor mis-configurations up to major problems that meant all the backup tapes in the world couldn't have rebuilt then in a DR situation.

Of course the major problem with the above is that people can and do brain dump themselves through certifications regardless of what level of computer knowledge they have. This means we can't say with faith that an MCSE will be good (I once had a taxi driver who was MCSE qualified ). This of course has diluted the value of the certification. It's also one of the reasons certifications with practical testing is worth the most (CCIE for example).

Things are improving with practical testing now appearing in Citirx certification and MS starting to use simulations and large pools of questions but there is a long way to go.

 

[Moley]

Well a little update time I think.

Had a chat to ACAS today, it would seem I have be unfairly dismissed due to them not following statutory disciplinary procedure. I thought this might have been the case due to having done voluntary work at the CAB for a while and learning about unfair dismissal whilst on duty there.

Time to appeal my dismissal I think and if I get no joy - ET1 time....

 

[FishThrower]

Well a little update time I think.

Had a chat to ACAS today, it would seem I have be unfairly dismissed due to them not following statutory disciplinary procedure. I thought this might have been the case due to having done voluntary work at the CAB for a while and learning about unfair dismissal whilst on duty there.

Time to appeal my dismissal I think and if I get no joy - ET1 time....

Did you get a verbal and written warning before they sacked you?

 

[m_cozzy]

Certs are worth getting. The main reason I was shortlisted for my current job was the fact I had RHCE (redhat engineer) at the top of it in big letters along with mcse. They were looking for a windows/unix guy and that jumped out at them. Once you are then in for the interview its obviously down to how you sell yourself.

 

[HangTime]

Once you start to get interviews you will also find that most companies have now got there own tests as well. Some are just a few pages of multi-choice questions with others doing practical tests. This has been brought in to weed out the 'paper' certified people (I once saw a CCNP certified person unable to configure a simple router and switch setup!).

What I find somewhat surprising is that more employers don't use some sort of competancy 'test' or assessment in addition to a standard interview. I'm sure there are plenty of people out there who have managed to get decent jobs off the back of an impressive looking CV coupled with a good interview manner and ability to BS. Take all those questions like "describe a time when you faced a difficult problem and how you overcame it", it could be nothing to do with you, you might just be described how a colleague overcame a problem. Once someone has got their foot in the door, unless they are REALLY bad they probably won't be got rid of in the short term.

I had one interview which started off with a test, basically they gave me a small task to complete, left me alone for 15mins and then came back to talk through it. I thought that was great, since it wasn't just some stupid multiple choice questions to be assessed afterwards by a machine, it was a realworld practical issue which I had the opportunity to discuss immediately afterwards and explain my line of thinking and approach.

Surely that sort of thing is of more value to a prospective employer than random questions about what your hobbies are and some pre-rehearsed speech about what your 'weaknesses' are? OK so it is probably slightly more costly/time consuming than a standard interview so may be a bit OTT for low-level roles, but it never ceases to amaze me that companies sign people up on many tens of thousands of pounds a year on the basis of flicking through a CV and then a 60-90min interview.

 

[Moley]

Did you get a verbal and written warning before they sacked you?

Nope. They completely failed to follow statutory disciplinary procedure.

 

[dowie]

What I find somewhat surprising is that more employers don't use some sort of competancy 'test' or assessment in addition to a standard interview.

My place does this - A lot of people put down crap on their CV just to fill it up with buzz words - then at interview you find out that it is complete rubbish - giving people an examin the first round saves wasting any further time on the chancers.

i reckon the more employers start using actual testing inhouse or require candidates to sit things like a brainbench test the less ***** we'd get in this industry.

 

[Fr0dders]

Well a little update time I think.

Had a chat to ACAS today, it would seem I have be unfairly dismissed due to them not following statutory disciplinary procedure. I thought this might have been the case due to having done voluntary work at the CAB for a while and learning about unfair dismissal whilst on duty there.

Time to appeal my dismissal I think and if I get no joy - ET1 time....

i must admit, i was tempted to post about that, you cant just sack people when you dont like them.

But didnt want to pry as to if you'd been disciplined / given written warnings etc.. which can be used to justify their dismissal claim in court.

If you've spoken to CAB and they've told you you've got grounds, then you most probably have. Good luck with your appeal mate

 

[bigredshark]

Yep - second that - guys who are experts in unix, citrix and general technical stuff can earn a packet once they've proved themselves. Though I disagree about spending too long in support (depending on what sort of support you're doing).

The best guy I knew at my firm got poached by a client (a bank) for at least 200k - he was a techie + a team leader/manager

fact is he wasn't a bulls**t artist manager who practices 'soft skills' and 'delegation' he was simply a very good techie who didn't take cr@p form anyone and was very competent at his job and the jobs of the people he managed - he pretty much did the same job as the people he was managing in addition to his 'team leader' role and the clients recognized that - basically he had offer from several banks and has ended up in a decent position at a very nice bank.

Well it depends what you want to do. Support does have some nice jobs at the top of the pile if you don't mind doing support, personally even at the highest level I couldn't stomach doing support work for another 10 years. So I got out of support, moved into architecture (I'm quite happy designing enterprise networks for 100k a year for 10 years) and I'm enjoying it a lot more. As I said, it depends what you want to do but my advice is to get out of support before too long

 

[bigredshark]

Once you start to get interviews you will also find that most companies have now got there own tests as well. Some are just a few pages of multi-choice questions with others doing practical tests. This has been brought in to weed out the 'paper' certified people (I once saw a CCNP certified person unable to configure a simple router and switch setup!).

What I believe you've actually seen is somebody who claimed to have a CCNP and couldn't configure a router and switch. I cannot believe you can pass a CCNP without that knowledge, they are not easy exams...

 

[bigredshark]

I think the comment about working in IT for over 20 years and not being in management shows little ambition, is a little wrong, not everybody wants to achieve that, and working in IT, I don't feel that's the route you need to go down. I work with a few contractors who have been in technical positions for a No. of years, and still have valuable skillsets, as long as they keep themselves up to date, they have no reason to go into management. I wouldn't say they were un-ambitious either

I, for one, know I could spend the next 5 years in an engineer/senior enginer role and continually learn and develop over that period of time. The idea of man/project management is really not very appealing!!

I think it's fine if you're a contractor and you're happy and making good money but to me, just sitting around not going forwards isn't something I'd do. Some people will be happy consulting on active directory for 60k a year until they're 50, some people (me) will be very disappointed if their not making 100k a year by the time they're 30. It depends what you're priorities are, if you're prepared to work for an investment bank and deal with the 60 hours weeks I guess...

 

[dowie]

As I said, it depends what you want to do but my advice is to get out of support before too long

Fair comment - it was just a counter example to show that not all 'support' types will have a dead end career.

I do agree with you in general I guess - in a lot of cases (at least in financial software) support is used as a training ground before moving into other departments.

A lot of what analysts in R&D or consultants on client sites do is not too different to the work of a support analyst anyway. I know plenty of people who work in junior roles on a service desk and do quite well out of it - it is possible to earn say 60-80k while still avoiding taking a management/team leader position.