IT Jobs - The best?!

I'm an IT Technician for a International Organisation, I don't fix anything though - we have an IT service provider for that.

Doing some development work and general IT project work at the moment. Studying part-time still for a CCNA through college which means the module i'm taking can count towards a degree. I'm hoping to keep with that an although it will take a little longer, eventually get a degree while i'm still working and gaining experience.

THere's only two negatives I can see... the fact i'll miss out on uni (I can deal with that), and the fact the degree will not be from a 'well known' uni and will be from a local college. I'm hoping the experience will make up for it though.

No matter what anyone says, you do NOT need a degree to get somewhere, but it'll help.

I'll either head down the network security route, or the management route.
 
I love my Job, My pay grade is 18,000, With a possible 3k bonus every 3 years.

I work 41 weeks out of the year. And get Fully paid During my holidays.

I'm an ICT Technician within Education. And I Adore it.
 
[TW]Fox;10903263 said:
It just seems rather against what all the seasoned IT people here reckon if you can go more or less direct from Uni into contracting. Uni is great but.. surely people who pay a contractor expect practical, realworld experience? :confused:
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I started contracting as a Business Analyst with almost no experience other than the ability to use Visio. I did 4 months on a fixed term perm contract doing SOX work and then moved onto being a Six Sigma Greenbelt with one of the world's biggest credit card companies on £250 a day. From then on it's been up all the way.

In some areas it's pretty easy to get into IT contracting.
 
I did exactly the same, HND and then a degree top-up.
To be honest, I got where I did today, off my own back. I'm still glad I have a degree as it did prepare me for the amount I was expected to undertake (It's not uncommon for me to write 10,000+ words a week on top of all the other tasks.)

I'd advise against tech support, there is a reason why there are so many positions available; the job usually has a very high staff turnover, it wouldn't take long to find out why. However, there are some lucky people who land good tech support jobs.

I have a couple of friends who work in IT departments of investment banks and they earn shed loads of money. Don't expect to be on £50k after walking out of Uni, most people work their way up.
 
doublehelix2 said:
For all of the contractors, are most of the highly paid jobs programming or software dev? I hate software dev :(
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Programming is software development.... It's just software dev consists of other stuff such as UML modelling/architecture stuff.
 
Analyst seems to be OK.

We are recruiting for a BA with 3-4 years experience (in Central London) - pay is c£32k. A Good BA with relevant Financial or Insurance experience can command up to £80k for a Perm position.
 
doublehelix2 said:
For all of the contractors, are most of the highly paid jobs programming or software dev? I hate software dev :(
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Whatever happens to be most in demand at the time.:p Theres some people who are in quite a niche and therefore on mega money, but if you 'just' want high 5 figure or low 6 figure 'potential' salaries (say between 60k and 120k) then getting good at software development, software architechture, QA or business analysis and going contracting is the way. Obviously depends a great deal on location, London is where you want to be for the 6 figure 'potential' salaries.

I say 'potential', as you would need to employed without breaks to earn that.
 
[DOD]Asprilla;10919340 said:
£250 a day, 22 days a month, 11 months a year is just over £60k and that's pretty much the very bottom starting rate for any kind of IT contractor. I know Project Managers on £1,250 per day.
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Holy crap i need to get ITIL and PRINCE2.
 
nero120 said:
Who'd be a project manager though? Okay it's great money, but you have to become a useless ****** as part of the job! ;)

Personally, couldn't be bothered with the stress of it.
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Given that the art of good project management is the development of a good pair of sloping shoulders i'm sure i could deal with the stress of dropping other people in the manure !
 
KoolMoD said:
Are graduate schemes really the best route into the IT sector anymore then? I graduated with a 1st Class degree in IT last year, and spent most of my final year applying to graduate schemes. I managed to get into one of the big blue-chip companies, and have been there for almost 6 months now, and to be honest I'm really disappointed with my experience so far.

I shan't bore you lot with the reasons why I think this particular graduate scheme is pants, but I'm interested to know whether people in the sector feel it's important to get onto and complete them? I'm working outside London in Hampshire and getting paid around £24k for this, so to me this isn't too bad for a first job out of University. That's part of the reason I'm sceptical about leaving it, because I think I'd struggle to get an "ordinary" job with the same kind of salary. I'm looking to get into the non-technical roles such as Business Analyst / Project Analyst (which is actually the sort of roles I'm doing for my current employer) but I'm finding the experience I'm getting is minimal and pretty worthless so far.

So are graduate schemes important for those coming out of University? Or is it more about gaining experience in the sector, getting paid potentially less money?
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Hello there mate,
I am working in an IT company in Cambridge and need some Application Specialists, Requirement Analysts and Technical Specialist.

If you are interested, get in contact with my through my trust. Pay is very good and benefits are excellent. Let me know.
 
I'm pretty psyched, just got a place on Sky's graduate technology programme - 2 year 4 department programme, good pay, free sky+
And I'm a Economics and Politics student with no professional or academic IT background...
 
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