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IT Industry
Hi everyone,
Well, I'm in college majoring in IT. I figure there are some IT Pro's on here and was just wondering if I could get some general comments about the state of the industry and what you like/dislike about the jobs you perform. What might I do to get ahead of the game? Things of that nature.
I'm specifically interested in network engineering. I know cisco has a certification program for that.
My current coursework has been/is on computer architecture, c++ and java programming, and systems analysis.
Thanks for any input
Matt
Well, I'm in college majoring in IT. I figure there are some IT Pro's on here and was just wondering if I could get some general comments about the state of the industry and what you like/dislike about the jobs you perform. What might I do to get ahead of the game? Things of that nature.
I'm specifically interested in network engineering. I know cisco has a certification program for that.
My current coursework has been/is on computer architecture, c++ and java programming, and systems analysis.
Thanks for any input
Matt
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Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Bi0hazard on -
Im a second semester college student in IT computer networking. So far its a lot of fun and a lot of hard work. Learn to document everything you do cuz you will be doing that a lot on the job.
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Permalink Reply by Matt on -
true, my prof just stressed documentation in class today, thanks for the reply
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Permalink Reply by Sean Moriarity on -
True that documentation is the key to any job wether its Cisco in Layer 3 IP networks, or Unix BSD/Microsoft in Layer 7 IT support. Certifications are good, but only when you start working for a company and gain some experience. The reason I say this is 4 points
1.) If you certify without experience then you are only paper certified and your resume will normally be overlooked
2.) Let your education get you the job and start off taking baby steps
3.) Find your interests in the company which could be operations or engineering to guide you in the next phase
4.) Then begin your certifications as you expand your career.
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Permalink Reply by Marc Solomon on -
The question reminds me of an old joke which had the punch line, "Go back! Go back! It's a TRAP! There is two of them!" I have been in software development for over 30 years and this has to be the blackest time for this field I have seen in all those years. Well... at least in the U.S.
When I started in this industry, management was done by either software people who had been around longer than the other software people or engineers who believed that software was just another type of engineering. The first group sucked because they knew nothing about managing but at least they knew about software and its problems. The second group sucked because they believed that software engineering could be accomplished using the same disciplines and processes as any other type of engineering. It can't. But it was still better than today's management.
The current wave of management are MBAs who think that software developers are all the same and that each one is replaceable by another (plug and play so to say). Since at current market rates it is cheaper to hire 3 software developers in India, Russia, Romania, or China than one in the U.S. and with the wonderful technology of the Internet working with people around the world is 'feasible' (for low values of feasible) why would you hire one here when you can get one there cheaper? Because the average 'employment life expectancy' is only six months in Mumbai many companies still find it cheaper to hire 2 there knowing that over a year long project at least one of the two will quit.
Matt, even network engineering is being farmed out to cheaper markets. Unless you want to spend your time setting up and maintaining small and midsized networks there is little real network engineering going on in this country. There is some money in network engineering if you specialize in network security (step 1: firewalls and more firewalls, step 2: harden those servers!, step 3: teach the users to stop being assholes, step 4: teach coding for security) but unless you are a hacker wannabe I don't know how interested you would be in that field. It is also like pulling teeth to get corporations to take network security seriously until the horse has left the barn. Until there is a serious breech, most companies are unwilling to spend the money needed to implement security.
Sorry to be the bearer of such tidings, but I have been watching as many of my friends and colleagues at all levels are being laid off, terminated, right-sized, etc.. as their jobs are being sent overseas. One man I worked with for over 10 years now runs a landscaping business. He figures no matter what, people will still need landscaping. Personally, I am going to hold on to my job as long as I can and hopefully it will last until I retire in another 17 years... but, well..., thats a lot of hopeful wishing.
Best of Luck to you Matt,
-- Marc
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Permalink Reply by David Clark on -
I've worked in IT for almost 20 years. My biggest disadvantage today ? I don't work in code and I'm now forced to make some changes.
Learn to write. Respect the fact that code is fluid ;it can and will change,evolve. You best do the same.
Get deep into Linux and that says nothing about Bill Gates,Windows or anythng else. The sun isn't setting on Bill's empire but its rising on a few others. Be there.
Its the cloud !
In the 1910's this thing called radio or wireless burst upon the scene. People built them from kits. [ In the early 60's I made a radio from a kit for a Scouting badge.] Furniture and hardware stores got rich on radio sales. They were in the Sears Roebuck and Montgomery Ward stores and catalog sales were huge. Then people opened Radio stores -they were all over the place and many of those techs came from the military or took correspondence courses. Sales and service made a very good living for those guys. Ever heard of Western Auto? Radio Shack? Then TV came along. Same phenomena.
In the 80's me and other geeks 'custom built' PCs. Yeah buddy- 1MEGABYTE of memory,30meg hard drives, two big 5 inch floppy drives. I made 750 bucks a machine and busted my ass to keep up. This guy at UT in Austin named Michael Dell came along. There was another guy in South Dakota who started in his gradpa's barn - people bought millions of PCs over the phone from them. I made a lot of money all the way through the mid 90's, mostly on builds,sales and service.
That was then. Try making your living on hardware today and you will need a job in Windows to survive - the delivery window at McDonalds. Hardware is integrated,it's quality and longevity is up and the costs are down.
Sure I still work on hardware but I haven't put a machine together in several years - including my own.
Why the story? Sewing machines. Fresh veggies in Brooklyn in February. Its all the same.After the car took over -Ever wondered what happened to the guys in Chicago who picked up the manure left by all those horses? They had a job in 1910. Where were they in 1935 ? Think.
Follow the breadcrumbs. Its the same story.
The money is going to be in the cloud,databases,networks and security. Betcha. Look for niche markets and pray for the demise of outsourcing. Its allowed MBAs and CPAs who don't know what the purpose of a left mouse button to make millions at OUR expense. Outsourcing firms think we're 'bodies'. They're screwing us.
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Permalink Reply by Mad Max on -
Whilst learning, remember to augment it with stuff you research yourself online or whatever (erm, guess you're doing that now by asking here lol). I'm not in support or a network admin myself but knowing the way things evolve in this world, you should always be aware that what you're being taught now was likely out of date 5 years ago.
Education is always slow at updating it's curriculums for current practices and so on, so you should always keep your ear on the wind of what IS actually happening now from the industry itself. Look for websites that specialise in the industry with blogs and so on so you can learn from people doing it day to day.
It's the same as anything really. My friend is currently studying web design yet everything they're being taught is massively out of pace in relation to current technologies and practices. They're still teaching Action Script 2 when 3 is here. Table based layouts when all that is handled with CSS. Older versions of CSS and JavaScript. They don't even mention things like Ajax or jQuery!
I know it's not the same industry as you're in but the same principles are there. It moves a hell of a lot faster than the teaching of it does!
Good luck with it all!
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Permalink Reply by Matt on
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haven't read through each response completely yet,
the general idea i'm getting is to specialize and make yourself as indispensable as possible to reduce the odds of being outsources
thanks for the input
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Permalink Reply by David Clark on
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Here's my experience when working with other geeks.
Skip the indespensible bit... none of us are or ever will be. Stay current on your skillset. Do good work. Cover your clients a** . Always remember that we work in a field rife with those completely confused. They need you but they don't need to be treated like idiots. Be gentle and take your time with the newbie . Intellectual bigotry is poisonous in IT workgroups.
I treat data with the secrecy of a priest, the one exception is a pedophile. I'll drop a dime on him and sleep like a angel.
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Permalink Reply by David Clark on
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We're on the same page. To be specific;if I find material clearly pedophilic,someone's going to hear about it. In the US,I can become complicit rather quickly if I merely ignore them. As for porn - who cares.
I have one rock solid rule carved in stone I have always embraced and passed on to my students. I never accept responsibility for someone's data.
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Permalink Reply by Marc Solomon on
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Gordon brings up an important point here. No one in the IT field works the way you were taught in college. It is rare that you will work by yourself. An overwhelming percentage of us work in teams. On those rare occasions where you are alone on a project, you will still have at minimum a boss and a client to deal with, and more likely associates in all sorts of disciplines you never expected to work with when you are in college. Having worked on teams of anywhere from 2 to 500, I can tell you dealing with people and dealing with limited view of the whole project are two issues I have had the hardest time teaching recent grads.
I had one grad assigned to me that wouldn't write a simple initialization routine until he understood the whole system into which it fit. I had neither the time or the inclination to fill him in. I needed him to trust me, the lead developer on the project, that I knew enough of how it fit to know that it did. Other hoops I needed to get across to new grads were the need for version control, reproducible build environments, test first design, documentation, and other parts of the 'process' of developing a system that are not taught in colleges. These are all things that are part of being on a team instead of being a maverick. Having been in and out of colleges for 30 some odd years, I have never seen this fully covered and yet it is probably the most important skill I need a new grad to have... Luckily, we know few that have ever learned it there and realize when we hire a new grad, we will have to teach it one more time.
As for Max's comments about what you are being taught being out of pace with the latest, don't sweat it. The actual version of things don't matter as much as you learning how to think and how to understand computers. If you can master that the rest you can learn on the job. Very few of the languages I learned back in the 1970's (FORTRAN, PASCAL, APL, IBM 360 Assembler) are useful today. What I learned about deconstructing a problem and building a solution, applying that solution to a piece of hardware called a computer (and I have worked on some very unusual pieces of computer hardware over the years) is timeless. Over the years, I have been hired time and time again to work in yet another computer language, yet another development environment, yet another operating system, with yet another set of programming tools. Versions of each change over and over and over again (C, K&R C, ANSI C, C++, Objective C, C#, and so on and so forth). Trying to keep up with the changes in a monumental task. Unless you are responsible for those changes or how those changes effect the system you are working on, don't bother. More importantly, keep up with the trends in the industry. I've watched as we have moved from mainframes to minicomputers to microprocessors. I've watched as we have gone from spaghetti code to structured code to object oriented code.
Trends are important to follow; versions, not so important. People skills are more important though as is learning to work on a team.
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Permalink Reply by Craig Chamberlin on -
Gordon, this is exactly what I was going to say.
It's all about respect and adaptation. Most employers don't want you to be able to do a task on the spot, but they want you to be able to have the people and personal skills to find out what needs to be done. Develope valuable resources and researching skills so if you don't know the answers, you can confidently tell them you will find them. That is what employers are looking for, problem solvers who can both empathize and communicate with the customer.
It also helps to understand ITs place within your company and put yourself in the Businesses shoes when it comes to their perspective on IT in their workplace. If they think it's an expense, justify it as one. If they think it is an investment, boy oh boy my friend, you are a lucky one.
Good luck :D
As a side note, employers would much rather keep a less intelligent IT employee with people skills than a brilliant IT employee with a degree at MIT whose head is so large no one can argue or learn from him.
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Permalink Reply by Ace2020boyd on -
Ive also been thinking about going into IT when i get out of high school. At the moment im a junior in HS taking Networking course and so far im loving it. Anyone know a good collage to go to for IT besides RIT or MIT?
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