Certs help you get your foot in the door by providing some credibility, and your college degree will surely do the same. I've acquired 95% of my IT knowledge from working in the field and sponging as much information as possible. Find a mentor, ask questions and remain interested -- there's no better way to learn.... other than CBT nuggets
Agile is hot, I was thinking about getting the cert but I felt it wouldn't be that beneficial being I dont work in an Agile environment, but having Agile on your resume will get you some looks.
Gotta finesse through them math courses by any means necessary.
Certs help you get your foot in the door by providing some credibility, and your college degree will surely do the same. I've acquired 95% of my IT knowledge from working in the field and sponging as much information as possible. Find a mentor, ask questions and remain interested -- there's no better way to learn.... other than CBT nuggets
Ahhhhh Scrum.....I was a CSM but it expired a year or so ago. I still do get hits about being a Scrum Master for jobs but was never interested in it. I was with a company that was really pushing it since we were "dev heavy" so they had classes for everyone to go to for free and take the exam at the end.
Ahhhhh Scrum.....I was a CSM but it expired a year or so ago. I still do get hits about being a Scrum Master for jobs but was never interested in it. I was with a company that was really pushing it since we were "dev heavy" so they had classes for everyone to go to for free and take the exam at the end.
New job now (well, 7 months now but I used to work here for a few years from 08-11)....we just hired an older guy who is allllllll about Agile/SCRUM....these daily stand ups, sprint planning meetings, and meetings to go over and define user stories.....I was recently bumped to Team Lead and have a couple guys under me so I have to be in the meetings with him and help break out all this stuff... Man....don't miss this stuff
On another note, I am automating some of the stuff we are doing so I am getting more involved with scripting and making .BATs and PowerShell scripts.
I used to make small files or run commands frequently, but I am talking about more detailed ones to perform certain tasks, check files sums, and output various log files to determine what else to do and stuff like that now. Liking this part of it right now instead of just the deployment and building of servers/VMs and integrating them into whatever we are trying to do at the moment.
Good to see you guys doing well in here still, and congrats on going back to school, finishing school, landing jobs and getting these certs for all you guys!
^This
Certs help you get your foot in the door by providing some credibility, and your college degree will surely do the same. I've acquired 95% of my IT knowledge from working in the field and sponging as much information as possible. Find a mentor, ask questions and remain interested -- there's no better way to learn.... other than CBT nuggets
Nice. I need to look into the 2012 Server stuff myself. I have the MCITP for 2008 but....we know how the gov't goes....they not moving onto 2012 platforms until accreditations have expired or something, lol.
Crazy how you very rarely ever see internships or Jr level type of work in the IT field these days. Not sure where they are going to find everyone with at least a couple years of experience if nobody offering entry level type jobs anymore.
So damn true man. I will never forget...my IT Director (so called IT guy from the late 80s-early 90s; pretty sure he was just a help desk tech or something) told me "I don't have to know what VMWare is or what the interface looks like. That is what I pay you to do."
Stuff like this is what really makes me question if a degree from a nationally ranked school is worth the 40K compared to a 15K masters from a regionally known school. I am struggling with my decision lol I decided not to take any classes this semester at Hopkins.
^This
I have seen times where as long as they can get you in the door with at least some kind of degree, they don't even care. It is just a requirement that the position requires and if they can say it is related somehow, you are good. Two of our more senior systems guys here....one was going to back to school now since they wanted him to have a B.S and not just an Associates, and the other has a degree in Behavioral Science.
My last job, our network architect (now works for Cisco) and has had his CCIE for like 7 years now, and has a degree in Criminal Justice, haha
Real world experience is definitely coveted over just certs and degree. The jobs and work are out here though, so don't get frustrated. It will work out in the end.
Nice. I need to look into the 2012 Server stuff myself. I have the MCITP for 2008 but....we know how the gov't goes....they not moving onto 2012 platforms until accreditations have expired or something, lol.
The Solutions Architect thing will definitely be dope and definitely net you some good pay. I was doing it at my last job, and they just were treating it as that was what I was supposed to be doing....as a Sys Admin II
Customer was literally telling me "we need a system to do XYZ". I would research that area, gather various vendors and their product, have meetings with them about their products and determine the one that would work for us and our environment. I was specing out the hardware to order if we needed any, and I was installing, configuring, testing, hardening, and deploying it for us. I would even tie it back into our CommVault backup solution (with NetApp back-end) to make sure it was being backed up properly. Needless to say.....I was promoted to a level 3 Admin at least by the end of it since the guy that was in that spot finally showed that he was an idiot and didn't know anything.
We were setting security policies for servers in our environment. He was still logging in to each individual server and setting them. I told him that he should be using GPOs for majority that and it was the whole purpose of them to set settings in one place and it takes effect on all servers in our domain. If you are the so-called 12-15 years experience guy, I shouldn't have to tell you this type of thing, lol. He ended up modifying the Domain Controller GPOs to only allow "Server Admins" to Access the Network and logon, and locked out everyone in our environment right in the middle of the day (government customers and all). He was always so obvious with it too. He would come from the data center or something and ask me "Can you still log on? Is everything still up?". My reply to him would be "what did you do?" and he would just say "Oh nothing. I was just making sure everything was still good."
Who said there weren't any? If someone did they really aren't looking that hard.
There should be adequate opportunities in most major cities. I live in San Diego and there's NOT a good IT job market here (relative to cities of similar size) yet I still see plenty of opportunities. It should be a lot easier in the Bay area, LA, Seattle, Chicago, Houston, Austin, etc. Better pay to CoL ratio too.
Yea it was me who said it and you guys are right it is of course based on location and what industry you are in. Of course I don't see them really anymore since I do DoD work primarily. When I was getting out of school of course I saw them more because I was looking for themYea, internships and Jr lvl positions depend on your location. I'm in Pittsburgh, there are next to none here, I found one internship I'm going to apply to just for the sake of putting my name in there. They want cats still in UG so w/ me being 6 yrs removed from that, don't know how it'll go
