9 Essential IT Job Skills for 2015

biggene

I thought this article was rather funny since it outlines basically the exact same advice given on this board almost daily.

9 Essential IT Job Skills for 2015 « | Petri Petri

Asif Dasl

Jeez it's not even December yet and there is a list for 2015!

Thanks for the link though!

JasminLandry

Good article!

biggene

Asif Dasl wrote: »

Jeez it's not even December yet and there is a list for 2015!

Thanks for the link though!

Well,

The board members here do talk about having a long sighted vision when it comes to your career.

Shdwmage

They forgot knowing how to nap with your eyes open from all of those late nights studying the rest of that jazz.

RomBUS

Decent read

I'm sure they could've come up with 10.

srabiee

RomBUS wrote: »

I'm sure they could've come up with 10.

Yeah, 9 is such an odd number. I guess they did it to stand out from the other "top 10" lists.

UnixGuy

10. Linux

11. Configuration management tools (Puppet, chef,..windows SCCM?)

12. DevOps concepts and practices.

coffeeluvr

Thanks!

timesvan32

Powershell. My supervisor showed us this program a few weeks ago, and I don't know how to use it LOL.

kbowen0188

I actually curious as to if there are any good online courses or textbooks that will help me learn Powershell?

Asif Dasl

kbowen0188 wrote: »

I actually curious as to if there are any good online courses or textbooks that will help me learn Powershell?

Useful thread for powershell resources:
http://www.techexams.net/forums/mcts-mcitp-windows-2008-general/103018-virtual-labs-powershell.html

jeffjames

Hi All -

I'm the author of the IT job skills article (linked in the OP) that was published on the Petri IT Knowledgebase, and I just wanted to drop in and say hello, and to also thank you all for your kind words and commentary about the article. I'm always interested in hearing positive (and critical) feedback about the stuff we publish, so I definitely appreciate the feedback and discussion.

@RomBUS - If you have any suggestions to bump the IT skills count from 9 to 10 I'm all ears.

@UnicGuy -- Great suggestions! I may have to make have to make the follow-up article a Baker's Dozen...

Kind regards,

- Jeff

apr911

Like most lists in the IT World, this list is full of biased conjecture...

While powershell does deserve a spot on this list as it is very much true that Microsoft is going the way of powershell, I dont think it rates as the #1 skill.

Scripting as a whole might (python, perl, bash, et al) but powershell? I hate powershell. To me it is just horrible. This isnt a GUI vs CLI issue/rant either. I am Windows admin but I love Bash and the power of Linux. This is purely a disgust in powershell on its merits as a scripting language

Powershell has its uses but simple things like fetching files or a webpage status code or simple string replacement (wget/curl/sed on linux) and the passing of variables/arguments are far too convoluted in Powershell and many of the commands are far too verbose and convoluted. Additionally, the Windows-isms such as non-case sensitive variables and inconsistent command expansion (particularly variable expansion) drives me nuts!

Microsoft would have been better served embracing an existing scripting language than trying to create their own but that's the way of Microsoft, why use something readily available and open-sourced when we can create our own horribly opaque proprietary language and force it upon everyone?

A person who can write powershell scripts will likely find their skills in demand. A person who can think programatically and write python/bash/perl/et al scripts will likely find their skills in higher demand as these are more versatile languages capable of higher level interactions with other non-Windows systems. Switching to/from powershell from/to another language though is not for the faint of heart.


2. Cloud. Cloud is still a buzz word and while the author of the article explains the particular skill that is needed is the ability to differentiate work loads best suited for the cloud and in the process makes an effort to differentiate himself from most pundits who proclaim cloud to be the savior of IT, the fact is determining what work loads are good candidates for cloud and which aren't isnt that hard. More importantly, being from an IT admin's perspective, being able to identify a workload that is perfect for cloud doesnt mean you can magically move it to the cloud... Your company needs to be willing to deal with the hiccups of a cloud migration as well as allotting money and time for developers to work on retooling apps for the cloud.

3+4. Security/Compliance go hand in hand. I dont know a single security admin who doesnt don the compliance/auditing cap every now and again and vice-versa so I dont know why they deserve 2 slots on the list. Given the high profile hacks in the last year (ala Target & Home Depot) and the high profile vulnerabilities (Heartbleed, Poodle, ShellShock, the XenServer Cloud Reboot vulnerabiltiy, et al. [admittedly many of these vulnerabilities were not announced when this article was written in early August but there are plenty of others that were]) security should be higher on this list why they are all the way down at #3 & #4 is beyond me.

5. Google Apps/Office 365 goes back to cloud. Its also sort of like saying skills in Office are in demand. Sure for a helpdesk operator or as a general computer operator but a power-user IT admin? Given the average lifecycle of mail applications, Exchange 2010 and 2013 will be with us for some time yet. Also, while email is one of those applications that is uniquely well suited for the cloud from a workload perspective from a business critical and business privacy perspective I just dont see the enterprise level by-in and trust in the cloud that would see them move this vital IT asset.

6. This is better summed up as BYOD. BYOD has been a concern for some time and this one may rightly deserve a place on the list but the real issue with BYOD has more to do with security than management of the device. Once the device is on your network, its pretty easy to control what they can and cannot do and how. Really, as an IT admin it doesnt matter to me if its a windows phone, an iphone, an android or some home brew OS that some guy wrote in his spare time in his basement. From a management perspective its all the same to me. The concern is what the device might pick up from both inside and outside the company that could then expose the company from a security perspective.

I may be able to prevent a compromised device from infecting other systems or calling home and exposing the company from within my network but once that device leaves my network, I have no control over it or the data on it. Even company issued mobile devices have this issue. While I can apply the best encryption known to man for data at rest on the device, I still cant stop the user from connecting to the unsecured wireless hotspot in their local starbucks (In theory I could but in practice its more difficult) or from being social engineered into allowing a hacker onto their device while the encryption keys have been entered.

7 is a particularly difficult one. As a Networking Admin, I am fully aware IPv6 is coming but its been coming for over a decade now and while we are slowly making our way into IPv6 I have yet to see a coordinated push into IPv6 and I see nothing in the works that would indicate to me that 2015 will be the year for that push... Most end-user ISPs still havent deployed IPv6 and until they start doing so the "IT world" as a whole has little to "worry" about in regards to IPv6.

8. Virtualization is probably the only one on this list that I really cant find fault with. It is a high in-demand skill, the author wasnt completely stupid as he grouped VMware and Hyper-V together (many authors split these into 2 separate categories) and really VMware and Hyper-V are the dominate players... Sure there are others hypervisors like Xen, Openstack and other at-scale cloud hypervisors or a plethora of micro-hypervisors (KVM) out there but it really does come back to VMware and HyperV in most cases and even in those cases where some other solution is in place, the author doesnt completely lock himself into the niche.

9. Softskills is another one that I really cant find too much fault with but it also can depend on the role and the ability to "fake" it. A customer facing IT role (including internal business customers) soft skills cant be stressed enough... An IT facing IT role or even a customer facing IT role while behind closed doors/not dealing with the customer, soft-skills can fall a bit.

Id much rather work with an a-hole who knows their sh*t and gets sh*t done than a nice guy who doesnt know jack and creates more work. Now if you're an a-hole who doesnt know jack and creates more work, well there is no hope for you.

One thing I would add to the authors list of important soft-skills is ability to comprehend, interpret and therefore learn information. Some say hire for attitude train for skill. Thats a good mantra to have and one that I try to practice myself but you can have the best attitude, all the inquistiveness in the world and the willingness to learn but that only gets you so far. If you lack the actual ability to learn then you're SOL.

SephStorm

apr911 wrote: »

3+4. Security/Compliance go hand in hand. I dont know a single security admin who doesnt don the compliance/auditing cap every now and again and vice-versa so I dont know why they deserve 2 slots on the list.

Hi, I'm SephStorm, nice to meet you. I'm an analyst, I do no compliance work, different tem does that, and i'm thankful for that. Personally when I was looking recently (no longer am) I received a lot of offers for engineering and IA/compliance positions, they almost immediately get tossed. Even if I get to do some red-team work in the next year it would support compliance, but I wouldn't be typing up any policies or directly auditing compliance, I suspect it would be "IA says we aren't vulnerable to heartbleed, you tell me if we are!"

apr911

SephStorm,

Thanks for the input.

I did not necessarily mean to say that every Security admin does compliance at a high level.... but Im sure you do highlevel overview type stuff right?

Everytime I get on a device there are a few highlevel security compliance/auditing type things that I check out of habit. Antivirus running? Patches waiting to be deployed? No unusual programs running? No permit IP any any on the inbound acl? etc.

When your team deploy's a new server do you just trust that it's right? Or does it go through a 2nd pass QC/audit by a member of the team other than the one who built it?

My point was more that you need to know how to secure a box to effectively audit it and you need to know how to audit to effectively secure a box. Im not arguing that Security/Compliance are one position... They are rightfully separate positions (thankfully because I have 0 interest in deep dive auditing) but they use the same core skillset and thus dont belong as separate "skills" on the skills list for 2015.

SephStorm

I mainly look for indicators of compromise, response team is supposed to look deeper and what not but... yeah.