Post to myself : 10 Years Ago : Advice to IT professionals

zaleonardz

So my story is, I am now 35, I have been working on computers since 4, and started screwing around on a Commodore 64,

Therefore, Logic dictates, that I have been doing this for a while.

I actually found myself in a market space about 12 years ago, whereby I ended up as an ERP manager, purely by accident.

I excelled, liked it and carried on, having only the high school equivalency qualification.

I got given more departments to run, and moved over to operations as well, as ERP = Business fundementals = Strategy ect

Then found myself out of work due to global company closing

I then got certified in SAP Business one in 2005, which was pretty new in my country with zero resources, and I ended up doing about 8 projects varying in size, again ERP was language, Finance, IT, Logistics, became specialty. I was freelancing during this time consulting for/to project houses

I then got offered a job by an ex employer, for another major international. Senior manager, Title of Ops management, responsible for Logistics, ERP, IT, and sometimes Finance (while they were between finance managers)

I did that for about 5 years, I then got bored, everything was working, redefined ERP, processes in place, line managers trained, reporting in place.

Based on my experience, references, ect, I was accepted to do an online MBA through the University of Liverpool. I did that in 3 year while working at the above. I qualified, got paperwork, and boss goes, thats nice. I have a masters degree that cost me more then my car, and boss kinda goes, "well done"

I decided bugger this, I am going back to freelance consulting, but as I hate sitting at home between Projects, I bought a small business in the automotive trade repairing accident damage, idea was, to have an "office" and be able to Freelance.

So I quit my job, got a support agreement from old company, got my SAP clients as well. bought this franchise. Continued to consult,

Franchise started taking up more and more, I hit a huge market boom, and the franchise took over. staff from 8 to 35, vehicles 4 a week small to 30 a week, medium to large.

Right at the end of a seasonal spike, I sold the place at a decent profit, but did not build my consulting client base during this time, so 3 years "out of IT" basically

Now I am unemployed, I have been in IT and Operations for 16 years, market is saying your not an IT guy because of 3 year gap, and you have no real IT paperwork, management is saying well, we see your IT experience, but we want a manager.

I now have to go and re-establish my skills in the form of paperwork.

I sat in for ITIL foundation training, what a continental joke, ITIL itself is not a joke, the standards are pretty cool, if your a multinational with 1000 IT support staff,

The people that attended the training, were there because ITIL is something trendy to put on the CV, have no CLUE, I was stunned at the total lack of application of knowledge, they of course had 100% pass rate, yet I would not trust most of those guys that graduated to make toast, let alone design a service delivery strategy.

I have been an ERP DBA for x amount of years, I am set in my ways, my SQL knowledge, or way of doing things were efficient and effective, was second nature. Never bothered to learn anything else, as I could accomplish any task with SQL nested views and BusinessObjects Crystal Reports, any database, any excel table I could do.

Now I find myself, at 34, "Too Old", I have no paperwork of relevant skills, my path is not clearly defined, am I management, or am I an IT guy, nobody is even looking at me.

I am currently starting of 70-461 with the aim of Business Intelligence, and WOW was I in for a shock, thought I was a 15 year experienced consultant, with SQL being mother tounge, so this should be easy... Im probably going to fail my exam, which is in a weeks time.

Summation

After reading all of the above crap, the punch line is, even if you have decent work and your "future" is set, make sure you do at least one relevant course a year as self study, and show continued improvement in terms of skills. Do not make the same mistake that I did, oh and an MBA is actually not much these days...

Go onto a career site, look for the trendiest certification in demand which is fairly easy to spot, and go do that, regardless of relevance to your future and current state.

I wish I had read this post 10 years back...

Case in point from the training for 70-461

Their way
SELECT
Name,
NumberOfSales,
SalesQuantityTotal,
SalesGrossTotal
FROM
Products pout
LEFT JOIN
(SELECT
s.ProductID,
COUNT(*) as NumberOfSales,
SUM(Quantity) as SalesQuantityTotal,
SUM(Price * Quantity) as SalesGrossTotal
FROM
Sales s
JOIN
Products p on s.ProductID = p.ProductID
GROUP BY
s.ProductID) pin ON pout.ProductID = pin.ProductID

My way, which I have been using for the last 10 years

Select products.name,
(Select Count(sales.ProductID) from Sales where sales.ProductID= products.ProductID) as 'NumberOfSales'
,(Select SUM(Sales.Quantity) from Sales where sales.ProductID= products.ProductID) as 'QtySold'
,(Select SUM(Sales.Quantity) from Sales where sales.ProductID= products.ProductID) * Products.Price
from products Order by products.name


Mine is far simpler to understand, a bit more resource intensive, but has served me well, it also means, I fail....

So who has dinosaur tricks for 70-461 ? I am using CBTNuggets, any other critical tool I should consider.

maXmood

quiet a story tbh.. my only advise to you is, quit studying, start a business.. service orianted is better than selling products.

zaleonardz

Yea, most likely.

Well I have been unemployed now for 8 months, and through private consulting, I have managed to still maintain lifestyle, maybe i should just obtain 2 more clients, if I bill out 30 hours a week at half or 3/4 of market rate, I must admit I am sitting pretty.

Only issue is, when you work for yourself, you really work for a prick, no holidays, no leave, no sick leave, no work = no pay, no pay = stress..

Hmmm

maXmood

zaleonardz wrote: »

Yea, most likely.

Well I have been unemployed now for 8 months, and through private consulting, I have managed to still maintain lifestyle, maybe i should just obtain 2 more clients, if I bill out 30 hours a week at half or 3/4 of market rate, I must admit I am sitting pretty.

Only issue is, when you work for yourself, you really work for a prick, no holidays, no leave, no sick leave, no work = no pay, no pay = stress..

Hmmm

very true.. it only becomes easier when you later on become an organization, or if you get an office with partner and staff.. it does take sometime though.

zaleonardz

My previous business I employed 35 people. Thats great to say, but as the boss, the only rule you need to know about being the boss is , Friday is payday, and your responsible for 35 families, had a **** week, head caught on fire, smurfs broke in and stole your stock, Friday is payday.... ENd of list

Dont know if I am ready for that again, Partnerships are great, until there is actually money, or profits, then well things go badly,

Im going to send out profile's to a few management consulting firms, see if I can "slut" myself out on their behalf, 3 good clients, 10 hours a week each... its all I need...

jamthat

Slutting yourself out to management consulting firms was going to be my suggestion. With 1) over a decade of SAP/ERP experience, including successful implementations, 2) MBA, 3) management experience, you'd be a highly desireable candidate for a senior manager-level position. You have all the pre-reqs. For that level - if you can prove that you're able to interact with clients and sell work, you're set.

Source: I (for about another month) work for a big four; SAP security.

zaleonardz

That was my theory too, apparently not.

That said, and I beg forgiveness if the below is deemed racist, I am not a racist, but fact is simply, it is really is a bad time to be a white male in South Africa, law actually literally demands that big business maintains and develops black equity, it really is racism in reverse, and government is tabling further changes in Legislation.

So do I move my entire family to Canada ?

If I consult as an independent however, I do not form part of the BEE score card, I just cannot deal with any government organizations, which of course suits me just fine

See how the management consulting thing goes, finish this MCSE, go do CIMA Operations, and then if not stable, leave.

Anyway

Crux of all of this is, if you want to fall back on IT in your career, keep your certs current, or at least the major ones, an MCSE obtained in 2000 is not worth the paper its written on,

dou2ble

This is great advice for those just entering the work force! Thanks for sharing it. And I really hope you're able to get back on your feet and it all works out.

As a security guy I have run into Sr IT professionals that have become accustomed to doing things their way instead of the vendors way. For example, a 'Sr Systems Engineer' with 15 years of experience with Microsoft products. This sounds great and he can build you a whole domain and harden it, but he has no cert and wouldn't even be able to tell you the latest Microsoft way of installing stuff or their security best practices. While certs don't mean you know everything, they do at least show you're familiar with the Microsoft recommended way of doing it. The problem with having your own way is it sometimes conflicts with continued vendor support. Now that Continuous Monitoring is becoming a bigger deal clients want IT guys that do it the vendors way. They might have their own tricks but it complements the vendors way. Without long term support you'll find yourself with a product or install that has to be replaced down the road because it was done "wrong". 5-10 years ago there were a lot of Sr IT guys as the go to guy in a company, now they're replaced with Cisco CCIE's and Microsoft consultants (Even the techie's are required to get a CISSP).

One exception, this doesn't apply to Linux and Unix admins. They run their own path.

kly630

Nice to see someone else with SAP Business One experience. I wound up working 2 years as an analyst at a firm doing implementations and getting certified too (2011-2013). I learned tons and tons about business in that role, even though I was almost purely in a technical support role.

I'm kind of wondering if the issue was more that you've gone to run your own companies and are trying to reach a managerial role through that route after selling your body shop. People are hesitant to accept that you're really an tech professional when there's not a resume progression with titles, education, and certs. So I absolutely agree about doing 1-2 certs per year, especially if you're off in a separate realm like managing a business of your own. If you're sticking with the core IT certs like Microsoft and Cisco, you've at least got something to show for it.

One other question, that you can avoid if you'd like. Have you considered becoming an SAP partner if you're not already? I've wondered about that myself from time to time, but really am probably too early in my career to consider it. Seems like you'd have to spend a lot of time chasing business, but I kind of wonder if being someone's partner of record might help in keeping business steady.

UnixGuy

OP great story! Thanks for sharing, and I can only wish you good luck!

dou2ble wrote: »

...
One exception, this doesn't apply to Linux and Unix admins. They run their own path.

Unfortunately this is not true anymore. There used to be excellent standards and best practices by Sun Microsystems, with proper up to date checklist to do things the right way, but as Solaris is dying (I cringe as I type this!), Linux is taking over, with absolutely no standards.

I understand this is my personal opinion, and many respectful IT professionals seems to disagree with me, but I don't like the way Linux is going. It's all about the new cool tool to do/automate things. I've seen organisations spend money and time automating things that didn't even need automating. Let alone the installations done by developers(or devops) that makes you laugh. What's happening right now is web developers learning (PHP/MySQL) then transitioning into designing servers and optimizing/securing OS'ses without any proper training. All of this (and other reasons) made me decide to quit the Linux/Unix administration market and move on. But I digress.


I agree with OP that keeping an eye on the market and strategically certing is our insurance policy in the IT market. Also, living in a stable country helps!

zaleonardz

To the Unix guy....

One word, Novell... anybody remember that... was the cream of the crop... now a distant memory.

As for eh above, I am doing an MCSE in Business Intelligence at the moment (ok trying too) and I am getting my paperwork in order for transfer to either Canada or Germany.first approached old clients to see if I can get job offers.

kly630, would liek to engage you in your question regarding SAP partner, facebook or whatsup chat perhaps ?

thenjduke

I can tell you never too old to learn something new. I am 42 and thought I was done learning. Hell no back to school I went and working towards master and have many certs under my belt and updating them this year.