Had an interesting conversation with the IT Director at a fairly big University

N2IT

I'll recap a few items, keeping them fairly high level. I don't want to roll over on the person but I felt the information was interesting. Again this is from the Director of IT Education @ xyz University

They no longer prep students for the A+ exam

They have a cyber security program (Bachelors and Masters). They have found that companies are REQUIRING security + for interns and new graduates to go straight into security. Also said it was BS that you had to work help desk before moving into Security. ( I specifically asked them this question ).

Former student of theirs is making over 200 a year, graduated from the virtualization program. Said students that graduate from virtualization or security program have a strong chance of landing a job right out of school. (Especially if they do internships)

Literally has 5 - 6 (Mostly large ones) companies calling and emailing him monthly about new graduates with Java skills, even very basic. They can't find these skills and it's killing some of these projects the companies want to do. He said a new grad can make almost 100,000 coming out of school with Java skills. Those resources are so rare.

Dropped the service management course. Companies are not asking for this as much. Several years ago ~5 or so it sounded like this was a big deal but now it's gone away, almost like a fad. I'm seeing this as well, while service management is important IMO it's not was hot as it once was, not even close.

Recommends any young person to get in Cyber security or virtualization. See's a lot of old school sys and network admins coming back through the master program to pick up on virtualization. Some were laid off others just to stay relevant.

Client side technology is not longer being taught on a stand alone class. It's only being offered as part of a entry level infrastructure course. Student's aren't particularly interested in those skills and for the most part companies aren't looking for those resources. This is just another move to shape the curriculum to what the market wants, and it's not client side skills. ***In this area

Really went on about virtualization, I think that was his interest but had some really good stories about students and where they are now.

He was stone faced when he said that student are landing jobs immediately once they graduate from the virtualization program. You can tell he was serious and due to several reasons I am sure that program is placing a lot of people right now.

Just wanted to share with the community.

coffeeluvr

Wow! Interesting information. Thank you for sharing!!

DoubleNNs

I know virtualization is still a hot skill, but to me it seems the industry is moving more towards cloud in the enterprise, and leaving virtualization technologies to the Data Center Admins. Would any of you agree?

I've always felt that college curriculum have a short time lag from the real world. Once a hot skill is noticed, the curriculum has to actually be planned, shaped, and rewritten to tailor to it, and so except for a few electives here and there, the overall curriculum is geared towards trends at their peak and potentially losing ground, as opposed to emerging technologies and skills.
Which, isn't actually such a bad thing. Because often emerging trends turn out just to be short-lived fads.

yzT

What I still don't understand is that ******* interest most companies have in Java.

BlackBeret

@OP - Does this school have an online program?

@yzT - Cross platform, portable, good for quick and dirty in house app's. Usually companies that are using it have been using so it's easy for them to grasp.

TechGuru80

Although those salary figures are inflated if he is talking about traditional students...having a university that is receptive to market trends helps enormously in landing students jobs immediately. It sounds like that person has a sound view on how the market is evolving.

greg9891

wow thats interesting lol. well i was ever stearing towarsds those areas so thats Good.

Ismaeljrp

DoubleNNs wrote: »

I know virtualization is still a hot skill, but to me it seems the industry is moving more towards cloud in the enterprise, and leaving virtualization technologies to the Data Center Admins. Would any of you agree?

And what does the "cloud" rely on?

Virtualization is a key ingredient for scale-out in Data Centers which is where "Cloud" resides. Remember Cloud isn't a technology. It's just a word to describe the infrastructure that we don't see and don't really care about through the internet.

I know you mentioned "in the enterprise". Which is true in many cases and that is, exactly what is increasing the markets necessity for more virtualization, storage, programming skills.

echo_time_cat

Although I agree that virtualization is "the future", I think the IT director in question is being a great sales person for this school, but isn't in touch with reality.

*New grads making $100,000 fresh out of school just because they "know java"?

*You don't need experience before working in Sec?

I just question his motives in making such statements.

Danielm7

echo_time_cat wrote: »

Although I agree that virtualization is "the future", I think the IT director in question is being a great sales person for this school, but isn't in touch with reality.

*New grads making $100,000 fresh out of school just because they "know java"?

*You don't need experience before working in Sec?

I just question his motives in making such statements.

There is probably a fair bit of that going on too, it was my first thought. I work with a
bunch of people that know virtualization really well,
they have decent jobs but nothing over the top and when they are hiring it never seems all that hard to find people with the experience. I'd also greatly echo the security comments as it's the field I'm in.

InfoTech92

Interesting read considering I just ordered the VCA-DCV book lol. Going to study for this cert and hopefully get it. It's very entry level, but it'll break me into the world of virtualization. I built an ESXi box at home, so that was pretty fun.

olaHalo

Sounds like a good sales pitch to me
"java skills"
Lol

What I take from this read is dont stay complacent

UnixGuy

A fresh grad from a top university who gets a programming job with Google doesn't get paid 100K fresh out of school...This manager is selling his university. False figures (my guess).

BlackBeret

A fresh grad from the masters program with 10 years experience is likely.

Danielm7

BlackBeret wrote: »

A fresh grad from the masters program with 10 years experience is likely.

That's an interesting spin we've seen before. Like some of those intensive coding schools where they say someone gets a job for 75K+ after, while ignoring the fact that the person was already a developer, they just went to that school to pickup another language.

koz24

100k doing Java out of college seems like a stretch to me too. I'd also love to know what the 200k guy is doing in virtualization. Not doubting you can get 200k jobs in virtualization, but would be curious to see his experience and certs. Surely it's not a new grad.

InfoTech92

koz24 wrote: »

100k doing Java out of college seems like a stretch to me too. I'd also love to know what the 200k guy is doing in virtualization. Not doubting you can get 200k jobs in virtualization, but would be curious to see his experience and certs. Surely it's not a new grad.

I'd like to know what IT job in general is getting you 100K fresh out of school without any experience.

networker050184

Sounds like he made quite the sales pitch!

markulous

InfoTech92 wrote: »

I'd like to know what IT job in general is getting you 100K fresh out of school without any experience.

I think it would be possible somewhere like the Silicon Valley/Bay Area where the cost of living is absurd and it's software dev/programming. I'm not sure how common that is, but I would think that is possible.

kurosaki00

Hey! I got a semester of java!

Got a friend who graduated from a BSE in software engineering from top school. Fortune 500 company paid for his Master degree in top school. Not making 100k.

I guess Virtualization and Java is teh way to go.
Btw I hate java. Friggin NullPointerExceptions

InfoTech92

markulous wrote: »

I think it would be possible somewhere like the Silicon Valley/Bay Area where the cost of living is absurd and it's software dev/programming. I'm not sure how common that is, but I would think that is possible.

Right out of school though? Idk man, that's steep for fresh out of college.

redworld

koz24 wrote: »

100k doing Java out of college seems like a stretch to me too. I'd also love to know what the 200k guy is doing in virtualization. Not doubting you can get 200k jobs in virtualization, but would be curious to see his experience and certs. Surely it's not a new grad.

$200k is approachable in NYC but you'd better be a big swinging dick at a financial firm to warrant it, i.e. lead virtualization architect at a hedge fund where they actually have in-house applications that need to scale. Just vCenter admining isn't going to get it done.

yzT

BlackBeret wrote: »

@yzT - Cross platform, portable, good for quick and dirty in house app's. Usually companies that are using it have been using so it's easy for them to grasp.

you said it all xD

rsutton

Unless you are talking to the directory of an Ivy-league school, I feel sorry for the unwitting student who falls prey to his sales pitch.

cshkuru

I don't know where the OP is located but I just did a quick Craigslist search on the west coast showing a few entry level java jobs at 80K or so. Not a lot mind you but a few. Given that I could see a few grads from a well respected program pulling 100K. Also the claim about the virtualization guy making 200k was 1 former student. Not all. I can also see that as a quick search on virtualization turned up a couple positions that were 150K+ and one at $100/Hr contract. I didn't look to hard for much more.

paul78

Please don't jump to conclusions. I don't think that @N2IT said that if you graduate from the visualization program you will make 200K. Hey - I graduated public school kindergarten and I make over 300K. That doesn't mean that having a kindergarten education assures that you will make big bucks.

dark3d

Arkansas - fresh out of college devs. are getting hired on at $65k consistently.

Networking a bit less. Our server 'farms' have actual cows roaming nearby.

clouder

olaHalo wrote: »

dont stay complacent

This is extremely important, in my experience. Get out there and learn new stuff.

bigdogz

Working for an MSP I see that we do a great deal of virtual and/or 'cloud' (public/private/hybrid/community) work that has increased.

Yes, I, like the other previous posts agree that the director is trying to sell the university. I also think that he/she is a little short sighted or not thorough enough in their understanding or just talked to a handful of people in the real world.

The only other logical explanation for the $100K position(s) is to use figures from areas with a higher cost of living.

For the students not to know fundamental hardware and go into the InfoSec community is setting them up to have an audit fail at the very least.
Depending on the arena of Information Security they may be slighted. Pen testing utilizes knowledge ALL environments...of some programming, networks, boxed applications like Office, hardware, and soft skills just to name a few.
I can just see the newb saying, "What's that?" when looking at a Pineapple, server, or PC; taking longer to figure out what it does without the tools or knowledge of what he/she is looking at when they are at a customer's facility.

I would not hire someone who does not know hardware and asking for a 60k-70k job within InfoSec.

Even in a virtual environment you have to spool hardware resources from somewhere. There is an understanding that the vendor has responsibility to support the hardware and can R&R a device, but there also has to be some troubleshooting from the virtual person as well.

Regards,