Opinions on my Career

Rhuwyn

Ok here is my situation. I found this site which has been very helpfull so far. I've been in the industry for 7 years. I started at Age 16 making 7 bucks an hour just building PCs and fixing them for a small local repair shop. Now after 7 years after going though several diffrent companys I am making 14 an hour. I currently work at a shop. We repair PCs/Mac/Printers inshop. We do onsite networking from everything from a 2pc home network to mid sized companys with several VPN locations. At this point I only have my A+ certification. I feel like my career has gotten stagnant in it's growth but i've been so busy with my regular job and sidework that happens to come me way that I haven't had time to sit down and study. I've decide that I have got to start getting on the ball so that I can finally get past the hourly type tech position and move into a higher end position where i can get a decent salery. I was pretty much wanting opinions on what certification tracks and the order i ought to do things in and any other advice you guys already doing admin work would have for me.

binarysoul

Depends on what stream of IT you enjoy the most and can be really good at. You have to narrow down your choice of career. IT, as you know, is a very specialized field. Unless someone is a superman, one can't be everything in IT, but a reasonable confident and dedicated individual can make a career out of an area of specialiy in IT. Do you like networking, security, database, programming or something else?

Once you decide, you can go and persue certifications in that area. Bottom line, first decide what you like in IT; everything will follow. The question is what if you like an area that is not high in demand? Well, in that case, you need to tweak your mindset, I suppose.

Slowhand

I completely agree with binarysoul on this. You have to decide what you want to do, before you can figure out what certs you want to get. However, if you're not quite sure where you're going or what you're interested, other CompTIA certs aren't a bad way to go. Something like Network+ gives you a very good grounding in networking, enough to know if you like it or not. Getting Linux+ probably wouldn't hurt your current situation, as a lot of PC techs don't necessarily have any Unix/Linux experience.

Aside from that, poke around this site and some of it's affiliates, read up on different certs, and find out what appeals to you. You might like networking, administration, web design, software development, etc. . . the only way to know is to venture out in different directions and find what you like. Whatever you decide, I wish you luck and I hope you find something good.

DirtySouth

I agree with the last two posts. Need more info on what your career goals are and what you like to do. If you would like to stick in the desktop support area, it may be a good idea to look into some MCSE/MCSA certs. I realize they are server certs, but there is a lot of overlap between desktop and server support. Also, Server Admin jobs are almost always going to pay more than desktop support positions.