The State of the IT Field (please read)

Hypersonik

All makes interesting reading.

I'm currently a year into my IT career after finishing my 2nd degree - this one being in Computer Systems Engineering.

Working at a Technological Enterprise level company as a Network Operations Engineer.

All I can say is that the year has kicked my ass! All of my degrees have been heavily involved with Mathematics and bit level tranmissions, not to mention C++ and databases (which I suck at). As such, all of the networking terminology has been new and it has been hard keeping up and delivering to the company's needs.

The good news is that I deal with all the latest kit, Citrix Netscalers, Cisco Guard platforms, 6500 series, digi CM's Toplayers etc etc.

The bad thing is that I always feel exhausted after finishing a shift (11 hour shifts - 5 on, 3 off) and have not managed to dedicate time for my CCNA.

I'm hoping that the experience is the key issue here. I have read a lot about the experience counting the most.

If so, in addition with our financial trend following that outside the US, i'm hoping for some decent job availibilty

FlexTec

A little about my self.

I got hooked to the internet in 1995 and wanted to advance my career in that field.
I blew a summer away learning as much about the internet and then went to a community collage taking programs in WindowsNT and Novell administration. Cisco was next and passed that but did not take my cisco ccna cirt. I did not know it at the time but I was suffereing from SleapApnea. It hammered my short term memory and in once case caused me to loose my job. Since that time worked in some good companies such as Microsoft, Fluke electronics. A small Company that need a admin to support there network and product specialist. September 11 hit and we almost
I lost my job because of the severe downturn of sales as a result of 911. I Could not find work because the lingering .com crash in Seattle and the resulting 40% IT unemployment rate. Stuck it out in a small town being close to my Canadian wife then immigrated to Canada. Things were no better if not worse in Vancouver and could not for the life of me get a job interview. Since that time I have not worked in the IT industry. I did work installing infrasturture for Bell and IBM for a company but recently was layed off.

What happened to me was the fact that I know I could have been in a better position if I had some cirtifications. Cirtifications do help but it is not enough today. I think somone with a well rounded base of Business skills and a IT support position would help substantially.

We are in a downturn now in Vancouver. The building boom is over and now construction workers are looking for work. Companies are tightening there belts, houses are starting to fall in value leaving home owners in a upside down morgage situation. I think it will be very tough for me to obtain employment even if I am cirtified.

Best advice to anyone is get double qualified in a different industry that is somewhat recession proof.

Find the Proctor and Gamble of industries and try to get qualified to break into that market.

I will get my cirtificate in 70-270-272 even if it does not mean I am employed in that market.


For the 19 year old kid "do not recall your nick" we ALL were in your shoes. You may have to stick to something you do not like and be thankfull that if it is not what you want, it will be enough to pay your bills. Also, can I sugest that you put your income into some kind of investment for retirment. Yes the stock market sucks now but you are sooo young. In 5-10 years this downturn will be completly history. The stock market is cyclic. This is perhaps one of the worse markets to happen in along time. You have 45 years to invest your earning into a retirment program. Its best to start early because your account could compound.

vegetaholic

I learned a lot from this thread

Thank you all

Brain-dumpers are not always successful.

I know some of friends who got 100% in their CCNA and they don't know
how to configure the simple router.

Turgon

The market sucks right now and will get much, much worse this year. Hopefully everyone watched their money the last couple of years. Good luck in the job market.

itdaddy

i have to agree with Turgeon and Vegataholic

economy sucks; man there is no jobs for IT and if there are they want 20 certs and will pay you 45k to start ! holy crap!
i mean nothing...that is why i am just going back to college mayeb i will teach or something
man IT is an excited careerfield but seems to me IT is or can be really worked over.

I cannot believe how much credit union or bank presidents get in pay. i mean
i deal with these guys all the time and man what seems the policy makers make the $$$ while the brains of the company IT people get paid crap...i see guys who get paid 65 or less $$ a year and that is okay and then you have managers who get paid 100k in lending??
what the hell. I work my arse off in IT to know the stuff I know and get paid crap!

I am working on my BS degree and might get into teaching and then do some consulting on the side.. I have to get out of the racket; i am insulted getting paid what I do and how much I give to the company in knowlege; they want stuff for free when I learned it at a premium. Not everyon great IT guyis in a super job. I work for people I can run circles around. I dont know what I ma saying I am just pissed at the places I have interview with.
This one big company had no IT guy to interview me. They had staffing interview me and
ask if I could do this be a full tim programmmer and fulll time network engineer for a place that had 300 personnell? i said no! I dont know of anyone who can do both all the time wwell. The got someone but they pay hime 43k a year and no benifits..and on call 24/7
I wasnt willing to do that and leave where I am at. Ihave great healthfor my son.
so i stay..but some day I want to leave this s% hole..I have been at a job for 4 years and have done so much for this company..they just say thank you! yeah while managers who dont do squat get paid way over what I get paid. I think I want to be a manager
and IT manager that way I can get paid manager pay. I really am considering a career change. IT guys network engineers well at least where i can see get paid crap compare to
HR or IT Managers who dont know squat but are part of management.

NOT!

I think i will go into teaching and have summers off atleaset i can help someone and feel good about helping someone and get paid decent wage teaching without the headache of
these people in mananagement getting paid big bucks; i mean in lending in banks you get paid some great money or if you are a fressh from college and get CPA certified man you start off making 65K route out the gate! s# in IT you have to 20 certs to make that much!
Yes, there some of you that are very lucky but most are not! and my spelling and grammer suck since I am writing so fast...just pissed off how much people who have taken history classes make big bucks while us guys who have taken vector physics and calc II get paid crap!

econonmy sucks and so does my field

on the bright side I am finishing my BS degree and push to make more money on the side
that is going good but wish I could find one job that pays me what i am worth! ;(

so it is back to school for me maybe even a masters degree since econmony sucks!
then maybe during baby boomer time I can hit it big! seems like it

msteinhilber

itdaddy wrote: »

This one big company had no IT guy to interview me. They had staffing interview me and
ask if I could do this be a full tim programmmer and fulll time network engineer for a place that had 300 personnell? i said no! I dont know of anyone who can do both all the time wwell. The got someone but they pay hime 43k a year and no benifits..and on call 24/7
I wasnt willing to do that and leave where I am at.

I know of a lot of people who work for companies that are like this, myself included. I work for a large real estate company so we are certainly feeling the crunch like many other businesses are. Now it stands at 40 offices, a lot of agents have left for other careers so I would guess around 1200 users roughly. We handle all aspects of our companies IT needs from with the exception of some of our phone issues are handled by our telco and we do so with just three of us in the IT department, myself and my counterpart are the two non management in our department with the third of us being the IT manager. Me and my counterpart have been reduced to 4 day work weeks to save money when we were already understaffed as it is. Now we stand here with not enough time in the day to accomplish the everyday items that crop up with workstations and whatnot, but we have recently been experiencing a whole slew of server failures as our hardware is aging and we have been struggling to find money in the budget to deal with these before the become a problem and then trying to squeeze in time to fix them.

I think the most stressful part of it for me right now is because of the age of some of our equipment, we have been getting slaughtered lately with domain controllers performing epic failures as well as other servers failing. We've been having routers fail at remote sites that are getting old as well. Each time any of these significant events occurs which have been often lately, we have to put everything else on the back burner and deal with the big problems. Then because we end up a day or two behind at best, sometimes a week or two at worst when we have a series of larger problems - we get our agents starting to complain because their needs are not being met fast enough since we handle repairs of their desktops/notebooks as well - and they are not too great at understanding the prioritization of problems.

itdaddy

msteinhilber

yeah, I couldnt believe it and your story. It just sucks how much knowledge it takes to do what we do and then get crapped on. But in your case i will say a prayer for you man.
I 1200 users 3 guys that is a skeleton crew man! I know your pain really.
thanks for the words. And yeah what they want you to do programmer, network engineer and tech support holy crap and they wanted me to build (which would have been fun) a program that interfaces with the supplies that the machine used but I just couldnt do it.
can you imaging programming and then having to maintian when MS$$ does something new.
I said it ineeds to be full time jobs and what they wanted to pay?? crap! for your soul!
I am waiting and finishing my schooling and waiting for the right wave!


robert;)

markk2008

I so agree with all of you guys, there is no other day like any other, you have some days where the workload is bearable, and then you have other days where you have about 20 things thrown at you at once and you are expected to cope, especially if you are the only person in the it department.

It's definitely demanding, but a good challenge at the same time.

itdaddy

if you have a good boss it almost means everything...i do not have a good boss
it sucks! i love to keep busy and the more differentthings yes really the more experience you get.

you can have person A work 4 years IT and have it slow and learn nothing
you can have person B work 4 years IT and busy as hell and learn everything

so when I see adds that say 2-3 years experience or 5 years experience and BS degree
I see a guy who had 10 years IT and is just as good as BS and 5 yers but the world
is set on the BS and x years. play the game! and win!

markk2008

I can't believe these people who buy fake certificates, ok, so some of them look very close to the real thing, but I would never think about anything like that, cos if you don't actually have the knowledge to back it up, what's the point in having the certificate in the first place.

seansabian

Everybody's trying to do more with less. I work for a school district that is spread out over 40 miles. We have 10 schools in Chicago and NW Indiana. Next year we plan to run schools in St. Louis, Indianapolis, and South Bend, IN. So far, the managers are trying to do it with existing resources. We have three people in IT. My coworker has 5 schools. I have 5 schools. And the contractor runs PowerSchool (student information system) and maintains websites for the entire district. We have 11 locations, 40 servers, 1200 computers, 550 teachers and staff, and control everything from the demarc to the end user.

We are always hustling and humping. I really think they will only get us some help if we fail to meet a major deadline such as fail to get report cards out on time or something like that.

All I can say is take your downtime and don't let them burn you out.

I have been with the school district going on 6 years and yes I am a twelve month-er no summers off for me.

itdaddy

Mark

really? yeah but it is funny how no employeer looks at the issue number when
i got my CCNA I got a number proving that I am CCNA, I think MS$$ does the same thing
so a employer can some how look them up adn prove they received the cert. but
many employers do not do this; I would never do it either but I bet there
are people out there that never get caught. But me I woudl never do it
casue when you do get caught you are fired!
no way rather work my way up and be honest; cause I still believe hard work and being honest will get me somewhere; -- I hope

seans

yeah wow! you guys are busy...i guess for you it is al about priorities! huh!
crunch time
but think of the experience you are getting invaluable! priceless!

ChronoBasher

Hey Guys,

IT entry lever here, been working at a helpdesk for a small software/web developer for about two years, currently working to get my A+ and AS in CompSci by this summer.

We felt the recent events in my office sadly, as they laid-off 2 of my co-workers and gave myself and my other co-worker pay cuts. Although it sucks, I'm thankful that I was not one of the ones laid off...and it did serve a rude wake up call to get into gear with my education.

jrs91

I haven't read the whole thread, and maybe I will be regarded as a prick, but I can't believe the amount of complaining by a couple people. Maybe you guys were just having a bad day, I don't know... I don't have as many users as some of you, but I have to do the programming, the systems admin, help incompetent managers with data analysis and THEIR jobs because they lack any sort of quantitative skills, etc. I feel that I am underpaid, and sometimes I get **** upon because expectations are unrealistic about how much I can do in any given day, but the bottom line is that I've also had the opportunity to learn a LOT, and i have been handed a ton of responsability without having to waste away my life in some helpdesk role.

I got to develop the .net app and sql database that the entire company runs on for everything. I got to put together an asterisk system that handles 5000 calls per day. I got to virtualize all of the servers with Virtual Iron. I got to deploy an iSCSI SAN. Yes, I deal with a lot of ****. I work 100 hour weeks at times (especially when hardware was failing left and right because it was so old a few months ago, or when the power kept failing and screwing up AD because they didn't give me a proper UPS when i asked for it). For 4 months straight I last year I worked 70-100 hrs/wk, WHILE taking 4 classes at university (my university is close to work and I go to and from work during the day). Maybe I am a masochist but I enjoyed this time because i learned a ton during that period. I now have very broad experience. I was able to prove that I could deliver consistent results under pressure, and also to prove that even when i don't know something, I have the brains to learn it. i will get a fantastic recommendation from my boss when I leave because I have been such a go-to guy. This will all help me when looking for my next job. There's a positive side to everything guys.

My opinion is that if you are awesome, someone will be willing to pay you what you are worth. Some people over-value themselves though. I know MCSEs that can't figure out anything they weren't explicitly taught. There are so many people in IT that decided to go to tech college on a whim because they read the salary reports for a ccna or ccnp, but don't have IT and computer skills in their bones.

If you're miserable at your job, look for another one. If you're a generalist and sick of it (generalists usually make less money than specialists), figure out what you are most interested in and become really really good at that. Figure out what skills you need to get a better job and LEARN them. There are incredible opportunities for really good IT people. the key word is good. I have met a ton of VERY mediocre IT people, some with lots of certs, but really good people are relatively rare imo. A lot of people learn by rote and lack the ability to think on their own.

I think that small companies that pay low salaries are actually one of the best places to start an IT career. You get exposure to a lot of different areas and if you're smart you can build experience fast while developing a good reference for the job you really want.

drainey

jrs91 I totally dig what your saying but I think you may be being a little too harsh here. I think the guys you refer to are just blowing off some steam here where they feel safe doing it. That said I think ItDaddy said it all when he said it depends on your boss.

My last job was listed as a PC Tech in the paper, described as a pc tech in the interview, payed on the low end for a pc tech and was in reality very much a sys admin job, we did it all. Phones, network, servers, pc's, laptops, end user support, etc. And we had to support not only Windows, but client access software for the IBM mainframe, UNIX as our mail servers were UNIX, sun systems, etc. The experience was great and lead to me getting a higher paying job (Fortunately with another good boss), but it would have been unbearable if not for my boss, who totally respected me and my efforts. A good boss can make a crap job worth having, a bad boss can make the best job a nightmare.

someuser23

I work as a Security Guard in a very large building occuiped by 3 well known banks, it's a 12 story building.

One company (I won't say the name) takes up about 7 floors in the building. They have about 200 total computers and they have 1 I.T guy who does all the work.

Not to complain but I see this more and more these days. It seems companies don't need as many I.T guys as before, only 1 guy to do it all.

I mean, I only have a 2 year and a couple certs and while I won't say I'm high level, I have a hard time getting a help desk job.

With my certs I should be a Desktop Support Tech... doing basic work with installing hard drives, light networking and so forth and I never get looked upon for this type of position. I've had a couple light contracts here and there but nothing permanent.

I think for those who want to stay in I.T, it's best to aim big, you have to be able to do something that everyone else can't. The truth is that companies just don't need multiple admins anyone of a whole bunch of programmers.

Only 1 or 2 and they'll lay off everyone else... sad but true, they just don't need the people anymore.

jkeady

I started as a tech at Compaq a year before HP bought them. When HP started laying off techs I got a part time tech job at the nearby college. So I had a part time job at least when I was laid off. then I was able to get on there full time. I worked therefor 5 years and sat in in all the classes at night that I could. But it didn't pay very well so after my family started, I got a part time job on the side being a tech at a nearby hospital. It helped a lot that their network admin had been in some of the same classes that I sat in on. After a few months they said that they would pay me more than both jobs to come work for them full time. After a year of that I got a call from the microsoft teacher at the college that wanted to know if i would come work for him at a medical billing company. After a 13k increase I went to work for him. So in a few years I have doubled my income by working hard and learning new things but for me the connections have been the most important influnce.

jgargano03

Maybe I'm off base here but wouldn't it make sense if the IT field ran it much like a carpenters, iron workers, or electricians guild?

So many hours to become an apprentice, journey man etc... I think this would true weed out wanna bee's from the real deal. Any thoughts?

itdaddy

Companies just dont want to spend much and people do not want to leave their jobs for fear of inflation and such...

Older people are keeping their jobs vs retiring..

but I can see companies hiring cheaper labor techs like places that charge 120/hour will be under bid by techs charging 65/hour, I can see that easily.

dmarsh

Originally many IT people then came from maths, physics or electronics backgrounds, they were very intelligent and highly trained. AT&T/Bell labs helped produce the microchip, Unix, C, etc. IT itself was barely a discipline yet.

I started using computers as a kid in 1984 pretty much when the microcomputer revolution really started to kick off.

There was a computer industry before the dot.com boom, companies still needed accounts, payroll, CAD/CAM, automation, embedded devices, billing, telecoms, banking, and many of the things we use computers for now.

The difference was there were few IT wanabees, bookshops would have 5 computer books if you were lucky, now they have entire walls.

What was niche is now mainstream. People before had to be uber geeks to get a job, I learnt assembler, C, C++, and a lot more, got a BSc (Hons) just to land a junior programmer job. It was not easy then either, but there was not as large a proportion of 'hangers on'.

As the industry has become more mainstream, anyone that has an ipod now thinks they deserve a job, they will game any system to get a job, its not just certification braindumpers, they get other qualifications too, I have worked with clueless developers who have BSc or MSc degrees, they cannot do anything, not a web page, not a batch file, let alone systems programming. I was particularly baffled to find an IBM business analyst graduate consultant who could not even use Word !

I have worked with ex MS employees that had 20+ skillsets all marked as 'excellent' but in reality knew none of it, I have interviewed people who had borrowed other peoples CV's and put their name on it !

Programmers generally had to work VERY hard to get anywhere at all, this did lead to elitism and young cocky punks, and yes I was one also, but you know what, I'd take the cocky punks that have earnt their spurs, over the business IT or other wannabees every time.

I entered IT professionally as a junior programmer in 1995, before the internet became really popular.

Two main things have spurred job creation, the internet and mobile phones. I would not look to IT for the next big thing, maybe biotech or nanotech.

There have been several major blips, Y2K, dot.com, and now credit crunch. In between there has been outsourcing, offshoring, brightsizing etc. It is not a forgiving industry for many people.

Many of the people pulled into IT during the dot.com boom should never have entered IT. I disagree that people get found out, many companies just move people sideways or upwards. The truely useless hold onto high paying jobs for grim death, they know where their bread is buttered. Ironically they often get glowing references when employers do want to ditch them as its easier to lose an employee that way !

Recruiters and certifications appear to have largely made a bad situation worse.

We have people incapable of doing filtering and selection doing filtering and selection, I've lost count of the number of times I've played buzzword bingo with recruiters, they do not know what they are talking about and phone me to ask me to explain the job description to them! Often they will not put me forward for positions that I am 100% qualified for because of their own ignorance. Other times they cannot even write a correct Job description having obviously transcribed it from a client over the phone, the errors are quite laughable.

Here is a recent quote from Dice forum :-

I just came across a requirement for "Demons ratable engineering problem-solving skills" in a job description. Does anyone know what that means?

Recruiters often do not even have a command of the english language or customer facing skills, they could not even spell demonstrable !

If anything I would say that the long term trend is that the average computer user will get dumber, someone playing Quake requires little understanding of the machine verus someone programming an Altair for example. Its probably akin to the average motorcar driver, we no longer crank the engine, prime the pistons, instead we just turn a key. Higher level abstractions take us further and further from the real technology.

As larger and larger amounts of our tech gets produced in Asia and India, its more and more likely that our real engineers will come from those countries.

dlesliepdx

My transition into an IT carreer:
During the 10 years working for this company the System Administrator identified me as someone he could trust and he would call me to assist in updates or just general pc help. I was the guy at the company that had the latest computers at home, the newest cellphone and was generally known as the company geek. When the System Admin was out or unavailabe everyone called me.
I did this for 10 years while performing all of my "normal" job duties, and felt at times that I was underappreciated. I did all the "extra" stuff but did not get paid anything extra than my co-workers just doing there job.
I decided I was tired of being taken advantage of and started looking for a job doing the same task as I was hired for (non-IT) and not "helping" out any longer - just go to work and do my job!
I found a job, gave my 2 weeks notice and 3 days before starting at the new company the president of our company offered me the System Admin job - this came as a huge surprise! Other than "helping" out I had no formal training, but I had a love of technology and a "can do" attitude.
I was VERY nervous about taking the position, mainly due to my lack of experience and lack of training. I asked what expectations they had in regards to the position and the reply had me dumbfounded - "Computers, printers, network and tech stuff" was the job description the wanted me to fill. They offered me $30k/yr to maintain 2 exchange servers, 50 pc's over 3 locations, along with managing all technology related items in the company. In my current job (non-IT) I was commission and making $60k/yr. I told them I had a job for the same pay, doing the same thing but would stay with the company if they paid me $50k/yr (this truly was my dream job)
The next day they accepted my offer, asked me to write my own job description and choose my title.
Being at the same company for 10 years, helping out when I could and showing my love for technology truly paid off. You never know when you may be "interviewing" for a position.

Turgon

dmarsh wrote: »

Originally many IT people then came from maths, physics or electronics backgrounds, they were very intelligent and highly trained. AT&T/Bell labs helped produce the microchip, Unix, C, etc. IT itself was barely a discipline yet.

I started using computers as a kid in 1984 pretty much when the microcomputer revolution really started to kick off.

There was a computer industry before the dot.com boom, companies still needed accounts, payroll, CAD/CAM, automation, embedded devices, billing, telecoms, banking, and many of the things we use computers for now.

The difference was there were few IT wanabees, bookshops would have 5 computer books if you were lucky, now they have entire walls.

What was niche is now mainstream. People before had to be uber geeks to get a job, I learnt assembler, C, C++, and a lot more, got a BSc (Hons) just to land a junior programmer job. It was not easy then either, but there was not as large a proportion of 'hangers on'.

As the industry has become more mainstream, anyone that has an ipod now thinks they deserve a job, they will game any system to get a job, its not just certification braindumpers, they get other qualifications too, I have worked with clueless developers who have BSc or MSc degrees, they cannot do anything, not a web page, not a batch file, let alone systems programming. I was particularly baffled to find an IBM business analyst graduate consultant who could not even use Word !

I have worked with ex MS employees that had 20+ skillsets all marked as 'excellent' but in reality knew none of it, I have interviewed people who had borrowed other peoples CV's and put their name on it !

Programmers generally had to work VERY hard to get anywhere at all, this did lead to elitism and young cocky punks, and yes I was one also, but you know what, I'd take the cocky punks that have earnt their spurs, over the business IT or other wannabees every time.

I entered IT professionally as a junior programmer in 1995, before the internet became really popular.

Two main things have spurred job creation, the internet and mobile phones. I would not look to IT for the next big thing, maybe biotech or nanotech.

There have been several major blips, Y2K, dot.com, and now credit crunch. In between there has been outsourcing, offshoring, brightsizing etc. It is not a forgiving industry for many people.

Many of the people pulled into IT during the dot.com boom should never have entered IT. I disagree that people get found out, many companies just move people sideways or upwards. The truely useless hold onto high paying jobs for grim death, they know where their bread is buttered. Ironically they often get glowing references when employers do want to ditch them as its easier to lose an employee that way !

Recruiters and certifications appear to have largely made a bad situation worse.

We have people incapable of doing filtering and selection doing filtering and selection, I've lost count of the number of times I've played buzzword bingo with recruiters, they do not know what they are talking about and phone me to ask me to explain the job description to them! Often they will not put me forward for positions that I am 100% qualified for because of their own ignorance. Other times they cannot even write a correct Job description having obviously transcribed it from a client over the phone, the errors are quite laughable.

Here is a recent quote from Dice forum :-

Recruiters often do not even have a command of the english language or customer facing skills, they could not even spell demonstrable !

If anything I would say that the long term trend is that the average computer user will get dumber, someone playing Quake requires little understanding of the machine verus someone programming an Altair for example. Its probably akin to the average motorcar driver, we no longer crank the engine, prime the pistons, instead we just turn a key. Higher level abstractions take us further and further from the real technology.

As larger and larger amounts of our tech gets produced in Asia and India, its more and more likely that our real engineers will come from those countries.

You made a lot of valid points.

muon

halflife78 wrote: »

4. Technical school training is suppose to be listed as experience
If you went to a technical school for say your CCNA certification and you did labs for a year, this is a years worth of experience working with CCNA equipment. List the routers you worked on and what you did. This counts for any certification or degree you did labs on.

would you advise me to list the jr. college i got this experience from? it is not really part of the jr. college in that budget cuts and the way the school is administered does not affect the academy but the cisco academy is using the classrooms. my gut instinct says no since school and experience don't conjure up images of 'real' experience. my instinct tells me to think of a fancy name i got this experience from while leaving out the jr. college name.

Turgon

drainey wrote: »

jrs91 I totally dig what your saying but I think you may be being a little too harsh here. I think the guys you refer to are just blowing off some steam here where they feel safe doing it. That said I think ItDaddy said it all when he said it depends on your boss.

My last job was listed as a PC Tech in the paper, described as a pc tech in the interview, payed on the low end for a pc tech and was in reality very much a sys admin job, we did it all. Phones, network, servers, pc's, laptops, end user support, etc. And we had to support not only Windows, but client access software for the IBM mainframe, UNIX as our mail servers were UNIX, sun systems, etc. The experience was great and lead to me getting a higher paying job (Fortunately with another good boss), but it would have been unbearable if not for my boss, who totally respected me and my efforts. A good boss can make a crap job worth having, a bad boss can make the best job a nightmare.

Sounds like my first job back in the day. Client access to IBM mainframe..I did that for AS400 midrange. In the dash to get MS certified in the late nineties I noticed and still continue to notice a reliance on things outside the MS space for mission critical transaction processing..AS400, Solaris and Oracle in Banks, SAP to name but a few. Also the legacy networking is still in place in some shops. Its no surprise when NT came out they had a backoffice product called SNA server. Exposure there will serve you well. For those not exposed be aware because its out there. The cert space for the MS people without this awareness does not educate this particularly well because it pushes a one vendor solution.

itdaddy

dmarsh = prophet of IT industry OMG!

man you hit everything on the head man!
I agree with you 100 Percent.
I am from the 1980s as well starting out with computers and some programming.
I can see all what you said to be true.
The below statements among all your great words are amazingly dead on.
Just like this last Toyota crisis.
You mean no one from the USA Toyota could take charge to fix this safety issue? And what all due to Momma Japan having the USA execs by the *alls!
In turn, sending Japan's engineers to USA to fix the issue, thus emasculating our engineers!
The only way it will stabilize is when we have a equal and fair global job market but by then what will us Americans do? I mean people from overseas can move here to USA and no problems but it is very hard for any American to move to another country they don't want us there. Sure they want our jobs but they don't want us living there.
We need fairness. If it is easy to come here, it should be easy to go abroad.
I bet Britain is feeling the same crunch. I hear of cheap outsourcing all the time in their country and I bet they are getting torqued off too! Who as answers? We can
analyze the effects but can we solve the problem? God help us all.

Higher level abstractions take us further and further from the real technology.

As larger and larger amounts of our tech gets produced in Asia and India, its more and more likely that our real engineers will come from those countries.

Turgon

itdaddy wrote: »

dmarsh = prophet of IT industry OMG!

man you hit everything on the head man!
I agree with you 100 Percent.
I am from the 1980s as well starting out with computers and some programming.
I can see all what you said to be true.
The below statements among all your great words are amazingly dead on.
Just like this last Toyota crisis.
You mean no one from the USA Toyota could take charge to fix this safety issue? And what all due to Momma Japan having the USA execs by the *alls!
In turn, sending Japan's engineers to USA to fix the issue, thus emasculating our engineers!
The only way it will stabilize is when we have a equal and fair global job market but by then what will us Americans do? I mean people from overseas can move here to USA and no problems but it is very hard for any American to move to another country they don't want us there. Sure they want our jobs but they don't want us living there.
We need fairness. If it is easy to come here, it should be easy to go abroad.
I bet Britain is feeling the same crunch. I hear of cheap outsourcing all the time in their country and I bet they are getting torqued off too! Who as answers? We can
analyze the effects but can we solve the problem? God help us all.

It's the race to the bottom. Its creating fortunes for a few in the West. We shall see more things move to clouds as companies become more global. The vendors will take care of infrastructure and they will move things out. More things move overseas due to economies of scale. Manufacturing is out there now, more operations will go, support, platform management, development, design. The smaller shops are fine until they get owned by a parent company with a global policy. Suggest people think 5 years hence. Some good jobs getting companies services migrated overseas though.

earweed

Here in the US health care industries are still growing even in this economy. Unless Odumbo and the dumocrats really mess things up with health care the industry is going to continue to grow.
With that being said I'm currently applying to IT departments affiliated with larger hospital chains.
Depends upon your location. If there is a large health care industry in your area that may be one way for you to go.

Turgon

earweed wrote: »

Here in the US health care industries are still growing even in this economy. Unless Odumbo and the dumocrats really mess things up with health care the industry is going to continue to grow.
With that being said I'm currently applying to IT departments affiliated with larger hospital chains.
Depends upon your location. If there is a large health care industry in your area that may be one way for you to go.

Heath care is growing and we will see a mushrooming of companies in this area. The rewards can vary though as often the IT costs are low on the shopping list.

itdaddy

earweed

Unless Odumbo

hahahahahaha ahha

I had never heard that one another good one is Obamination! haha
but Odumbo is my favorite ahahhahahahahaa ahaah

yep demcrats are going to mess it up taking away competition.

I have said why can't we make health care like car insurance. My policy is renewed every 6 months and once the 6 month contract is over I can pick any car insurance I want that gives me a good deal? why cant we do that with health care?
US has always had great health care noone is denied just a huge bill in return?
It is about the cost not the care? huh democrats? huh?

Like Rush Limbau said our health care is fantastic anyone in America will get the best health care it is just they charge so much in return. what we need is competition in health care not governemnt controlling what we do.

It is so obvious what to do....competition drives prices to be more fair and makes the big guys who want to rake us dry think 2x.

how governemnt is so stupid sometimes!...

Turgon

itdaddy wrote: »

earweed




hahahahahaha ahha

I had never heard that one another good one is Obamination! haha
but Odumbo is my favorite ahahhahahahahaa ahaah

yep demcrats are going to mess it up taking away compeition.

I have said why can't we make health care like car insurance. My policy is renewed every 6 months and once the 6 month contract is over I can pick any car insurance I want that gives me a good deal? why cant we do that.
Like Rush Limbau said our health care is fantastic anyone in America will get the best health care it is just they charge so much in return. what we need is competition in health care not governemnt controlling what we do.
It is so obvious what to do....competition drives prices to be more fair and makes the big guys who want to rake us dry think 2x.

how governemnt is so stupid sometimes!...

Government is just government, whoever gets in they will play it the way they see it. Just dont get played. Many people in IT now will be out of the industry in 5 years time, others will not. Think laterally and position yourself accordingly to give yourself the best chance of longivity!