Knowledge

Hey
Im curious as to where everyone got their knowledge was it all from certifications or through years or experience? Do you find that certifications give you ALL the knowledge you need in your jobs?

Peter

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Ricka182

First, try not to post the same thread twice.

Second, I got my knowledge through study time, lots of it. Personally, I don't have a lot of IT history, but I know people who worked in the field since the days of Prodigy online, and are just now getting certs to back up their resume. With the certs I do have, I feel there's still a lot more to learn that can really only be seen in the real world. Hopefully, I'll get a chance to get in someday soon.

JOblessELement

Learning is simply a never ending process ... no one knows it "ALL" - not the experienced, not the certified. It is love for a certain subject matter that will drive you to get you this knowledge. Books, experience, teachers, fellow employees, forums, etc. are just a variety of means to achieve perfection.

Rebound86

yeah soz 4 posting twice not sure what happend there anyway i only ask becasue there are times when i hear people talk "techie talk" and i get a bit lost, somtimes im left wondering where they got all this from!

sigh so what your saying is that no matter im gonna be stuck thinking WHAT did they just talk about

janmike

Rebound86,

From JOblessELement:

no one knows it "ALL"

Most correct!

Ouside of doing the occasional troubleshoot for self, wife, or friend/family and spending 6 months as a front-end user on a small business network at a clerk job over a 6 year period, my on-job experience is a total of 2 months of work station deployments and remote imaging and a total of 60 hours at my present position.

I discovered that the "techie talkers" had to call ops center for help just as often as I did. I tell you this from experience--when it's your watch, and a service or an application goes down, you can't talk it back up. A server doesn't care what comes out of your mouth. You have to know how to make that thing percolate.

Most of the "talkers" I've come across are gamers or technology lovers who want the latest and the best. Likely, you will never have the latest and the best when you actually "sit in the seat".

No, I don't feel like a professional--even though my certs & title say I am, and the employer's dress code says that I am(according to organization policy anyway). But I'm learning--every day. As a matter of fact, the person who is training me, is at times quite impressed with my knowledge of the workstation box and its peripherals(at times we have to make a help desk call and go outside of the ops center).

Hope this helps. Best of luck on your career

mikiemov

Personally speaking, I have been the IT Administrator for a small business (50-80 users) for 5yrs or so. The knowledge which I had built up during this period wasnt specific to any particular subject, instead I knew a little about a lot of things ie hardware, win98, Win2k, telephone switches, printers etc. I knew enough to get by and could "hold my own" speaking techy with colleagues etc.

Last May, I started studying in earnest for MCSE and passed my 7th exam last week to obtain MCSE with MCSA along the way.

IMO, I would say that the "depth" of my knowledge has increased substantially since studying and passing these exams. So in answer to your question, Id say knowledge in the IT field is a mixture of experience and certs. As far as what employers want, I'd say a combination of both is ideal. As you can pass exams etc, but if you do not have any practical, working experience of the systems then it is more or less worthless.

Keep at it anyway..

Mike

bellboy

study for certs wouldn't give you all the knowledge.

halflife78

I learned most of my initial knowledge hands on with my job. I got my IT job because I was the only one who showed up for the interview 4 years ago, I do the networking and telecom for a 700 seat callcenter. The vast amount of equipment I work on (34 24 port switches, 15 T1's, G3R phone switch, routers, etc.) helped me gain my troubleshooting abilities.

Recently I passed my CCNA. The value of going to school and studying for that was it gave me a more intimate speaking knowledge of what I am doing when diagnosing or fixing a problem. It also strengthened my Cisco skills as we use Nortel here. Another big plus is when I go on an interview now and I am asked a question I am able to use my new knowledge learned to better formulate a more professional response to a given question.

Like Jobless said, learning is a never ending process, I learn something new at work everyday.

Rebound86

the sounds about right i guess its just 1 of those jobs, things change so fast i cant keep up, i have taken to reading Australian Personl Computers (a mag over here) and i get some good general computer knowledge from it. It does not help in terms of my CCNA but it makes for an intresting read. My computer knowledge while geater then your average farmer is not much most of it was gained through work experience (BEST week of yr 11 by the way) and what i get out of cisco but it seems that if you have more computer knowledge then some1 else then that assume that you have the answers to all there questions eg my mother asked me the other a question the other day in regards to excel !!! i have NEVER used excel in my life how was i supposed to know why the text kept disappearing? any way thanks for takin the time to reply.

JOblessELement

why the text kept disappearing?

What in the world?!? Or has Microsoft come out with an ad/spyware version of Excel (OfficeSuite)?

2lazybutsmart

How true. Very good points from all of ya. Cert's don't buy you knowledge; they're just there to prove you know the stuff. Unfortunatelly, people are using them for other means of "expression" these days.

I've been certified for only 3 years now and one of the most important things I've achieved from my certification was that I came to know how much was out there that I didn't know. They say knowledge is not about what you know, but what you know you don't know.

I've kept on digging with a never-ending appetite since then, and all I see as I go my way is that I've got a very long way to go.