First Post: Career In IT
techdudehere
Member Posts: 164
Hello!
I am here to get advice from those who have different experiences than I and to give advice as best I can to those just starting out. Right now I have MCSE, A+, and a few random MS certs. I have about ten years of experience doing ISP and Helpdesk support, plus small business server and workstation support. It's a mix of perm and contract positions but 80%+ perm stuff. I have experience doing both remote and onsite support.
What I know I am lacking: VLANS and larger scale networking stuff (I've mostly done very simply environments or just did troubleshooting on networks already setup by someone else), CISCO stuff (I only work on one or two CISCO routers--a big mistake on my part was not learning more of that when in the ISP world), VMware and Citrix I have provided some support for but have never been the person making the decisions or doing the initial configurations for, Exchange server on a larger scale -- I've only done very simple mail servers where everything resides on one box, well there's more but hopefully that gives you guys some idea where my skill sets are in need of an upgrade.
I feel the time is rapidly approaching where guys who only know how to fix machines and do basic server work will become very unappreciated. I'd like to stay a head of the curve. My current plan is to keep hammering away at certifications and try to find opportunities are work to shadow and assist with things that are slightly above my head. I also tend to stay on difficult problems so that I can learn more, which sometimes results in some delays but I make up for it by not slacking off and feel I am getting some good experience so I want to stay at my current job even though the turnover is pretty high which can be scary. Does anyone else get nervous when they see high turnover rates?
I am here to get advice from those who have different experiences than I and to give advice as best I can to those just starting out. Right now I have MCSE, A+, and a few random MS certs. I have about ten years of experience doing ISP and Helpdesk support, plus small business server and workstation support. It's a mix of perm and contract positions but 80%+ perm stuff. I have experience doing both remote and onsite support.
What I know I am lacking: VLANS and larger scale networking stuff (I've mostly done very simply environments or just did troubleshooting on networks already setup by someone else), CISCO stuff (I only work on one or two CISCO routers--a big mistake on my part was not learning more of that when in the ISP world), VMware and Citrix I have provided some support for but have never been the person making the decisions or doing the initial configurations for, Exchange server on a larger scale -- I've only done very simple mail servers where everything resides on one box, well there's more but hopefully that gives you guys some idea where my skill sets are in need of an upgrade.
I feel the time is rapidly approaching where guys who only know how to fix machines and do basic server work will become very unappreciated. I'd like to stay a head of the curve. My current plan is to keep hammering away at certifications and try to find opportunities are work to shadow and assist with things that are slightly above my head. I also tend to stay on difficult problems so that I can learn more, which sometimes results in some delays but I make up for it by not slacking off and feel I am getting some good experience so I want to stay at my current job even though the turnover is pretty high which can be scary. Does anyone else get nervous when they see high turnover rates?