Which is easier to get into right after college Programming or Networking

techhead.v2

I know this may be a subjective question but I'm about to finish school in a year with a BS in IT. Took various different classes I like programming and like networking so could see myself working in either field. Knowing how tough the job market is today wanted to ask which field is easier to get into and which is more gratifying to work in without the headache that I hear help desk causes. I have no problem certifying myself need it be ccna or java. Just curious to see the opinion of you guys in the trenches.

kgb

You might as well ask which truck is better, a Ford, Chevy, Toyota...

Only you can answer that question. Find what you want to do for 8hrs a day, 40hrs a week, for the next 10-40 years, then go do it. It doesn't have to be final either. A lot of people, myself included have multiple careers throughout their professional lifetime.

I can tell you how my day is as a software engineer, but my experiences could be completely different than a guy that sits on the other side of my wall that works for a different company.

techhead.v2

Hey kgb, thanks for the quick response. How do you like being a software engineer?

lsud00d

I finished school in 2008 and from my experiences (and many friends in IT by proxy), there are many more dev positions out there that pay higher straight out of college if you finish in CS vs. ISDS/IT-similar degrees. Most of my dev/programmer friends started at $45-50k after completing their CS degrees.

the_Grinch

I think you'll find more jobs on the dev side of the house as there are way more companies will to train you up. On the IT side, you're expected to pay your dues before you really get to do anything. I tend to think this is because on the programming side it is much easier to get practice. If you aren't working while in school and going for IT, much harder to come by documented proof that you can do something.

techhead.v2

What side are you on Grinch? Programming or IT? How do you like it? I do kind of work in an aspect of I.T. I have a part time as a bench tech for a small shop doing performance test on networking equipment before being resold to other vendors. I wrote vbscripts that automates the tests which save me time in typing.

dmoore44

There are a lot more entry level programming jobs available right now - but a lot of them revolve around big data/databases/web applications/etc...

But I really wouldn't worry about it - you never know what a job in the tech arena is going to ask of you. For one of my jobs, I was hired to as a telecom specialist but wound up doing some web app programming... To be honest, it was kind of strange, but an interesting experience.

martaw

I had to make a similar decision starting out... I was somewhat torn by choosing game development or networking. I ended up doing networking, but I have been integrating programming now with my networking skills which is very powerful. Usually someone can do one or the other. It is more rare to be able to do both. While a bunch of guys are doing redundant tedious work, you can program automated logical processes to take the workload. You can do some pretty sophisticated stuff with a programming/networking combo.

As far as straight programming, yes, I think you will probably make more right out of college. If you are really talented and hit the right startup or company in Silicon Valley, you can get seriously banked. Seriously. The flip side is that there is a lot of programming talent overseas that can do things on the cheap. This fed into my decision to start out with networking... hard to outsource XYZ Enterprises' hardware networking infrstructure in Big City, USA. Sure, it can be administered remote... but sometimes you need a real network engineer on site to take care of things. I figured network engineering would be harder to outsource. If you add in network security, companies are even more reluctant to outsource that overseas.

alexander77

I was in a similar situation as you martaw between game development and networking, but I worried about being outsourced like my friends programming job was. What languages are you using for network programming?

martaw

Right now I have mostly used Perl with some CGI and Expect/TCL. I am also picking up XML/XSLT.

the_Grinch

I'm on the IT side of the house right now, but I'm thinking of trying to switch to development or devops. I've been in the helpdesk/noc/deskside support game for over three years now. Our programmers have it pretty good, tend to be able to sit at their desks and just code. Obviously they run into issue just like we do, but again they are fixes they can make right from their desks. The other thing is they get to be a bit more creative. Programmers are the masters of the universe as it were, if it doesn't do something they can make it do it. IT doesn't always have that creative side.

lsud00d

the_Grinch wrote: »

Programmers are the masters of the universe as it were, if it doesn't do something they can make it do it.

I felt that way when I programmed a DOS-esque GUI front-end to one of our linux applications