What is the best degree for IT?
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We have one member of our team that has put what @scottalanmiller is talking about into practice.
We have just hired @Mike-Ralston, who has been an Intern with our company for 3 years. He is 18, and is now a full time employee on my PBX team as a junior PBX engineer. He is still learning and working with SAM and others on my team to fill in any gaps he may have. But at 18 he will not have any college debt over his head. Will have had a full time job for 7 years by the time of his counterparts have graduated college, and will be making more than most of them will coming out of college with a degree, just based on his job experience in the next year.
He spends hours playing on our servers, because he wants to. He has built out some very cool stuff and has learned how to troubleshoot and does a great job diving in and researching on issues he hasn't seen before. College will not teach you any of this.
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Not that doing a Beowulf cluster won't teach you some things, but as a starting point it seems very "hobby." Exactly the kinds of things I would expect professors, who are completely out of touch with IT as a field, to point you. Remember, professors don't work in IT, they work in academia. Typically they have little idea what IT as a field is doing and often are unemployable themselves. They teach at a fraction of the income of normal IT pros because it is what they can get, not because they are passionate about IT. They tend to see IT as a very "geeky" and "hobby" activity and lack the business context essential to making IT make sense.
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@coliver said:
One of the biggest things I can't recommend enough... Look into getting some older servers or used equipment and setting up a home lab. It doesn't have to run 24/7 but getting hands on with enterprise gear and operating systems is generally a huge benefit.
This cannot be overstated. The value of this is huge. Even when I was well into my career and making six figures, my home lab remained a critical part of my resume and something discussed heavily in any interview.
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@Draco8573 said:
@WingCreative so my question to you is how much of the IT world did you know going into school? were you slightly above the average user? or did you get out into the world land an IT job and then learn all the stuff or did you teach yourself while in school for psych?
I have always been a technically minded guy - the main way my friends and I hung out in high school was through LAN parties, which meant I already had some network troubleshooting experience by the time I graduated
I was interested in making my career something else because I associated IT help with people saying, "Hey by the way, while you're here can you fix this for free?" I always thought I could probably make it work if needed, and after a few fruitless interviews for other on-campus employment I picked up a help desk job without too much trouble.
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@Draco8573 said:
@scottalanmiller that is great for you. but I don't want to be anything that high level. being a boss is not my thing. I honestly have fun being a system admin. It is really cool playing with all the new stuff that we get. I get to figure out all the new types of thin clients that we get, I have learned a lot about messing with routers, and my boss put me in charge of our trend micro server so I dig through that and learn how to use that properly.
I'm not a boss either. I'm a tech, but one that talks to management. I do IT because I love IT. It is an amazing field and gives me a lot of flexibility to be creative and technical. Sure I'm at a high level and that's not for everyone. But the things that got me to being ranked the top IT pro on Wall Street by 38 apply to people looking to get to any spot in the field and successful in it. Whatever it is you want to do in IT, getting there quickly and standing out as being above average helps you to get jobs, keep jobs and be paid more. All things that, in the end, contribute to stability and career safety.
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@Draco8573 said:
I think being a server tech might be really cool as well.
Some terminology that will be critical for you in job hunting:
- Server Tech: This is a high end bench (not IT) career where you rack servers physically, replace failed drives, do cabling, put labels on things, replace memory, etc. It's the high end data center equivalent to "building a PC at home." If you worked in Manhattan you might cap out at $50K. In most regions, $35K. It's not an IT job. CompTIA has a Server+ cert for this. Only enormous companies hire this position.
- System Admin: These are the people who run the actual the operating systems on servers. A system admin would rarely, if ever, physically see a server. These people are sometimes referred to as "ops" people. They are the famously "always on call" jobs and can easily earn above $200K. Their jobs are very high stress and are widely being replaced with DevOps.
- System Engineer: These are the people who design the systems that Admins run. They are not on call normally and have much lower stress. I know very few who earn over $175K because they lack the stress of admin jobs.
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@Minion-Queen mentioned me earlier in this thread, and I just wanted to pop in and confirm what she had to say; I worked with NTG as an intern for three years, training on PBX Engineering, and the use of several other systems, and I cannot stress enough how valuable interning can be. The day I turned 18, they brought me on board as a full-time employee, and have given me the resources to continue growing in experience and IT related knowledge. I'm able to get senior-level certifications if I work towards them, and I never paid a dime for a college education.
I'd say college isn't entirely necessary for IT, unless, as @scottalanmiller has said, you want to go for any sort of Business Management degree. The people who have gone for that tend to get jobs in this field pretty quick, so far as I've seen in my few years experience.
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@scottalanmiller I understand that I will be 25, but the thing is while I want to learn and want to get better. And you are right schools are a little behind the time. And while I can figure things out my brain doesn't work like the rest of yalls. I don't learn like everyone else. Sometimes I just have to have things explained to me a certain way or it just goes right over my head and if I was all by myself I would probably be lost. For example I had a calc class where the professor was decent but I just wasn't understanding what he was saying so i went through like 8 professors that put their lectures on youtube till I found one that made sense to me. I have a pretty bad strain of ADD, because of it i have very bad short term memory and so like I said it helps when I am able to walk up to someone and ask questions.
and as for the Terminology. what about a server administrator?
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@scottalanmiller said:
- Server Tech: This is a high end bench (not IT) career where you rack servers physically, replace failed drives, do cabling, put labels on things, replace memory, etc. It's the high end data center equivalent to "building a PC at home." If you worked in Manhattan you might cap out at $50K. In most regions, $35K. It's not an IT job. CompTIA has a Server+ cert for this. Only enormous companies hire this position.
My dream job, gotta find a way to make it pay.
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@MattSpeller said:
@scottalanmiller said:
- Server Tech: This is a high end bench (not IT) career where you rack servers physically, replace failed drives, do cabling, put labels on things, replace memory, etc. It's the high end data center equivalent to "building a PC at home." If you worked in Manhattan you might cap out at $50K. In most regions, $35K. It's not an IT job. CompTIA has a Server+ cert for this. Only enormous companies hire this position.
My dream job, gotta find a way to make it pay.
Ha ha. Now that it's all about just swapping parts, it just never will.
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@scottalanmiller sigh... if I'm being honest I'd probably take it with the low pay anyway just to be super freaking stoked to show up for work every day at a job I love
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@Draco8573 said:
and as for the Terminology. what about a server administrator?
Not really used. Generally same as system admin. There are only the three roles that I mention. Names could vary, but they really don't. Anything with the word "server" it is is likely to conjure up visions of touching the hardware. And anyone that touches hardware is either very junior or not even in IT. IT is the "tech" side, not the "plugging things in" side.
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@MattSpeller said:
@scottalanmiller sigh... if I'm being honest I'd probably take it with the low pay anyway just to be super freaking stoked to show up for work every day at a job I love
You really like physically racking servers? You can do this in most cities. Every datacenter hires these roles.
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@scottalanmiller Headphones on, rocking out to tunes, surrounded by bits wizzing around at mind boggling speeds - I'd be in heaven. No stress so I could focus on my health and hobbies and .... life!
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Server Techs that I know were always glued to cell phones as they were always doing hardware swaps in coordination with the system admins.
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@Draco8573 said:
@scottalanmiller I understand that I will be 25, but the thing is while I want to learn and want to get better. And you are right schools are a little behind the time. And while I can figure things out my brain doesn't work like the rest of yalls. I don't learn like everyone else. Sometimes I just have to have things explained to me a certain way or it just goes right over my head and if I was all by myself I would probably be lost. For example I had a calc class where the professor was decent but I just wasn't understanding what he was saying so i went through like 8 professors that put their lectures on youtube till I found one that made sense to me. I have a pretty bad strain of ADD, because of it i have very bad short term memory and so like I said it helps when I am able to walk up to someone and ask questions.
That makes sense - do you have any examples of learning methods/styles that have worked particularly well for you when learning other topics? There are a wide variety of online courses and classes out there for online IT learning, so if you have the motivation you should be able to find one that works for you. The best part: they're all cheaper than college!
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Plus books, resources like PluralSight, etc.
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@Draco8573 said:
@scottalanmiller I understand that I will be 25, but the thing is while I want to learn and want to get better. And you are right schools are a little behind the time. And while I can figure things out my brain doesn't work like the rest of yalls. I don't learn like everyone else. Sometimes I just have to have things explained to me a certain way or it just goes right over my head and if I was all by myself I would probably be lost. For example I had a calc class where the professor was decent but I just wasn't understanding what he was saying so i went through like 8 professors that put their lectures on youtube till I found one that made sense to me. I have a pretty bad strain of ADD, because of it i have very bad short term memory and so like I said it helps when I am able to walk up to someone and ask questions.
That is the best part. Forums like ML are great and providing many people perspective on a given topic/issue.
If you don't understand what you're reading in a book, create a post - see what kind of responses you get.
Also, don't limit yourself to just one forum. Branch out. Be uncomfortable. This is kinda a must. If you're comfortable, you're probably not learning.
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@Dashrender said:
Also, don't limit yourself to just one forum. Branch out. Be uncomfortable. This is kinda a must. If you're comfortable, you're probably not learning.
Great way to put it.
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@Dashrender said:
That is the best part. Forums like ML are great and providing many people perspective on a given topic/issue.
This really cannot be overstated. In a class what are you getting, one teacher who likely does not and possibly never has, worked in IT and ten to twenty kids who have little perspective on IT all speculating about what things are like today, could be like tomorrow, etc. When there are forums with hundreds or thousands of working professionals available to have those same discussions and learn from the people not just doing stuff today but building the stuff for tomorrow!
