What careers is the industry looking for?

[Bahumat]

Was thinking about changing jobs (but staying in IT) and working in London. I spent a few years doing an IT Helpdesk Analyst role, for the past year I have been working as first level support for the JLR websites which use Microsoft CMS platform.

Ages back when I tried to get a 1st/2nd level IT job I kept failing when they said "do you know Active Directory" :*(
If I'm going to learn something, I may as well learn a subject that would get me a nice job!

The 2 courses which I heard good things about were the MCSE and the CCNA. Also career wise I heard SQL was good as is Networking.

I don't want to learn a whole new area of IT to find out I cant get a job in it, and as I dont really know what I'm looking for I hoped someone could help?

 

[Bahumat]

Ahh regarding courses I think MCSA also looks good.

 

[old.user4556]

I'm in IT and see a lot of what is going on.

A lot depends on where you are, there seems to be a locus related to skill sets. One of the technologies there always seems to be no end of work for are Java programmers and Oracle (pl/sql) programmers.

Although programmers are subject to it, stuff like Windows/Unix and network support (tin, wires and environmental) is easily outsourceable, offshoreable and easily consolidated. Personally, I wouldn't want to train in those things although I'm sure there is still plenty of work in the UK.

My 2p.

 

[Bahumat]

Thanks Big G for the input. I'd want to work in London as that's where the money is. I live in Essex so its a 40 minute journey to Liverpool Street so if possible i'd not want to work North London.

Do you know much about Cisco engineers and what things they actually do?

Thanks in advance

 

[old.user4556]

Our networking guys are outsourced , so I don't know much about that sorry.

 

[Bodhi]

Seems to depend really, I work as a Presales Specialist for an Infrastructure Solutions company and have no IT quaifications whatsoever. However I did work in Sales for their sister company for 6 months where my technical knowledge was noticed, which got me the position I hold now. You say you fallover when they mention Active Directory, do you have an old box you could install Server 2003 on and tinker? I've got it running upstairs, and it really wasn't that hard. In fact I decided to do it all remotely using TightVNC just for an extra challenge and had the DC up and running within an hour of installing the OS.

 

[Bahumat]

Seems to depend really, I work as a Presales Specialist for an Infrastructure Solutions company and have no IT quaifications whatsoever. However I did work in Sales for their sister company for 6 months where my technical knowledge was noticed, which got me the position I hold now. You say you fallover when they mention Active Directory, do you have an old box you could install Server 2003 on and tinker? I've got it running upstairs, and it really wasn't that hard. In fact I decided to do it all remotely using TightVNC just for an extra challenge and had the DC up and running within an hour of installing the OS.

My friend said something about using vmware to do it so I may try that. Did not want to end up ruining my pc though hehe!

I've looked at some AD books and it seems like you can 'learn' far more than what you can use. Will have to maybe get a 2nd machine

 

[Dark Orb Choir]

the most active directory stuff you will need to know will be password resets and memberships of groups (for 1st/2nd line work anyway), plus its a piece of piss and could be taught to you, my advice would be to get a 1st line job then try and get a 2nd line one in the same firm then jump ship a few months later.


Plus tbh you may not actually be using Active directory directly, most places only let "experienced" people use it and give the 1st line monkeys something like "Adam" (active directory application mode) which is sort of a cut down version with limited access to fuck things up.

good luck

 

[Kryten]

The VM suggestion is an excellent one - I have something like 30 different VM's, some servers, some "thin client" based, some standalone and the likes, all for testing - for AD I found it stupidly easy to fire up a 2003 Server VM, get everything you needed for AD set up then use 4 simulatenous XP VM's to use as clients and tinker from there. It's definitely a better way of learning something than reading from a book, however it's also a good idea to have some material in front of you whilst tinkering with VM's to throw up some ideas, suggestions and real life scenarios you may encounter.

 

[old.Osy]

Right.

For SQL / Oracle stuff you need YEARS of working experience, nobody is going to say "Hey, I see what you did there, you went ahead and read a book on Oracle, didn't you !".

Those years you only get by starting out small, like some entry level junior analyst, doing simple DB tasks, such as maybe a backup, new users, a simple report, etc... not to mention you need a totally different mindframe to even like those things (Yeah, I find them incredibly boring).

Cisco is nice, and if you are interested in it, there's still a couple solid years for you to study it, before you really become valuable. But, as opposed to DB stuffs, you can get a job easier, especially if you passed through CCNA1 and CCNA2 with flying colours. And then you can spec in like voice or data, or both...

And then you have MS environment type of job, where you would need AD. Don't get fooled by people talking like:

"So then I created a new OU underneath it, blocked inheritance of the default policy, and created a new one which locks the station faster that the default one"

AD is piss easy. Everything about it is quite well documented, there's TONS of resources on the web, and if you keep a VM handy, with same config loaded, and you test before applying changes, you should be fine.
You basically assign a role (point and click action) to the server, reboot it, and bingo, that's a DC. Whooo!. Then you bring up the DNS, tell it where to sync (other DNS server, such as ISP one...), then the DHCP (here it depends if you have private IP ranges or not, but still easy to setup), and you have a working AD environment. It is some work behind it, but nothing extremely complicated, trust me.

And then, as another option.... going up the path you are now... and becoming the ITIL wise "Service Desk Manager". Which ain't bad, but it will never become a very technical job, outside of excellent knowledge on client OS and client applications. Besides, you need people management skills, anger management skills, etc


I have NFC about programming, so that is why i'm not touching it.

my two cents

 

[DaGaffer]

Pursue scarcity. One group that seems to be able to write their own ticket at the moment are Java developers. There's a ton of work in mobile, or possibly even more lucrative, IBM Websphere. World and its dog are going to down the Websphere route for ECom and/or portal dev and there's a real shortage of good devs and support people.

 

[kirennia]

Still doing my degree so can't really comment on the industry but can give my standpoint on the complexity/learning timeframe/fun involved in some aspects.

SQL. Honest to God I have found nothing more dull in my entire life. You really do need a particular mindset to do this although it isn't a hugely difficult thing to learn, I'd personally rank it alongside filing documents in an office. It's extremely repetitive, picky and the reason for the high salary is that nobody wants to do it. Of my degree course we did one module consisting of just that, another involving it and then another which you could optionally use it. Not one person chose the optional one and not one person said they enjoyed doing it when we did it. For certain types of applications you have to know it to a degree though so it's worth learning. More power to people who can do it, of course but the chances of you being one, I don't know you but I know 0/30 want to pursue it on our course.

Programming. There are tonnes of languages but the core object oriented ones, java, c++ and more recently c# etc etc aren't easy to learn to a professional level but as far as I've seen there are plenty of jobs out there involving them which pay well. Especially seeing as university applications for those types of courses have apparently (second hand information) seen a 3 fold drop in recent years. Although a lot more difficult then SQL, they give me personally a lot more satisfaction and diversity. Having looked at job applications recently, anything above a junior role does seem to require a few years experience which creates a catch 22 unless you're one of the lucky ones. I still beleive that application is as viable a route into a job as pieces of paper saying you can do things so if you bought a portfolio into a job interview of good work, I don't see why you can't fast track the easier (but potentially more time consuming) option of university if you're intelligent enough to learn it on your own. It's not easy though, especially seeing as a lot of people on the internet tend to offer 'dick-swinging' answers instead of straight up ones so having to trawl through mountains of answers to find the one you're after becomes extremely tedious after a while. Okay so books are useful but when you just want to know specifically one functions use and how to use it, google has a better chance (imo) then a book.

Trying to find out how to write XML using c++ is a classic example... turns out, the can just write to a file called *.xml instead of *.txt and it'll work but try getting that as an answer having to sift through pages and pages of "download m1ne converter, it's aw3s0me!11!!"...most of which are very bad practice ways anyway.

Networking. Personally I don't like it but I know a lot of people who do so I'll try and be as unbiased as possible. Pretty much every medium-large sized company requires a techie capable of sorting network issues, many of these companies of whom will have someone in a permanent role doing just that. As such, the scope for jobs is quite large but again, without documentation saying you can do it or work place experience, I'm unsure of how many of these would be willing to trial you. It is afterall a gamble and there are a fair few people competant in this area you have to compete against. Also, with those who require these roles being medium/large sized firms, the recruitment offices are more likely to have to follow the red tape in employing the safe bet. MSCE's would most likely help here a fair amount.

MSCE/CCNA route. I've heard mixed responses about the viability of these so am too interested as to the usefullness of doing them once I've done my degree. They do however give paper proof of competancy in specific platform/program areas which many firms need, including non-software based firms.


Not sure whatelse I could comment on (presume you don't want to go down the art/computing route)...it's late...or early, whichever way you look at it. Feel free to slate my points here, as I say, I'm not in the industry yet so most of this is speculation and/or second hand information.

 

[SilverHood]

Just chipping in here...

SQL is very useful if you know it. Being able to query a DB on your own comes in handy in both support and programming roles. That said, you don't need to really go deep into how to maintain databases (unless you want to be a DB admin), just learn the basics of selecting, inserting and updating rows.

Programming - if you haven't done this at a degree level, or are very enthusiastic about coding in your spare time, then forget about it. If you do code in your spare time, the most importing thing is writing applications that you can talk about on your CV and in interviews. Write an application to handle your games, dvd and book collections or something. Try to use the latest technology. Use frameworks (Spring for java seems to be widely used), so you can compare your limited experience with the stuff you've done in different ways. Also, with economic downturn, dev roles are one of the first things to be cut, so might behard finding entry level programming jobs in the short term.

As for accredited courses, I'd not bother doing them in your own time. Look for a position with a big company (800+ staff) where they offer you the possibility of doing the courses as part of staff training and development.

Also, what daGaffer said. IBM Websphere and BEA's WebLogic are currently real hot items.
Oh, and IBM mainframes - especially the old AS/400 models which are still used by thousands of business worldwide. This technology was new in 1988 and the people who currently support it are all close to retiring age and there's a real shortage of people who know how to maintain and develop (using RPG and Cobol) for these oldies. Good opertunity for moving into the newer mainframes too, as these things are going to be canned eventually.

 

[Bob007]

As the IT inductry is wide and varied, you have a lot of options avail.


For the AD stuff try 1 of the microsoft press books. Looking at maybe 290 or 294, either will give you a good start in AD. I think MCSA/E is over working it at the momment and might be better, as said, seeing if you can gain it in employment. AD its self is massive in the scope of things it can do, but most of it you won't need when starting out, on that i'd surgest 290 as it gives an all round overview of 2k3/xp client/server enviroment.

So my advice would be to not look to far down the path. Get what you need right now and with luck fall into something that helps you gain what you need later.

Also check out any local colleges, Some (not many) will often run CompTIA/Cisco/Microsoft courses that are goverment funded. You won't get it for free but you should get it as a reduced rate as OCR will fund some of the fee's for you.

Barking College Cisco Sem 1 for instance. (don't know Essexs being a northern lad, so not sure its close)

Finaly (more of an open to all statement) check out learn direct, they run goverment funded courses for anyone, they only do basics. Adult Maths/English. ECDL and so on. But as I've witnessed peeps with A level maths being asked to sit the Adult Maths/English as part of there job its something that not going to hurt either you or your pocket(important ).

Good Luck

 

[Chilly]

I really enjoy SQL and designing data models. Using a well designed data model is a pleasure when programming complex software. And at the end of the day, most programmers use query builders and data object layers to abstract themselves from the database itself in all but the very complex cases where some horrible 150 line query is required.

In the form I work for, network admins spend more time fucking about with firewall access lists than actually building and maintaining resilient, fast, networks for us infrastructure guys to use to deploy to.

Company I work for has exceptionally busy and large databases (our hottest db is rumoured to have one of the highest OLTP loads on the planet in terms of transactions per second in a sustained load - getting on for 10k/sec on a single oracle instance running on a sun box) so working in SQL and pl/sql on these badboys is actually very interesting if you know what you are doing. It's all about what your company uses it's IT for. If you sell bits of metal and use IT to essentially replace back office staff, then expect boring work. If your company uses it's IT as it's primary business enabler (ie a website or online business) then it's far more likely there will be cool stuff going on.

Cool stuff these days means massively distributed computing, 100% uptime, vast numbers of users, etc etc. If you can get into even a junior role in a company with that kind of stuff going on you will soak up the experience and knowledge.

 

[old.user4556]

Just to touch on SQL, I'd say all programmers I've worked with (whether it's website designers, java programmers, sas programmers, whatever) are able to write SQL queries. Granted, the pl/sql and Oracle guys can write much more complex SQL but i'd say understanding SQL was prerequisite in a lot of IT roles. Working with unix and W2k3 are also fairly standard skill sets to have.

 

[yaruar]

One area which i think is going to be big in the next few years is powershell admin. A lot of existing windows admins will not get on too with with the move away from gui administration. If you're going to go down the microsoft route then I'd definately recommend spending a lot of time getting used to powershell scripting and general command line gubbins as it's the way things are going to go. Certainly with exchange 2007 now there are quite a few things you can no longer do in the gui and server 2008 is much the same.

 

[Bahumat]

Thanks everyone for your help on this. I don't think I'd love SQL so with what people say it does scare me off a bit!

I think what Bob007 said about getting what I need now is a great idea so I'll try and get myself VMware and learn AD.

On most of my previous interviews they said I was very good in the interviews and they liked me, however the lack of AD was a factor.