coral acquisition
Active member
what does your boss do?
OT: IT career advice
- Thread starter socalchris
- Start date
what does your boss do?
Beach Native
New member
What's the ratio of people in that condition with a degree versus those without one?!
1) Finish the degree.... even part time.. just FINISH it. It will open door much more than just an MCSE. Things have changed since the late 90's where certified folks could just walk into ANY job and make at least 60k.
2) Put yourself through school doing what you like, or at least something close to it. I put myself through school with a CNA, CNE under my belt... call it good timing, but when Novell was on its way out, there was a big shortage. Get the MCP / A+ / CCNA to get into an entry level job while going to school.
3) Dont be ashamed of taking a long time to finish your degree. It took me 10 years to finish my degree. Getting married 1/2 way through and flunking out of my first school didnt help. But I NEVER took a semester off. I would advise the same.
4) Do everything you can remotely related to your degree. Dont be too choosy. Everyone in I.T. does "desktop jockey" work and its the only way you will gain people skills and make a name for yourself. If you just jump into an "engineer" title it wont look good without experience behind it.
I have 12 years in this industry. At this point I find myself in my dream job as a Senior Network Engineer. I have no regrets about my past. Sure things could have gone more smoothly had I finished my degree sooner, or not have been married. But when I graduated I had 8 years of I.T. experience already so a $75k+ job was easier to find. This year I might just break 6-figures.
I have a Computer Science Degree from Cal State Long Beach, a CCNP, and I plan on going forward with a CCSP and eventually a CCIE in routing/switching or security.
Just PLEASE dont quit school.
2) Put yourself through school doing what you like, or at least something close to it. I put myself through school with a CNA, CNE under my belt... call it good timing, but when Novell was on its way out, there was a big shortage. Get the MCP / A+ / CCNA to get into an entry level job while going to school.
3) Dont be ashamed of taking a long time to finish your degree. It took me 10 years to finish my degree. Getting married 1/2 way through and flunking out of my first school didnt help. But I NEVER took a semester off. I would advise the same.
4) Do everything you can remotely related to your degree. Dont be too choosy. Everyone in I.T. does "desktop jockey" work and its the only way you will gain people skills and make a name for yourself. If you just jump into an "engineer" title it wont look good without experience behind it.
I have 12 years in this industry. At this point I find myself in my dream job as a Senior Network Engineer. I have no regrets about my past. Sure things could have gone more smoothly had I finished my degree sooner, or not have been married. But when I graduated I had 8 years of I.T. experience already so a $75k+ job was easier to find. This year I might just break 6-figures.
I have a Computer Science Degree from Cal State Long Beach, a CCNP, and I plan on going forward with a CCSP and eventually a CCIE in routing/switching or security.
Just PLEASE dont quit school.
Agree
Agree
I agree, finish a degree.
Pick whatever you like the most because you will be doing it for the rest of your life...
Do not think how much you wil be making in 2 years, instead look into 10 years... that will give you a better picture.
And it is true... It is not how much money you make, but how much you get to keep
Agree
I agree, finish a degree.
Pick whatever you like the most because you will be doing it for the rest of your life...
Do not think how much you wil be making in 2 years, instead look into 10 years... that will give you a better picture.
And it is true... It is not how much money you make, but how much you get to keep
818
New member
He owns his own construction company. Industrial plumbing to be exact. Had a good year and contracted 2 LAUSD job sites. He doesn't do a damn thing now, he just has workers making his 250k.
The person who taught him the trade went to a 4 year school and makes around 900k per job site. Anyone know the Downtown LAUSD building on Beaudry and 3rd? Yep, his crew is going to re plumb the whole damn thing.
^Both education and experience can go a long way as you can see
818
New member
I don't know but I'm pretty sure there are successful people in both categories. Not to mention illegal immigrants who make millions of a catchy hustle.
Best things probably, you can get a degree and work a 9-5 spot with it with good pay, or take the knowledge you got from it and hustle with what you really love to do.
School is where its at man.
Last edited:
Mac Inger
Member
Long thread so i didnt read through it,..but ill offer some adivce on a market you maybe havent looked at, which i know best : cg, visual effects.
2 ways you can go :
cg artist, which is pretty technical mind you
or you can be a sys admin for a vfx house. I have several friends that do that. You would need more specialised knowledge then a regular networking/it guy because of specialty software, linux, render farms etc etc.
I teach 3d at a school here in Hollywood. If youre interested i can give you a tour and you can sit in one of my classes for free and see if you like that
http://gnomon3d.com/
cheers and good luck
2 ways you can go :
cg artist, which is pretty technical mind you
or you can be a sys admin for a vfx house. I have several friends that do that. You would need more specialised knowledge then a regular networking/it guy because of specialty software, linux, render farms etc etc.
I teach 3d at a school here in Hollywood. If youre interested i can give you a tour and you can sit in one of my classes for free and see if you like that
http://gnomon3d.com/
cheers and good luck
Trade schools are a gamble... as long as you dont just get an AA degree, and they GUARANTEE job placement it might be worth it. Most of them are very pricey. Ive had 2 sisters-in-law go to fashion trade schools. One went to FIDM and she still works in retail (manager of a department at Nordstrom). The other went to Art Institute in Santa Monica and she has a decent job with a interior design firm. FIDM was a 2 year degree, and AI was a 4 year degree. The sis that went to FIDM always talks about getting that 4 year degree. 
cthetoy
Active member
Wow, lot of tips here. Here are some tips from the interviewer point of view since we hire lots of part timer here for the City Government
1. Be on time for you interview. Yes we get plenty of no shows and people coming in 10 min late.
2) Dress appropriately. While most IT jobs are casual Friday type clothing at least put a tie on to show some professionalism and seriousness. I interviewed people with T-shirts, jeans and one guy we called Santa because he wore a red suit and tie.
3) We tend to hire people with the most experience so get an early start working. You can start your experience with plenty of IT consultant company which contracts you to several short term projects to various companies, governments, etc.
MCSE, A+, etc are appreciated but previous experience has the heaviest weight.
4) The last 3 months we hired about 10 people and fired 6. Why they were fired: Sleeping on the job, chatting all day on MSN Messenger, coming in late repeatedly, and we fired one because he kept staring at one female employee’s breasts. This was all within the first month of being hired and we were very lenient because we gave repeating warnings.
1. Be on time for you interview. Yes we get plenty of no shows and people coming in 10 min late.
2) Dress appropriately. While most IT jobs are casual Friday type clothing at least put a tie on to show some professionalism and seriousness. I interviewed people with T-shirts, jeans and one guy we called Santa because he wore a red suit and tie.
3) We tend to hire people with the most experience so get an early start working. You can start your experience with plenty of IT consultant company which contracts you to several short term projects to various companies, governments, etc.
MCSE, A+, etc are appreciated but previous experience has the heaviest weight.
4) The last 3 months we hired about 10 people and fired 6. Why they were fired: Sleeping on the job, chatting all day on MSN Messenger, coming in late repeatedly, and we fired one because he kept staring at one female employee’s breasts. This was all within the first month of being hired and we were very lenient because we gave repeating warnings.
socalchris
New member
I think I could see myself getting into CG....sys admin would be cool too. I do have some linux experience, but not work experience. Maybe I'll have to take you up on that offer.
reefer4sho
New member
i would recommend going to a university over a trade school as i went to Idiots Training for Tomorrow AKA ITT tech. don't get me wrong school is always what you make of it but i spent a small fortune for AS degree and could have done it for a lot less at a community college and possibly finished a BS for the amount i paid for my education. Good luck and don't be in a hurry to make money now as in time with an education you will make more of it and maybe even enjoy what you do.....
FishyBiz
New member
Wow... this thread is way OT for RC but its great to see that there are some very knowledgeable people on RC in a wide array of fields.
This is a question for one of you IT nerds. :lol:
My PC has been running a little slow lately. I know very little about computers. Is there anything I can do to speed it up a little? I have a Dell GX280 with windows XP.
This is a question for one of you IT nerds. :lol:
My PC has been running a little slow lately. I know very little about computers. Is there anything I can do to speed it up a little? I have a Dell GX280 with windows XP.
HenryTran
Active member
Get a new one
all kidding aside, it could be programs that you've installed recently and processes are running in the background using up processor speed, malicious spyware, or some kind of virus. just a couple of scenarios.
what is running slow, internet or when you try to open a new program?
Captain Quirk
New member
VERY briefly:
Defrag your hard drive. Do that first.
Second, check your registry for fragmentation:
Use Page Defrag (http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/FileAndDisk/PageDefrag.mspx) to check for fragmentation. You can USE it to TRY to defragment your registry, but in my experience it doesn't work all too well.
Instead, I use CONTIG (http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/FileAndDisk/Contig.mspx).
Contig is a command line utility, but it AIN'T rocket science... Not by any means.
Once you do these if there is any fragmentation of your registry it should help speed things up - sometimes substantially.
Also, to see what resources your system is using, a tool that replaces Task Manager called Process Explorer (http://www.microsoft.com/technet/sysinternals/ProcessesAndThreads/ProcessExplorer.mspx) walks all OVER Task Manager. You can see really detailed process information with this tool. Look for CPU time, memory usage and process ID's. Sometimes a higher process ID number will host a rogue process (virus/malware/whatever), however, sometimes the earlies processes will also host them. It depends on the flavor of the virus/whatever...
Anyway, hope this is of some help.
