i'm going to school next month for IT. 14 months M-TH from 6 to 10:30
at the end of it I'll be A+, Net+ and hopefully MCP certified.

Do any of you have these certs? What do you do all day?

i got a fine microsoft pc and support cert and im studying for my A+ right now on cheat disk besides all that all it's gotten me is shipping/receiving and data entry jobs.

please shoot me now.

get redhat certified that will get you a job

I'm not certified in anything and have an IT for a public school system.....but that's because my uncle is a cop for the city and got me the interview

....it's not what you know, it's who you know

this all depends on if you are doing contracting or working at a big time company. If you were working at my company, you would spend 1/3 of your day talking to secretaries about their computers, 1/3 of your day bringing new keyboards to douchebags like me, and the other 1/3 fixing email accounts and getting coffee.

that's close to what I do, although instead of secretaries, its teachers, and I don't get coffee for anyone

I have my AD in software and networking technology I also have certs in exchange hosting (2007) and SQL. I am a DA/ST for an exchange(email) hosting company and what I do all day is listen to customers complain about them not getting their email and then fix related issue.

I was gonna say: IT is a huge field.

Also: Be prepared for long nights and lots and lots of coffee drinking

Also partII: Take some sort of course in C++ as it will teach you to think logically and will help you if you ever need to script via perl/powershell/cmd

and finally,

as a long time programmer C++ is horse shit. I hate that fucking hack language. This is 2009 and if you aren't using a true OO language, then you are scripting. plain and simple. Learn perl and different shell scripts. that will definitely make your job easier. If you can get down regular expressions in PCRE then you are golden. makes grep so powerful.

As a language it sucks but taking the course(for me) definitly helped as far as scripting is concerned.

I will agree with you there. the class I learned the most about programming in was compiler design. I took that my super senior year too... I was like "Why didn't we do this the first year?"

I DON'T UNDERSTAND YOUR CRAZY MOON LANGUAGE.

Yea I'm thinking the same thing reading this lol

Rev, did you major in Comp Sci?

I work with a computer, but besides email, and drafting contracts for my clients, i only use it for RTTP.

I work in IT and unless the job requirements specifically call for MSCE or A+ certification, they mean nothing, if you're a natural tinkerer and have been fixing computers for years, that's all you need to know, and certification does not equal experience.

This is true. As with most jobs/careers employers look at experience over education.

yes, my degree is in computer science. I would have done my masters, but my company moved when I was going to enroll. Plus, I looked at the courses and I already knew most of the stuff they were teaching. they were about 10 years behind the ball on what the industry is using. I'm programming 90% of my time in Java. 5% in C#. 5% perl/php/other. I'm basically a dinosaur cause I'm not programming in Ruby/Python/SPS with an Eclipse IDE and SVN (ruby/python). That reminds me, I need to learn ruby/python. I bet I could be proficient in a few hours.

on my list of things to learn is Ruby, Python, the theory of OO web development (besides java servlets/tomcat which I already rock). I plan on moving RTTP to more PHPO when I get the time... it's just finding the time. I already use a bunch of PHPO that I made and a couple that I downloaded from some PHPO site.

oh, SPC's is another thing I need to learn. Store Proceedure Calls I have made/used for years in Oracle for DB work, but I don't reall know how to utilize them in the new mys ql.

heh, I hit a sql injection check there.

Anyone work with TCL, TCL/TK, or expect? what a shitty language that is. god fucking damn it will LISP/SCHEME people just die alreayd.

Python is simple if you know C++/java.

Where did you go for CS? It does seem odd that you didn't take compiler design until your 5th year...although, it seems most colleges have little to no idea on how to teach CS. I went to UMass Boston for 3 years for CS, and had transfer credit from another school where I took CS for 2 years, and was still taking gen eds until I left.

I have a BS in Computer Science, which was a requirement for my position, but from all the programming, (Java, C, Python...), theory, mathematics, ...I've never used any of it on the job. All I've used is cold, hard experience, fixing and supporting PCs and servers.

Programming is not an issue, if you've learned one, you can reference another easily.

But as a consequence, my mathematics part of my brain is severely weakened (maybe it's all the pot after college?), but it's still there and will always be.

No matter, I entered the computer field originally because I wanted to make games. Realizing quickly in college that game design is a starving artist occupation (like playing metal), I went for a support job at school. I'm getting out of the computer field as soon as you can call me Dr. Darkwor of archaeology.

right. you actually already know it. eclipse does most of the work anyway.

I went to UNH.. duh.

darkwor: I've been writing crazy algorithms lately at my job. it's nice to flex those math muscles. Especially when you think something out and then Bango! it works like a champ.

ruby is suppose to be just like Java except most people are thinking that Java is dead so that they are no longer making OS for Java and all the free OS development is getting done with ruby.

PS: TCL is still horse shit.

I don't use ecilpse for anything. I was using it for Perl/PHP as an ide, but never got the compiler hooks. Someone here wants me to get TCL running in Eclipse for their team. I will do it, but I still have TCL.

should have figured...lol

how long has TCL been out? I haven't been in CS for about 3 years

I've been using TCL for 7 or 8 years. I don't mind using it to spit out commands over a socket. I just can't stand scripting in it.

See, that's something I never learned/knew about that I probably should've.

wow. I have no idea what you nerds are talking about. Show me some boobs or gtfo.

I don't have shit for school. Brad, I actually got into the networking field from working on multifunction copiers. Like DW said, it's just having some experience and being able to fix shit.

MOAR PEAZ

WHO DAT?

thanks all
I have alot of experience troubleshooting problems including networks. From talking to others I understand the certs don't mean much and that experience is key, I'm just curious what people do all day. Because the IT people I deal with when I'm having issues hooking up a customers multifunction copier seem like total idiots. They also never answer the phone and love playing phone tag.

Here's something some people don't understand about IT guys: most IT guys have a lot of people to cover....in other words, they're not your personal computer technician (not directed at you, just a general "your")....just going on what I've seen in my experiences, some people expect their IT guy always be readily available AND know everything about computers when that is completely unrealistic

I'd hit it with my ten foot penis.

thats not more, its just a lot of the same one and who the hell is that. fappin needs to happen now omg lolz

I did desktop support and helped out the network admin in addition to my normal job (too boring/difficult to explain) at an investment firm for about a year. I was able to get A+ and MCDST by studying on my own and eventually the company that we outsourced our IT department out to hired me. After working so long trying to get a strictly IT job, I hated it and quit. If the company/circumstances were better, maybe I'd still be in the field. I'm about two tests away from getting MCSA but I don't know if I want to go back or not.

i have no idea who that chick is, i was hoping someone else would

Lay off Scheme, bro. Lambda will MESS you up.

If you got nothing, worthless certs are better for padding your resume than nothing...

Get into programming then realize you fucking hate programming and then realize the only job you can get is a shitty helpdesk desktop support bullshit job where you want to kill everyone ever. A+, Net+ and MCP might help you get a better shitty helpdesk desktop support job, but probably not.

Then figure out what you really want to do and then get certs like MSCE if you want to be a sysadmin or CCNA for network admin or whatever.

Going for CCVP, red hat cert, and some gay cisco rich media cert... Fuck yeah.

Knock up your boss's daughter. That always seems to work out well in the movies.

It seems to me like lots of IT departments boil down to one or two guys who actually know how to troubleshoot complicated problems. The rest of the staff is there to clean powdered sugar out of your mouse, hang up your calls when they're trying to transfer you, and stammer "Uhhh.... ummmm... I think I'd better call Jerry" anytime you ask them a question that can't be solved by hitting F1.