Some thoughts/guidance from the guys in I.T?

[RyanvF]

Hey guys,

Thought this could be a cool thread similar to [MENTION=4071]BeoTeK[/MENTION] 's (if you had the opportunity...) but at the same time it could help people like me who are interested in studying I.T soon.

"If you guys could study/re-study something in IT what would it be, and why so?"

What do you think is more important when companies hire? Experience or Qualification...

If anyone has any advice for youngsters looking to to hop aboard the I.T train please splatter information

Things to think about:

• Places to study
• Intern oppourtunities
• Short Courses
• Helpful contacts
• Stories of successful studies and careers

I think forums are a great way to help guide people and hand down knowledge!

I have found this article from a while ago if anyone is interested http://mybroadband.co.za/news/business/45716-best-it-fields-to-study.html

 

[Hiro]

i've been in the IT game for about 13 years, and my one piece of advice would be...DON'T GET INTO IT

i know that may come across as a tad generalistic and bitter, but that's IMHO. Having said that, if you are a sado masochist and insist on a career in IT, then i don't think you will regret focusing on JAVA dev skills/training.

 

[Dohc-WP]

i've been in the IT game for about 13 years, and my one piece of advice would be...DON'T GET INTO IT

i know that may come across as a tad generalistic and bitter, but that's IMHO. Having said that, if you are a sado masochist and insist on a career in IT, then i don't think you will regret focusing on JAVA dev skills/training.

+1

Programming is the way to go, there's way too many technicians in the market so if you tend to go that route be prepared to earn peanuts.

also almost anyone knows how to assemble these days, im still glad that when i studied we went into detail as to how repair and look for faults inside psu's, monitors on motherboards etc, swopping caps & soldering etc, they dont teach you that in IT anymore its now just take out and replace.

Coding is where's the money at without a doubt.

 

[BeoTeK]

I'm of a rare breed where I believe Knowledge is power and as such it should be shared and given freely. Sure it's always great to have that piece of paper behind your name but I also believe experience is so much more valuable. Was actually talking to a colleague about it this morning. Some places want you to have the paper work while others demand work experience, but how do you get the job without the papers or on the adverse side you can't get the job without experience.

Me personally, I don't have any qualifications to my name, only experience. The I.T. industry is a sticky one, cos to get in the door and become a "technician" rarely isn't that difficult. Most people who have some know how on computers are effectively techies, and good knowledge on how to Google is critical
The experience comes where you become excellent at trouble shooting. That's the big thing. When you start delving more into servers, active directories, clusters, virtual machines, virtual private networks, routing, etc... that's where the complication comes in, but again, that comes with experience.

I have never been a book work and I learn better by doing and thus everything I know I have learnt by myself. I'm proud of it though it hampers me some times when applying to big companies. If I had to study something it would probably be MCSA or something more along the lines of the Linux industry.
I am really not interested in programming/developing, though I do have a fundamental understanding of Java, SQL, etc.



Also, as [MENTION=532]Hiro[/MENTION] says, stay away. You effectively become a minion. Long hours and expected to be available 24/7 (regardless of being a single father) and the pay is really shit because the market is so populated. Like I say, mostly anyone can do the basics. And why pay our exorbitant salaries when they can get monkeys and pay peanuts.

 

[Hagan]

+1

Programming is the way to go, there's way too many technicians in the market so if you tend to go that route be prepared to earn peanuts.

also almost anyone knows how to assemble these days, im still glad that when i studied we went into detail as to how repair and look for faults inside psu's, monitors on motherboards etc, swopping caps & soldering etc, they dont teach you that in IT anymore its now just take out and replace.

Coding is where's the money at without a doubt.

This (in bold) scares me, and programming is not for me. My best chance of getting into IT where I work now, is getting my licence.

 

[walterl]

I've been in the IT Industry my whole life, since my first job in 1988. You can be in IT without qualifications, but qualifications do play a big role as it could be your ticket into a job and later on in your career for promotions.

Lots of companies will require a degree before they even look at your CV.

 

[PsychoFish]

Hey guys,

Thought this could be a cool thread similar to [MENTION=4071]BeoTeK[/MENTION] 's (if you had the opportunity...) but at the same time it could help people like me who are interested in studying I.T soon.

"If you guys could study/re-study something in IT what would it be, and why so?"

What do you think is more important when companies hire? Experience or Qualification...

If anyone has any advice for youngsters looking to to hop aboard the I.T train please splatter information

Things to think about:

• Places to study
• Intern oppourtunities
• Short Courses
• Helpful contacts
• Stories of successful studies and careers

I think forums are a great way to help guide people and hand down knowledge!

I have found this article from a while ago if anyone is interested http://mybroadband.co.za/news/business/45716-best-it-fields-to-study.html

First off, decide WHAT you want to do in IT, the field is huge and some parts of the industry is flooded. Basically you have a couple of main "areas"

• Support
• Administration/Engineering
• Development
• Management Support (Like Business Analysts and Project managers)
• Management

These very broad areas have lots of sub areas and some even cross into other areas. I almost want to say you need to know where you plan on going BEFORE even deciding on your first course. On the support side degrees will leave you overqualified and the starting and mid career salaries are horrendously low simply because you are at the bottom of the food chain and require little to no certifications to start (good examples of Support type certifications is A+, N+, CCNA)

Moving into the Admin/Engineering field is very similar as junior positions are hotly contended and salaries tend to be low. Once you advance, and if you end up in a specialized track (Server Administration, Virtualization Engineer, etc) you can earn decent money. The upper tiers of Engineer end up being like the Infrastructure Architect type positions. These tend to be highly qualified (generally a degree or additional post grad studies) and loads of experience. However certain admin and engineering fields are over saturated (Networking and Microsoft system admins especially) and this makes it a very difficult career path to start on.

The development stream is rather diverse. Starting salaries are higher than most other areas, however as a junior you will be working extra long hours in most cases and with seemingly impossible deadlines. The key for this area is to pick a programming language and build up from there; be prepared to learn a lot and at a rather brisk pace. You will almost certainly require a degree here. The most common degrees I see in this field is B.Sc Computer Science, B.Comm Information Systems, B.Eng Electronic

Moving into the more "hands off" type roles (Business Analyst, Project Management and Management) you will need a degree and experience to boot. The degrees here tend to be more B.Comm orientated and will in most cases tend to require additional short courses to get things started.

PLACES TO STUDY

• UCT
• UFH
• UFS
• UKZN
• University of Limpopo
• NWU
• UP
• RU
• Maties
• UWC
• Wits
• UJ
• Unisa
• CPUT
• CUT
• DUT
• MUT
• TUT
• VUT

Short courses / Additional

• Networking (in order): N+,CCNA, CCNP, CCIE
• ITIL (at least foundations)
• Project management for non-project managers
• Finance for non-financial managers

Let me know if you need more information

 

[blaaislaai]

I'm in the IT industry (tech support) and can agree that it's definitely overpopulated and salary sucks! Did some digging and noticed there are loads of jobs open for developers, especially for java. And salaries are alot better, in some cases twice as much

So,if you really want to go the IT route, definitely study programming. Java and Web development seems to be on high demand judging from what I have seen.

 

[Dohc-WP]

I'm in the IT industry (tech support) and can agree that it's definitely overpopulated and salary sucks! Did some digging and noticed there are loads of jobs open for developers, especially for java. And salaries are alot better, in some cases twice as much

So,if you really want to go the IT route, definitely study programming. Java and Web development seems to be on high demand judging from what I have seen.

+1

thats what i said

 

[ArchieChoke]

Hey guys,

Thought this could be a cool thread similar to [MENTION=4071]BeoTeK[/MENTION] 's (if you had the opportunity...) but at the same time it could help people like me who are interested in studying I.T soon.

"If you guys could study/re-study something in IT what would it be, and why so?"

What do you think is more important when companies hire? Experience or Qualification...

If anyone has any advice for youngsters looking to to hop aboard the I.T train please splatter information

Things to think about:

• Places to study
• Intern oppourtunities
• Short Courses
• Helpful contacts
• Stories of successful studies and careers

I think forums are a great way to help guide people and hand down knowledge!

I have found this article from a while ago if anyone is interested http://mybroadband.co.za/news/business/45716-best-it-fields-to-study.html

Since I'm a bit of a late bloomer (i.e. started 2009).

I found that I required my A+ and N+ in order to be able to be considered for a position within the organization.

A+
N+
S+

All can be obtained through http://www.comptia.org/ . Register and book an exam.
You can pass the above exams by just purchasing or obtaining them via google, by searching for Exam cram A+ or N+ or S+.

I wanted to go into development, however required technician skills in order to be promoted to a Junior position in development.

Pro's
You learn how to solve common problems straight outta your head.
Key knowledge of the windows architect starts to make sense and becomes common knowledge for you.


Cons
You get real tired of hearing users give you a long story about the error they got, which all you really want is the actual error message.

You will hear how they walked in, in the morning, had coffee, opened their email, etc.. etc.. till they eventually tell you "printer offline".


Now I moved to a higher position. I have applied to get an I.T. Diploma through Damelin (Which I have little annoying issues, not with the content, but with the poor administration of the campus.)


An I.T diploma will cover a broad look of what consists of IT:-

• Information Systems
• Databases
• Networking
• Web development (HTML, HTML5, JavaScript,CSS1,CSS2,CSS3, etc..)
• Project management
• Software engineering
• Microsoft Office
• Accounting (basic ledger accounts, trial balance, etc..)
• System Software
• Documentation and Analysis
• Programming (Visual Basic, Java ,C #)

All the above could be covered by Comptia which would be your MCSD(Microsoft Certified Solutions Developer) , MSCA (Microsoft Certified Solutions Associate) , MSCE (Microsoft Certified Solutions Expert).
However doing the Comptia route would mean every time they would revise the certificiation, you would have to re-write the exams.


I was reading somewhere that the Comptia certification however does not weigh as much as they do locally,when going internationally with them. Hence myself going for a diploma and then hopefully a degree.



Most of what people say above concerning techies is true, one thing that they dont mention is that it is a really frustrating and unrewarding job. Often you will fix things that are actually a little more complex than a usual issue and you wont even get a pat on the back. If you can handle not getting a pat on the back and feel self pride for your accomplishment then you should be alright. Oh and also, all of sudden that your in I.T. , it means to everyone that you are able to diagnose why the kettle doesnt work, or the Telephone stops working(Even though you outsourced the phone systems.), or you'll know the answer as to why the customer mail didnt reach your exchange server and you have to get it for them on the interwebs.


Oh let me not forget my favourite, Sarcasm that people give you just cause you work with computers.
Once in a while you might have to mingle with the sales people and comments will fly. "looks its I.T. who plays games all day".

 

[PsychoFish]

Oh let me not forget my favourite, Sarcasm that people give you just cause you work with computers.
Once in a while you might have to mingle with the sales people and comments will fly. "looks its I.T. who plays games all day".

Uhuh, however my response is "When I work you can't", which is completely untrue because I really don't care, I do design, planning and high level implementation of enterprise infrastructure, so no... let me get back to drinking coffee and playing some games.

 

[FarligOpptreden]

This thread makes my brain hurt. I'm in IT (software engineering) and have been so for 10 years. I've been doing Microsoft stack for this whole time and also been focusing on Java / Oracle / Unix recently.

It's an unforgiving industry with long hours, incredibly steep learning curves (despite qualifications) and tools as diverse as the stretch of your imagination. The pay can be good, but getting there is an uphill battle that many don't want to face.

 

[Solitude]

This thread makes my brain hurt. I'm in IT (software engineering) and have been so for 10 years. I've been doing Microsoft stack for this whole time and also been focusing on Java / Oracle / Unix recently.

It's an unforgiving industry with long hours, incredibly steep learning curves (despite qualifications) and tools as diverse as the stretch of your imagination. The pay can be good, but getting there is an uphill battle that many don't want to face.

I'm basically of the same mold as FarligOpptreden. I'm a software developer that works with the Microsoft stack. More so now than before. I used to be a C/C++ programmer whereas these days it's mainly C# and also some front end work in javascript.

Back in the day it was fine to do courses here and there but these days I'd say it's very important to get a degree. You'll get paid more because of it and you'll land jobs much easier.

As a programmer you have to learn constantly. The field is changing the whole time and you are expected to stay up to date. But if you enjoy programming then you'll stay up to date in any case. Because programming is something that you'll probably either love or hate. It requires a good concentration span to do it full time. And I know a lot of people who study programming but then only work in it a short time or not work in the field at all because they can't stand it.

Also with programming it's easy to see when someone isn't doing a good job. In most cases you will work towards deadlines and you will be expected to write code that are both easily maintained and easily adaptable.

Unfortunately at many workplaces that means overtime.

Luckily there are so many places where you can learn programming before actually going to study it officially. So a person can pick something, dabble in it and see if you like it or not. I love programming. In fact I code at work then go home and code on my personal projects. If you can see yourself doing that then programming is a good job option for you. If not, then it's probably better to go in a different direction.

 

[PsychoFish]

To echo [MENTION=20]Solitude[/MENTION] and others, programming is very rewarding in the end, but be prepared (especially in junior roles) to work long hours and to learn pretty much constantly. I had my heart set on becoming a developer, but I don't enjoy working as a developer. I'm still very good at coding/scripting using multiple languages. However I'm a senior infrastructure engineer/architect dealing specifically with Linux, Networking, Security, Storage and Virtualization.

I have worked on multiple operating systems namely AIX, BSD (mostly FreeBSD), HP-UX, Linux, OS/2, Solaris and Windows (right from 3.x to 2012 R2).

The only constant thing in my many years in the IT industry has been the fact that things will change constantly. You need to stay on the curve.

My knowledge of the languages is especially handy when it comes to Linux shell scripting, and very handy in finding and fixing little mistakes some devs make. The differentiating factor is that I can connect the dots between dev issues and infra issues.

The point i'm trying to make is that you should find your primary field of interest, but not limit yourself to it.

 

[FarligOpptreden]

My knowledge of the languages is especially handy when it comes to Linux shell scripting, and very handy in finding and fixing little mistakes some devs make. The differentiating factor is that I can connect the dots between dev issues and infra issues.

My specialty is making sure the deployed code works no matter what environment you choose to put it in.

...or at least make it configurable enough to adapt it to the environment. Seriously, many developers can't build scalable applications or services. Even extremely senior people who've been in the industry for yonks.

 

[PsychoFish]

...or at least make it configurable enough to adapt it to the environment. Seriously, many developers can't build scalable applications or services. Even extremely senior people who've been in the industry for yonks.

What i tend to see with the new generation of devs is that they cannot do efficient memory management. Threading is also an issue for some devs. And the "just give me more CPU" excuse doesn't work if your application only uses like 5% CPU on ONE processor in a dual/quad/more configuration.

 

[TBlaar]

If you want my opinion: Don't go into IT.

IT is cut-throat, being good or having a degree even, is just not good enough any more. We have to constantly update our skills and be better than the next guy, just to keep your job or to progress. If you are really good or driven, you will do good. But then you will also not need to study to know that you want to do IT, because you will already be doing it. (Being good in IT is about what you know and understand, not what you have on a piece of paper.)

I would rather suggest a career in Finance, albeit very boring. The thing is, you will always find a job if you are a Chartered Accountant, and they are some of the richest people in the world and LOTS of CEOs and MDs of large companies are CAs. It's a very good direction to go into, it's always good to know finance, and it's a very good way to learn the real inner workings of business.

 

[okuhle94]

I am studying IT at the moment, in my second year at the moment. I going to finish studying once I got my BTech in IT. I would love to get into the software development sphere, and eventually management. I am aware that with being a really good developer comes long hours of work and writing code that is easy to maintain and read. I have tried writing my practicals using what I understand about the Model View Controller pattern, and that seems to work well... with the controller object being passed into the form... Just need to figure out how to "dynamically generate" forms and how to design my own form controls.

Must say second year programming is not difficult for me - we do C#, and JavaScript / XHTML.... I been learning Android, Java and some design patterns.... I was thinking of trying Oracle... and learning more about MySQL.

Some really valid, real, and encouraging pointers in this thread.

 

[PsychoFish]

I am studying IT at the moment, in my second year at the moment. I going to finish studying once I got my BTech in IT. I would love to get into the software development sphere, and eventually management. I am aware that with being a really good developer comes long hours of work and writing code that is easy to maintain and read. I have tried writing my practicals using what I understand about the Model View Controller pattern, and that seems to work well... with the controller object being passed into the form... Just need to figure out how to "dynamically generate" forms and how to design my own form controls.

Must say second year programming is not difficult for me - we do C#, and JavaScript / XHTML.... I been learning Android, Java and some design patterns.... I was thinking of trying Oracle... and learning more about MySQL.

Some really valid, real, and encouraging pointers in this thread.

Some stuff I have been tinkering with might interest you. I'll just throw some names about Hadoop, Elasticsearch, Kibana, Marvel & Aerospike

You'll find these things interesting to say the least.

 

[FarligOpptreden]

Some stuff I have been tinkering with might interest you. I'll just throw some names about Hadoop, Elasticsearch, Kibana, Marvel & Aerospike

You'll find these things interesting to say the least.

Into big data are we?

Another thing I forgot to mention earlier: if you're entering the software engineering game, you need to be good at problem solving. I mean, really good at problem solving. When you're faced with real-world software engineering problems, Google will not help you all that much. The syntax of a programming language or the availability of a library helping you do X is not the issue - knowing how to use the most appropriate tools at your disposal to solve the problem at hand in the most efficient manner possible is what will set you apart in the industry. You can't just C# everything to a pulp and expect it to work, neither can you expect Java to be your coding messiah - each tool has a place and is used to solve a piece of a bigger problem.