To those who work in I.T.

[Finch]

How did you break into the field? What education and certifications do you have? For a guy who has half-assed studied Cisco CCNA/CCNP curriculum for the past 4 years (I have a home lab if that counts for anything), how would you recommend I go about getting out of this dead end job and into something that requires a thought process....

This is pretty open ended, so give me anything that comes to mind.

[Nitrogen]

just like in any other job: You start at the bottom, getting work experience as you go.

Education or certifications can be a foot in the door, though.

Startups are great for learning things; but job security at startups is null.  Thats how I got most of my experience.

[Sindawe]

You need three things to break into I.T.

Experience, experience & experience.

Or be lucky enough to get on with a small shop that will over look your lack of the above so you can gain that experience.  I've been banging on computer keyboards since the days when that Apple IIe was the bleeding edge, which did help immensely when I jumped ship from Biotech to I.T. in 2000.  You'll have to start at the ground floor (aka Help Desk) to get the time under your belt.  Certs are nice, but if you don't understand the tech behind them and that which underlies all I.T. they are just window dressing in an empty store front.

I don't have any "formal certifications" in what I do, I just know how to make it work and/or find the answers to get things running again when they go down.

[41magsnub]

Where do you live?  Big City, small town?  It tends to make a difference.

I started by getting my AAS degree in Microcomputer management which was largely useless but got a degree on paper.  I then self studied for my NT4 MCSE while in college and got a job with a local firm that does network consulting.  I started doing remote network admins via VPN and low level service and moved up from there.  In 2 years I was doing small projects and now 10 years later I am the senior engineer for a medium sized firm (for Missoula Montana, 17 folks) setting standards, major projects, and internal support.  Feels good to have gone from peer to peer stuff to designing and implementing an entire hospital and not having to touch desktops anymore.  All the while I updated certs as needed for 2003 MCSE, CCNA, CCDA, and random other ones which are more to impress clients with than anything else.

I managed to skip the whole service center hardware part of the job and I am just fine with that.

In larger cities you will probably start on the help desk of a company doing monkey work and have to self develop to break out of the entry level job.  After that it is a pretty natural progression as long as you stay on top of your training. 

Self study is hard (to do and to find time for).

Also do not be afraid to volunteer your time or work cheap at non-profits to gain experience and a network of references.

[lee n. field]

For a guy who has half-assed studied Cisco CCNA/CCNP curriculum for the past 4 years (I have a home lab if that counts for anything), how would you recommend I go about getting out of this dead end job and into something that requires a thought process....

What else can you do besides IT?

This business is a battle, a headache, a futile struggle against entropy and an object example of the Calvinist doctrine of total depravity.

How'd I get in?  Read voraciously, took a lot of community college classes on the way to an associates in something sort of related.  Got in at the bottom (very bottom -- I was minimum wage for a few weeks). 

[The Annoyed Man]

How did you break into the field? What education and certifications do you have? For a guy who has half-assed studied Cisco CCNA/CCNP curriculum for the past 4 years (I have a home lab if that counts for anything), how would you recommend I go about getting out of this dead end job and into something that requires a thought process....

This is pretty open ended, so give me anything that comes to mind.

Certs are only good for entry level stuff and consulting. Get a four year degree if you want to earn a decent salary. Look for a company where IT is not the primary reason for existing yet is necessary. For instance, I have been doing very well for the last decade specializing in IT operations management for large construction companies - I have had two job in 10 years, make six figures and manage seven people. At this point, I have zero certifications but I have a bachelor's degree and people skills - the last is the most important. In my industry, building trust is a critical factor as is being able to translate complex technical concepts into plain English. It helps that I can present well to employees in large groups and that I have excellent technical writing skills and a background in military journalism. If you communicate well and present as trustworthy in face to face encounters you can move up.

[RevDisk]

Be very sure you want to work in IT before you do it.  Hours can suck, a lot of the software sucks, and it's expected to work like magic, at all times.  Even if you don't have the budget to run a good setup.  Plus, everything changes on an insanely quick basis.  And the pay isn't like the 90's anymore.  The market is flooded with MCSE/CCNA paper mill certs.

If you haven't run screaming yet, you'll be fine.  If you can afford it, just get a job doing entry level stuff.  This means Help Desk or some other first level support.  Volunteer to do everything under the sun you can.   Rack up experience.   Sindawe is exactly right.   Paper certs or degrees are nice.  They get you an interview.  Beyond that, they don't mean much.  Experience and knowledge is everything.  You make your way in IT by being either the absolute expert in whatever you specialize in, or the guy that fixes any problem that comes up.  If you want to make money, find a niche.  Security, SAN's, routers, whatever.  Just be the absolute expert at it. 

Get whatever job you can.  Then branch out as much as allowed.  Read everything you can get your hands on.  Experiment. 

[41magsnub]

For certs, there is one huge benefit for those that some don't think of..  they provide a tangible metric for the business owner that you can show as benefit to attending a training.  It also as I mentioned above is a tool to impress potential customers.  A big benefit for my firm is we have enough certs between us to be a MS Gold Partner which looks good to customers and entirely covers our internal software licensing costs.

There are a lot of "paper cert" holders out there so don't expect the certs to carry as much weight on a resume after you have been in the industry for a while.  However, and this is a big however, when you are starting they show at least a modicum of desire and motivation to want to learn.  There is a lot of bitterness about certs so do not expect a lot of praise from "veterans" for getting them, but don't do them for that, do them for your own knowledge and as a resume builder. 

Side note:  wearing cert logo gear is sort of the IT equivalent of being a Mall Ninja so don't do it.

[Finch]

My ultimate interst lies with networking, and network security. I was planning on getting my A+, Net+ and CCNA within the year in an attempt to get something entry level (and hopefully by then I will have some bills paid off so I can take the inevitable pay cut). And on the college level, well I live in Las Vegas and UNLV doesn't offer anything having to do with networks, only a Computer Science degree which focuses on programming.

Thanks for the input guys...

[Manedwolf]

My ultimate interst lies with networking, and network security. I was planning on getting my A+, Net+ and CCNA within the year in an attempt to get something entry level (and hopefully by then I will have some bills paid off so I can take the inevitable pay cut). And on the college level, well I live in Las Vegas and UNLV doesn't offer anything having to do with networks, only a Computer Science degree which focuses on programming.

Keep in mind that when you get those certs, there will five dozen H1Bs from India who have them, too, and will do it for less than half what you'd consider a decent salary.

Lots of people in IT I know have ejected and gone into actual growth fields like biotech, as more and more IT stuff is either offshored, or the IT people are treated, at corporations, like coal-stokers in the bowels of an Edwardian liner. They're expected to come in at 3am, work entire nights and days till things are fixed, and then replaced when they burn out.

[Stetson]

I have worked as a Network Engineer for MCI/Worldcom, an NT/Win2k Admin for HP/Agilent and other sundry network jobs.  Hated every one of them.  Now I work on a level 3 helpdesk.  I make more money here than anywhere else I have worked.  I have almost no work stress and I'm no longer on call, I work M-F 8a-5p. 

I have an AAS in Network and System Administration from a tech school that was bought by DeVry.  I have no certs but I do have 9 years of consistent employment and experience.

Most helpdesks do nto require certs.  Use them to get your foot in the door, while you are getting your certs and go from there.  I will, this fall, be working with my boss to learn call center metrics and statistical predictability for the type of desks we run here.  After that, then I will start my managment progression with this company. 

All depends on your end goal....

[mfree]

AAS in Computer science, math and science concentration; That and a college that required an internship and boasts about it's 98% placement and you've got it made.

[Paragon]

I guess I'm a different story.  I started off with a tech school that didn't provide any certs, but gave me a lot of knowledge, then joined the Marine Corps in the field of Data Systems.  4 years later, I came out with enough knowledge and experience to work in a tier 3 helpdesk for the USAF (my company is a subcontractor of Lockheed Martin). 

In the Marine Corps, I ran a shop of 15 Marines that were responsible for every aspect of IT in the regiment.  That went a long way on a resume.  I still don't have any real certs, but I know my job, and I do it well, which is what employers really look for. 

[RevDisk]

I guess I'm a different story.  I started off with a tech school that didn't provide any certs, but gave me a lot of knowledge, then joined the Marine Corps in the field of Data Systems.  4 years later, I came out with enough knowledge and experience to work in a tier 3 helpdesk for the USAF (my company is a subcontractor of Lockheed Martin). 

In the Marine Corps, I ran a shop of 15 Marines that were responsible for every aspect of IT in the regiment.  That went a long way on a resume.  I still don't have any real certs, but I know my job, and I do it well, which is what employers really look for. 

That was my resume, more or less.  Signal Corps work in the Army, then working at the Defense Information Systems Agency.  No certs, incomplete college education.  I'm an infosec guy for Sikorsky now.  It's...  interesting work.

[Sylvilagus Aquaticus]

I've got a dual degree; half of it is in Comp. Sci. Got it back when Ethernet wasn't even a fully-conceived dream.  Learned Bell Labs UNIX on a PDP 7 back then. Never worked in the field until the 90's, when I started learning/using Linux as a curiosity while building whiteboxes and doing the early WWW thing. Later, I moved and went to work at a big ISP/VOIP shop which folded, then got lucky and landed a job with one of the Majors doing Level 3 hardware support on servers/deskside/midrange units. From there, I picked up enough OS skills in a very specific product to get gigs working contract sysadmin, then went back to the Major to do L2 kernel support. Now I'm L3 for critical/special support for the OS.

I've got some internal certs from the Major. Those look really good on a resume, but along with a buck will buy a Coke out of most machines.  I was in the right place at the right time and got lucky, with a lot of attitude and bullshit, but I know how stuff works, and why it works...down to the code and hardware instruction level.

Hell, I used to be a nurse.

Regards,
Rabbit.

[one45auto]

In another twenty years you'll be wanting to get out of IT. Try working every single frickin' Friday and Saturday night and going home red-eyed and exhausted at six in the morning after pulling a 12 1/2 hour shift. You'll learn to tape cardboard over your windows so you can sleep and get accustomed to being on-call, even when you're on vacation. Then there's all the dates you'll lose because the women you're interested in all work a normal Monday through Friday day schedule like any normal human being.....the list goes on and on.

[RevDisk]

In another twenty years you'll be wanting to get out of IT. Try working every single frickin' Friday and Saturday night and going home red-eyed and exhausted at six in the morning after pulling a 12 1/2 hour shift. You'll learn to tape cardboard over your windows so you can sleep and get accustomed to being on-call, even when you're on vacation. Then there's all the dates you'll lose because the women you're interested in all work a normal Monday through Friday day schedule like any normal human being.....the list goes on and on.

I know the economy sucks, but I really hope you're hourly.  Because if you're working those hours on salary, you need to get another job.  Even the salary is "high", divide it by the number of hours you're really working.  IT does not need to be that bad.  Set up a sane on-call policy.  And just do not work 12.5 hr / day when it's not an emergency.

[WeedWhacker]

I'm a Linux (UNIX/Solaris) sysadmin (i.e. if it's broke or we want it built, we'll ask the "sysadmin") who also does Windows and basic ethernet networking.

I broke into the field because I love working with the technology: building my own Microsoft-based computer systems, building others' systems, learning Linux to use remote servers and services, then setting up Linux servers to provide email, DNS, web, etc.

If you don't love getting your mitts dirty with tons of ever-changing technical details of computer system hardware and software, you'll eventually go mad. If you do love it, just find a task you personally want done, browse around for software which will do the job if you can't write your own yet (or just write your own), and repeat until you can explain what you've done over the years to a layman/interviewer. Start at the bottom, work your way up.

Experience was key in my case, with most of that which got the ball rolling being from my own hobbies. I have not completed any college degrees; most of the classes I took were unrelated to IT and those that were were antiquated and unhelpful save the one regarding C++ programming.