Career advice

[Mug]

What I found was that an interest in computers does not necessarily mean you should go for a career in the computing world. Keep computers as a hobby, and pursue other options (hobbies are nice and doing them full time might ruin it for you).

 

IT jobs are boring, unsexy and often really depressing. Many people go to university in the expectation that it'll get them a job but having a solid portfolio often outweighs qualifications. If you're going into the hardware side of IT then it's common that no qualifications are necessary. 

 

Loads of people say that soon it'll be crucial to code, but I disagree. The people that say these things often come from companies that benefit from a saturated Computer Science job market; you're more likely to be successful if you go for a less saturated market. In the UK, that's generally STEM areas, and I doubt that as an industrial chemist (for example) you're gonna be using much javascript.

 

I started my university on a computing course. 4-year, sandwich. It was incredibly easy, and people that I still know from the course have gone on to doing fuck all. One dude works where I did work experience (in the NHS deploying computers), another works in retail (a job I helped get them lol), another works for one of the ATM companies fixing cash machines. Granted, I didn't go to Cambridge or even a top 50 university, but this is where graduates often end up, if you told them this before they started uni there's no way any of them would have went. I'm still at uni, having dropped out of that computer course after a week. Looking to become a teacher after I've finished this year of research. For the people that aren't sure whether it's needed for the job they want to go into, uni is a con; make sure it's needed before you proceed. Don't do something because you think you enjoy it, do something because you know it's for you.

[Techicolors]

10 minutes ago, Mug said:

snip

i don't know how saturated the compsci market is, but i assume it's pretty dense. that said i don't have a whole lot of career alternatives, compsci is just what aligned best to my interests. 

[beersykins]

1 hour ago, Mug said:

IT jobs are boring, unsexy and often really depressing.

That may simply be your personal experience, but the environment between companies and even roles within the same company can vary widely.  If you don't find at least some element of the field exciting then you are in the wrong field.

On 6/20/2018 at 3:23 PM, Technicolors said:

at the moment i declared computer science as my major but i have a feeling that i may not be cut out for it.

That's really your call, if you don't feel passionate about it now the chances of feeling passionate about it after you've done it full-time for years are pretty low.

 

On 6/20/2018 at 3:23 PM, Technicolors said:

interviews they give you in the field go way technical

Yep that's kind of the point.  The bulk of the value you provide is knowing how to do things or succeed where others cannot.

On 6/20/2018 at 3:23 PM, Technicolors said:

plus spending roughly 4 years getting the degree from a school that isn't the likes of MIT, Stanford etc. 

You don't have to attend a top school to get a decent salary.  I have a six figure position with an online degree.

On 6/20/2018 at 3:28 PM, linustouchtips said:

go for a a plus certification like i did

The A+ only adds value if you really don't have any qualifications on your resume.  If you have any degree of professional experience it generally isn't worth the fee they charge you to take the exam.

On 6/20/2018 at 3:46 PM, Spaceman_Wil said:

Now, I am a Manager of IT with much larger company. I have all the freedom in the world and I am paid ~50k a year. To me at least, it seems like a lot for someone with no degree, no real formal training, and 9/10 flying by the seat of my pants.

I'm surprised, usually Chicago has pretty inflated rates and salaries.  If you look around it should be pretty easy to double your salary with one job move.

16 hours ago, Bawna Tho said:

There is a massive over-abundance of IT Technicians.

Entry level roles usually have an overpopulation of sorts, however I will say even at base levels you experience boatloads of idiots that don't have much conceptual knowledge.  At the higher end there's a really vast shortage of qualified professionals.  I've done some hiring for Network Engineer type of roles, it's difficult to either find someone who has the skills, or to find someone who has reasonable skills but who doesn't have a self-inflated ego the size of Texas and doesn't play well with others.

5 hours ago, fpo said:

Get a degree anywhere. It matters.

Pretty much this, it's more important to tick the box than to worry about where it's from.  Most local companies don't expect to have Harvard graduates, and also cannot generally afford to offer Ivy League candidates a competitive offer they would find elsewhere.

 

 

[Guest]

3 hours ago, Technicolors said:

what do you mean?

As an entry level, you should get training & someone more experienced to help you. 

[wasab]

Get an Oracle certificate. That allows you to work without the expensive college degree.

[Crunchy Dragon]

11 hours ago, arnavvr said:

So is Salesforce the company and Salesforce the development platform two different things?

To my knowledge, Salesforce is the company that runs the development platform.

[Mira Yurizaki]

20 hours ago, Technicolors said:

i'm kinda afraid that after spending a few years on a major, it turns out i don't like it but i have to keep going or else it's a total waste. and the student debt is the biggest con for me.

You're going to have to take that risk either way. And it's not like you need to get a job in the field you've majored in. If anything, think of a college degree as a safety net. You can do anything you want after school, but if push comes to shove, you have something you can fall back on.

 

Regarding the whole student debt thing, in my mind, I think there's a combination of cherry picking, predatory loaners, and poor decision making on the student's part. I managed to walk away under the student debt average for a STEM major. And over a third of that of that was from the first year because I lived in the dorms (very expensive) and I was considered an out-of-state student (also very expensive). By my second year, I found another place to live that was close by and reasonable and I met the state residency requirement.

 

To go back with what I said earlier about where you go not really mattering, I think a lot of people feel pressured to go to a prestigious school where you are paying basically an SUV a year to attend. And that's a huge problem with recruitment these days. And then there are plenty of scholarships and/or grants you could apply for. You just have to look for them.

 

So yeah, if you don't want to walk away up to your eyeballs in debt, you need to actually make an effort to avoid loans.

 

18 hours ago, Bawna Tho said:

Programmer; Relatively low skill ceiling. It is about repetitiveness, skills solving and a lot of googling (Has been for me at least) Also, there is a LOT of tools online that can teach you what to do. Web Dev not so much because of the likes of Wix etc.

However I'd argue a good programmer, one that writes well designed software that's relatively easy to maintain without sacrificing performance, is a rare thing.

 

3 hours ago, Mug said:

Loads of people say that soon it'll be crucial to code, but I disagree. The people that say these things often come from companies that benefit from a saturated Computer Science job market; you're more likely to be successful if you go for a less saturated market. In the UK, that's generally STEM areas, and I doubt that as an industrial chemist (for example) you're gonna be using much javascript.

I thought I was the only one who had this belief after seeing all these news reports and public figures in tech companies going "We should make programming mandatory!" with the only reason being that job market will continue to increase in the upcoming years. And even then, I keep hearing the whole "it's practical because it teaches logical thinking" reason but... you don't need programming to teach that.

[Mug]

41 minutes ago, M.Yurizaki said:

I thought I was the only one who had this belief after seeing all these news reports and public figures in tech companies going "We should make programming mandatory!" with the only reason being that job market will continue to increase in the upcoming years. And even then, I keep hearing the whole "it's practical because it teaches logical thinking" reason but... you don't need programming to teach that.

Indeed, pretty much any degree teaches in-depth analysis skills, and most degrees teach problem solving.

 

You should never fall into doing a degree, or doing one because it teaches you certain skills, do it because you want to and it'll contribute positively to your chances of employment.

[Techicolors]

6 hours ago, beersykins said:

That's really your call, if you don't feel passionate about it now the chances of feeling passionate about it after you've done it full-time for years are pretty low.

i think it's moreso of the fear that i won't be able to get a job after graduation, even with internships and decent resume 

 

1 hour ago, TimsTips said:

snip

i heard that most of what learn in this field is on the job. think a degree just checks a box and puts you up in the pile, as others said

 

i don't exactly know a gameplan with networking. if i'm in uni and a coding bootcamp it's my peers, professors, job fairs etc. i looked into meetups in my area and there's isn't a whole lot, or that the group doesn't meet often or haven't met in a while 

 

5 hours ago, fpo said:

As an entry level, you should get training & someone more experienced to help you. 

so a senior dev?

 

4 hours ago, M.Yurizaki said:

snip

compsci seems to be pretty general, i could branch into other stuff (electives for last 2 yrs)

 

talking about recruitment, seems some companies scout more often at prestigious schools. so i kinda miss out on that 

 

i could look for scholarships and grants, but i wish there was a single way to apply to a whole bunch at once 

[Bangzong]

On ‎6‎/‎20‎/‎2018 at 3:28 PM, linustouchtips said:

go for a a plus certification like i did they got online classes for that then you can go from there im trying to get gud at network

 

this stuff https://certification.comptia.org/certifications/a

 

Hello all, Im posting in this area because I'm in a similar boat as the individual who made the original post to this thread. I understand a lot of people have been pointing in the direction of software development, but im curious on which route one should go to learn about the development of hardware, and how to implement said hardware to meet desired outcomes. I have searched a lot on the internet and have watched a lot of the LTT videos trying to learn about things from RAID to PCIe and the importance/benefits of said hardware, but one thing I've had trouble finding are things like, what materials are motherboards made of and why, what is every single component of a CPU/GPU, what are they made of and what is their purpose, and how do all of these parts work in conjunction to meet what it was built for. 

 

(Quick Bio); 25, USA Armed Forces (Field Artillery). Currently going to school online for an AS in Computer Applications. This degree path was the only online nationally recognized degree that I could find covered by the Army's Tuition Assistance and is labeled as teaching the introductory phases of both IT and Computer Science, as well as productive applications in the Microsoft OS. 

 

I quoted "linustouchtips" because I am curious as to whether these certifications (or similar ones) are widely recognized by the majority of organizations. I'm really interested in learning all there is you can learn about computers A-Z, but I also understand the probability of actually knowing all there is to know is very slim. So I figured with the resources available on learning software languages I could work on those on my own time. Needless to say I'm looking for ways to learn beyond what my current degree will teach. But again I would like to focus on the bare basic principle of the hardware components that are the standard to super computers used by the worlds leading technological companies. I guess I'm a dreamer, but nonetheless will appreciate anyone pointing me in the direction of sites or books I can pick up to start learning these things.