IT Certifications and Careers (Official Discussion Thread)

[Everything Zen]

So I just passed the A+ 1002 and now am officially A+ certified. Did it mainly to prove to myself I can complete it (been working on it on and off for 2 years), but now I'm tryna take a serious look into a career change. Any suggestion on what route I should go. Was looking to end up working in Security or as a Sys Admin. Was thinking of completing the Comptia Trifecta but also tryna get some hands on experience. Currently working for a large insurance company doing claims so no formal tech experience.

congrats breh! outside of the sec+, comptia certs are just barely worth the paper their printed on.

I've been preaching this for a while now in this thread. If you're trying to make a career out of this, or if you're on your way up and trying to get an edge over the competition, cloud + automation is the fastest route.


Cloud + Linux + Some scripting language(python/go/node)
Cloud + Network + Security + Some scripting language(python/go/node)
Cloud + Containers + Some scripting language(python/go/node)

Any combo of the above will have you eating for a while.

If you wanna make stupid money, learn iac tooling and couple them with the above skillsets to create, manage and scale highly available infrastructure:

Terraform/Pulumi, ansible/saltstack, CI/CD(gitlab/jenkins), basic version control with Git, and Kubernetes. This may seem overwhelming at first, but you're not gonna learn all of this at once and you don't need to learn all of it. It's a natural evolution to your cloud/infra workflow... once you've gotten comfortable enough with cloud infra, clicked around the gui a few times and you find yourself repeating the same tasks over and over, you're gonna find it annoying and ask yourself.. how do I make this faster? That's where these tools come in.

Also.. I see a lot of people get overwhelmed by coding portion like you need to be a full stack developer to begin to automate stuff. You really don't need to go that deep.. just learn basic data structures, dataflow, loops and error handling and you're off to the races. You can start automating shyt within a few days of going through a python course. The most important thing is having a high level overview of what you're trying to accomplish, what pieces you're trying to tie together and how they integrate with your code. Also, don't think you need to write 1000s of lines of code before it's considered automation. You can automate lots of shyt and save a ton of time with just 10-20 lines of code. It all depends on what you're trying to do.

keys right here

 

[Alvin]

Windows 10 cert useless? I was thinking of getting it to get my feet wet. Some of y’all are saying the CCNA is useless now? I was going to get that because I have limited network knowledge. Is there any point of learning windows or Linux server if anything is moving towards the cloud?

 

[Alvin]

I feel like at this point everyone whose serious about IT should have some knowledge dealing with these cloud vendors. More and more companies are seeing less of a need for managing their own DC's. I learned AWS because its been the most common in the companies I been at.


AWS/GCP/AZURE pick one and learn it well. You'll see that the they all have similar services just different ways of how they are configured so learning another will be easy.

Azure or AWS?

 

[dat aint da same sandwich]

Azure or AWS?

 

[GollyImGully]

Windows 10 cert useless? I was thinking of getting it to get my feet wet. Some of y’all are saying the CCNA is useless now? I was going to get that because I have limited network knowledge. Is there any point of learning windows or Linux server if anything is moving towards the cloud?

What is your career goals breh? Do you have an idea of the type of role you want? Do a job search and see what the requirements are and focus on getting those skills.

CCNA is not useless especially if you are just starting out and want that network knowledge. Probably one of the better certs to start off with. Now moving past the ccna and getting a ccnp/ccie is where you must decide the value to you. For me it doesnt hold much value anymore but for you circumstances maybe different.

Linux can never be useless. Not sure if you are in the field yet but if your doing cloud work youll be touching a lot of linux servers.

 

[Everything Zen]

Windows 10 cert useless? I was thinking of getting it to get my feet wet. Some of y’all are saying the CCNA is useless now? I was going to get that because I have limited network knowledge. Is there any point of learning windows or Linux server if anything is moving towards the cloud?

like gully said above, ccna will always have value (especially when first starting out) but depending on how green you are, you may be better served by going through net+ material first. lotta guys try to jump straight into the cisco stuff due to ccna being considered "entry level" and quickly get burned and discouraged because they aren't familiar with the fundamentals.

at a high level, all "the cloud" really is are someone else's (usually linux) servers.

Azure or AWS?

search around and see which one is popping in your area. from what i hear, if you learn one well enough, the knowledge mostly carries over to the other two.

 

[Alvin]

like gully said above, ccna will always have value (especially when first starting out) but depending on how green you are, you may be better served by going through net+ material first. lotta guys try to jump straight into the cisco stuff due to ccna being considered "entry level" and quickly get burned and discouraged because they aren't familiar with the fundamentals.

at a high level, all "the cloud" really is are someone else's (usually linux) servers.



search around and see which one is popping in your area. from what i hear, if you learn one well enough, the knowledge mostly carries over to the other two.

Yeah I was going to follow a network plus guide, but not actually take the cert. then I was going to actually test for the ccna

 

[Alvin]

What is your career goals breh? Do you have an idea of the type of role you want? Do a job search and see what the requirements are and focus on getting those skills.

CCNA is not useless especially if you are just starting out and want that network knowledge. Probably one of the better certs to start off with. Now moving past the ccna and getting a ccnp/ccie is where you must decide the value to you. For me it doesnt hold much value anymore but for you circumstances maybe different.

Linux can never be useless. Not sure if you are in the field yet but if your doing cloud work youll be touching a lot of linux servers.

Right now I have a pretty good paying job with help desk however I went to school for windows server to be a windows system admin. You think I should continue on that route or simply start moving into the cloud.

 

[Rhyme n Tekniq]

Windows 10 cert useless? I was thinking of getting it to get my feet wet. Some of y’all are saying the CCNA is useless now? I was going to get that because I have limited network knowledge. Is there any point of learning windows or Linux server if anything is moving towards the cloud?

1.) Windows 10 certs? I'm assuming you mean those role-based Certs MS is trying to make catch on nowadays. With the MCSA/MCSE being retired, MS certs are a clusterfukk outside of the Azure Administrator Associate; However I have seen job descriptions ask for MD-101/MD-100 or MS-100/MS-101 every once in a while. I'd go with those as far as MS certs go

2.) CCNA is still valuable and carries heavy marketability. Having CCNA-level knowledge will get you far in the Desktop/Server infrastructure world. Pure networking might be a stretch because the bar to entry is so high.

3.) Dont get caught up in the cloud hype boogyman bullshyt that's going on now. It's literally just a regular infrastructure hosted on some company's massive server farm
Some of the same shyt you would do on-prem you could do in the cloud. This alarmist "learn cloud or die" message being pushed is toxic and utter bullshyt. Not everyone can be cloud engineers and architects right off the bat. You gotta have the traditional desktop and system guys to support the day to day shyt and puttin out fires and such; Yes pure hardware support will fall in demand as companies adopt cloud and virtualization more.

So instead of breaking open PCs and replacing components and setting up workstations like the old days

The modern Desktop /systems guy might be
managing Microsoft 365 from the admin center,
managing accounts in Azure AD or
Provisioning and troubleshooting Citrix/VMware virtual infrastructure running on Azure or AWS platform
Configuration Management
Application Deployment and management
Possibly even manage routers and firewalls from their GUI or CLI

Dont be in such a rush to jump straight into cloud that you trip up before you even get started. Sharpen your networking skills, scripting skills and learn the basics of cloud technology for AWS, GCP, or Azure. set aside a resonable chunk of time to get good at it

if money is your motivating factor, There are plent of jobs ranging from $50k to $95k that arent necessarily cloud roles but deal with cloud technologies that can be the spring board to a true cloud engineer role. Cloud is unavoidable at this point so there's no need to rush. spend time building up essential skills on the job and studying everything you need for you goals on the side

 

[colicolicoli]

An IT recruiter accidentally sent me an email with a guy asking for $92/hr

I couldn’t help but look at the resume and it was bananas

He has a CRM and CISSP and worked at Harvard, Disney, AIG, ADP and others.

Very motivational.

 

[H@LLOW]

im thinking im just going to get the aws practitioner and go from there everybody keep telling me cloud is the wave

i was thinking the same breh.

 

[Rhyme n Tekniq]

i was thinking the same breh.

Triple that notion


I'm prepping myself for a Cloud Engineer role as well. The thing is i'm giving myself until March 2023 to get ready.

That's enough time to

1. learn Scripting with Powershell, Python, and Bash
2. Get my networking up to a CCNA level
3. Familiarize myself with the different cloud platforms, mainly Azure
4. and learn the basics of shyt like Ansible, Terraform, Kubernetes...

1 and 2 are gonna be needed anyways the higher you progress in the field

 

[H@LLOW]

Basic python class for brehs.

 

[H@LLOW]

 

[H@LLOW]