I was on helpdesk for 4 years until I finally got a chance to move into a Sys Admin role and then left for a Sys Engineer position. I doubt you find anybody who's gonna trust you with more than break/fix and password resets with just 6 months of helpdesk experience.
If you are in a solid environment then being on helpdesk might not be that bad. The desktop guys at my job work with office 365, AD, VDI, SCCM, Backups, McAfee ePO/Web Gateway, and tons of other shyt. Almost everything gets offloaded to them at some point.
What i find hilarious about this is that help desk itself doesnt give skillsets that can get you an engineer/admin role. Certainly not at the depth an employer cares about. So its amusing to me that an employer treats 4yrs on the phone any better than 6months on the phone if you got those certs in both cases. From a cursory reading of this thread, it seems like you could knockout sec, net, ccna in a year. Maybe half a year more for the msce stuff. But none of that gaurantees you a good job.
Rather than busting your ass for 4yrs doing irrelivant work while sitting on certs that you recieved
many years prior, it seems more benefitial to just go the traditional cs route while peacefully enjoying student life or pursuing better paying employment until you graduate. Such a graduate is still elligible for that sys admin, net admin, cloud admin role. I mean most of yall in this thread seem smart, studious and motivated enough to to finish traditional college corsework (in Cs or Eng) if you can manage to teach yourself the dry subject matter in those certification tests. So it shouldnt be an issue.
It seems like employers have a strange antagonism with their IT help desk people, thats frankly bizzare both internally within a company and externally. You rarely see this in other industries, except maybe airline pilots. Compare that to how Employers are generally welcoming of fresh CS grads and willingly give them internal internships or accept external interns with nothing but theoretical book knowledge. And with less than 6months doing actual work they are qualified for the 100k+ gigs yall are seeking in this thread.
@ not knowing any port numbers. I interviewed at a place and they asked me about PKI (public key infastructure) i didn't even know wtf that meant i just made some shyt up and interviewer said "so you don't know much about PKI". I got an offer letter anyway and worked there for 1 year and half
certs do not hold the value people think that they do.
. Yes, the technical experience I gained on the job makes me more valuable now but you need something to allow you in. That was my way in.
