IT Certifications and Careers (Official Discussion Thread)

[greenvale]

Hey brehs,

I'm currently in the accounting/consulting field @ a comfy job making ~60 right now with yearly raises. I'm interested in switching careers to something related to networking/infrastructure, because the culture here is getting bad and I wanna switch before it's too late (I'm 1 year in my career). I've also been messing with computers since I was a kid so it's interesting to me as well. I was an accounting/MIS double major and I have my CPA but not sure it would be helpful. Any advice for pivoting to this field?

 

[Lord Z]

good shyt! you said you was gone do some shyt and you did it. What type of job is that for??

I'm heading towards a presales architect position due to my background . But you can also be a cloud architect .

My next step is to had some security certifications and reach the top level for all my other certs

 

[No Homo]

I'm heading towards a presales architect position due to my background . But you can also be a cloud architect .

My next step is to had some security certifications and reach the top level for all my other certs

My cousin who's an enterprise architect, just told me he did an interview for cant remember if its pre sales or sales architect

Said they wanna start him at 225k plus he gets a commission or something off what he sells..basically told me he can top 300k in a year ....Keep grinding breh

 

[Lord Z]

My cousin who's an enterprise architect, just told me he did an interview for cant remember if its pre sales or sales architect

Said they wanna start him at 225k plus he gets a commission or something off what he sells..basically told me he can top 300k in a year ....Keep grinding breh

Man you just put the battery on my back . I should be craking 100K Canadian very soon .

We on and we ain't stopping

 

[tuckgod]

Long story long, my wife just got a job teaching at a private school a couple weeks ago and all of my kids are going there.

They happened to have an IT Tech position posted for the school that had been posted for a minute, and I had already been chopping it up with the guy that runs IT at the school.

I was an IT in the Navy 15 years ago, got out, went to school for Psych, and ended up in Mental Health for the past 10 years.

I said fukk it, and applied for the position last week just to see what would happen.

I stumbled upon a thread up here yesterday and read up on a couple of y'all brehs adventures in IT.

I messaged one of the posters who was speaking on getting a help desk job and 4 years later was turning down 100k a year jobs.

That inspired the fukk out of me.

I walked into the school yesterday afternoon to pick my kids up, stopped by dudes office to tell him I had applied for the position, and walked out with an IT Tech position.

I had to take a small pay cut to take the job, but I'm geeked to get back into the IT world.

Any advice y'all have for me would be greatly appreciated.

I have no IT experience past '03, but dude told me he'd train me up on everything I need to know at the school.

I also have no IT degree and no certs but I'm about to get on them shyts asap.

I start officially on the 10th.

 

[Artenche]

lol hell no if your client sucks and the city sucks.

Damn shyt sounds rough.

I just figured having days off would be dope. I'd make trips outta that.

 

[KingTut]

Long story long, my wife just got a job teaching at a private school a couple weeks ago and all of my kids are going there.

They happened to have an IT Tech position posted for the school that had been posted for a minute, and I had already been chopping it up with the guy that runs IT at the school.

I was an IT in the Navy 15 years ago, got out, went to school for Psych, and ended up in Mental Health for the past 10 years.

I said fukk it, and applied for the position last week just to see what would happen.

I stumbled upon a thread up here yesterday and read up on a couple of y'all brehs adventures in IT.

I messaged one of the posters who was speaking on getting a help desk job and 4 years later was turning down 100k a year jobs.

That inspired the fukk out of me.

I walked into the school yesterday afternoon to pick my kids up, stopped by dudes office to tell him I had applied for the position, and walked out with an IT Tech position.

I had to take a small pay cut to take the job, but I'm geeked to get back into the IT world.

Any advice y'all have for me would be greatly appreciated.

I have no IT experience past '03, but dude told me he'd train me up on everything I need to know at the school.

I also have no IT degree and no certs but I'm about to get on them shyts asap.

I start officially on the 10th.

Congrats breh! The best perk in all this imo is that yall can take one whip to work and don't have to waste time driving to multiple places before and after work.

Edit: As far as advice I would say just always ask questions about anything you don't know or are not 100% sure of. Show your boss that you're eager to learn and take on new duties whenever possible and I assure you they will have your back. Also take some study materials to work during down time. I usually have at least 1.5-2 hours throughout the day where I have nothing to do and can get some reading in.



On another note I finished up my AWS CSAA course and am starting to read through the white papers and I'm finally realizing how much shyt I'm gonna end up wasting my time trying to memorize that might not even be on the test. Took some practice exams this week and got 75-80s on them so once I start getting 90s-100s I'm gonna schedule my exam about two weeks out. I'll probably end up spending less time studying for this cert than my CCNA only because there's way less "techincal" stuff to know and the only hands on work is in the actual console which is pretty straightforward.

 

[acri1]

Long story long, my wife just got a job teaching at a private school a couple weeks ago and all of my kids are going there.

They happened to have an IT Tech position posted for the school that had been posted for a minute, and I had already been chopping it up with the guy that runs IT at the school.

I was an IT in the Navy 15 years ago, got out, went to school for Psych, and ended up in Mental Health for the past 10 years.

I said fukk it, and applied for the position last week just to see what would happen.

I stumbled upon a thread up here yesterday and read up on a couple of y'all brehs adventures in IT.

I messaged one of the posters who was speaking on getting a help desk job and 4 years later was turning down 100k a year jobs.

That inspired the fukk out of me.

I walked into the school yesterday afternoon to pick my kids up, stopped by dudes office to tell him I had applied for the position, and walked out with an IT Tech position.

I had to take a small pay cut to take the job, but I'm geeked to get back into the IT world.

Any advice y'all have for me would be greatly appreciated.

I have no IT experience past '03, but dude told me he'd train me up on everything I need to know at the school.

I also have no IT degree and no certs but I'm about to get on them shyts asap.

I start officially on the 10th.

My advice is to shadow the higher-level IT guys above you as much as possible and ask them if they have anything you can do.

Trust me (I'm one of them) they're lazy and love delegating work to the helpdesk/desktop guys (even if it means some training), so it's an easy way for you to gain skills and experience.

 

[Obreh Winfrey]

My advice is to shadow the higher-level IT guys above you as much as possible and ask them if they have anything you can do.

Trust me (I'm one of them) they're lazy and love delegating work to the helpdesk/desktop guys (even if it means some training), so it's an easy way for you to gain skills and experience.

It's dudes like you that make me actually have to do work at work

 

[Rice'N Beckford]

Phone interview for a level 1 tech support role tmrw for a company that services POS systems at 9:30am....

......30mins before my job’s weekly conference call

My foot into the IT world is coming soon brehs

Time to study the networking part of this A+ cert book for an hour or 2

 

[acri1]

It's dudes like you that make me actually have to do work at work

Why do today what you can just have a helpdesk guy do tomorrow?

 

[David_TheMan]

Long story long, my wife just got a job teaching at a private school a couple weeks ago and all of my kids are going there.

They happened to have an IT Tech position posted for the school that had been posted for a minute, and I had already been chopping it up with the guy that runs IT at the school.

I was an IT in the Navy 15 years ago, got out, went to school for Psych, and ended up in Mental Health for the past 10 years.

I said fukk it, and applied for the position last week just to see what would happen.

I stumbled upon a thread up here yesterday and read up on a couple of y'all brehs adventures in IT.

I messaged one of the posters who was speaking on getting a help desk job and 4 years later was turning down 100k a year jobs.

That inspired the fukk out of me.

I walked into the school yesterday afternoon to pick my kids up, stopped by dudes office to tell him I had applied for the position, and walked out with an IT Tech position.

I had to take a small pay cut to take the job, but I'm geeked to get back into the IT world.

Any advice y'all have for me would be greatly appreciated.

I have no IT experience past '03, but dude told me he'd train me up on everything I need to know at the school.

I also have no IT degree and no certs but I'm about to get on them shyts asap.

I start officially on the 10th.

Best advice I have, is be ready to learn.
Have a legit hunger to learn about the processes you implement, and how to refine those processes, how to make things better.
If you have the passion to learn and the self-discipline to channel that passion and educate yourself and augment that with certifications, you can go far.
Also never forget you are in the service sector and to treat people well, no matter how dumb they are or how rude.

 

[acri1]

Hey brehs,

I'm currently in the accounting/consulting field @ a comfy job making ~60 right now with yearly raises. I'm interested in switching careers to something related to networking/infrastructure, because the culture here is getting bad and I wanna switch before it's too late (I'm 1 year in my career). I've also been messing with computers since I was a kid so it's interesting to me as well. I was an accounting/MIS double major and I have my CPA but not sure it would be helpful. Any advice for pivoting to this field?

I guess the first thing to think about is whether you're willing to take a significant pay cut.

It's not likely that you can get a job making 60+ in IT without any experience. Can't say exactly what you'd start at (depends on the location and company) but I'd be surprised if you could start out much over 40. Personally my first job in IT was a tech support job for 10/hr but that was in the mid-late 2000s.


If you're willing to take a pay cut, study up and get your A+ and Network+ certs and start applying for entry level jobs. Most likely you'd have to start out with something like helpdesk technician/desktop support and work your way up, but it's possible you could find a Jr. Sys Admin job.

 

[Artenche]

Anyone here do contracts? Like 6 months here, 6 months there? I hear mixed things but some dudes telling me they like the money and the flexibility, and don't have trouble finding work.

These guys were in infosec/cybsec, same path as me, if anyone was wondering.

 

[acri1]

Anyone here do contracts? Like 6 months here, 6 months there? I hear mixed things but some dudes telling me they like the money and the flexibility, and don't have trouble finding work.

These guys were in infosec/cybsec, same path as me, if anyone was wondering.

Personally I don't, but I know people who do and some like it, some don't. Really depends on what you're looking for.


The advantages are that you usually can make more money (sometimes a lot more) than just being a regular somewhere, and you do have more flexibility.

Main disadvantage is lack of benefits tho. If you want any type of insurance you'll have to pay out of pocket for it, and forget about a retirement plan. The other disadvantage is having to find work...it may be easy now, but in the (likely) event that the clown in office causes a recession in the next few years, things could get harder for contract brehs. The other thing is that if you're going from contract-to-contract you may have less of an opportunity to work your way up the latter at a company. Like I said, just depends on what you're looking for.