106rallye

I am coming to the end of my degree in computing (June/July) as there seem to be quite a few IT professionals that post here I was wondering if anyone could give me their opinion on a couple of things. Firstly what sort of jobs I should be looking for, ideally I would like to get into the networking industry but can't find many jobs that don't ask for experience.

Also out of interest I have already got a good HND in IT and was wondering if in my situation would anyone have stayed on to get the degree or left and gained industry experience? I stayed on because I was not sure what else I could do but now I am wondering if I have made the right desision?

I would be really interested to get peoples comments as I am finding it hard to get good advice on the subject

Thanks

Andy

p.s. I hope I am going into the right industry to allow me to get a job which means I change my username from 106rallye to something a bit better in a few years time!!!

Alec

Andy
IMHO the best thing to do would be to get a trainee type job in a reasonably big company, a grad type programme, do that for a couple of years and go contracting. A bit vague i know. Have you tried :

mutant_matt

Andy,

I see you live in Herts which is good for what I was going to suggest. You need to get into Financial IT (i.e. in the City). FIT pays a *lot* more than "normal" (non-financial) IT 'cos banks have loads of money and pay really well. Once you have a job in financial IT, there is no going back. The opportunities for training, travel and percs are enormous.

I wouldn't recommend getting into the Networking industry as there are limitations on a) how much you can earn and b) long term career progression. Get into Software support and build up your experience that way and then move into consultancy and longer term to Project Management.

Hope this helps,

Matt.

camk

I'd agree that some generalist type role is best for the first year at least, then you'll get into something that you like. The other thing is don't specialise too soon as it can get a bit tedious after a while.
I've been through Tech supp to Programming then management then programming again and now back to tech supp management. The biggest benefit I think I have a good grounding now in most areas so can probably get into most stuff thats out there. I even did my SAP basis training & certification while I was a manager !!. When I'm hiring its 70% attitude and 20% technical, you can get the technical in a few weeks intensive backed up by on the job experience. The wrong attitude can't be changed. Just be seen to be keen to try anything, don't get caught up in the latest fad and its not all about the money for the first few years, go for the experience, the money will come just don't get caught up in it or you'll end up chasing the latest fad and when it dies you'll need to start again, your career is a long distance race, not a sprint.

Best of Luck
Cammy

GranTurismo

Hello,

The most important hingto do is get a Job in an area you like. You will do better if you like your job and therfore help your long term prospects. Comms (networking) is fine I have to good mates who work in Cisco and HP and they are "Minted Geezers" and only 26 years old.

The city graduate programs are very good, I work for a IT training company and we do a lot of the training for the Big banks etc. THey do invest a lot in you.

Have a look at

dsmith

Andy,

I am a Cisco specialist now working within BT. My personal view is that to go directly into networking the actual Degree is relatively unimportant. Different organisations also place differing emphasis on the importance having a degree at all. Certainly within NatWest there were many people who had left school at 16, started with the Bank and were in no way disadvanteged within the IT areas. Whether this would continue to have been the case as people move up the management food chain I don't know ....

It does seem the experience issue is a Catch 22 for a lot of people. I personally started as general PC dogsbody in a small company moving every couple of years, each time to a more specialised role until I was a pure Network Designer. Now just started my 4th job in about 5-6 years. I know many of the people have followed a similair route. This has the benefit of giving a wider IT perspective which can be a real benefit.

For a slightly more direct route I would suggest looking to get on a graduate IT programme run by a large organisation (like the high street banks). These also offer the ability to get a wider IT and business experience whilst offering the levels of training support required to fast track to a design role.

I would avoid contracting until you have some solid experience. The training is a very valuable part of a permenent package especially in the first few years. What ever you do don't sit back and expect companioes to do the hard work for you. Make sure you squeeze all the training out of them you can, and as soon as you feel they have done all they will, move onto the next. Mercenary I know but these days perhaps the only way ?

With networking a good start would be to Study for the CCNA. It is relativley easy and can be done from pure book study. It certainly won't guarantee a job, but it does tend to be used as a first sort when some companies go through prospective CVs, especially when experience is short in the first few years.

Regards

Dean

106rallye

Thanks for all the constructive advice, it is really useful for me to hear the opinions of people that have been through the decisions I have got to make. I think I am going to aim for a job that will provide as much training as possible and I certainly feel if I am ever in the position to be employing people a degree will in no way influence my decision. IMHO the degree I am doing has no real relevance to the working environment. It is really behind the times and I feel like I have had enough! My HND provided real hands on work with constructive practical assignments (PHP web sites, network design, construction and monitoring), while my degree is all essay writing about articles from 1983!
Thanks once again to all that have posted

Alec thanks for the offer I have got so many questions that need answering I don't really know where to start!

Matt I like the sound of Financial IT i will do a bit more research I think!

Cammy what do you think the non 'fad' industries are a the moment?

GranTurismo Our whole course group is struggling with Java as we don't have a lecturer! Know anyone who Tutors in the Herts area baring in mind that the College is going to foot the bill(hopefully)! by the way did you get your name from the game? If so that game is my excuse for doing cr*p in my A-levels!!!

Dean how much time/money is the CCNA?

TonyFlow

Blimey, i never knew there was another scooby owner on this bbs from Ipswich! Dsmith, if you hear of any jobs at BT for an AIX/NT Administrator, let me know, and chuck in a few good words for me! Working at Thetford is a bit of a treck (and puts a few miles on my car - even if it is only a lowly 1.8GL)!!

DrEvil

Andy,

I recommend you contact Sun Microsystems (http://www.sun.co.uk) , good money and good training scheme... also a good stepping stone to kick start your career, but dont mention that one to them

Rgds, Alex

camk

Probably easier to highlight the places I wouldn't go as I see them being short term spikes in labour demand which technology will simplify eventually, BTW this will attract many flames and is only my opinion, but based on 15 years experience as Sysadmin/DBA/Developer/Finance Systems blah blah blah !!!

Security (will get simpler so Sysadmins will take this on eventually)

Web Design(Currently loads of work but you'd be better to take on a generic Analyst Programmer type role to learn how to think a system development together, for want of a better description). Again don't focus on the technical aspect learn to think a system design and flow together.

WAN Support, I think this will all soon start to be farmed out as people start to use MVP and the like with 3rd party providers. Most corporations have their own WAN guys but the guys in mine are becoming less technical and more supplier management.

Database Admin(will merge to become generic Sysadmin, you'll need both sides of the equation to get a job then), good money today but its not the most exciting job on earth and Oracle/Informix etc are doing their best(sic) to make their product make DBA people redundant. Albeit slowly

Right do your worst lads !!!

camk

Avoid consultancies(e.g. KPMG/Price Waterhousr,JP Morgan etc tec). You'll spend most of your time working in another place with skills you've just learned and as a lot of their work and learning is superficial to just get the next piece of work(you'll be forever sweating), first few years you're better in a single environment under one of these graduate schemes where you get to try everything from helpdesk to mainframe operations. Long term it will work out better if your good.

Cammy

dsmith

CamK

you asked

Security - Disagree, one of the biggest growth areas for a very good reason, more and more businesses are getting connected so the need for people who really understand the threats, risks and the appropriate repsonse is increasing. Day to day security admin may well become a pure admin job, but the initial design of an appropriate security policy and implementation method will be an increasingly key role.

WAN Support. Both agree and disagree Yes many companies will increasingly outsource these, but many more companies are therefore offering these services. Supplying these services to many companies is necessarily more complex than an a single company in-house design. So get into a service provider for the juicy work !

As a general rule (in my experience) companies which sell IT services tend to respect thier IT people more as they are revneue earners rather than other companies where IT is still seen as purely a cost. (the slimy sales people still seem to get paid more though ! )

All IMHO of course.....

Dean


[This message has been edited by dsmith (edited 30 January 2001).]

dsmith

TonyFlow - Have mailed you off-line

Andy

Have to be honest and say I'm not sure on the cost side. I believe if you do a course and then the exam its just over a grand. If you bought a few books and then did the Exam I guess it would be about £200

Timewise the course is a week I think. ( I haven't actually done these as I was fortunate to get the experience before they were as popular...) However I will be doing it soon merely to ensure I have the appropriate letters on the CV. Without a job giving first hand experience and the kit to practice on there will be an awful lot of reading (and imagination!) required, and there is the Catch 22 I'm afraid

try

GranTurismo

Hello,

if you want to look at the price of training look at

106rallye

Cheers GranTurismo! I will have a read. I like the web site especially the scrolling information v. cool

Skippy

Dean

Do you work for BT Syncordia ??? BT supplied all our Cisco routers and configured the routers as we install them on-site as part of a network upgrade. Do you know Ian Smith, passed his CCIE recently ?

I would agree with the route of experince, we have both with us and the one's that get on and do you job are the self trained one's. Not saying this is always the case though.

Cisco training is defo a good route to take, loads of demand for the right people out there.

Skip.

dsmith

Skip

I actually work for a company called IDL, who subcontract people to BT. The actual project I'm working on is for BT Ignite at Adastral Park, though I know a few synchordia people from my last Job where threy looked after the WAN (plus at the last count three previous colleagues had moved to Synchordia). Though I don't know an Ian Smith unfortunately. I tend to agree about the self-trained ones - mainly because thats the way I've done it .

Regards

Dean

mattski

Andy,

I think you would find an ISP interesting. If you can find a small one (i.e. one that hasn't been bought yet!) you tend to do bits of everything.

This will give you not only a good grounding in a wide range of disciplines but also allow you to see what you like.

I would definately look at Cisco stuff, even tho the kit sucks Unix is always useful and fun, anything relating to databases, web design etc are all worthwhile. Perhaps the new flavour-of-the-month kit would be worth learning how to use, i.e. Juniper, Foundry, Netapp etc.

In short do a bit of everything and see what you like, invariably you'll find that you use the cisco knowledge when writing bits and bobs in a unix environment etc etc, they all help each other and utilimately help you.

It also pays to go and install slowaris on a box, buy a couple of little cisco's and make a little network etc etc. If pos it would be better if you can get in an environment where you will be thrown in at the deep-end. You'll learn by breaking things which is the best way to do it, not that I would know of course

(some guy a few years ago did 'rm -rf *' from the root directory of a solaris box! he learned very quickly!)

ta,
Matt

TonyFlow

Must agree with the self-training theory! The only way that i can learn is with hands-on experience, whatever I hear in a classroom, or read in a textbook just gets discarded in my head, what i teach myself through having little "plays" on systems, is the most valuable lessons i have learnt! I have never came across a situation that has echoed those that you are taught in a classroom, or from the text-book cases!
Befor I was in to UNIX, i was a PC support person, i saw people using AIX and thought id like to get into it! Luckily we had a spare few systems, and i had a play with them, i installed, de-installed, added hardware and software, created and removed filesystems, installed the operating system etc, then I was put on to standby, and specialised in UNIX from there on!

106rallye

I like the sound of the ISP Matt I enjoy most aspects of computing so a good general job sounds great! I totally agree with hands on learning, as part of my project last year I configured an apache web server with PHP and MySQL I liked working with Linux as well but my mate went a bit further and built a beowoulf out of ten 486's! It was a good idea but he built it in his bedroom so now it looks like a computer scrap heap! I start my parallel processing module next week so I know where I am going for help on that one!
Thanks all for the posts
Andy
Ps. would have replied sooner but have had exams and assignments, my girlfriend gets cross if I play on the internet and don't do any work!!!

mattski

Beowulf is cool

It might be worth getting apache going with OpenSSL and stuff too, maybe have a play with Perls DBI stuff...

Just trying to think of a small ISP.....whereabouts are you?

ta,
Matt

106rallye

I am In Berkhamsted its near Watford, I tried configuring SSL but I have failed so far! Apparantly there is a RPM that does the whole lot for you now SSL, Apache etc? dunno if its true though!

mattski

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:<HR>Originally posted by 106rallye:
<B>I am In Berkhamsted its near Watford, I tried configuring SSL but I have failed so far! Apparantly there is a RPM that does the whole lot for you now SSL, Apache etc? dunno if its true though! [/quote]


pah! rpm - tool for gimps

You'll get it working, just perservere

Can be quite interesting getting some pgp type stuff working on solaris boxes as they don't have /dev/random. There is a perl thing from cpan that can 'simulate' it tho,
it's called EGD (entropy gathering daemon).

Check out the following URLs...

106rallye

Cheers Mattski I'm sure that I have got a few late nights coming now trying to understand a few things!

simon_prickett

I'd recommend in some way getting into the mobile internet... not a huge thing at the moment, but has potential when done right... email me if you want more info.

BTW there's nothing wrong with a 106 Rallye, nice choice, there's one in our village that I admire, looks neat in red.

Simon.