Who works in IT?

pault123

Do any of you guys work in IT?

What do you do?

What qualifications have you got?

How did you get into the industry?

Reason I ask i'm looking at getting into the IT support industry, i'm currently an IT consultant for a government scheme. I've seen all these various job requirements MCP, MCSE, CISCO engineer and wondering which of these if any is worth studying and what route you would reccomend to get into IT, from the ground on up?

Many thanks

Paul

NickyBoy

Hi

Lots of us out there trying to get into IT!

A very good forum to ask these kind of questions (IMHO) is here;

http://www.certforums.co.uk/forums/index.php?referrerid=2268

Good luck!

GaryS

I work in IT, and have done for about 10 years.
Its not as lucrative as it was before the millenium, and if you look at the news a lot of companies are "offshoring" their IT departments to India.

T4i

NickyBoy wrote:

Hi

Lots of us out there trying to get into IT!

A very good forum to ask these kind of questions (IMHO) is here;

http://www.certforums.co.uk/forums/index.php?referrerid=2268

Good luck!

Glad I saw this, some very good info here.

John_Gray

I have worked with IT since about 1967; I have worked in IT since 1972. I used to described myself as "the oldest techie in captivity". I was made redundant 18 months ago after 27 years techie-ing with the same (large) company, and now do the ICT for a medium-sized voluntary organisation. I don't expect to be there as long as that... (I don't often begin all my sentences with "I"!)

John

amcluesent

In retrospect, I'd never touch IT. Much better to get trained as a plumber or train driver. Wages are getting hammered by off-shoring.

Lorian

Forget the salary, callout fees and unlimited techno toys, IT people are never popular at the christmas party.

Little_John

I work in IT, been doing it since I left college self taught PC building and software piracy back when it was lucritive people were happy to pay £20 for a blobby cd, cd writers were slow 1x or 2x and disks cost £2. I would build at least 1 pc a month and sell it to a freind and make a few hundred quid which I used to find my time at college while all my mates were working weekends I was watching Bolton Wanderers.

I ended up working in a shop I had been buying parts from for 6 months for very little just to learn and get cheap PC parts so I made more money. I was head hunted by a company that built high spec PC's for CAD companies (I built the pc and rendering farm the coke polar bear adverts were created on) spent a few years there working my way up from build to tech support, network engineer, field engineer and even gave sales a shot which I didnt enjoy and the company went bust.

I then got a job installing travel agency systems learnt loads more including novel the company was sold and we merged with a larger company in Glasgow and became the Manchester office the sale was canceled and I became a field enginner working from home for the Scotish company. I was put through my MCSE which was pretty tough and that companys IT team was sold to another comapny wh made me redundant after 8 months.

I then went self employed I dont think I could work in an office again after so many years working from home installing travel systems, networks, system repairs anything that my customers want even selling hardware and software. i love it. I left college in 97 so have been working properly for about 9 years almost. I would never do a job I didnt enjoy especially as I am in the position I could get away without earning for a while. but I enjoy doing it. driving 1000 miles a week especially in the summer is good.

The PC sales side now is none existant send them to Dell I cant buy the parts for the prices they sell them at. the unusuall items I can get and dont go stupid making profit on them, sometime I sell at cost I do it as an sweatner for them to use my services and it works well they dont feel ripped off. I also point companies in the direction of where to buy peripherals they see I make nothing on them its a great confidence booster for them and they dont mind when I charge them £120 to install a PC and transfer their data and install their software.

scheming_gypsy

i've worked in IT since i left school 14 years ago.
My dad bought a second hand laptop (lunchbox) and asked if they had any part time jobs going. After about 3 weeks i was building PC's to order.
I moved on to be the main techie and then moved into sales. I left there and worked at BT doing desktop support for 18 months before getting my current job.
Senior IT support Engineer & Telecoms Engineer for a 1000+ call centre, team of 3 IT bods and a manager, only me doing telecoms. Been there 5 years and had no official It training and P60's for the past 3 years have been around 30k.


MCSE's aren't that important these days.
experience over qualifications i've found
if you want a qualification then it's CISCO. People may outsource to India but that's usually call centre support, MCSEs are too easy to get, like the adverts say, you can go from being a bin man to IT manager so you need to specialise and CISCO is the way forward. You can't get CISCO certified by books, you need to go hands on, buy routers and learn what you're doing.

IvanOpinion

I have worked in IT for 23 years doing anything ranging from sales, building PCs, installing PCs, software development. Generally now I work in business and systems analysis ... usually for utility companies, government offices or banks (moved to that because so many development and support jobs were being shipped off shore). I do still however love getting back to developing in anything I can get my hands on (including mainframe (CICS, COBOL, DB2), AS/400 (RPG), Unix (Oracle, PL/SQL), PC (VB6, C#, ASP.Net, CMS, SPPS, SQL Server etc. etc.).

Ivan

wonka

I started in IT in 1990. I got an electronics degree that year, and had been sponsored by an electronics firm. But by then I knew PCs inside out, could build them, and program them, so told them to stuff their job. Went working at Price Waterhouse in Manchester, doing support and programming.

Since then I've switched jobs a few times, and have been working with Document/Content Management & Workflow systems for over 10 years. Mainly design complete systems for banks, insurance companies, Government Depts.

Have been earning ~50K for a few years now. Have also been a tight-fisted money saver for years, so mortgage paid off, lots of investments, nice house, etc etc. Not bad for a Salford council estate scumbag eh?

If you go into IT, you'll need to do more than support or programming, otherwise an Indian or Chinaman will eventually take your job. You need to perform a "high-value" IT job, like project management, tech architect, consultancy etc. Our company is already considering offshoring some our more junior roles.