Do you work in IT?

Camride

New Member
Just curious how many of us here actually work in this field.

I work for a Infrastructure Consulting company as a Systems Engineer. I do mostly project based work (as well as some tier 3 service work for our help desk) on Microsoft (pretty much everything) and Symantec products (Backup Exec, Endpoint, SMSMSE, etc). I love my job and am always learning new stuff. I'm currently working on upgrading my MCSA to the MCITP: Systems Administrator, then to Enterprise Administrator. I've got the 2 exams I needs for the MCITP:SA scheduled in June, then I plan to get the rest done for my MCITP:EA done by the end of August. After that I'll be working on Citrix certs as our company has been doing alot of Citrix virtualization work lately.


What do you do? :)
 
Sure do.. I've been doing IT now for the last 30+ years. I used to hold a MCSE and CNE with several other little nitnoid certs, but let it lapse because of where I was working. Some day I may take the tests again, but at this stage I don't see the point. I've done everything from Fortran V programming to network engineering, but now I'm just taking easy and doing the easy stuff. The only certification I'm probably interested in persuing would be an CISSP.
 
I work in IT at Sea World. Yes they have an IT department. Managing 500+ XP workstations/laptops, several Laser/inkjet printers and anything else that communicates through the network. I also manage all the Cisco LAN switches. Little bit of server management but the big corporate guys like to handle that themselves. I have an A+ :p Never pursued any other certs, though I think I can start my Cisco certs. I have a lot of fun with the network side of things.
 
i'm currently doing a Masters in computer science ( But mostly self taught) What scares me though is that sometimes it feels like I Know more about using a Computer than the People that teach me - no offence to them they are all Geniuses in their own right.
 
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Admire you guys in the IT business . I am self taught too . Learned everything by the chuck and chance it method .
I could have been a contender but could not find the any key ?

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I worked for EDS as IT support for 9 years doing 2nd line support. Gave it up a couple of years ago after far too many idiotic management decisions.

Having to provide support for 60 developers connecting to a Citrix farm consisting of three Windows servers with Oracle apps running, and listening to all the devs moaning about the servers being slow when they were compling their applications, and being told by EDS management that we had to support it and fix it to make these three servers work faster (just so they could save money on licences) after telling them about 100 times that it would never work ... was about the final straw for me :rolleyes:

Not to mention the 300 other machines that were running XP on Pentium III 450's and 256mb Ram :confused:, fun days .... oh how I miss them, not :)

I could have just jumped ship to another company, but at the time I was that pee'd off that I handed in my resignation, took a 6 month holiday, then changed career to Accounts ;)
 
Been working in the It Field now for a little over 10 years self taught just recently went to school to broaden my knowledge and just got hired on by the Local County Government as an Associate IT Professional. In 6 months to a year I will be A+& Sec+, 1 year to 2 years CCNA & Network+ certified plus others in the range of 5 years
 
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I worked for EDS as IT support for 9 years doing 2nd line support. Gave it up a couple of years ago after far too many idiotic management decisions.
You don't happen to know who Harvey Braswell is do you? Just curious, as he just bought the company I work for. I know he used to be high up there at EDS. :)
Been working in the It Field now for a little over 10 years self taught just recently went to school to broaden my knowledge and just got hired on by the Local County Government as an Associate IT Professional. In 6 months to a year I will be A+& Sec+, 1 year to 2 years CCNA & Network+ certified plus others in the range of 5 years

Take this FWIW but I would completely skip A+ and Sec+ and go straight for CCNA. Those certs, from my experience, are mostly worthless in most area's of IT. I was going to take my A+ when I first started getting into IT and a ton of IT guys told me to skip it, it wasn't worth the time. They were right. The other biggest piece of advice I can give you on certs is specialize! Find a niche (that you enjoy and that hopefully pays well) and get certified in everything you can in that niche. If you go for the "know a little about alot" technique you will get pigeon holed into a job that has a very finite ceiling. The reason is you will always be at the mercy of having to call a consultant when you get in over your head on something. Consultants are specialized and expensive, and they're expensive because they're specialized. :p If you like networking start with CCNA, then CCNP and keep working up til you get your CCIE ($$$$$). I've gone down the Microsoft road and will continue down this road as it wouldn't be in my best interest to change specialties now with 5+ years of M$ experience. If you want more advice or anything just shoot me a PM.
 
true about the certs but most jobs around my area mostly require them and plus I will possibly working for the local schools system teaching tech support to some high school students and they also require A+ certs.
 
You don't happen to know who Harvey Braswell is do you? Just curious, as he just bought the company I work for. I know he used to be high up there at EDS. :)

Afraid not :).

I was however there when Dick "Action Urgency Excellence" Brown was there, and when he subsequently got the boot (and about $35 mil for his 'efforts' :eek:).
 
surprisingly me working as a IT Manager in a private concern. No certifications, just studied basics during my college days, then R&D with the help of Google and internet. Self study is wat makin me survive. But nw thinking of atleast doin a MCSE.
 
Finally finished my MCITP: Server Administrator certification (basically a Windows Server 2008 certification). Now I just need two more to get my Enterprise Administrator cert. :)
 
Finally finished my MCITP: Server Administrator certification (basically a Windows Server 2008 certification). Now I just need two more to get my Enterprise Administrator cert. :)
Well my MCITP:EA will be put on hold for a while as I have to wait for my employer to buy the training materials. In the meantime he needs someone to get up on some networking certs, which I've been wanting to do anyway. So now I'm working on my CCNA and HP AIS (Procurve switch cert).
 
I am trying to upgrade from MCSA (Server 2003) to 2008 for reasons unknown. I am pretty much paying for it myself and there is no employer subsidy. I think I am just interested in the tech and like keeping up-to-date on the stuff. I actually enjoy the exams, for all the stress they cause. I am MCITP: Enterprise Support Tech specialization, which I really value. But converting the MCSA 2003 to 2008 would give me a few more MCTS certs and another MCITP :) It is cool to see other certified individuals on the site.
 
Drew, what certs/experience do you have out of curiosity? I'm wondering how much experience I should have if I ever decide to start my own consulting business.
 
No actual IT experience here,

For 20+ years, I used computers as a tool to perform other operations - write repair orders, customer billing, etc. when employed by a company. I bought my first computer in the mid 80's with an 8088 processor, two 5 1/4" floppy drives and no hard drive at all - DOS 3, if memory is accurate. As a small business owner building bicycle frames, I was my own IT "non"-professional setting up and maintaining my own computers and computer network to support the bicycle frame business. Since retirement, I am now playing with computers AS a project rather than using them FOR a project as I had previously done. I still have a computer in the garage, one in the shop, one portable (laptop), and two or three more scattered around the house. Now if I could only figure how to keep them all syncronized so if I make a change to a drawing in the shop, it will automatically make the same change to the same drawing at all locations when I exit the file without additional input from me. :confused: Prior to that, I had to take a stack of punch cards to the university computer lab and go back after a couple of days to see if my program even ran.
 
I have no IT experience at all. However I would like to learn. I'm getting tired of beating my poor old arthritic body up working in the Lumber Industry for peanuts.

The problem is working for peanuts. I can't afford to go to school. I was wondering if any of you IT Professionals could suggest a few books that I might get that would give me a good start on educating myself. I keep thinking I would like to get into working in Cyber Security or Networking.
 
I have no IT experience at all. However I would like to learn. I'm getting tired of beating my poor old arthritic body up working in the Lumber Industry for peanuts.

The problem is working for peanuts. I can't afford to go to school. I was wondering if any of you IT Professionals could suggest a few books that I might get that would give me a good start on educating myself. I keep thinking I would like to get into working in Cyber Security or Networking.

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This is old and out of date, I read through some of it and it helped on A+, which ultimately is a very simple test. Network+ was updated and so was Security but it will still be helpful. Look for online training videos, they are the best....

CBT Nuggets: Training for Cisco CCNA SQL MCSE VB.NET A+ Linux PMP & Many More IT Certification Exams!

Particularly well valued. Look at what is on the exams if you are looking for Microsoft exams. Pass a basic MS exam first if you want MCTS... "Microsoft Certified Professional" and "Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist". For me "Windows Vista, Configuring" was a particularly easy test.

CCNA is very difficult and I haven't even approached it. Cisco tests are notoriously difficult since from what I've seen you need to know telnet commands on the router by memory. You'd be better luck taking Network+ later on and studying a long time for CCNA.
 
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