IT Career thread

[Tactical Genius]

An urgent message for all the OTF IT bods.

I am part of a program helping and mentoring people who wish to get into IT and I was hoping to draw on the experiences of some of the posters.
If you could answer the questions, I would greatly appreciate it (and I am sure it will be of use to posters on here who are considering a career change).


1. What advice would you give someone who wishes to get into the IT industry with limited IT knowledge?
2. What would be your top five areas in IT to get into?
3. What Issues did you experience getting your first IT role and how did you get around it?
4. If you could go back in time to the beginning of your IT career, what advice would you give yourself?
5. What is your experience around gaining professional IT certification, how useful do/did you find it?
6. Would you still recommend and IT degree?

All responses welcome and appreciated.

[Gangster Octopus]

Retire, like what I want to do...

[ursus arctos]

TG, for the last 20 years you have repeatedly told us that you are the only one on here with an it bod

[Tactical Genius]

TG, for the last 20 years you have repeatedly told us that you are the only one on here with an it bod

Hahahaha

[San Bernardhinault]

OK. Starting from the position that my IT job is not really IT, kind of IT adjacent, but I still do some sort of IT-y stuff. Others are more properly immersed in it than me.

1. What advice would you give someone who wishes to get into the IT industry with limited IT knowledge?

You'll always have imposter syndrome and so does almost everyone else. You look at advice being given on message boards when you do a search on your problem and it's all inscrutable and complex and terrifying, and the people answering the questions seem belligerent and aggressive because not every single detail isn't included in the query.

Don't worry. Learn enough to get by, hack around to get solutions, and when you learn more elegant ones implement those. But basically don't worry. Just get by. That's what everyone is doing apart from a few niche individuals who actually love this stuff. Most people are in IT because there are millions of jobs in IT, not because they care, or love it, or it's a vocation, or they get joy from writing code.

2. What would be your top five areas in IT to get into?

Anything but 3D graphics and animation. It pays like shit and there's not much work and lots of people are thrilled by the idea of getting into it.

Probably statistic analysis. Whatever the modern equivalent of SPSS is.

And, related, big data stuff.

3. What Issues did you experience getting your first IT role and how did you get around it?

Knowing fuck-all and lying about my experience and knowledge (and the guys I contracted to lying about how much I'd get paid - it was a fair swap). I got around it basically by my answer to 1 - hacking solutions and reading a bit and reading TFM and reading TFM again until I could bullshit and bluster my way through just enough

4. If you could go back in time to the beginning of your IT career, what advice would you give yourself?

Stay out of IT and do something that allows social interaction with real humans even if the pay is shit

5. What is your experience around gaining professional IT certification, how useful do/did you find it?
6. Would you still recommend and IT degree?

I never did any professional qualifications related to IT at all. And my physics degree, back in the day, was so old school that they didn't even require basic (or BASIC) programming.

[caja-dglh]

From my world:

Cloud, Salesforce, Mulesoft are the main areas of IT folk that seem to be super valuable. If they want to be a bit more data monkey, RPA and AI (though the former should be gone in the next decade really, I kind of doubt the work will end that soon). Big Data, Data Architecture. Customer Experience interfaces and unifying disparate software solutions that actively have no interest in working together.

Also a key skill is learning the ability to get the actual best idea implemented despite a volume of people seeming to be invested in making life as difficult as possible.

I would recommend decent project management skills. Quite often the PM is a disaster and they will need to be their own PM to execute and show their value.

But I am not an IT guy. I deal with them a lot though.

[Lang Spoon]

ITIL seems a massive waste of time but for some reason is a valued qualification, so waste that week of your life to get the Foundation level at least. It's not difficult and no one seems to put it into practice except when they are being obstructive. Ditto Prince2, cos as Caja sez you'll be as well being your own PM as half the PMs in the world are pure mince and make things worse. And even if they're good the Programme Manager/CIO is probably a wank. Also learn to talk Agile/Scrum/Waterfall bullshit to a fluent level. And Agile type stuff is prob more practically useful than the bureaucratic hell of Prince2.

But I'm not really IT either and code scares me and hurts my head, so prob best ignore me.

[hobbes]

1. What advice would you give someone who wishes to get into the IT industry with limited IT knowledge?
If you've got the head for it, be a developer. If you haven't, start on a service desk. It's the quickest way to pick up the lingo and get exposure without much experience.
2. What would be your top five areas in IT to get into?
Mobile app programming, Azure/AWS automation, Power BI, Data warehousing, security
3. What Issues did you experience getting your first IT role and how did you get around it?
I sign know anything about computers. I lied.
4. If you could go back in time to the beginning of your IT career, what advice would you give yourself?
Start 5 years earlier so as not to miss the y2k gold rush. Also don't trust umbrella a companies. They exist to fuck you over
5. What is your experience around gaining professional IT certification, how useful do/did you find it?
I'm sure it's really useful in some cases, but I've done loads of course and about 2 exams. It never hindered me.
6. Would you still recommend and IT degree?
I didn't do one. But IT is getting harder, more siloed, less interesting and pays less Unless you're in finance . Anything you can do to jump some rungs is good.

[Patrick Thistle]

With regards to number 1 I'd say the main advice is the same for any job - be helpful not a hindrance. There is a plethora of can't do people working in IT and that's why IT as a discipline often gets sidelined from project planning and excluded from conversations where their input could be really helpful.

Be a friendly helpful person and people won't really care if you're the best at what you do or not. It's also useful to build up a reservoir of grace for when the inevitable fuckup happens.

[mmm]

1. Get experience somehow. I got started on a placement whilst on benefits and ended up in a paid position working for the same organisation (lucky to be in the right place at the right time). A colleague of mine, who was also looking to move into IT from something completely different, started volunteering with us prior to replacing me in a paid position.

2. I'm probably too out of touch to know but SharePoint Online has been a big thing in the charity sector recently. More generally, security and Azure. Helpdesk can provide good experience, especially if working with knowledgeable/helpful colleagues.

3. I was approaching forty and had recently started with a very basic course to become computer literate then onto an accelerated technician programme as I was enjoying the subject so a lack of real-world experience/confidence (and knowledge!) was against me when applying for jobs. I was very fortunate to get a placement alongside a manager who was generous and helpful.

4. It's ok to not know everything. Respond to people quickly. Deal with issues quickly.

5. My qualifications were pretty basic. A Cisco CCNA (at the time) gave me some confidence but I have not felt a need to obtain a further qualification in almost 20 years of working in IT.

6. Probably as a good degree would have made a big difference to my confidence, I guess, especially where I work as most colleagues are educated to at least degree level (although non-IT).

I would strongly agree with Patrick Thistle's post. I really feel I am the imposter, without the syndrome, and am always gobsmacked to get any positive feedback from colleagues - I feel I'm conning them all - but I try to be helpful and quick to respond and I think that's appreciated as much as anything else.

[steveeeeeeeee]

I'm a Key Stage 3, 4 and 5 Computer Science teacher but I've only worked directly in IT for 2 years (junior developer back in 2000 and 2001) then indirectly as an IT product owner for 2 years. I try to answer the questions you provide a lot of the time with students, I always hope I give good advice, but I could be way off the mark.

1. What advice would you give someone who wishes to get into the IT industry with limited IT knowledge?
Get an IT helpdesk job. If you are good at it, it will lead to big things fast as long as you are in the right environment. I always use the example of a young lad without any real qualifications I would deal with when product owner, he went from helpdesk to service delivery manager in the space of 18 months. I'm still connected on LinkedIn, his company was bought out by the biggest player in the US and he's now Vice President of Service Operations, living and working in the USA.

2. What would be your top five areas in IT to get into?
a. Main one I advise my students to look into is IT project management, especially the cocky and mouthy ones with strong personality. You need a basic understanding of IT, but you need to be good with people, something most programmers/developers lack. It's a good gateway. Most kids I teach are also bilingual or more, gives them a real advantage.
b. Network engineer, my mate knows nothing about IT but has lived comfortably plugging in cables at city banks for the past 20 years. Sh*tty work hours though.

The next ones, in my opinion, require talent and aren't something anyone could do:

c. Know-what-you're-doing web-development, I mean really knowing JavaScript and web-based frameworks. But in my opinion, it's a passion and really not something you get into, you'd already be in it. None of it is that difficult.
d. Database administration
e. Encryption

3. What Issues did you experience getting your first IT role and how did you get around it?
I hated it, it was the most macho working environment I have ever experience, but geek-macho. People taking the piss out of your coding and questioning your intelligence. I had no desire to return but it did inspire me to train up and get better at it.

4. If you could go back in time to the beginning of your IT career, what advice would you give yourself?
Don't bluff, you get caught out quickly. You will learn on the job, but you have to bring some of your own learning as well.

5. What is your experience around gaining professional IT certification, how useful do/did you find it?
I only have academic certification, it's served me well because it's multidimensional, serves a number of purposes and doesn't go out of date.

6. Would you still recommend and IT degree?
Only if you wish to stay in an academic IT field and only if the university you got it from is reputable. So many graduates come out of university with IT related degrees not being able to code.
If you can get in with a good company, you'll learn far more, but your progress is dependent on that company's faith in you.

[steveeeeeeeee]

Sorry, answered Q4 wrong. I had no issues at all, a guy I was chatting to in a pub offered me the job, I wasn't even looking, But this was at the height of the dot com boom. He resigned a month after I started working there!

[Tactical Genius]

Guys, I really really appreciate this, it has really helped me with the mentoring programme I am a part of.
Consider this a reparations part-payment made.

It would only be fair if I give my answers:

1. What advice would you give someone who wishes to get into the IT industry with limited IT knowledge?

Decide what areas in IT you would want to go into - Like medicine, it is a pretty broad industry
Look at the job market, the job ads will let you know where there is a skills shortage and what the roles are paying
Consider roles where there is more work over niche roles that may pay higher and there is less work (This is not necessarily the same advice i would give someone who has been in IT for a long time)
Consider accruing skills that can be portable, so tying yourself to large vendor products like CISCO, Microsoft and Amazon would be my recommendation.
Have a short medium and long term plan for career progression The short must be fixed, the medium term can be semi flexible.
Once you have decided on the area you wish to get into, go in 100%, And focus on not just being good, but being exceptional.


2. What would be your top five areas in IT to get into?
The safe bets would be big vendor products so:
Microsoft Cloud applications
Microsoft Azure
Cisco Networking
Amazon AWS
Programming (Python, Java)

There are some other areas like AI, Machine Learning etc,

3. What Issues did you experience getting your first IT role and how did you get around it?

I came out of University bright eyed and bushy tailed and spend the next 3 months applying for my first role as my degree was essentially useless. I did my professional Microsoft certifications in a couple of months and it was only then my career started to take off.

4. If you could go back in time to the beginning of your IT career, what advice would you give yourself?

Like Hobbes above, forget the degree and go straight to work. If I had, i would have had around 5 years experience by the Y2K scare and I would have made a financial killing like the old boys who loved telling me their stories of their ?150 an hour six month contracts and double-pay to be on standby from December 31 to Jan 2 2000.

Also, not only master your area, but have a strong working knowledge of other technologies that interact with your areas of expertise.

Also to focus on not just being good, but being excellent in my field, something i didn't really understand until the last 10 years.

5. What is your experience around gaining professional IT certification, how useful do/did you find it?

I would strongly advocate them. It is an objective measurement of skills and knowledge especially in lieu "experience". It will also differenciate you from most other people in IT who feel being formally qualified to do their jobs is not necessary (these are the first people out of a job whenever there is a slight downturn)

6. Would you still recommend an IT degree?

For anyone above the age of 25, definitely not. An IT degree is of limited use in the industry and it is a waste of 3/4 years sitting in the class room only to come out and do the same entry level IT roles you could have got without going to University. An IT degree is not generally considered usless, but in all intents and purposes is useless.

[Snake Plissken]

Meant to post in this thread but Life intervened.

1. What advice would you give someone who wishes to get into the IT industry with limited IT knowledge?

Just do it. But "being in IT" is such a wide scope of things. There are so many jobs that are IT related - hell, I'm of the opinion that every company is an IT company given their reliance on it to get everything else done.

Be willing to tinker and learn and play around with stuff. Hardware, code, whatever. If learning a programming language use sample code as a jump-off point for what you want to do not as a copy and paste. Be willing to accept that every mistake with your code is your fault - the computer is doing exactly what you are telling it to do.

But my advice is to be very end user focused. Far too many technical people see the machine as the important part of the equation. I don't give a damn if the code is perfect or if the network can be configured to be 0.1% faster if someone in the Accounts department can't find what they are looking for on a jumbled up mess of a screen. Understanding what the user wants, and to be able to explain it in non-technical terms is still massively desirable. Developers don't care about users, support people don't want to talk to people and admins try to blind people with science. Being the person who can speak to all three and get the users what they want is going to make you a fortune.

2. What would be your top five areas in IT to get into?

Teams (I'm serious, this is where Office 365 is going)
The MS Power Platform is going to be absolutely huge
User experience and user interfaces
Admin wise - Intune/similar and device management

3. What Issues did you experience getting your first IT role and how did you get around it?

Not a good example here, as I started as a 16 year old on the YTS. I'd already had a computer for ten years by that point but it was any job in a storm on leaving school as I couldn't afford to go to college, let alone university. I got into contracting because I lost my job on my 30th birthday and that was a big kick up the arse.

4. If you could go back in time to the beginning of your IT career, what advice would you give yourself?

Imposter syndrome is huge and prevalent. There is no One True Answer to making something work. Also, again, listen to your customers/users. I kind of accidentally did this by osmosis, which means I am now holding voluntary sessions in lunch hours to show people stuff to make their lives easier in Outlook/Teams/OneDrive and 100 people show up.

5. What is your experience around gaining professional IT certification, how useful do/did you find it?

Left school at 16 with GCSEs, no qualifications until I did an MSc a few years ago just to see if I could. I find certs very useful as a contractor because they back up your CV. But a lot of them, the MS ones in particular rely on a good degree of actual experience. So if you want to learn a technology, just go in there and do it. Especially as what the MSc taught me was why things worked how they did rather than how to do them.

6. Would you still recommend and IT degree?

BSc in lieu of professional certification? Maybe. Master level in addition, definitely.

[David Agnew]

Late to this as well, but...

1. What advice would you give someone who wishes to get into the IT industry with limited IT knowledge?

Good question. 20 years back, I know people who got into developing by doing night courses with a couple of local specialist IT training firms, that trained people to a really good level. I've not worked with many people who've got into the industry for a long time. The ones I did taught themselves development to a high standard at home, and applied for trainee positions at their present employer.

2. What would be your top five areas in IT to get into?
Data security, Power Bi, desktop support (with a view to ending up on the sys admin/networking side), developing (java/python or c#/MVC, as well as mobile apps), web design


3. What Issues did you experience getting your first IT role and how did you get around it?
I didn't, really. When I left school, I went on a YTS course that would alternate between three months of learning, and three months of placement. The first developer role I applied for, I got, and worked there for seven years.

4. If you could go back in time to the beginning of your IT career, what advice would you give yourself?
Don't take that transfer in your second job.

5. What is your experience around gaining professional IT certification, how useful do/did you find it?
Not done it.

6. Would you still recommend and IT degree?
Didn't do one.

[David Agnew]

4. If you could go back in time to the beginning of your IT career, what advice would you give yourself?

Like Hobbes above, forget the degree and go straight to work. If I had, i would have had around 5 years experience by the Y2K scare and I would have made a financial killing like the old boys who loved telling me their stories of their ?150 an hour six month contracts and double-pay to be on standby from December 31 to Jan 2 2000.

*Maybe* in London, but I worked at one of the sites in Birmingham that was paying the best money locally for contractors, and ?3k a week was the second biggest figure I was aware of. There was one contractor on ?8k a week (?225 an hour), who was not only the most useless developer I've ever encountered, and the most divisive team member I've known, but crucially, she was married to the man that handed out the contracts.

[andrew7610]

What advice would you give someone who wishes to get into the IT industry with limited IT knowledge?

Snake's answer pretty much. Whichever tech skill you choose, there will be plenty of other people who can do that, so 'soft' skills are the key differentiator if you want to get employed. Remaining employed is down to how willing you are to learn.

What would be your top five areas in IT to get into?

AWS - the sheer scale of what it covers is daunting, but its actually not that hard.
Office 365 - Sharepoint and Teams in particular
CRM - Dynamics or Salesforce
The catch-all 'DevOps' methodology is definitely worth understanding. Recruiters love DevOps guys, without having a real clue what they actually do.
For entry-level Service Desk roles, build yourself a Powershell toolkit for all your Active Directory/365 admin tasks. As well as making your life so much easier, you can take this from job to job and look like a guru on day one.

What issues did you experience getting your first IT role and how did you get around it?

At the time I started (mid 90s), anybody semi-literate and with a slight interest in IT could get a job. I worked in administration for a pensions company, and ended up moving sideways into the IT department because they couldn't fill the roles, and it all took off from there.

If you could go back in time to the beginning of your IT career, what advice would you give yourself?

Don't worry about not knowing everything. Google does, so you don't have to - you just need to know what to ask.

Pick the brains of anyone who really knows their stuff - generally, they're very keen to show how brilliant they are.

If you're working on a really technical project and a new PM (they come and go frequently) announces at any time "I'm not from a technical background" get the fuck out asap. Clusterfuck imminent, and it won't be their fault.

What is your experience around gaining professional IT certification, how useful do/did you find it?

Good to have on your CV in a crowded candidate field, but not a deal breaker by any stretch.
Some of the heftier IT certifications (and IT degrees) are out of date by the time you finish them. I have an MCSE - in Windows NT4. The ROI time-wise was negligible, and very little of the course had any practical use in a real-world setting.

If I'm asked about certification for a certain tech in an interview, I usually say 'I'm working towards that now' which often seems to be enough. I haven't bothered with a certification for 20 years, other than ITIL foundation which an employer paid for me to do in a week-long cram course because they wanted all their IT staff to hold this.

Would you still recommend an IT degree?

3 years working the job > 3 year degree course, no question.
My degree is in 'Business IT Management' which was about 50/50 between tech stuff and corporate management stuff, which I've always thought was an ideal mix. I've never been asked to prove I have this, which is just as well because anybody who has been on a 1-day Word course could knock up a more impressive certificate.

Elements of the basics that are covered might prove useful (coding structure, database design, SQL etc) but you can gain this knowledge more quickly elsewhere.