IT Careers advice please

[fizzwheel]

Originally Posted by krhall

If you really must get a course, go down the Cisco route or possibly learn HP Procurve stuff.

I'd add Vmware into that list to, but if you dont know much about server architecture you'll be stumbling around in the dark.

Mike_AVFC works in Presales now I think, the company I work for are a customer of his. Definately worth talking to if you want to go down that route.

[L3nny]

I've worked on a helpdesk and it's okay. A lot of people think the people working on helpdesks don't know what they are talking about but it's usually the user who just doesn't listen or already thinks they know best that causes the most problems.

In the jobs I have done 90% of the problems were between the keyboard and the chair

All helpdesks are completeley different, some I have worked on you have a set script to read out some are more of a customer service job and some you just wite down everything the user says and pass it on to 2nd line without even trying to solve it.

A job where you are supporting a set group of users rather than the general public will be better because you don't have to deal with the idiots who have nothing better to do than ring up the helpdesk everytime something happens they aren't sure about.

In my experience I have found that qualifications are just as important as experience. In order to get a job you will have to deal with the dreaded employment agency and they seem to get paid more commission the more supposedly qualified they think you are and wont even pass your CV onto the employer unless you have specific the skills and qualifications they think you need.

My route was from pubs, then sales, tech-sales, brief spell in catering then helpdesk. From there i've done a multitude of IT jobs, but i'm back on a helpdesk now as thats what i enjoy (contrary to many above).
There's two types of help desk. There's the ones that take calls from home users trying to fix their printers, or there's the ones that talk to business users about very specific software.
I fit the latter category, in the past being involved with logistics systems, but now gambling.
The work is easy, there's a good crowd in the office, and my bills are paid.
I'd advise the helpdesk route too, but there's a lot of options to explore within a helpdesk environment.
If you don't like the helpdesk, show initiative, and you'll soon be moved to where you want to be, given the right employer.

Originally Posted by fizzwheel

Mike_AVFC works in Presales now I think, the company I work for are a customer of his. Definately worth talking to if you want to go down that route.

Another customer eh! His company should be paying the org a cut!

Zig, I've been working in IT for many years, so if you want a chat about it, then I'll be at Pizza next Thursday.

However, it might be a bit difficult to break into at the moment due to there being a lot of IT people looking for jobs.

Why not look at your strengths and see what else you can do?

You seem to have a lot of knowledge and experience of sales, so why not use that to your advantage? I'd guess from chatting to you that you're a pretty good salesman. So have you thought about becoming a freelance sales consultant or tutor. Sell yourself to companies as someone who can improve their sales by teaching their sales staff how to sell better. I'm sure that you'd be great standing up in front of a room full of people and imparting knowledge. People do tend to listen when you speak (if only because they can't get a work in edgeways ). It might even be worth seeing if you can get a bit of work doing that whilst you're between jobs, just to dip a toe in the water.

It could certainly save you several years of training to do something completely new and having to climb the ladder from the bottom.

Ah, chap. Just the other day when you posted on that thread about agencies, I thought to myself "wonder if he works in IT?" as we have started recruiting again. Then you said sales so I forgot all about that thought...but now this

I am tempted to come to pizza/Soho just to give you some input from my experience of things! What an excuse for me eh

FWIW I will say now (and some of these things have been said) that "IT" covers SO much it really needs narrowing down. You have the support role, as mentioned, the developer role, the infrastructure role. There's probably more, too.
All of these break down (or need to be broken down) as they are very wide ranging as well.
Myself, I work in the developer role. This is what coding comes under, of course. But within this role you can break it down into 2 main aspects - infrastructure (different to the infrastructure role I mentioned above), and pure development. I work in pure development, which can be again broken down into areas which have fairly different 'styles' for want of a better word. Areas such as the database, the server side processes, and the front end UI.

As you can see there's a lot to discuss and I think maybe it is better done in person!

The last point I would make is that the company you work for will make a difference to how IT is used/viewed. I work for a company where the IT is very much a strategic area, it contributes to the running of the business and is very much essential for profit-making. Some companies treat (perhaps reasonably) their IT as a tactical/ancillary area, they will use a PC but not try to do anything development wise to contribute to their profit-making.

Oh and to give you some idea of my experience it's 5 yrs computing education (A-levels & degree) plus 7 years IT (2 for a defence company and 5 for a major investment bank). So that's where I'm coming from with my comments.

Originally Posted by SoulKiss

As for Linux, well you REALLY need to have an interest in it, its not something that you can just learn, you have to live it - and the reason I never took Kev up on the offer is that as I already have a Job, I cannot support anything that that I did for him in a real-time 24/7 situation.

I wasn't having a pop SK, I was just pointing out that Linux skills are a very useful thing to have as there are always people that need help with it. I also agree that you really need to live and breathe it to be any good at it.

...and talking of Linux - Baph is back!!! How's it going mate, oh and sorry for the derail.

In my years of IT it has gone from being a sort of luxury, to something the business cannot do without, but also something that is expected to work. The result is you only ever get noticed when things go wrong.

[Spiderman]

Ah all you kind people taking the time to give me this advice, its really touching and yet another reason why i love this place so much

If a couple of you guys are gonna make it to Pizza Night next week then i'll deffo be there and i'll even shut up (for a change) and listen (believe it or not, i can actually do that really well) to all te advice you have to give me.

As you've all said there is so much to choose from in the IT world that i need to have an idea or direction i guess. Sadly i dont think i know enough about the industry as a whole to be able to narrow it down much.

Pre-sales sounds like my thing having such vast sales experience behind me but i always assumed that entails cold calling clients that may be interested in the softwares your company can sell them. Is that right?
Or is it more a case of they contact your firm for a solution to a problem and a pre-sales guy calls them back and takes it from there?

Any more advice or even links to suitable places to look for helpdesk work is appreciated guys, just so i gte an idea of what the job titiles are i should look out for, the salaries on offer and the firms etc.

I have no idea about sales I'm afraid, but you mention help desk - presumably you want to figure out what it is you want to do first?

I don't have any sites off the top of my head but you should be able to find some pretty easily, then just pick some options and browse

I might be able to make it to pizza night but actually Soho is more likely this Friday. The wife is away so won't care if I'm not back home straight away! Are you at Soho tomorrow?

[fizzwheel]

Originally Posted by Spiderman

Or is it more a case of they contact your firm for a solution to a problem and a pre-sales guy calls them back and takes it from there?

In my experience thats what I look for from somebody doing pre sales. Its normally my experience that somebody doing pre sales will have a serious techy background in the thing that I am looking to buy so that I get advice on how to configure / set it up etc etc, but thats only from my Infrastructure / Server / datacentre perspective.

Oh the other thing is, if you are going into helpdesk / IT Support kinda of area, you'll be working with some people who do the job because they are interested in computing and can be heavy duty nerds. If you are going into it because you think "This looks OK I can make good money here" then IMHO I'd find another career path... Oh and dont think its a 9 - 5 job either. I'm going into tomorrow night to take our systems offline to do some maintenance work, I'll do a full day and then go back in and start at 8pm and if it all goes OK, I wont leave till Midnight, if it goes badly, well, I wont be going home till its fixed. I've pulled 24 sometimes 36hr shifts sometimes when the deep brown stuff has interfaced with the fan...