Which career road to go down?

Originally Posted by femaleacid

Plus - were merging with another school in September so I will be dramatically busy with installing the new network and setting up the new equipment

If you can't afford to go to Uni this September, then stick with the school at least until this project is over. It will be invaluable experience and you'll learn a lot.

Then once it's over, whatever you decide to do next, get the hell out of there! Schools are a very insular environment from an IT perspective, employing a limited breadth of technology and tend to be right at the back of the queue when it comes to innovating and implementing new technology, plus they tend to be at the bottom end of the salary scale.

Very large companies also tend to pigeon hole you into a particular role, ie: desktop support technician will never touch a server, a switch or a firewall, there is a whole other department whose job it is to do that.

For gaining experience, getting yourself into an IT company providing outsource services, solutions provision, and support for companies in the SME (Small to Medium Enterprise) marketplace is a really good place to start. You will be exposed to the technology deployed within their customer base, i.e. lots of different technologies, across lots of different organisations, within lots of different markets across both public and private sector. With a smaller organisation you'll be expected to pick up and learn about the whole solution from end to end, not just learn about switches and firewalls, or servers, or database administration, etc.

It's true working directly for any organisation in an internal IT team, that you only get exposed to the systems that they use, and only have to fix the problems that they come across. A service provider will give you a much greater breadth of experience.

Originally Posted by ravingdavis

I don't agree with dissuading people from heading to university - I went and got an IT degree which in turn helped me get onto a graduate scheme with a very large networking vendor.

I know you are not a big fan of who I work for SK but its a very good job and I cannot imagine my prospects or salary would be as good as they are now if I had not got a degree.

I agree with this, but in your case RD it's not your degree per se that has got you into the job you are in, but the fact you got onto the graduate scheme with your employer via Birmingham Uni. It's a minority of IT students who get this kind of opportunity (or who are deemed talented enough), but if you can get onto a graduate scheme with a large corporate, I don't think there's a faster progression path in IT.

It doesn't mean a degree is the right way forward for everybody. I'm recruiting at the moment for Technical Architects to join my team on a £65k package by the time you add car allowance and bonus. All the candidates that I'm interviewing are at least in their mid 30's with 10-15 years experience, they all have every certification (i.e. MCSE, CCNA, VCP, etc) under the sun, but not all have degrees! By the time you've progressed up to that level after 10-15 years, your experience is much more relevant.

In your case, it probably won't take 15 years to get to that point, but like I said, that kind of opportunity is the exception rather than the rule.