Computer networking

[Gidan]

Heh, you have no idea the amount of work entailed in being a Video Game Designer.

Be prepared to work 80 hour weeks MINIMUM, often. Frequently, as you approach deadlines, people do 100-110+ hour weeks. The guys at Blizzard, as WoW was getting into its final stages were getting to the office at 8am, leaving at 2am 18 hours later, then coming right back to work the next day at 8am, and doing this 7 days a week for a month.

Be prepared to be treated as a complete peon bitch for the first 3 years or so, as they give you all the shit work cause you don't know much yet. You'd best love making levels and zones for Quake/UT/HL2/etc, because that's in large part what you'll be doing every day for those 80 hour weeks.

How do I know all this, you might ask? My brother did/does that for a living. He started out being a contract game tester at Sega and worked his way up. Now, he's finally gotten a plum slot, after 10 years of busting his ass.

-Arlos

QFT

My little brother works for these guys, http://www.vvisions.com/home.cfm

He lives, breathes and eats his work. His job is more or less his life. He got the job because he was already damn good at what he does, he did start at the bottom doing grunt work. Debugging and maintenance get old fast and he did it for years. We are talking a guy who got his BS in CS in 5 semesters at school (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute). In video game dev, it doesn't matter how good you are, you always start as a grunt, where in many other fields, if you good enough you can start near the middle or even near the top.

If video game dev is what you really want, be prepared to work hard and long.

[Captain Insano]

Is there a good money to be made in this field? As a tech: no. I did this from the time I was 19 until about 25. Its an awful field to be in, IMO.

I've been doing tech support for going on 5 years now. The pay isn't that great. We're always short handed and there's been times recently that I'm the only one in my department for the last 3 hours of the day (which is rather disappointing for a NYSE/Fortune 500 company I think).

I'm glad to see this thread as I've been wondering what I'd need to do to get more into the same field as Kaiine asked about. Which certs should I try for first?

I'm wanting to get into IT for a Native American tribe that has there HQ here in my hometown. If I can get on there, I'd make decent money for where I live and they'd pay for me to get more certs and/or college all the way up to a Masters.

you want to make money in IT? Get a master's degree while you work. Certs really do not equate to big bucks anymore. They help, but not much.

The real money in IT is using your sk33lz afterhours on little side projects for other people.

Almost EVERY salesman I know makes way more money than most extremely skilled IT people. I just do not know how they get away paying people what they do in the IT industry. For the investment in time, education and experience the pay is subpar IMO.

I'll give it this... I actually liked the learning curve to some extents. I hate jobs that are mundane and IT never is.

[Tossica]

You can earn over $100K a year as a cisco consultant easily. There is most definitely money to be made. Most high level cisco guys I know charge over $100 an hour for their time and work like 3 day work weeks. Even at 20 billable hours a week you are clearing over $100K. As an MS server tech, you can still charge $50-$75 an hour and make good money. It's tough being a consultant though. I ended up taking a full time job again because the sporadic paydays and lack of benefits was getting to be a problem.