Education/Jobs question

[Lyion]

I'm sorry, Mindia, but while I am sure that some online schools are indeed quite fine, NONE of them is going to give you the same education as a true to-of-the-line MBA program, such as Harvard, Stanford, Berkeley, or any of the other top-10 to top-20 schools.

Right, but if you aren't going Ivy league, or top 10, Kaplan is just as good as an average state school. A degree is a degree. Plus, in IT its even less relevant since you have people who aren't degreed in their field, and even those with Comp Sci degrees rarely have the skills for the jobs out there.

Anyways, as a former IT hiring manager, I could care less where your degree is from, I care more about your experience and what you do in the door talking to me. If I'm hiring a SAP Administrator, I'll take the guy with the Kaplan Degree and the SAP Certs over just the Top 10 school if we are talking pure academics.

[Gaazy]

Heh, then we had to fire that accountant because the coal business hit a slump like 3 months later, oops

[kaharthemad]

I'm sorry, Mindia, but while I am sure that some online schools are indeed quite fine, NONE of them is going to give you the same education as a true to-of-the-line MBA program, such as Harvard, Stanford, Berkeley, or any of the other top-10 to top-20 schools.

Right, but if you aren't going Ivy league, or top 10, Kaplan is just as good as an average state school. A degree is a degree. Plus, in IT its even less relevant since you have people who aren't degreed in their field, and even those with Comp Sci degrees rarely have the skills for the jobs out there.

Anyways, as a former IT hiring manager, I could care less where your degree is from, I care more about your experience and what you do in the door talking to me. If I'm hiring a SAP Administrator, I'll take the guy with the Kaplan Degree and the SAP Certs over just the Top 10 school if we are talking pure academics.

Amen Lyion I have done hiring in my time.. Ill grab someone with good skills before a college grab, Ill grab a guy with a military background beofre some snot nosed bitch from college. If you goto college, you had better have some experience or you had better show me your capable or your back out on the street.

Odds are though if two people come in for a job one with college and one with military and both carry the exact same certs. that military boy is getting hired first.
Uf there is 2 people standing in my door from two different colleges I dont care where he went to school it all boils down to personality and his bearing.

[Arlos]

Big companies look more at the name of the college than small outfits do. They're already getting shitpiles of resumes, it's just one more criteria of selection. Plus, they can generaly figure that someone coming out of say, UC Berkeley is likely to have had a better education than someone from Podunk State U. Schools get reputations for reasons, frequently, and there IS something to where you learned.

That said, they'd sure as hell hire a genius from Podunk U over a moron who somehow made it through Stanford.

Me, I' mactually kinda worried about the job market when I get done with this go-around in school. At the very least, though, re-acquiring my certs and being able to show 6 years of experience on top of the new degree should fifferentiate me from the average masses getting out of school, even if I am rather older.

-Arlos

[Lyion]

3/4 of the new IT hires are people over 50, Arlos.

Plus, there are a metric ton of jobs out there, if you have the certs and the knowledge. The big problem is people who are regional and won't look outside their hometown.

[Arlos]

The other question is, of course, whether I really wish to get back into network engineering. I constantly found that the IT department was treated as the red-headed stepchildren of the company, with never enough people or budget to really get stuff done like we wanted to, and no understanding on the part of upper management what our job required and entailed, thus getting hit with crazy and unrealistic instructions or restrictions. I remember one time at Oracle, we had a network outage planned for 6 weeks, so we could do some absolutely necessary firmware upgrades on every one of the routers, and it was canceled an hour before go time because Larry Ellison was going to be in his aircraft hanger that evening, and didn't want to miss out reading some email. Then there was the doomed project of trying to use AOL as dialin to the Oracle network, before VPN existed, and none of the AOL engineers grasping the concept that we wanted some actual security and encryption on connections from the internet into the corporate backbone....

I'm taking a bunch of directed courses towards a Bioinformatics certificate, and that's actually sounding kinda interesting. The main extra thing I need to pick up is some more database type skills. One of the things that most appeals to me about the bioinformatics is that it's a reall cross-genre type of position: you're helping out with pure research, plus you have to do sysadmin stuff (cause you're likely the only computer-related guy in the group), you have to do coding, you have to do database work, etc. Also, as you're a dedicated part of a research team, you're part of a potential profit center, rather than just a painful but necessary expense. And hell, I've always loved science more than anything, and while it's not Astronomy, it's still interesting as hell...

-Arlos

[Gaazy]

I need a certificate for browsin teh internat, im gettin real good at it

[Xaiveir]

I need a certificate for browsin teh internat, im gettin real good at it

Talk to Al Gore, he invented it!

[Gaazy]

k, i'll drop him a line once I figure out email~

[Tikker]

I constantly found that the IT department was treated as the red-headed stepchildren of the company, with never enough people or budget to really get stuff done like we wanted to, and no understanding on the part of upper management what our job required and entailed, thus getting hit with crazy and unrealistic instructions or restrictions.

welcome to the real world

the biggest thing to really remember about IT is that the people holding the purse strings AND ultimately making the decisions don't know what they're really talking about

[Tossica]

Our business is booming.

Wanted: Good server admin/network engineer that isn't a social retard.

Seriously, we need techs.

[Ganzo]

so basically i get from all this, that people not in the industry saying no, but few in the industry saying yes do it?

[Tikker]

book education/certs will never go wrong in IT (since a lot of it is just strict book knowledge)

but he should be prepared to start out entry level IT shit job. security guys almost never get hired right off the street

[Ganzo]

what is a shit entry IT job? what does it pay on average

[Tikker]

entry level IT can be help desk at $10/hour or maybe something like basic network admin stuff like the "backup guy" (ie the guy who changes the backup media every night at 3 am) for $15/hour

big part depends on whether he wants to get into big corporations, or if he wants to stay with smaller networks in smaller companies (both can be cool)

[Ganzo]

He wants to get something in field as soon as he gets associate and than work while getting bachelor/masters so by time he has masters he's got experience.

He makes 16 an hour now. Would you say he should do it?

[Tossica]

Entry level IT job usually means help desk or tech support. Both suck.

[Tikker]

He wants to get something in field as soon as he gets associate and than work while getting bachelor/masters so by time he has masters he's got experience.

He makes 16 an hour now. Would you say he should do it?

does he have any actual IT experience now?

99% of what makes a good IT guy is ability/willingness to learn, so a lot of companies will look favourably on a guy that's willing to work and go to school at the same time

security just isn't something that hires off teh street
you generally need a bunch of experience before they'll even consider hiring you

[Lyion]

Ganzo, in Detroit he should be able to make around 45k starting out. It shouldn't be tough getting in the door, because, well, most IT people won't relocate there.

He needs to both finish his degree and get certified to really sell himself.

I'd suggest getting a CCNE and MCSE, which aren't tough. Then start out in any type of IT position he can find and work his way towards his end job desire.

[Tikker]

ccna?

[Lyion]

CCCP?

CCNA. Ya, that was a typo.

[Diekan]

There actually is a CCNA.

[Tikker]

I know, i was correcting him foolman

[Tossica]

CCNE - Cisco Certified Network Engineer

[Tikker]

CCNE - Cisco Certified Network Engineer

in the context of easy to get certs, CCNA not CCNE tho