IT career advise needed

MrWenger1982

Hi,
I am a recent college graduate starting out on my career. I have recently started a great new job as a server analyst. The pay is roughly 30k plus great benefits such as health insurance, pension scheme etc. There is also a lot of travel involved in it too.

I am hoping to become MCSE certified as soon as I can. How long would this normally take if I were to work hard? Are there 7 exams in total?

An aside note, am I wasting my time in servers from a long term career perspective? I see programming jobs seem to be better paid but to be honest, I have no interest in it. Any of my friends who are programmers hate their work and the people they work with. I would like to be self employed one day so is the IT a good avenue to go down?

I would really appreciate any advise going? Thanks

tech

Hi to be honest with you these exams have got alot harder in the last few years since 2003 MSCE started, I have some of these exams and just study at home for these and read loads of Testkings and alike. I myself would have no interest in Software programing either I work installing and servicing pc / server and love it,

Cake Fiend

MrWenger1982 wrote:

I see programming jobs seem to be better paid but to be honest, I have no interest in it.

There's your answer. If you have no interest in programming (or any other particular avenue of IT), don't consider a career in it. IMO no amount of money can make up for dreading going into work every day. Do whatever you're interested in (and if that changes, change career track to match - relatively easy in IT).

Server admin/analysis is probably a good road to take - it's a relatively specialized part of IT that is always going to need a workforce. I'd personally recommend going down the UNIX road if you have the interest, I'd say there's better money (more specialized) in it, particularly in security. Still, there are plenty of companies out there hanging onto the auld MS way of things, so either way, you'll always have a career prospect.

MrWenger1982

I don't plan on becoming a programmer but I just wanted to see other people's opinions on the matter. I am trying to push our department to incorporate Unix systems (mainly for the training) but without luck. I really enjoy my work currently with servers but I just wanted to know if people thought they were good career prospects.

I will have the opportunity to further specialise in SAN storage or Exchange in the summer. What do people think is the better avenue career wise?

Cake Fiend

MrWenger1982 wrote:

I am trying to push our department to incorporate Unix systems (mainly for the training) but without luck

[OT a bit] Get used to this - unfortunately, management (especially Microsoft-heads) generally seem to have an overpowering fear of change, and Linux, BSD, etc are still considered kind of hippy-OSs by some and aren't taken seriously. If you train yourself in UNIX-like systems on your own initiative (at home or whatever), you can use that to get certified at some stage and see if you like the UNIX route. If you're the type of person who likes to be challenged, I very much doubt you'll be happy adminning Exchange servers for the rest of your days...

DublinWriter

MrWenger1982 wrote:

Hi,
I am a recent college graduate starting out on my career. I have recently started a great new job as a server analyst. The pay is roughly 30k plus great benefits such as health insurance, pension scheme etc. There is also a lot of travel involved in it too.

I am hoping to become MCSE certified as soon as I can. How long would this normally take if I were to work hard? Are there 7 exams in total?

An aside note, am I wasting my time in servers from a long term career perspective? I see programming jobs seem to be better paid but to be honest, I have no interest in it. Any of my friends who are programmers hate their work and the people they work with. I would like to be self employed one day so is the IT a good avenue to go down?

I would really appreciate any advise going? Thanks

The trouble with vendor certification is that it locks you into one particular narrow technical focus and many people forget that your vendor qualification can be taken back off you if you don't do the neccessary update exams.

I spent many 100's of hours getting a CNE (the MSCE of it's day) and it's a worthless piece of paper now. I'm almost 20 years in IT now, did a BSc at night in TCD while working and currently doing an MSc, and they (will) open more doors for me than anything else.

IT as a career is a tough one to call as the lack of a centralised professional standards body in this country, or any, makes an IT career path a bit hit and miss.

The bottom line is do what you love.

Personally, I like programming and I've been self-employed for almost 10 years now and have worked all over Europe.

If I were you I'd get some niche hardware skills together - maybe SAN, check out maybe networking stuff and the CISCO qualifications, or even Linux. You'd know more than me. Make yourself indispenceable in one particular area that's in demand and will continue to be.

Good luck!

Cake Fiend

DublinWriter wrote:

The trouble with vendor certification is that it locks you into one particular narrow technical focus and many people forget that your vendor qualification can be taken back off you if you don't do the neccessary update exams.

I'd agree with this, but the MCSE in particular can look well on a CV and is pretty universally valued (despite the fact that any 18-year-old with an interest in computers might have more real-world knowledge than an MCSE). Also, the MCSEs tend to last a decent while (the 2000 MCSE is still valid) and it's usually only one or two exams to update it.

With this guy's lack of professional experience, I'd say the MCSE is worth getting under the belt (provided it's a starter rather than the meat and potatoes).

MrWenger1982

I have about a year and a half's worth of server experience as I worked with them on work placement also. MSCE's are highly spoken of from most other people in my group. It seems to look quite good on somebody's CV especially for me who is only just out of college.

DublinWriter

MrWenger1982 wrote:

It seems to look quite good on somebody's CV especially for me who is only just out of college.

Says it all really. Most people I know working in the hardware/server arena wouldn't even be graduates.

TBH, if I had to chance to do it all again, I would have avoided IT completely, but I'm just old and bitter!

TempestSabre

DublinWriter wrote:

Says it all really. Most people I know working in the hardware/server arena wouldn't even be graduates.

TBH, if I had to chance to do it all again, I would have avoided IT completely, but I'm just old and bitter!

Ditto on both.