PompeyVillan Posted March 3, 2015 Share Posted March 3, 2015 Hi all, I was just wondering what some of you people do for a living, as I know there are some skilled and experienced individuals that peruse this forum. I'm looking to change career at the moment, with a view to working in 'IT'. Ultimately, I'd like to be working in networking, as this is something at interests me at this early stage. I'm looking to take the CompTIA A+ exam in a few months, to show a general tech competency and then move next to look at something more specific. Perhaps the Cisco CCNA, at the open university. What do y'all do? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
darrenm Posted March 3, 2015 Share Posted March 3, 2015 I'm kind of a jack of all trades, I've been doing the IT thing since writing games on my MSX at 8 years old and I'm now 37. Current job is as a general sysadmin, LAMP developer, MySQL DBA, systems architect and overall dogsbody. CCNA is always useful. You get to use the real iOS 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tegis Posted March 3, 2015 VT Supporter Share Posted March 3, 2015 I'm kind of a jack of all trades, Same here, I did a stint as a pure MS-Exchange admin in the early 2000s but got bored very quickly doing just one thing. It does hurt the wallet a bit though not being super-elite at one thing but on the other hand there are loads of jobs around. I'm currently on a "refuse-stupid-license" triad after being burned by: Microsoft: Oh, you want to license the SQL-server for virtualistation? That'll be a gazillion dollars for each core in each possible v-motion-based host. Netapp: Oh, you actually want to save data on your SAN? You'll need a licensefor that, and another for backups, and another for snapshots, and another for monitoring. A gazillion dollars please Mitel: Oh, you want to be able to answer that phone you just bought, that a license please. Oh, and you want to be able to log in to it, antother license, oh you also want a connection to the PBX? One more license please. A gazillion dollars. FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUu 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PompeyVillan Posted March 3, 2015 Author Share Posted March 3, 2015 I've learned stuff by just googling the lingo in the first two posts. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
limpid Posted March 3, 2015 Administrator Share Posted March 3, 2015 Microsoft: Oh, you want to license the SQL-server for virtualistation? That'll be a gazillion dollars for each core in each possible v-motion-based host.. Proxmox / Maria / NoSQL Netapp: Oh, you actually want to save data on your SAN? You'll need a licensefor that, and another for backups, and another for snapshots, and another for monitoring. A gazillion dollars please Nimble Mitel: Oh, you want to be able to answer that phone you just bought, that a license please. Oh, and you want to be able to log in to it, antother license, oh you also want a connection to the PBX? One more license please. A gazillion dollars. Asterisk I'm an infrastructure architect. Recently specialising in bulk email and systems monitoring. You know when you get an email/text in the morning with a one hour delivery window? I sent that. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tegis Posted March 3, 2015 VT Supporter Share Posted March 3, 2015 Proxmox / Maria / NoSQL A combo of Maria and MongoDB is in the works. Looks like a tasty combo for the current project. Nimble Never heard of them. Will have a look. Dell sold me a Equallogic box the other year and the good thing there was that everything was included in the price. No nasty after-sales surprises. Asterisk Yeah, what we had but left in hope of a major player and less hassle . Major mistake. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
darrenm Posted March 3, 2015 Share Posted March 3, 2015 Proxmox / Maria / NoSQL A combo of Maria and MongoDB is in the works. Looks like a tasty combo for the current project. Nimble Never heard of them. Will have a look. Dell sold me a Equallogic box the other year and the good thing there was that everything was included in the price. No nasty after-sales surprises. Asterisk Yeah, what we had but left in hope of a major player and less hassle . Major mistake. We've moved to elasticsearch from MySQL. Incredible speed for big data when given enough IO and memory. My favourite SAN is still IBM SVC. And I much prefer FC to iSCSI. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
choffer Posted March 9, 2015 VT Supporter Share Posted March 9, 2015 I'm the guy that hires and fires the people that you (OP) aspire to be. Reading this thread reminds me that I haven't done anything remotely technical for years and frankly, I've no idea what any of you are talking about Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PompeyVillan Posted July 10, 2015 Author Share Posted July 10, 2015 Passed the CompTIA A+ this week and have been offered some extra part time work at my current place doing bits and bobs. Repairing and trouble shooting. Onto the next cert, probably the Network +. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Davkaus Posted July 11, 2015 Share Posted July 11, 2015 I'd recommend the CCENT over the NEtwork+ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PompeyVillan Posted July 11, 2015 Author Share Posted July 11, 2015 I'd recommend the CCENT over the NEtwork+ Thanks for the advice, for what reason? I quite like the Mike Myers books, and have been advised that the N+ is a good next step. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eames Posted July 13, 2015 Share Posted July 13, 2015 (edited) ^^ I manage a tech support and data quality team and tell people like the posters above what to do. I have no idea what anyone just said - I do however deliver a magnificent PowerPoint Edited July 13, 2015 by Eames Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
limpid Posted July 13, 2015 Administrator Share Posted July 13, 2015 I think you may have missed the entry sign. This is a thread about Tech jobs. There's no PowerPoint in here. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gharperr Posted August 4, 2015 Share Posted August 4, 2015 (edited) so i graduated last year with degree in computer science. Got a 2.1 (or B ) from top 20 university in UK. Havent done any programming since then as ive been mostly focusing on poker but decided i would try get back into it and look for some freelance work. Dont mind about money i just wanted to create a portfolio so was looking at the cheaper jobs....So i google freelance work and took a quick look what people were asking for...problem is...i have literally no idea where to start on ANY of the projects (not web development projects).Is this common for a graduate or am i just stupid? I dont get how people get into freelance work? Even for low pay stuff it seemed like people were asking for super advanced stuff Edited August 4, 2015 by gharperr Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheDon Posted August 5, 2015 Share Posted August 5, 2015 I'm the Lead Developer/Technical Architect for a software company. We're a Microsoft house so it's the full Microsoft stack (so MVC for web, WPF for desktop, TSQL at the bottom). We've recently acquired a few other companies so we're looking at integrating all our systems together, so I'm currently looking into ESBs, and trying to steer the conversation as far away from BizTalk as I can. so i graduated last year with degree in computer science. Got a 2.1 (or B ) from top 20 university in UK. Havent done any programming since then as ive been mostly focusing on poker but decided i would try get back into it and look for some freelance work. Dont mind about money i just wanted to create a portfolio so was looking at the cheaper jobs....So i google freelance work and took a quick look what people were asking for...problem is...i have literally no idea where to start on ANY of the projects (not web development projects).Is this common for a graduate or am i just stupid? I dont get how people get into freelance work? Even for low pay stuff it seemed like people were asking for super advanced stuff Going into freelance work straight from uni is an amazingly bad idea. Most freelance work that's advertised online (especially the lower end of the market) will end up going to India because they undercut everyone, you're not going to be able to compete on price, quality, or timescales. Your best bet is entering into the permanent work force and gaining some real world development experience. If you work for a decent company you'll have people making sure you don't pick up bad habits, and you'll be able to extend your skills in a much lower risk environment. Then when you have a couple of years experience you can switch to contracting where the big money is (we're currently paying contractors between £400 and £450 a day, and they're not amazing developers by any stretch of the imagination) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tayls Posted August 6, 2015 Share Posted August 6, 2015 The Don - Who does your recruitment for contractors and do you need a hand ever? I am set to finish my job in recruitment tomorrow - and starting a career in IT. The only thing is I am starting off as a Service Desk Analyst whilst studying for an IT/Computing Degree with the OU... Not sure if I am making the right move as I am taking a knock financially!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheDon Posted August 7, 2015 Share Posted August 7, 2015 The Don - Who does your recruitment for contractors and do you need a hand ever? I am set to finish my job in recruitment tomorrow - and starting a career in IT. The only thing is I am starting off as a Service Desk Analyst whilst studying for an IT/Computing Degree with the OU... Not sure if I am making the right move as I am taking a knock financially!!! Mortimer Spinks, we've got an exclusivity agreement with them in place, but they're pretty hopeless a lot of the time! Probably because we don't like paying their full fees and have beat them down to a 10% commission. I keep telling people if you don't pay them as much as everyone else is then we're not going to get their best applicants, they'll go to people who are happy to stump up their full 30%. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tayls Posted August 7, 2015 Share Posted August 7, 2015 The Don - Who does your recruitment for contractors and do you need a hand ever? I am set to finish my job in recruitment tomorrow - and starting a career in IT. The only thing is I am starting off as a Service Desk Analyst whilst studying for an IT/Computing Degree with the OU... Not sure if I am making the right move as I am taking a knock financially!!! Mortimer Spinks, we've got an exclusivity agreement with them in place, but they're pretty hopeless a lot of the time! Probably because we don't like paying their full fees and have beat them down to a 10% commission. I keep telling people if you don't pay them as much as everyone else is then we're not going to get their best applicants, they'll go to people who are happy to stump up their full 30%. Are you able to go outside the agreement ever? If you were interested in setting up an RPO elsewhere then my (now former company) would be able to do all of your recruitment for peanuts. They recruit for some massive firms within retail banking/payments, insurance among others and have agreements in place to deliver a full RPO or work to rates set by the client for ad-hoc roles. Let me know if this would be of interest and I can hook you up with the right people to talk to. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leviramsey Posted August 8, 2015 VT Supporter Share Posted August 8, 2015 NimbleNever heard of them. Will have a look. Dell sold me a Equallogic box the other year and the good thing there was that everything was included in the price. No nasty after-sales surprises.If I may throw in a plug for my employer......for whom I do various systems/web programming tasks. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Davkaus Posted August 8, 2015 Share Posted August 8, 2015 He said he didn't want any nasty after sales surprises. Are HP still not letting people download firmware for servers unless they have a pricey support contract? Tossers. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts