So yeah to make it short I'm not sure where to go with my IT career. I got a BS and master's degree in MIS and have been working it general IT support for 11 sum years.
I started off working for a dept within my University doing tech support with Win95/NT4. Worked this job throughout my undergrad
Graduated with my BS and got a job as a staff worker in another University dept. managing a 3-man help desk and again doing regular low-level IT support stuff. Administering a few Win2K AD servers, file/print servers, COTS software, etc.
Got jaded and wandered off to Asia to teach English for a year. Wanted money again so moved back to US.
After being unemployed for a while got a sys analyst job at a small company that outsources all critical systems. I am its only IT person and there is no upward mobility.
Network & VOIP = 3rd party provider that handles everything
Email = hosted provider
Backup = hosted provider
ERP servers = hosted support
So I've become a secretary/IT tech. Any problems with regular workstations and laptops I deal with. File servers and AD Servers are also my responsibility, but anything else I pick up the phone and call some hosted provider.
So because of this scenario I don't have the environment to learn (hands on/shadowing someone smarter than me) new things may that be Cisco networking stuff, Exchange admin stuff, VMware,or DB Admin. (All of which are the "hot" IT jobs that was discussed in another thread)
I've dabbled with LAMP so I can program simple php and MySql but I really never administered it under a production environment.
As an MIS major I'm a horrible C++/Java programmer so yeah that type of development is not for me.
Where I live there aren't many/any IT jobs that pop up and if I look at the next largest city i find that they are only in need of peeps with 10 years Oracle, 6 years VM, Sys admin with a bunch of certs, networking peeps with a bunch of certs and experience, etc.
So the question is, what should I do to go about improving my situation in the IT field? Should I get some MS certs and try to get a real sys admin job? If so do most people just buy a book or take real classes or take online classes?
But yeah I'm not sure what else I can do. Most stories I've heard from other MIS peers is that they never worked in IT during school and didn't really know anything when they graduated. Somehow they got lucky and got hired on by some huge company (Intel, IBM, Honeywell, etc), started out as a simple business analyst/systems analyst, and then moved up from there by becoming a cog in the corporate wheel. So they essentially got on-the-job training and are now PMP Project managers or some IT director. They still can't even setup a simple RAID array or even reinstall Windows on a laptop but they don't have to cuz they are so high up in management that all they do is delegate those lower-level tasks.
Any advice would be helpful. I think somehow went the wrong route of infrastructure instead of management. But that's something I never understood. How can you manage well if you don't know how to do something yourself?
I started off working for a dept within my University doing tech support with Win95/NT4. Worked this job throughout my undergrad
Graduated with my BS and got a job as a staff worker in another University dept. managing a 3-man help desk and again doing regular low-level IT support stuff. Administering a few Win2K AD servers, file/print servers, COTS software, etc.
Got jaded and wandered off to Asia to teach English for a year. Wanted money again so moved back to US.
After being unemployed for a while got a sys analyst job at a small company that outsources all critical systems. I am its only IT person and there is no upward mobility.
Network & VOIP = 3rd party provider that handles everything
Email = hosted provider
Backup = hosted provider
ERP servers = hosted support
So I've become a secretary/IT tech. Any problems with regular workstations and laptops I deal with. File servers and AD Servers are also my responsibility, but anything else I pick up the phone and call some hosted provider.
So because of this scenario I don't have the environment to learn (hands on/shadowing someone smarter than me) new things may that be Cisco networking stuff, Exchange admin stuff, VMware,or DB Admin. (All of which are the "hot" IT jobs that was discussed in another thread)
I've dabbled with LAMP so I can program simple php and MySql but I really never administered it under a production environment.
As an MIS major I'm a horrible C++/Java programmer so yeah that type of development is not for me.
Where I live there aren't many/any IT jobs that pop up and if I look at the next largest city i find that they are only in need of peeps with 10 years Oracle, 6 years VM, Sys admin with a bunch of certs, networking peeps with a bunch of certs and experience, etc.
So the question is, what should I do to go about improving my situation in the IT field? Should I get some MS certs and try to get a real sys admin job? If so do most people just buy a book or take real classes or take online classes?
But yeah I'm not sure what else I can do. Most stories I've heard from other MIS peers is that they never worked in IT during school and didn't really know anything when they graduated. Somehow they got lucky and got hired on by some huge company (Intel, IBM, Honeywell, etc), started out as a simple business analyst/systems analyst, and then moved up from there by becoming a cog in the corporate wheel. So they essentially got on-the-job training and are now PMP Project managers or some IT director. They still can't even setup a simple RAID array or even reinstall Windows on a laptop but they don't have to cuz they are so high up in management that all they do is delegate those lower-level tasks.
Any advice would be helpful. I think somehow went the wrong route of infrastructure instead of management. But that's something I never understood. How can you manage well if you don't know how to do something yourself?
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