career in networking/it

[ITJunkie]

Originally posted by: spidey07

Originally posted by: brockj

Originally posted by: polm

I'm really not sure how important the college degree really is, unless you are completely new to the field and have no past experience. I had to work my way from PC Tech -> NT Admin -> Unix Admin -> Network Analyst (cisco, nortel, etc.) but it was worth it considering I had no degree.

Same thing here, sometimes you have to just work your way up. Get your foot in the door at a good company and they will pay for you to get all the certs and education (aside from at least a BS). Not the case for everyone, but quite a few that I know.

thing is you will hit a ceiling very early without a degree and won't be able to move forward.

This is true in my experience. I have come a long way without having a degree but after the dot com crash, it was hard as hell to find a job W/O a degree as many companies wouldn't even look at my resume.

Even with 10+ yrs of networking experience, it wasn't enough in a tight job market.
Having learned that lesson, I am working to rectify that situation now and going back to get the degree.

To the OP, there is nothing wrong with persuing the certs...they are helpful. BUT as Spidey pointed out, they will only take you so far. A degree, some certs and some experience and you will go alooooong way! 🙂

 

[thujone]

great thread.

i was considering getting some certs until i landed this contract and when talking to my manager (who is really young like me... 24) he said don't bother with most of them.

most of them aren't valued that much if the person doing the hiring at a place is a tech savy person... simply because they KNOW how many certs are "paper" certs. ie: the person knew the test answers... but probably doesn't know sh*t about real world applications.

i think the cisco certs kind of fall outside of this though... since there is some real world application required to receive it.

really though... outside of schooling i think there should be guild/apprentice types of learning experiences available AND accepted as serious forms of learning.

CS and most IT related classes at universities don't prepare you for a general IT career. they usually just prepare you to be a code mill.

i think having a schooling situation based on mostly experience and research would actually be way better for the given fields.