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Advice on career path in IT 1
- Thread starter czxone
- Start date
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1
- #3
AIXSPadmin
MIS
We have a former student working for us - right out of college. She has been there for 9 months and was an intern for us last summer and she knows absolutely NOTHING! The company I work for is a Fortune 500 company and they only have a few openings every year in IT for "right out of college" graduates. With those few (maybe 2, AT MOST) they will not hire anyone without a few years of experience; but then it is a Fortune 500 company and the hardware costs millions and the downtime would be outrageously high to turn it over to nothing but college graduates with the expectation of giving them time to figure out where the problem is.
When you are losing thousands of dollars an hour for downtime, you want experience!
A college degree will help you throughout your life, not only in IT but if you decide to change careers; a certification is only good as long as that is the current release - and how long does any version stay current before the next release and the next certification for that release? I have 7 years of experience in AIX/SP and a bachelor's degree in business and a master's degree in education. Most people will not only change jobs a few times in their working life, but the will change careers too. If you switch from IT to say marketing, what employer is going to care if you have a certification in some old out-dated piece of software? They will care if you have a four-year degree.
Also, an MIS degree is probably more beneficial to an individual that a computer science degree because you will have a knowledge of business besides technology and businesses want a person to have business logic; unless you are going to design hardware or develop operating systems and create device drivers - which is what a CS degree would be beneficial for, go the MIS route.
When you are losing thousands of dollars an hour for downtime, you want experience!
A college degree will help you throughout your life, not only in IT but if you decide to change careers; a certification is only good as long as that is the current release - and how long does any version stay current before the next release and the next certification for that release? I have 7 years of experience in AIX/SP and a bachelor's degree in business and a master's degree in education. Most people will not only change jobs a few times in their working life, but the will change careers too. If you switch from IT to say marketing, what employer is going to care if you have a certification in some old out-dated piece of software? They will care if you have a four-year degree.
Also, an MIS degree is probably more beneficial to an individual that a computer science degree because you will have a knowledge of business besides technology and businesses want a person to have business logic; unless you are going to design hardware or develop operating systems and create device drivers - which is what a CS degree would be beneficial for, go the MIS route.
CajunCenturion
Programmer
After having read AIXSPadmin's post, I felt the need to respond paragraph by paragraph.
Para 1: Don't fall into the trap of making broad generalizations because of disappointment with one person. I accept that there are some real losers coming out of colleges with degrees, but that is NOT the rule. The vast majority of them have earned their degree and are well worth the investment.
Para 2: Agree 100%
Para 3: Agree 100%
Para 4: A CS degree from a respectable university will provide considerably more than hardware, Op Sys and Device Drivers. You'll also get Programming Theory, Data Structures, Database Systems, with potential opportunties thru electives for maybe Compilers, which can be quite beneficial when parsing SQL statements for example, and many other electives. I agree that business knowledge is a big plus, but please do not think that CS programs are so narrow and have the limited applicability implied in the previous post.
Good Luck
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As a circle of light increases so does the circumference of darkness around it. - Albert Einstein
Para 1: Don't fall into the trap of making broad generalizations because of disappointment with one person. I accept that there are some real losers coming out of colleges with degrees, but that is NOT the rule. The vast majority of them have earned their degree and are well worth the investment.
Para 2: Agree 100%
Para 3: Agree 100%
Para 4: A CS degree from a respectable university will provide considerably more than hardware, Op Sys and Device Drivers. You'll also get Programming Theory, Data Structures, Database Systems, with potential opportunties thru electives for maybe Compilers, which can be quite beneficial when parsing SQL statements for example, and many other electives. I agree that business knowledge is a big plus, but please do not think that CS programs are so narrow and have the limited applicability implied in the previous post.
Good Luck
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As a circle of light increases so does the circumference of darkness around it. - Albert Einstein
I'd like to state that if you want to best salary nowadays you should get a degree and then get a few years experience and then you will have the real $. It used to be when I entered the IT market less then ten years ago the market paid big bucks for anyone that could handle a mouse or a keyboard.
Now IT is less of a crazy gold rush and more of an everyday business. A degree becomes more and more valuable. Gary Haran
Now IT is less of a crazy gold rush and more of an everyday business. A degree becomes more and more valuable. Gary Haran
IKnowNothing
MIS
I'm all for certifications and expierence, but a degree is good for management in IT.
Assassin583@aol.com
A+, MCP.
Assassin583@aol.com
A+, MCP.
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