The easiest job in computers?

[Rudee]

Originally posted by: invidia
My friend's dad started out as IT support some 16-18 years ago. Probably made the 25-30k a year doing that. Now he moved up to IT security and is now making $65k a year.

18 yrs of IT experience and he only makes $65k a year? That's not that great of a salary. Where I live $65k/yr is considered entry level salary for people right out of college.

 

[oddyager]

Originally posted by: Rudee

Originally posted by: invidia
My friend's dad started out as IT support some 16-18 years ago. Probably made the 25-30k a year doing that. Now he moved up to IT security and is now making $65k a year.

18 yrs of IT experience and he only makes $65k a year? That's not that great of a salary. Where I live $65k/yr is considered entry level salary for people right out of college.

Depends on the field? Most CS majors right out of school won't even see that around NYC (unless you are top flight) and even then no post grad will see 65K. That is however low pay for a job in a big city and with that many years of experience but for all I know he may be living in a much smaller town.

 

[ultimatebob]

Sounds like he wants a night shift job in an IT operations center. They spend most of their time looking at status screens waiting for things to break, and might actually do an hour of real work in a 12 hour overnight shift. Profoundly boring job, though.

 

[evident]

rofl

 

[Nightfall]

OP,

If you are serious about getting into the IT field, there are a few things you have to know and do. Here are the impressions I get from your post.

1. You don't have current skills in IT right now. You have probably dabbled with computers but you are no expert.
2. You have no formal training in computers.
3. You have no formal education in computers.

If you want to get to that kind of salary level, you will need to get a degree, no doubt about it. Sure, people without degrees can get jobs like what you want, but they are few and far between. Now, you say you want to build/repair systems. Thats a good thing because you are going to be doing that for a few years to build your experience. Lastly, you are going to need a couple certifications like the A+, Network+, CCNA, MCSA, or something along those lines.

As someone who has done hiring in IT, there are 3 qualifications that all hiring managers look at when it comes to hiring in IT.

1. Experience - The most important. Having 10 years working on servers and networks will get you very far. However, in order to get that kind of experience, it requires a couple years working for lower paying jobs working on computers, doing help desk support, and so on. No matter if you have a degree or certifications or not, you will need to work your way up the ladder.

2. Education - A solid bachelors degree in computer information systems will help huge. The biggest thing it does is opens doors for you. The first lower paying job you will make more at which makes the job more tolerable.

3. Certifications - They bolster the top 2 qualifications, but never replaces them. There used to be a time where you could get your MCSE and make 100k a year without experience or education. Those times are over. Now certifications help build on experience and education.

I don't know how old you are, so I don't know what your time frame is or money situation. I will assume you have been working full time up until now doing something else in a different field. Here is what you do.

1. Apply to go to college part time.
2. Find a part time job or full time job working in technology somewhere. It will be a low paying job but you can find one doing hardware/software support on a helpdesk or building computers.

You should work toward your college degree and continue to work hard at your job to get experience. Certifications can also help if you can fit them in. Getting your A+ and Network+ are good starter certs.

You will not be making 60k in a short period of time. It will take you 6-10 years at least for you because you don't have the experience or education or certs right now. It will take a while, but you will get there. The question is, how hard do you want to work to get there?

 

[Nightfall]

Originally posted by: Rudee

Originally posted by: invidia
My friend's dad started out as IT support some 16-18 years ago. Probably made the 25-30k a year doing that. Now he moved up to IT security and is now making $65k a year.

18 yrs of IT experience and he only makes $65k a year? That's not that great of a salary. Where I live $65k/yr is considered entry level salary for people right out of college.

Depends on where you live. Here in MI, 65k a year for security with 8-10 years is spot on. In Chicago, its 90k.

 

[Mr Pickles]

You sound like an idiot. You are insulting the people that have chosen "computers" as a career so expect to get flamed. So what happened? Your WoW account expired and your parents won't pay for it anymore so you figured hey, you can drag add-ons into the add-on folder of the game and configure them to look cool so maybe you can get a computer job?

You aren't going to get paid that. If you want to get paid that then get some education under your belt. You're going to need something better than a clean criminal record to make your lazy ass look attractive.

If you really do have some die-hard love for computers then find a consulting firm. They'll assign you to helpdesk jobs. You'll make decent money by the hour and for the first few months you'll be a complete waste of their time as the companies find out how much you don't know and shove you right back to the firm. It will be great experience...

 

[Mr Pickles]

Originally posted by: invidia
My friend's dad started out as IT support some 16-18 years ago. Probably made the 25-30k a year doing that. Now he moved up to IT security and is now making $65k a year.


Going from 35k to something like 60k takes over 8-10 years to achieve; if you consider that a short period of time.

No offense to your friend's father, but no it doesnt. 35k to 60k can take about 3 years to do. You'll need a helpdesk job and a very disciplined regiment of cert education, but it can be achieved.

 

[0roo0roo]

best buy geek squad
dude seems to have a misconception of "computer job"

 

[TheKub]

Originally posted by: Nightfall

Depends on where you live. Here in MI, 65k a year for security with 8-10 years is spot on. In Chicago, its 90k.

Yep. I have a BS and 8 years of desktop support. Best Ive ever done is ~45k, that is government now, so I could probably make a bit more private (at a loss of some benefits or stuck around for more than 2 years).

No certs currently, and no real plans on getting them (I prefer experience over paper). Though Im sick of desktops and want to move up and may have to get some just so they can put a check mark in that box on the app.

 

[ultimatebob]

Originally posted by: 0roo0roo
best buy geek squad
dude seems to have a misconception of "computer job"

Something tells me that people who work for Geek Squad don't last very long. The combination of having to deal with stupid computer users and the guilt of overcharging them has to get tiring after awhile.

 

[0roo0roo]

lol yea that place is horror stories galore. incompetence = more money

 

[Nightfall]

Originally posted by: Mr Pickles

Originally posted by: invidia
My friend's dad started out as IT support some 16-18 years ago. Probably made the 25-30k a year doing that. Now he moved up to IT security and is now making $65k a year.


Going from 35k to something like 60k takes over 8-10 years to achieve; if you consider that a short period of time.

No offense to your friend's father, but no it doesnt. 35k to 60k can take about 3 years to do. You'll need a helpdesk job and a very disciplined regiment of cert education, but it can be achieved.

It goes far beyond just getting a certification. It also has to do with your level of experience and how hard you work after you leave work. Then you have networking. If you have the right group of people to talk to, you can get a job with great pay with limited experience.

You are right though. In order to make 35k grow to 60k in 3 years, its very doable. Just things have to fall in place for you WHILE you are working hard at bettering yourself. That isn't the norm though.

 

[Platypus]

I'll just paste what I said in your last thread... read it this time.

The internet is a wonderful free resource.. read about computers and figure them out. Even if you go to college and/or study and get certs you're not going to learn how to do anything unless you figure it out for yourself. If you don't think you'll be able to put in that kind of commitment then just don't bother with this field, honestly. You cannot be good at maintaining servers unless you have programming skills in my opinion.. even having basic skills is better than nothing. On that note, how do you plan on maintaining websites/databases if you do not understand code?

You cannot build/repair computers intelligently if you don't understand the hardware and how to build servers for specific tasks, etc.

 

[ultimatebob]

Originally posted by: Platypus
I'll just paste what I said in your last thread... read it this time.

The internet is a wonderful free resource.. read about computers and figure them out. Even if you go to college and/or study and get certs you're not going to learn how to do anything unless you figure it out for yourself. If you don't think you'll be able to put in that kind of commitment then just don't bother with this field, honestly. You cannot be good at maintaining servers unless you have programming skills in my opinion.. even having basic skills is better than nothing. On that note, how do you plan on maintaining websites/databases if you do not understand code?

You cannot build/repair computers intelligently if you don't understand the hardware and how to build servers for specific tasks, etc.

I don't know... maybe we should give him an IT homework assignment and see how he does!

Redfella: I want you to build us a CentOS-based Apache web server with PHP and a MySQL backend database. The web server needs to be Internet-facing (use a dynamic DNS service if you can't get a fixed IP address), fully patched, and secured to the point where it will pass an NSA security scan. This assignment will be due on Sunday by 6 PM Eastern time.

If he can actually complete that on time by himself, I'd give him a job recommendation!

 

[Platypus]

Originally posted by: ultimatebob

Originally posted by: Platypus
I'll just paste what I said in your last thread... read it this time.

The internet is a wonderful free resource.. read about computers and figure them out. Even if you go to college and/or study and get certs you're not going to learn how to do anything unless you figure it out for yourself. If you don't think you'll be able to put in that kind of commitment then just don't bother with this field, honestly. You cannot be good at maintaining servers unless you have programming skills in my opinion.. even having basic skills is better than nothing. On that note, how do you plan on maintaining websites/databases if you do not understand code?

You cannot build/repair computers intelligently if you don't understand the hardware and how to build servers for specific tasks, etc.

I don't know... maybe we should give him an IT homework assignment and see how he does!

Redfella: I want you to build us a CentOS-based Apache web server with PHP and a MySQL backend database. The web server needs to be Internet-facing (use a dynamic DNS service if you can't get a fixed IP address), fully patched, and secured to the point where it will pass an NSA security scan. This assignment will be due on Sunday by 6 PM Eastern time.

If he can actually complete that on time by himself, I'd give him a job recommendation!

The OP just sounds like the typical 'I hear there's great money in computers' type of person with no real interest at an engineering level in how they work. I just cannot understand the kind of attitude displayed thus far. OP if you're just doing this because you want an easy high paying job I really urge you to just not bother.. the industry really doesn't need more people like that out there.

I can't phrase this in a way that doesn't sound like a slam on you but take my word that I'm trying to be genuinely helpful here.

 

[redfella]

I know I was a little brash with my original post, so I apologize for that. I seemed to have made a few people flustered and maybe even a couple people to the point of actually being upset. That wasn't my intention. I wrote the post in a hasteful flurry.

Anyhow, I do have some ability to use computers as evidenced here. I was really into level design for a few years and thought I wanted to go that route, but ultimately decided it wasn't for me. The hours are too crazy for that feild (60-70+/week) and that interferes with my addiction to enjoying my free time in life (e.g. being lazy). So now I'm thinking just doing a normal computer job (you'll probably say there are no normal hours in computers).

Anyways, thanks for your help, those of you that did. I will be on my merry little way now.