/CCT/ Career and Cert Thread

What are you working towards? Need advice? Share your study resources!

Post it in here

If you've got a tech career:

>Job Title
>Years of Experience
>Degrees/Certs
>How did you find/get job
>Pay

Bump.

>Job Title
Help desk I
>Years of Experience
2
>Degrees/Certs
B.s. IT/none
>How did you find/get job
Applying while working at another help desk job
>Pay
$19.71/hr

I'm actually on my last week. Got a desktop support job lined up, goodbye help desk. New job is salaried, $46k/year

What's The difference between help desk and desktop support? Genuinely don't know.

>Job Title
Network Tech Tier 2
>Years of Experience
4 months
>Degrees/Certs
CCNA, half way through CCNP
>How did you find/get job
applied for it
>Pay
$31/hour, unlimited overtime at $46/hour + great benefits

how did you initially get that job? working on network+ and then CCNA next. but i have no work experience.

lied about work experience + answered all the interview questions correctly.
I think they saw I was self-motivated and I actually studied for the CCNA unlike all the dumpmonkey Pajeets out there

Is it worth going to university for computer networking or should I focus on self-learning certifications?

Which cert is the most employable out of:
>MCSE: Cloud Platform and Infrastructure
>CCNP: R&S
>CCNP: Data Center
Assuming you only have one of them?

Nope, 4 years of work experience and some relevant certs kill a degree in networking.

>Which cert is the most employable
Depends on the job. For networking, R&S gives you the most flexibility and the best knowledge baseline. You need a CCNA before going for the CCNP though.

>Job Title
Information Security Analyst
>Years of Experience
3
>Degrees/Certs
Just A+ and bachelor's in information systems
>How did you find/get job
Applied in senior year of college and did well during the interview
>Pay
75k (my starting salary was 70k)

Information security is the one of the best fields to get into right now.

>4 years of work experience

i can get the certs but i don't know where to start because i have no work experience.

Help desk is usually the most basic, tier 1 support. They take the incoming flood of clients/customers and assign things to desktop support technicians where necessary. They can do some troubleshooting themselves and can often close the ticket themselves, but otherwise they delegate to desktop or network support.

It's the equivalent of working a call center at an ISP or whatever. They often work long hours and make really shitty pay. It's generally a terrible job.

The easy mode way is to go to college and get an internship. Barrier to entry for interns is usually pretty low.

Otherwise, keep applying to a billion places until you find the one that cares more about your interview performance than your experience. Many places I know basically disregard education and work experience and just do a 2-4 hour technical interview.

The point I was trying to make was that if you were to apply those 4 years, you would be spending in school and instead work in the industry and be much more marketable to employers after those same 4 years.

You'll probably start in helpdesk but 4 years down the line could end up with a comfy, well paying career.

Thanks for the answer. I'll save my that tuition money and keep applying for helpdesk work while studying (right after making up my mind if I should go the Cisco or Microsoft route).

Are cybrary's lessons sufficient enough to earn certs such as A+? Or are there better resources that won't cost me ludicrous amounts of money?

>Job Title
Infrastructure Technician
>Years of Experience
1
>Degrees/Certs
Sec+
>How did you find/get job
Walked into the AF recruiters office.
>Pay
$45k/yr equivalent

Can a fantastic GitHub get me a job without a degree?

thanks for the help, im in my 30's and looking to better myself. what do you need for the helpdesk jobs? i got my A+ cert not too long ago and will probably get network+ soon. Can i work on CCNA and other certs while working a helpdesk job?

In programming or web development, yes.

If you have an A+ you can probably get most helpdesk jobs pretty easily. Then you can work on whatever.

Many companies will hire people for programming and IT jobs without college experience, actually. It depends on how enterprisey or governmenty the company is.

aren't the helpdesk jobs sent to the poo in the loos? or am i thinking of something else?

See my post here Yes, it's often outsourced, but it's also often insourced. It's not hard to get a helpdesk job in the US.