What do you do?

I noticed last year when I was looking at a lot of resumes and now that I'm looking at some more that a lot of people had certs that I knew nothing about. Autodesk offers a number of certs in the end user, professional, and specialist category for a variety of their software. Stuff like AutoCad, Revit, Plant 3D design and such.

Out of boredom I took a couple at the local community college. To say I was not impressed was an understatement. I would say that if you can open a web page you could have passed the user test with an hour of study without havintg seen the software before. If you had ever looked at a drawing on paper you could have passed the professional test without about 2-3 hours of study. The specialization maybe a day of study.

They had a practical part and a multple choice test. For all 3 they revolved around knowing how to do something "where to click" once they told you what they wanted. Well considering there's at least 3 ways to do anything in all their products I thought it was much ado about nothing. They tried to lump in all their stuff since their software still revolves around the command line for us old timers, the menu system they abandoned yet still have it hidden, and now the ribbon that they caved in to microsoft on.

Very little had to do with actually using the software. I wrote autodesk a letter telling them in at least 2 questions on the specialization test on autocad and revit they were wrong. Not suprising since they keep all the stuff in for legacy from the mid 80's and some of the people working on the stuff now weren't born then.

I did learn that seeing those certs on a resume is nothing more than filler.

Borzak_sl said:

Good deal, what part of the world?

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Texas side of Lake Texoma, but will travel a lot. Apparently we have clients in about 16 different states, sounds like I need to learn about Nascar and the drivers. Second day on the job I spent the afternoon at Jimmy Houston's place and shot the shit with him for a couple hours.

Not bad, sounds like a good way to meet people and landowners. At least in forestry and wildlife management landowners will kind of follow a good manager more than the company they work for. Friend of mine that is a game warden patrols that area a lot and lives in Sherman.

I went to school with a guy who dated Rick Clunn's daughter for a while. He was the goto guy to get fishing gear lol.

I haven't heard the name Jimmy Houston in about 20 years, thanks. I wasn't sure what happened to him.

Bill Dance designed the lake here in conjunction with the US Forest Service. If you ever meet him make sure to trip him lol.

Borzak_sl said:

Not bad, sounds like a good way to meet people and landowners. At least in forestry and wildlife management landowners will kind of follow a good manager more than the company they work for. Friend of mine that is a game warden patrols that area a lot and lives in Sherman.

I went to school with a guy who dated Rick Clunn's daughter for a while. He was the goto guy to get fishing gear lol.

I haven't heard the name Jimmy Houston in about 20 years, thanks. I wasn't sure what happened to him.

Bill Dance designed the lake here in conjunction with the US Forest Service. If you ever meet him make sure to trip him lol.

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Apparently it's Bill Dance's son-in-law that's now doing the lake design/consulting and uses his name. I don't want to say too much on a public forum but I hear he should stick to his other day job.

Flipmode_sl said:

So what part of the IT field has the best future? Programming, Desktop Admin, Network Admin, or Security? I'm finding it difficult just to even break in.

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I, personally, wouldn't just set out and say "I want to be a programmer." I met way too many people who thought programming was for them in college and suddenly realized that coding sucks balls in their opinion. It takes a bit of a different mindset to be a developer and do it for 40 hours a week every week.

Tenks_sl said:

I, personally, wouldn't just set out and say "I want to be a programmer." I met way too many people who thought programming was for them in college and suddenly realized that coding sucks balls in their opinion. It takes a bit of a different mindset to be a developer and do it for 40 hours a week every week.

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I'm doing a degree in Network Admin but there seems to be a lot of crossover between this, Security, and System Admins. I picked the support side over programming for the exact reasons you mentioned. But instead of having your job outsourced, seems these positions are being insourced with H1B visa workers.

TheBeagle_sl said:

Apparently it's Bill Dance's son-in-law that's now doing the lake design/consulting and uses his name. I don't want to say too much on a public forum but I hear he should stick to his other day job.

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The one here in MS is in the national forest and relatively new. I'm not sure which one designed it but like you said it has his name on it. It's doing really well and consistently produces 10lb+ bass and I think the record is 13. Pretty small lake tho (1000 acres), it's been a real boon for the area tho. Pulls people from New Orleans and Baton Rouge 2 hours away to fish it a lot.

Flipmode_sl said:

I'm doing a degree in Network Admin but there seems to be a lot of crossover between this, Security, and System Admins. I picked the support side over programming for the exact reasons you mentioned. But instead of having your job outsourced, seems these positions are being insourced with H1B visa workers.

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Learn SDN.
Physical Networking still has value but will be eaten away over the next decade.

Yes, I am biased

Borzak_sl said:

The one here in MS is in the national forest and relatively new. I'm not sure which one designed it but like you said it has his name on it. It's doing really well and consistently produces 10lb+ bass and I think the record is 13. Pretty small lake tho (1000 acres), it's been a real boon for the area tho. Pulls people from New Orleans and Baton Rouge 2 hours away to fish it a lot.

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Nice. I'm new to this area of fisheries work so I have a lot to learn but I am looking forward to having access to some premier private fishing lakes. There is one lake we manage that because of it's low pH (5.4) has to be propped up in a big way by feeders but ends up producing 3lb bluegill and charges upwards of $1000/day for access.

The Pond Boss Richmond Mill Lake...a legacy in the making - Bluegill - Big Bluegill

I enjoy programming so doing it for work is a no-brainer, that's like the ideal job for many people. If I hated programming I can't even imagine how shitty of a career it would be.

Don't forget the cloud bro! No computers! Oh my God!

The hardware tech side of IT is certainly falling/fallen away from being a decent choice, as end devices are becoming progressively more just FRUs at this point. Something's not working right? Replace it. The days of troubleshooting a virus for the most part are gone, as the default response is "load a working backup" in basically every instance. I'm not exactly sure how good specifically focusing on security would be, as the average level of security knowledge required by even entry level positions has been climbing pretty rapidly. You can't do anything without carefully taking the security and ease of use into mind, unless you are just working helpdesk tier 1 stuff. It certainly wouldn't be the worst area to focus on, I don't think. The programming side specifically you might be S.O.L. on unless you start working on a CS degree. Unless you get kind of lucky or know the right people, not having at least a BA in CS or some engineering stuff is going to be a huge problem, and specifically programming network applications/code is probably being shopped out to guys with quite a bit of experience in the field.

Borzak has some solid advice. Find a company that just needs an onsite IT guy to do whatever (usually A/V stuff for meetings, managing their phones/email, fixing paper jams, etc) and ride that until better options open.

Yeah it's probably boring as shit for a real tech person. But the smaller companies really get attached to someone who can just make it work. They're not looking for the latest and greatest and get attached to someone who hasn't got them sold on something that eventually turned into a money pit. As an example the last place I worked the IT ate lunch with me and another VP every day, and his office was next to ours. I don't think he had an IT degree either, but had been with the company now 15 years or so. I think he started out as someone who just came out to fix problems at their office in Phoenix and such. They moved him to TX and now he covers all 3 offices/shops.

Thanks for all the advice. It's tough decision to try and decide where to go career wise next. I make ok money as a Respiratory Therapist. I just don't want to do this anymore. I make about 65k a year and the wife makes about 60 so we pull in decent money for AZ. I know I'll take a pay cut initially but the upside is higher in IT from what I'm told and I'm kinda at my earning threshold in my current field. I figure if I have to work another 25 years, may as well get the most money out of it.

My hospital loves virtualization. Maybe that's a good path to focus too (goes with all the virtual networking stuff too).

Flipmode_sl said:

Thanks for all the advice. It's tough decision to try and decide where to go career wise next. I make ok money as a Respiratory Therapist. I just don't want to do this anymore. I make about 65k a year and the wife makes about 60 so we pull in decent money for AZ. I know I'll take a pay cut initially but the upside is higher in IT from what I'm told and I'm kinda at my earning threshold in my current field. I figure if I have to work another 25 years, may as well get the most money out of it.

My hospital loves virtualization. Maybe that's a good path to focus too (goes with all the virtual networking stuff too).

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I think you had said you were going for networking stuff (CCNA). Maybe use your connections at the hospital to get into their IT department? Networking at hospitals, especially security, is exploding. Might lead to something?

Fuck man, I hate this job. Fuck this.