Quote (Krawk @ Jul 11 2022 08:11pm)
Hey Jay,
I highly encourage going this route as the work life balance is unbeatable and making the switch has been a life changer for me.
Okay so first of all, no college is needed, you have to find out what you want to do in the space, such as
Cloud architecture, cloud developer, system operations
Cyber security
Software engineering
Network engineering
System admin
Next you want to get your knowledge into that space, so if cloud, let’s say Amazon cloud (AWS), look for a roadmap, so AWS has associate level certs, get all 3 of those first, then get the professional ones, then get 1-2 speciality. From there build a few cool projects on AWS to showcase to employers and you make yourself a strong candidate.
Comptia has the basics, the A+ the network+ and sec+
It’s brutal and boring but if you want to get all 3 to build the foundation then do so. And then pick a route you want to go. This is what I recommend. Professor messer has a YouTube course that goes through each course in depth.
If you want to do software engineering, which is computer programming, like web development, app development then there’s tons of full stack courses in udemy for $10 that’ll set you up. If you need recommendations then lmk.
Coursera is great, I’ve helped developed a few of the programs we have on there and we’re releasing quite a bit more by the end of the year. I recommend checking out Coursera along with udemy.
You can do it man, I went from cop to Google Engineer in 3-4 months, just got to dial it in and truly understand the concepts, not just memorize it. You want to be able to fully explain the design of the specialty you choose when being interviewed, you want to show projects to prove you know the work and show that you’ve put in the time and initiative.
being able to pass the COMPTIA certs will introduce you to things/fill gaps you may have. Amazon's certs are definitely good to get, looks great on resumes but when you can actually speak to that knowledge in an interview is when it can seal the deal. depending on where you're starting off knowledge-wise you may find AWS knowledge to be irrelevant right now, you do want to generally feel like you're comfortable troubleshooting a desktop/VM if you're going to try and work up from the bottom of IT (at least with the assumptions i'm making). there are ways into the field where you don't have the general "wrench monkey" knowledge but know what buttons to click in AWS or Azure or some in-house application that you just need to learn to update. generally speaking I think it's a more stable route to just work up from the helpdesk/IT dept instead of relying on someone looking for a super junior in a SysOps role, but if you are dedicated this can work. jumping right into something like that or even a dev-side role will require you to be good at demonstrating your willingness to tackle learning new concepts. the right set of circumstances can have you land you a job over a more qualified candidate if you seem like a better fit, but every interview is different. some need someone to take off running, others see the benefit in having a 6 month start-up period if they can underpay you and keep you for a few years and just want to keep a junior always cooking. there is that person out there that interviews well, took a Udemy course on Ansible and has a Jr. devops job that basically acts like a paid internship, but this is the outlier. the great thing about this field is that no matter where you're starting from, it is the kind of thing that if you just commit to setting time aside to study/learn some more stuff consistently you can get to the goal.
I think anyone that could pass COMPTIA A+ and get 20% of the questions right on the Network+, is generally personable in an interview, knows how to open event viewer, look at it and google "why is XXXXXX.dll failing when I open/do XXXXXXX", and willing to take lower pay, can land a support/associate level role without much prior IT experience if you shop around for a company looking for it. IMO the goal should be to find a job where you are delegated the role of swapping hardware, being the person that does the hard reboots at 5:30 when everyone else went home, AD password resets... making user accounts.. etc from there you should hopefully have opportunities to learn on the job, from maybe work-sponsored courses or just asking to be involved in fixes/projects higher-ups in the dept are doing when you have downtime.
This post was edited by purplex on Jul 24 2022 09:43pm