Jobs in IT industry...

A

ArJay

Hey Folks...

Just finished reading this thread about work in the trades...great thread and interesting read BTW.

On a similar note.....just wondering how many in here work in IT?

Currently studying Net Admin P/T. Is anyone working in the field?

Was hoping to get some feedback on your good/bad experiences and what to look out for or stay away from in the industry in general.

Cheers in advance...
Rory :)
 
I think you'll find a lot of people here from the IT industry.

My #1 bit of advice for anyone in the IT industry - stay away from any role where you aren't constantly learning new things - new products, programming languages, techniques, whatever.

You need to keep your eye on the next generation of hot technology and make sure you position yourself to be able to take advantage of that - not just because that's where the good jobs/projects will be, but more importantly because the old technology WILL become obsolete - and if you can't make the transition, your employability will drop.

Multi-skilling outside the IT industry is also very important - if you are also a finance wiz, or are great at selling, or you have management experience and credentials, or you are an experienced educator ... etc etc - all of these things make you far more valuable and employable than just your tech skills. Some of this is likely to be irrelevant to a network admin person - but management, project management, sales, relationship management, etc are all useful skills for pretty much everyone.

Don't wait for your employer to train you on the tech stuff - get out there and learn it on your own ... there's a tonne of resources about just about everything available online.

Good luck!
 
I used to work in IT - quite low level stuff though, unix kernel programming mostly.

I've just taken extended leave to produce a small sticky humanoid to terrorise my cat, but I still do sort of IT related stuff. Mostly web design/php, 3D modelling, texturing and animation.
 
I manage an awesome crew of IT staff.

In general when recruiting, we have found most uni degrees (I have a lot of Masters of IT, and Masters of this, that, and the other thing applying) have very little weight (other than perhaps a basic bachelors degree).

We tend to look now much more for industry based certification - eg CCNA, CCIE, MCSA, MCSA, CCA etc

Cheers,

The Y-man
 
So where is the big money in IT, or if you wanted a career change and were just starting out in IT, where is IT expanding and an under supply of staff exist? where is the oversupply of workers and a shrinking of demand?
Where is the big money being earned in IT and where do you start out to get there?
I have a sales background and business management so I'm assuming that including that would be of benefit to me initially but maybe not in the long term.


Sorry for the 20 questions nut I just googled all those industry based qualifications and had some questions.

Cheers


***Edit, seems network Engineers is where the money's at. Holy smokes! and Sales seems to be extremely well paid.
 
Last edited:
shady said:
So where is the big money in IT, or if you wanted a career change and were just starting out in IT, where is IT expanding and an under supply of staff exist? where is the oversupply of workers and a shrinking of demand?
Click to expand...

We had trouble filling our first/second level tech helpdesk in Melbourne at $55k. In Sydney, this will be as high as $70k. (MCP). It's probably the entry level. Learn as much as you can of the back end while on a helpdesk, get some courses and certificates under your belt.

If you get hold of a MCSA/MCSE, then move onto Level 2 desktop support and/or sys admin (in a small bis, you'd be 'all in one", in larger enterprises, you need to start specialising).

Alternativley, you might go for your CCNA, and start moving into the NW support area. You will probably also need some training on specific gear used in the organisation (Cisco, HP, Juniper, Pix, Radware, Packeteer, etc)

Cheers,

The Y-man
 
Thanks heaps for the feeback guys...

Y-Man, I'm currently studying thru TAFE which I'm finding a lot more hands on than uni....would you say tho that I'd be wise(er) to get a certification?

Also, can you walk into sys admin type work without previous exeperience or do you really need to go via the help desk route and work up from there?

R:)
 
Usually the helpdesk route. But with some good education behind you, its easy to move up.

The business side of IT is going really well at the moment, the non-technical side of it.

SAP, and in particular SAP/HR skills seem to be in extremely short supply at the moment.

IMHO, the network engineer field is probably going to be flooded soon, with so many people doing CCNAs and CCNEs etc. It happened with MCSEs. I remember you could write your own cheque if you had one, then after a while you needed one just to work on a helpdesk!
 
and just to throw the cat amongst the pigeons...

All I've heard of here is MCSA/MCSE. Microsoft are no the be all and end all of IT. :rolleyes:

No offence to anyone who works with those quals but there is far more to IT than just Windows and windows admins are a dime a dozen. Though finding good ones is not an easy task.

I would also look heavily into Linux. For one, it's free and there is an abundant amount of information teaching it online. This will give you a grounding to work as a Linux admin. There are plenty of emerging well paid positions in that field. You also get the added benefit of learning how a Unix system works which will give you a grounding with AIX, HPUX and Solaris not to mention Vmware ESX, Cisco kit (with linux at it's core), firewalls etc etc.

You can also hone skills on perl, php, apache, ruby etc etc. Any of the core web based technologies will make you highly employable and the majority of the worlds "Web" runs on Linux based servers.

Windows alone doesn't necessarily make you highly desirable to an employer.

You could also avoid the need to work your way up through helpdesk, desktop support (yuk!), etc, trying to get to be a well paid MS admin.

Unix is also viewed as being more specialised and hence generally attracts better salaries.

At present the Unix market is very short on people so it wouldn't hurt to cross skill into that area and as said above, extra skill, such as project management, can be well worth getting into if/when you have the chance.

I've heard that some of our PM's earn in excess of $250k (usually on a contract basis).

Cheers,

Arkay.
 
The business side of IT is going really well at the moment, the non-technical side of it.

SAP, and in particular SAP/HR skills seem to be in extremely short supply at the moment.
Click to expand...

Currently working in the functional side of SAP in logistics, merchandising, some HR and whatever I find needs to be done. Our company literally considered sending an employee to India to train because SAP Australia cannot provide the training. Even if our company want to spend the $ hire the right people - we can't find them in Australia, the last employee we hired came from Africa. All that equates to high salary, high hourly rates and some people with SAP skills command 100K salaries easily.

Been in technical support/helpdesk - pretty mundane stuff and you get sick of it easily - better to upskill yourself where there's demand but not many people with the same skillset - ie stand out from the crowd
 
Yep working in IT.

Sys Admin role, bit of MS stuff 1500 servers, less Netware stuff say 100 servers, a few SUSE Linux boxes, a few VMWare ESX servers.

The project management has always paid well. Specialise that gives less options but higher pay.

Industry certs seem far more job friendly than a degree or diploma. Citrix, cisco, vmware, microsoft, novell, redhat, sun, hp, ibm.

Probalby the best thing is to look at job ads and see what looks interesting and then work on getting the stuff they are expecting. Most certs can be done as self study, either buy the material or download it. Emule is great for getting study material.

Have a look on IT Seek - http://it.seek.com.au

Regards
Graeme
MCSE, CNE, B.Bus (IT)
 
quoll said:
Industry certs seem far more job friendly than a degree or diploma. Citrix, cisco, vmware, microsoft, novell, redhat, sun, hp, ibm.

Probably the best thing is to look at job ads and see what looks interesting and then work on getting the stuff they are expecting. Most certs can be done as self study, either buy the material or download it. Emule is great for getting study material.
Click to expand...

Ok thanks Graeme, great advice...I'll do that...makes much more sense focusing on a goal and tayloring the qualifications to suit.

I guess one further question is i see a few posts here and there about people looking to get out of the industry....
Is there a prob with burnout?

Rory :)
 
Last edited:
I guess one further question is i see a few posts here and there about people looking to get out of the industry....
Is there a prob burnout?
Click to expand...

Not really. Not from my perspective anyway.

Basically anything you do is going to get tired after a while. Even if you change it up a bit and move around and do different aspects of it.

One thing I haven't seen mentioned is the on-call side of IT.

It's not uncommon to work ridiculous hours outside of a normal 9-5 day.

My longest straight shift is 40 hours without sleep. Am on-call every 3 weeks (for 2 weeks, primary/secondary). It does eat into lifestyle and very few IT jobs pay overtime and usually pay a pittance for being on-call.

I'm fortunate enough to be payed double time for OT and get a healthy on-call allowance but even at those rates at times no amount of money can make up for what you may miss out on.

e.g. We had a major server crash last Christmas. I was on-call. Spent the whole day at work (9 hours). No amount of money makes up for missing Christmas with your kids.

So don't go in with rose coloured glasses. There's some great IT jobs out there, but there's more lousy ones.

My advice, never ever work for an outsourcer if you can avoid it. Maybe use it as a stepping stone. But outsource houses underquote to get jobs and have to make up the difference anyway they can. Usually the only fat in it is how hard they can milk their staff. So you end up with overworked, underpayed, unhappy people in a not very nice environment to spend your day in. Until you leave for greener pastures ;)

Cheers,

Arkay.
 
Arkay said:
My longest straight shift is 40 hours without sleep. Am on-call every 3 weeks (for 2 weeks, primary/secondary). It does eat into lifestyle and very few IT jobs pay overtime and usually pay a pittance for being on-call.
Click to expand...

My staff are paid a minimum 1 hour for each call received out of hours, and then are paid in blocks of 1 hour thereafter. If they return to work within 10 hours of work being performed, their next day is double time.

Cheers,

The Y-man
 
Y-man,

Not bad. At least if you get a lot of little easy fixes overnight. 30 mins work for 1 hour pay for being woken up at 4am is ok. Though if you get woken at 12, 2, 4, 6 it's rough to only get 4 hrs pay for that.

The continuous time for next day is pretty rare these days but only fair. Wish we had have got that one through :D

Do you find your guys tend to take the 10 hour break or just come in as usual anyway?
Are they encouraged to take the break?

We went through a big phase of flattening the OT for the whole organisation. Sat on committee for 6 months arguing for our upper management to then turn around and limit OT to time in lieu at 1:1. Even had one manager try to tell us that a 15 min job at 3am meant you could come in to work 15 mins late!

Consequently NO work got done out of hours until they realised it just wasn't viable and went back to paying us double time :)

Have also worked in places where I accumulated 70 days of time in lieu (no payed overtime available), then lost the lot when management changed... Grrrr.. Lesson learnt.

I believe in fair pay for work performed. These companies are not charities, or small startups, and I won't "donate" my time.

It's surprising just how many people do!

Cheers,

Arkay.
 
Arkay said:
Y-man,

Not bad. At least if you get a lot of little easy fixes overnight. 30 mins work for 1 hour pay for being woken up at 4am is ok. Though if you get woken at 12, 2, 4, 6 it's rough to only get 4 hrs pay for that.
Click to expand...

Oops ...correction - I reread the policy.

It is one hour minimum paid at the relevant overtime rates :) So if you are called before 20:30 you would be on time and a half, after which you would be on double rate for each hour (bloody confusing...).

Cheers,

The Y-man
 
A good mate of mine works as a Network engineer (I think) for a rather large company on Sydney CBD, I sent him an email asking him which direction I should move in and I'd like to post his response for any feedback from other IT professionals. I'm seeing him on the weekend and hopefully I can have a few more questions for him.
I dont understand what half of it actually is but all the big words an acronyms sound impressive

Part 1 - Where the money is (written by xxxxx xxxxx himself)

>From my experience with IT I have learned that like Finance, IT is usually a cost centre to a company.. With that in mind the focus benefits and $ bonuses are more focused on the front end/money making departments. If you could get yourself into a position with an IT company I think the better off you would be (rather than working for an IT deparment in a company that doesn't sell IT)

I have been attending a lot of IT seminars lately and what the BIG guys like Symantec and MS are saying is that IT will eventually be the department that will lead a company into the future.

There are a few big things that will challenge IT in the future.

1. Data Management - With the growth of data, there will be a need to have it accessible, secure, searchable and optimised. There is a new technology out called DeDuping, I believe this is the way of the future. In the long term it will safe companies literally millions of dollars in IT infrastructure. There is WAY too much data out there. For a company (such a Hudson) we have terabytes of information that is duplicated on our SAN. Not only does this take up unnecessary space on our SAN but also warrant long back up times and network activity. With deduping implemented, a company may only need to backup 2% of it's current data on a nightly bases. Huge cost saving for a company.
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/kevin_kelly_on_the_next_5_000_days_of_the_web.html - this is a great video regarding internet growth.

2. Ediscovery - E-Discovery - Electronic discovery (also called e-discovery or ediscovery) refers to any process in which electronic data is sought, located, secured, and searched with the intent of using it as evidence in a civil or criminal legal case. Court-ordered or government sanctioned hacking for the purpose of obtaining critical evidence is also a type of e-discovery. (See http://www.elaw.net.au/discovery.htm for more information)
Each year, Gartner emphasizes that e-discovery functionality is becoming increasingly important to archive. In 2006, it advised vendors to "integrate with tools to manage the discovery process". In 2007, it added that vendors must "offer more than just search and packaging, but also provide tools for review and case management." This year, Gartner expanded its comments by also saying:
"Discovery tools are fast becoming a requirement to play in the enterprise part of the market. Robust search, review and export features are not only required but are the focus for most scalability concerns... many archiving vendors are partnering with e-discovery vendors to provide multiple options."

3. Virtualisation - VMware for example.. big cost reductions for business. We have 90 VMware servers (virtualised servers) we are saving hundreds of thousands of dollars with this solution on physical space, power, maintenance costs that would be required if these were physical boxes.

With these big factors in mind I have to tell you that these are the two huge projects me and my department are working on now. I guess I am making ok money but if you somehow got into a job on the other side of the fence (sales of this) you would be buying a house every other week.


The Cisco and Microsoft learning programs you have put down below are good they can lead into many other paths. Citrix is also good but now a days citrix are being challenged by many other vendors including VMWare. I would definitely get you to check out ESX VMware as many companies will be looking into investing into this especially now that Microsoft supports Exchange server in a virtualised environment..
 
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