Ask Slashdot: Job Search Or More Education? 182
Matt Steelblade writes "I've been in love with computers since my early teens. I took out books from the library and just started messing around until I had learned QBasic, then Visual Basic 5, and how to take apart a computer. Fast forward 10 years. I'm a very recent college graduate with a BA in philosophy (because of seminary, which I recently left). I want to get into IT work, but am not sure where to start. I have about four years experience working at a grade/high school (about 350 computers) in which I did a lot of desktop maintenance and some work on their AD and website. At college (Loyola University Chicago) I tried to get my hands on whatever computer courses I could. I ended up taking a python course, a C# course, and data structures (with python). I received either perfect scores or higher in these courses. I feel comfortable in what I know about computers, and know all too well what I don't. I think my greatest strength is in troubleshooting. With that being said, do I need more schooling? If so, should I try for an associate degree (I have easy access to a Gateway technical college) or should I go for an undergraduate degree (I think my best bet there would be UW-Madison)? If not, should I try to get certified with CompTIA, or someone else? Or, would the best bet be to try to find a job or an internship?"
Find a job (Score:3, Insightful)
You should work on finding a job first. Academia tends to be very different then the work environment. A lot of companies also offer money for further training and certifications so you can always build up on that.
Get the hell out of IT (Score:5, Insightful)
The bot nets got too big for their britches. Microsoft started tracking them (cheap) and sending the American DOJ (expensive, but free for Microsoft) out to get them. Virus removal work has been plummeting ever since. Hardware is about 50 to 70% longer lived than 10 years ago, due mostly to cooler running chips. As for codemonkying, good luck competing with cheap offshore labor.
There are still jobs, but they're few and far between, and many go to Visa applicants. Your wages will be low, your hours long and you'll be on call for the rest of your life.
IT as a profession is dead unless the gov't steps in for some protection. I thought of running a lobbying group (god knows Unions are dead), but there's too many "independent thinkers" and they're basically divided and conquered. For your own well being get the hell out of IT.
If you want to be a programmer, (Score:5, Insightful)
get a degree. Programming jobs are heavily resume/GPA filtered. Unless you have someone on the inside ("who you know"), what you know will only get you so far. The great jobs, IMO, for a newbie, are best approached with a great GPA and transcript.
There is so much more to programming than just banging on a keyboard. Get a good discrete mathematical background, algorithms, data structures. Study the hardware level as well (don't sleep through Comp Arch like I did). For the best bang for your buck, dual degree CS with something else engineering related (mechanical, chemical, physics, etc). STEM is the big thing these days.
Do NOT bankrupt yourself or your future with crazy loans. Yes, "get a degree" and "don't bankrupt your future" are almost mutually exclusive these days. But even from a smaller college, a great GPA and transcript will get you in more doors.
What do you want to do? (Score:5, Insightful)
I finished my first degree, and after some futzing around decided to do a masters. While I think I could have continued to get good jobs with my BA and hobbies (I too learnt QBasic, and then downloaded QuickBasic from the net, when I was young), the second degree will get me to where I want to go faster. That's the thing, I have a direction I want to go to (which I didn't have when I finished my first degree).
With a BA and computer skills you should be able to find a varied number of jobs, including in communications type situations (you can read and write, and you can do (or learn to do) web stuff? that's all you really need). My advice, get into the work force for a couple of years and see if you can cope with the sort of jobs you are getting. If you want something extra, go and do more study.
Re:Professional languages (Score:5, Insightful)
Knowing C, IMO, is a litmus test for someone who knows how computers work. Pointers, memory, file I/O, etc, aren't directly useful in higher level languages these days. But knowing they exist would help someone write smarter code.
Re:Get the hell out of IT (Score:5, Insightful)
Hey Matt,
Don't listen to the above losers. These are the same eight guys that would complain whatever profession they ended up in.
Really.
Exactly, I get this way to much (Score:4, Insightful)
"I like computers"... it only gets worse when the hopeful claims to know "how to take them apart". Gee whiz! We got a rocket scientist here! He grasped the concept of the SCREW! Pity that by the way he phrased it, it is clear he has never managed to actually put one together again. But he has a golden future at a recycling center.
Neither is taking courses and getting perfect scores any clue. I took some exams and passed them with perfect scores even on languages I never used. It is easy. Most computer courses already give you a passing grade if you refrain from trying to eat the keyboard.
In The Netherlands, the current shortage is NOT in guys who can hook up a PC, or even those who can code. It is in people who can finish an application to specification within a budget. Coding is EASY. Coding well is harder but very few computer courses require you to write more then a few thousand lines of code. Hell, in university most students will build their own OS or something SEEMINGLY difficult. But building a base OS that just runs on one machine and doesn't really do anything is easy. Supporting an entire eco-system of hardware and making it fully functional for daily use by real people, THAT IS FUCKING HARD. Why do you think there are only so many OS'es out there? Why do think many of the "new" ones are really just Linux with a skin? (Android, Meego and its offspring, various realtime OS'es, Bada can use a Linux kernel as an option).
Same with a web application, Webshops are a booming industry yet the number of packages available is truly limited, especially ones that are any good. 4chan software is re-used on countless sites. Most forums run on the same code base.
With mobile Apps we have seen that there are PLENTY of would-be developers out there but the vast majority can just code, have a bright idea but cannot develop it. they cobble pieces together and shove it out the door with "it works for me" and wait for the money to roll in.
IF the poster wants a job in the very wide field of IT OR development (in many ways IT is so wide that development can't be considered a part of it) he FIRST needs to get an idea of what he wants to do, and then get some experience doing it.
If you came to me for a development position, no matter how junior and said "I want to do something with computers" I would tell you politely I have no room for you. Anymore then a carpenter has room for someone who wants to do something with hammers. I can teach you how to code, I might be able to teach you how to become a developer.
I can't teach someone who thinks everything that involves proximity to a computer is the same job.
I have had occasion recently to once again see the difference between a senior DEVELOPER and a senior CODER. One guy on a project I was reviewing happily showed me amazingly well written clean code with full documentation, fully complete and accurate unit tests, continues deployment. Full A+ material.
Just a tiny pity that it had taken him apparently 1.5 years to do as subproject budgetted for a few weeks in a project that was supposed to be finished in less then half a year... he had completely overshot the mark, gone completely beyond the spec and written something vastly more complex then what was needed.
And yet, he was in the company highly regarded despite essentially being worthless to the company... without the main project being ready, there was no use for his code. But the owner of the company told me, "he writes really nice code, nicer then yours, so why should I contract you to fix it". Needless to say I didn't take the interview further, if the owner of a company can't see the difference between being productive and being on a hobby project in this bosses time, there is nothing to manage except a fast exit.
Once again, coding is easy. Finding good coders is trivial. Getting a project out the door on time and with in specifications is the hard part. Don't impress me with your fancy one page script, show me shoddy