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If I'd given myself 5 years ago a piece of advice, it would probably be to understand what adulting is. Adulting is not just about self-care or taking care of plants, or paying the bills. It’s also about knowing and filing your taxes, learning how to negotiate your salary, assessing your skills, all those stuff. Believe it or not, I only learned most of that last month when a friend recommended a book called “Stop Getting Fu*cked by Technical Recruiters: A Nerd's Guide to Negotiating Salary And Benefits.” I also stopped reading books since I got my first job, so I’d also like to add that. Read a lot of books, especially self-help books. They’ll keep you sane, and I regret I only started reading again two months ago.

Document every fix you come across. This helps you learn/remember things and everyone loves the person who keeps documentation.

They'll likely have a Sharepoint/Wiki/folder full of documentation for you to work from as well. If there's something missing or needs updating - do that.

Write your documentation so that someone with no knowledge of the problem could read it, follow it and solve the issue.

https://getgreenshot.org/ - this tool is pretty great for screenshotting/annotating images.

Entry level tech is a great way to start your career - most of the issues you encounter just take a bit of Googling and common sense to fix.

If it's something you have to escalate, find out if your escalation point is happy to share the solution with you.

Before you ask for help, try some things to fix it. Let your escalation point know what you've tried as well.

DNS and BIND by Cricket Liu

Make very sure you only buy the hardcover version of this one, you're going to use it as a permanent reference forever & ever:

TCP/IP Illustrated, Vol 1: The Protocols

> What's worked

• Mostly jumping ship (that is, not negotiating internally, just getting a different offer)
• Lots of in-person networking at IT events, NANOG, etc.
  
• With one exception, never had a raise of more than $4k internally.
  
• I recommend reading Getting to Yes.

> what hasn't

• Dragging ass and making veiled threats about leaving
• Bringing in another offer -- unless you're tight w/ mgmt it's just a sign you're ready to jump; might as well just leave
• Trying to be the irreplaceable employee: in the short term I leveraged some great bennies, but then they replaced my ass with Puppet + Rancid

> and why?

It's damn near 2017 and corporate loyalty, on either side, is dead. Plus, if a company wants a new hire they need to pay the market rate (e.g. 80k to lure an experienced admin from elsewhere), meaning you can make wayyyyy more taking a new job.

Some books are excellent permanent references.

TCP/IP Illustrated, Volume 1: The Protocols (2nd Edition)

End-to-End QoS Network Design: Quality of Service for Rich-Media & Cloud Networks (2nd Edition)

Other books, as you point out are useful, but perhaps only for shorter periods of time...

It all depends on you and how hard you can push yourself. I was able to go to school at nights and complete my bachelors degree while having a full time job and raising two kids from newborn stage to toddler stage. My average day for 4 years had me was this

5am: Wake up drink coffee

515am: Start study/homework

645am: Shower, clean up for day.

7am: Leave for work

5pm: Get off work, go straight to school

6pm-10pm: Class on M/W/F, 1hr classes, 4 classes each at 3 credit hours. Did this my entire time in school to maintain full time status. I also went to school in the summer to speed up the process... No reason to let off the gas.

10pm: Go to bed recharge.

Tuesday/Thursday/Sat/Sun were my family time / added homework time.

During all of that I also completed Net+ and CCNA, granted that was not so hard as my degree program focused a lot of certification training. Had a few classes that were like CCNA prep stuff.

The schedule sucked, but I got a lot done in those 4 years. Anyone can work and go to school at the same time, you just need to accept you will loose a lot of your personal life, your free time, your hobbies, ect. There is no time to bull shit on facebook. At any given time you need to be doing something productive.

If this is the path you want to go, I HIGHLY recommend the book "Cant Hurt Me" by David Goggins, Navy Seal. Its a new book that I'm reading right now, that for sure would have helped me push even harder during this time in my life.

Cant Hurt Me: https://www.amazon.com/Cant-Hurt-Me-Master-Your-ebook/dp/B07H453KGH

There sure are books!

My favorite authors are Mike Myers and Todd Lammle.

Here's a guide for the CompTIA A+ certification.

These books can be a bit pricey, but it's EVERYTHING you need to know for the certification. If you have this book and a computer to practice on, you have everything you need to pass. The book is nearly 1,500 pages long as well. If you struggle to afford the books, you can always search online for illegal copies of older versions and possibly even the latest version that I linked. I assume the copyright police aren't going to be breaking down your doors.

The A+ certification estimates 6-9 months of hands-on training to be able to pass, but it can definitely be done in a shorter amount of time. Don't get dissuaded if after a month you feel tired of studying. Even if you don't have the means to take the exam, the information you can learn will help you so much.

I have graduated from WGU and I am currently going back for my second degree. I actually really love the school. The way that it is set up is perfect for me. The certifications that they have you get along the way to your degree really give you a leg up in the industry I feel like. (I haven't gotten to that part yet but I can certainly see that it would be a benefit down the road) I am a graduate of the business school for Information Technology management. I am currently enrolled in the BS Network Ops and Security program. I've gotten my A+, Net+ and Sec+ through WGU, with Linux LPI essentials, Cloud Essentials and CCENT coming up.

The way the school does things and gives you a 6 month term is great for someone like me who works a 45-50 hour a week high stress job. It's flexible and they actually encourage you to work on just one class at a time. The great part is that you can finish as many classes as you want in that 6 month term. I've actually finished a class in as little as 3 days. As long as you feel like you can pass the class or do what ever project/paper they want you to write, it becomes quick and easy. There's no sitting through long semester long courses of information that you already know. Their supplied material is plentiful on the IT side of things. They give you access to a lot of websites that you would normally have to pay for. Lynda.com and pluralsight.com (amazing learning tool not just for the classes you're in/going to take) to name a couple.

If you have any specific questions please feel free to ask me or shoot me a message.

Pick up Powershell in a month of lunches and grab a free month trial of pluralsight. Two great resources for learning the basics.

For your lab, check on your local craigslist; someone is always getting rid of some gear there. If not there try EBay, can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a CCNA lab kit like these: Cisco Lab Kit

Once you have lab equipment, get some windows servers spun up as that will make learning powershell both applicable and rewarding to you.

By far the best website for the base Comptia Certs is http://www.professormesser.com/ The website is free!! Comptia from my experience is only really needed if you have no experience and want to get an entry level job in IT. After that you would wanna look into the CCNA or MCSE depending on what you wanna do.

Hope this helps!

Just to give you a peace of mind, I'm gonna share that I'm utter shit too. I have almost 20 years of experience and working at a huge worldwide company. I have conducted more than a hundred interviews myself and yet, if I apply to somewhere I can't write a simple parsing script in a coding interview.

Some of us just wired this way. Also interviews are like a date. It is equally up to chemistry and luck along with correct answers to questions if you get the job.

To be useful too, a few links. Check out this for inspiration: https://rejected.us/

The best book to get an IT job: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Cracking-Coding-Interview-6th-Programming/dp/0984782850

People will tell you getting the A+ cert is a good place to start. If you want to get into more advanced networking stuff then the CCNA cert.

I've been studying for the A+ with this video series (Scroll down for the videos): http://www.professormesser.com/free-a-plus-training/220-901/comptia-220-900-course/

Heads up, the link you provided has your name in the title.

Otherwise…there’s a lot of work you need to do. The basic layout is fine, but you need to put some real descriptions for each job, put them in reverse chronological order (more recent jobs first), and remove the commas between the months and years. Not trying to sound mean, but just putting “stock shelves” and “assists customers” makes you sound a little lazy. You might be the hardest working person alive, but employers might perceive it another way.

Don’t copy these exactly—be creative and make your own—but these are some decent descriptions: https://zety.com/blog/retail-resume-example

Also, try to put descriptions that relate more to technology, troubleshooting, and customer service. Stocking shelves isn’t as much related to the customer service aspect of IT as being a cashier, right?

https://www.amazon.ca/Automate-Boring-Stuff-PowerShell-Sysadmins/dp/1593279183

Got this book in the recent humble bundle. Knowing Python, you'd probably skim the first four chapters, but after that it picks up pretty quick.

I'm on chapter 11 so far, already automated a few ad related tasks in my work.

> but I don't always think to bring a notebook

If you're job doesn't provide one, I suggest getting some of the amazon basics legal pads they're cheap and look in my opinion more professional than a spiral bound notebook.

​

http://www.indeed.com/q-Technical-Support-Specialist-l-Los-Angeles,-CA-jobs.html

you're a nice lady, but you gotta tell him to get off his butt, work on a cert like A+, and post his own reddit questions. someone with his resume should be able to learn quick and be presentable enough to find an IT job, at least entry level.

Professor Messer videos and his notes that you can purchase

Classic Brent. For anyone who hasn't done so already, read The Phoenix Project (or listen to it on Audible). It's great.

https://www.amazon.com/Phoenix-Project-DevOps-Helping-Business/dp/0988262592

I'd say you have a good start. At this point in your career, don't bother with another beginner cert like net+(but you do want the knowledge tho).

If I asked you to spin up a domain controller on a type 1 hypervisor with DNS, DHCP and join some computers to the domain and map some drives with group policy. Can you do that? if so, that's also a very good start, but not quite good enough.

For your level of knowledge, I'd say you need to homelab it up. Read a book like this: https://www.amazon.com/Installation-Storage-Microsoft-Server2016-Networking/dp/1337400661/ref=sr_1_6?dchild=1&keywords=MCSA&qid=1623261887&sr=8-6

There are 3 books, but this is just the first one. I was exactly at your point once and not sure where i needed to go. Hit these books hard and actually DO it, not just read it(don't even need to read the whole thing, at least 60% of them though). I won't even need to tell you what to do next because you will already know.

You would be a qualified candidate for several Phoenix area companies in the 100k+ range. Many of those do have remote positions available. Can I PM you some postings? Where are you located and what is your internet speed? (Fast.com)

Larger more "remote aware" companies factoring living expense into the pay equation. For example Gitlab uses their "HQ" as the base pay salary for employees and then runs that salary through a basic calculator that spits out the pay adjusted for living expenses.

So say for example that the pay in "Big City" is $150,000 and the company using many sources determines that the pay rate in "Little City" is 0.89 of what is payed in big city. The companies actual pay out to the employee would be $133,500.

You can see this in practice at https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/total-rewards/compensation/compensation-calculator/calculator/

Lynda has some good stuff, it has a pretty wide gamut; use the free trial to check it out. You can also see if your local library allows free access to Lynda, I know Houston's library does.

Also [PluralSight.com](pluralsight.com) has some more security focused courses if your interested in that. I've sometimes found interesting courses at [EDX.com](edx.com), (Coursera.com](https://www.coursera.org), or Udacity.com; microdegrees or certs are important enough to purchase imo.

Its far, far easier to find the perfect job while you are employed, rather than staying unemployed and feeling somewhat-desperate.

Take the interview. Do your best. Be honest. Be enthusiastic.

Focus on your strengths - ability to learn and all that.

In the meantime plow through some professor messer videos for the A+ certification.

http://www.professormesser.com/

Perhaps sign up for CBT Nuggets and exploit their 1 week free trial.

https://www.cbtnuggets.com/signup/trial#individual

I tend to go more with podcasts. Not sure it would help with any particular certificate though.

There are some good audible books by 'Gene Kim', but they are more about devops, and the business of IT, then about any particular technology.

• https://www.audible.com/search/ref=a_hp_tseft?advsearchKeywords=gene%20kim

If your commute is via public transportation you could probably look at using Pluralsight.com or something. Many of the the video learning services let you download offline videos. It probably depends on the video, but some of the courses are less visual, and you could probably listen to them in the background.

I would suggest starting with getting your A+ cert, and then look around for an entry level position. Here is some free training that won't cost a dime: http://www.professormesser.com/

Don't stop with the A+ btw, keep learning and bettering yourself.

Professor Messer has some Security+ videos for free. They certainly helped me.

http://www.professormesser.com/security-plus/sy0-401/sy0-401-course-index/

If you really wanted to, you could buy his Course Notes, which is basically a study guide that covers most everything you should know. Compared to other CompTia tests, the Security+ was one of the most straight forward. If you know the material, there is one right answer, as opposed to a right answer and a maybe answer.

Best of luck.

Looking back on my IT career (almost 20 years now), I'd have to say working for a company out of NY that did some lead gen. Worked long hours, but man, what a ride... I remember the day my boss at the time came to see me, gave me a company credit card and was like: "We're building a dating site!" ... I want you to join Lavalife, Match.com, and few others that were pretty big at the time and all subscription based services. He told me to take notes of what they were doing well and we'd do better.... A few months later with a team of 3 devs, we launched Imatchup.com, which at one point was generating about $600K / month... He had me going to bars to recruit "web cam girls" to join the company and lure some men onto our site as paying members... I was younger and just starting out so morals wasn't really a concern then, and seeing this type of money flying around was like being in lala land! Pretty soon we had CS staff and people dedicated to approve photos, which a lot of them were nudes, and then Hotmatchup was born... full on replica site with the exact same codebase for the lust crowd! We went on to build these types of sites for almost 8 years until 2008 when everything just kind of came crashing down... I jumped ship soon after for something more stable, but I'll never forget it!

https://www.trustpilot.com/review/www.reed.co.uk

General consensus: If it were possible to give a negative number out of 10, it would be negative, but as the lowest is 1, it has a 1.1 average out of 10 with 64 reviews.

Stay the hell away.

The CompTIA classes are not worth it either as far as paying for the course. There's plenty of free resources out there for the A+, Net+.

Excellent advice. Bringing this stuff home is probably the best thing someone can do. You can get older cisco routers and switches on ebay quite cheap and learn a ton. Look into Virtual Box, Hyper-V or something. You never know what you will learn tomorrow doing something like this that will send you on a total different path...

Check out http://www.codecademy.com/ if you want to get a taste of programming. I did all their PHP and some of the others. The first language you learn is a big learning curve, the second one is a ton easier, most of them after that is just syntax. Understanding how programs work really helps at times.

Edit: Just wanted to throw in that Linux/Unix is out there a lot. It is something definitely worth learning some. My last job had probably 20 linux servers. I use it on projects at home. I also used it for about 10 years to run a ton of websites using linux, apache, perl/php, sql, etc.

MIS and IT are different I cannot comment on MIS however. IT and CS you will be doing some sort of programming but it's all slightly different. I recommend learning python first ( http://www.codecademy.com/tracks/python) as it is useful in whatever technology major your choose.

After you learn the basics go to project Euler and try and solve some of the puzzles. This is pretty close to how CS majors will be using programming.

With IT is really vague you will learn alot of things in not much detail so self learning is key. So If you wanna be a sys admin get to know virtualization and scripting. Database admin learn everything about SQL. Etc.

I didn't get into my career until I was 28.

Spent 10 years after high school partying and working shit-jobs.

During that time, I learned a lot about the world. Learned about people, maladies, and all kinds of life-lessons. Made mistake after mistake etc.

One day a friend comes to me and says; "Hey, why don't we stop working our shit jobs and make real jobs in IT? My buddy got his Microsoft Certification and just got a raise for 40K to 50K and does less work. I replied to him as I was smoking a cigarette in the back of the restaurant I was working in; "Let's fucking do it."

Focused hard on my new career. Every day, if I was sober, I was focused on my goal. Every effort I made was in the direction of getting into IT. Studied hard. Took community college courses. Applied for a entry-level job to help build a resume. Drank a lot less. And in two years I finally got the career I wanted. Likewise, my entire frame of mind had to change in order to achieve such and my sense of discipline completely changed as well.

Think and Grow Rich.

17 Principles to Success.

Read/Listen to these books by Napoleon Hill. :)

What someone else said.... pass the certification?

Well get a GitHub and put some projects on their too then.

https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/python-networking-course/

Some ideas to make your own.

I'm personally of the opinion that the IT job market is good enough that nobody should feel tied down to a position that they don't like.

As /u/Jeffbx mentioned, certs are honestly not all that important. The advice I got about them in college is only spend the time/money if a company is willing to compensate you for them or you have a very specific job in mind that you need it for. They just expire too quickly and typically aren't a requirement to land an interview for most positions. Obviously much easier said than done but a degree will get you a lot farther than certs.

Just get on indeed.com, post your resume, start applying, and checking out what you qualify for. You might be surprised.

Glassdoor query for System Administrator around Austin

Indeed comparison of System Administrator and sysadmin around Austin

Looks like it might be reasonable, depending on the size of company. Aim high, then negotiate.

http://www.indeed.com/salary

Salary varies from city to city and state to state because it is a supply-demand issue on the skills and your qualifications. Starting Help Desk can be from $35-50k and starting SysAdmin can be from $45k-65k as an example.

First of all there’s so much white space - make use of columns etc

Add skills and proficiency. Lots of people don’t even read the resumes so they use automated software to look for keywords.

Do you know some programming since you did a CS degree? Put it in there! Operating systems? Types of network equipment you know etc etc

Finally a personal summary at the start of the resume so they can work out who you are

https://zety.com/blog/resume-summary

setup https://www.asterisk.org/, get some used hardware of ebay for phone and what not.

it really depends what 'voip experience' they want though. Using a voip phone? it's the same as any other phone really. Doing the networking? Setting up QoS? Building out a voip phone system? setting up voip voicemail? there's a lot in the 'voip' umbrella.

> Yeah I really love the idea of hands on approach with hardware

Yep. Lots of people do (especially new people).

> It's nice to actually have something to touch and look at instead of a virtual network via packet tracer

That's fine. You are not alone, I promise you.

You're focusing on the wrong priorities, but so are lots of other new people.

> Even though, like you said, all the important stuff I need to learn and focus on is on the CLI.

Physically, you need to know:

• Where is power cable connector.
  
• If device has power switch, where is it?
  
• Where is the console port?
  
• Where are the ethernet interfaces?
  
• What is airflow direction?
  
  • where does cool air enter?
    
  • where does hot air exhaust?
    

Once you know those things are, you're done with the physical characteristics of the network device.
Everything else you are gonna do will be in the CLI.

So, 15 to 30 minutes total time on physical characteristics.
30 to 300 days of learning time on the CLI and real networking concepts.

It's cool. I swear, lots of people buy low-end hardware labs because they feel the same need to touch hardware.

Two of these:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07L8P7PVZ

and two of these:

https://www.amazon.com/Cisco-Catalyst-Switch-WS-C3750X-48PF-S-Renewed/dp/B07PCV8YXS/

That's about $500 and change.

I didn't check eBay. Can probably find those basic part numbers a little cheaper over there.

If you need things to come in a lot cheaper we'd need to probably go one full generation older.

Catalyst 3750G and ISR 1841

Make sure the switches have the IP Base or IP Services licenses. No LAN Base trash.
Make sure the routers have IP Base, or IP Services or IP Security.

Make sure you buy at least two console cables.

Not OP, but I am enjoying this book so far: Learn Python Network Programming by Dr. M. O. Faruque Sarker. It was recommended to me by a college professor to help me understand networking better and he knew I already had a solid foundation in Python. Hopefully, you can find it just as insightful as I have.

You can learn some skills through free online classes. You can pay for certifications from these, but you don't have to have a certification for the knowledge. I built my starting knowledge through these kinds of courses, and now I'm putting myself through college while working in IT.

My favorite websites for online courses are Alison and Coursera. Good luck!

The technologies you mentioned HTML, CSS and Java script are Front End Web technologies so you may be interested in becoming a front end web developer https://www.udacity.com/course/front-end-web-developer-nanodegree--nd001

My biggest issue with salary reports is they are dominantly based off of contractor data and only use that specific companies sliver of data (e.g. Robert Half's report).

My ideal salary report has the following:

• National Salary Average based on non-contractor data and contractor data but clear documentation on the difference.
• I want actual hourly rates paid to the staff by contractors not the billable rate to the business.
• COL variance for major cities (ATL, CLT, NYC, DC, SEA, etc.)
• Population Breakdowns of what type work is where so I can see if the high salary rates are trended off of demand.

To be honest I have abandoned any published reports and just use www.indeed.com/salary and the bls.gov data to make my determinations for salary.

You do realize that people make very good money doing what you do. And that is IT work. So you already have experience in IT.

take a look at these jobs: http://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=operations+sql&l=

Many of them encompass what you have been doing. BTW these roles pay well. I know people making well into the six figures doing similar roles.

You have a lot going for you. You have TWO YEARS of experience and a DEGREE. That can look great on a resume. I would exclude your most recent position from your resume. It sounds like it was short-term and a terrible company so it won't help anyway.

Get your resume fixed up here or another sub like r/resumes and start applying like mad in the nearest big city. Be aware that some companies will simply not consider you due to your felony record. But many will, so apply anyway!

You mentioned your lack of git knowledge being a problem. If you have a laptop and Internet access you can quickly learn it for free. Download the free Pro Git book and start working through it. The first three chapters cover most day-to-day uses and likely everything you might be asked in an interview.

You can pay for it to get personal feed back but you can watch the lessons and access the homework for free.

Edit: Weird, I guess Coursera changed their model I guess? It's no longer free to audit. https://www.udacity.com/courses/web-development has courses for free though, so check those out.

https://kubernetes.io => plenty of info and documentation. Basically container orchestration and scheduling so if a container goes down another gets brought up almost immediately instead of just staying down.

I got an MIS degree and became a sys admin out of college. I ended up installing OS on servers, maintaining their hw/sw. But I also need to understand network concepts to help with troubleshooting or designing a new network. Get a free virtual machine app like virtual box and try installing RedHat, or even windows server

I never did any programming that wasn't sql, or just a batch file.

>I also want to have a job where I talk to people

Then this is great for you.

>I'm just a guy who googles stuff when things aren't working right.

Then this is seriously great for you

aQuestionText = '''\ I’m not all too great at math. This largely stems from how math was taught to me. I’m a big picture thinker and prefer to understand and ask “why” to be able to solve problems. I’m not so much interested in the process, but more the underlying principles and theory behind things. The farthest I got in High school was Algebra 2 and then I stopped. Will this be an impediment to a career in coding? My goal is to build applications.'''

aNewLine = "\n" anAnswerText = "No."

print(aQuestionText + aNewLine * 2 + anAnswerText + aNewLine * 2)

Python 3.6.1 (default, Dec 2015, 13:05:11) [GCC 4.8.2] on linux

I’m not all too great at math. This largely stems from how math was taught to me. I’m a big picture thinker and prefer to understand and ask “why” to be able to solve problems. I’m not so much interested in the process, but more the underlying principles and theory behind things. The farthest I got in High school was Algebra 2 and then I stopped. Will this be an impediment to a career in coding? My goal is to build applications.

No.

Click This Link to run this python program online

While you have a steady stream of income with predictable hours have you explored freelancing/tech job sites like upwork.com and angel.co? You might land a contract/PT gig that turns into something more lucrative/secure than your current role.

> Why is RHCSA considered a great certification when Red Hat is discontinued?

What the devil do you mean Red Hat was discontinued?

RHEL looks strong to me.

https://www.redhat.com/en/technologies/linux-platforms/enterprise-linux

Fedora looks good too.

https://getfedora.org/

In addition to whatever experience you can get in with Windows Server (make some GPOs, automatically mount a network share when you log in, etc.), I'd recommend installing Ubuntu Server in a virtual machine and setting up Apache and MySQL in it.

https://www.ubuntu.com/download/server

There are tons of tutorials out there for doing that.

Just about any field of IT can be self taught. And in my experience, self-learning is both a requirement and usually results in better techs. There are a lot of websites which offer free training and can get you moving in the right direction. If you are interested in Linux, you might try something like Cybrary Linux+ Course which should get you a good start. I'd also recommend setting up some virtual machines and just playing with it. If your organization is willing to allow it, you might try Oracle's VirtualBox and spin up a VM or three to play with during your down time.

I'm doing the same thing. I've started taking some courses here. I'm planning on starting college courses in the spring but I figured that this was a good way to get started.

In networking, vlans, firewalls , QoS, those are what I work on as a jack of all trades and have worked on when I was just networking. *Nix servers run the world so it's hard to say their hot right now, they always have been the backbone of computing.

Check out gns3 to help with the networking side of things. https://www.gns3.com

I don't know if there are any major changes between the 401 and 501 test. I did practice a lot of subnetting and Packet Tracer labs to get a better understanding of equipment, how they communicate, protocols, etc. Professor Messer was a big part of my study routine when going for sec+

Glancing at some of the coursework is a good way to freak yourself out and get down about pursuing it. Go on youtube and check out Professor Messer's Network+ course, he has hundreds of hours of video for the CompTIA Net+ as well as the A+ exam. Exam Cram is also another good route, buying the books and also checking out the authors videos on Udemy.com. If you've been in helpdesk for over a year chances are you're theoretically A+ proficient.

The best thing to do in my opinion would spend some time really soul searching and determine what you want to do. Getting certifications without a career path is kind of like going to the grocery store and buying ingredients for a 5 course meal before you ever determine what you want to cook.

Basic help desk work is really more about your customer service skill than your technical expertise. When I interview people for that position I like to hire friendly people with technical aptitude, not certified pros with poor service skills.

If you are going into an interview without any experience or certs I would focus on 3 things.

1. Customer service skills.
2. Passion for tech and a strong desire to learn
3. Future goals related to a technical career

Whatever ever you do dont bullshit the interviewer. That is an instant no for me. Also, dont bring up Linux because you think it sounds impressive. I dont know why so many entry level guys do this. No one cares, unless you are interviewing in a place that does. In my case we are a windows/mac shop so we don't.

If you dont have an A+ cert, start with that. If you were dedicated you coudl get that in a month or two easily. CCNA could follow it. Professor Messer is a good free resource. http://www.professormesser.com/

Good luck bro.

I'm currently studying for my CompTIA A+ certificate and I'm using Professor Messer to help prepare. It's free and Professor Messer is something you can start using now or bookmark it for later. There are resources for the Network+ and Security+ certs too, which was mentioned by /u/Tyrnis
Good luck!

It's not quite what you are looking for, but ProfessorMesser is pretty good and it's free. He also holds weekly study sessions where you can ask him questions and what not.

I've got a couple of ideas:

• Have you considered going back to school? You're young and if you can take out the loans and do a part time gig while studying, this is ideal. Engineering or computer science. If you have the mental capacity for these degrees, do it, get the prerequisites done at a community college, take the boards, and do it. Go this path if you are ambitious.

• If school's too much, then put those certifications front and friggin center. It should go A+ cert, that other cert you've got and the CCNA in progress. Then maybe a sentence or two before or after that saying, "Aspiring Information Professional looking to blah blah blah in the field of blah blah"

• The thing is that you don't have any experience, so you can waste time on your resume telling people you dropped out of law school and like dodgeball. That's cool though, half the people on this subreddit are fuck ups who pieced it together, got into IT and succeeded.

Check out this website that shows how you can put in kinda bullshit stuff instead of listing your experience (which you don't have) https://zety.com/blog/entry-level-resume-example

https://aws.amazon.com/getting-started/

Be sure and poke at the links down at the bottom.
Amazon provides considerable how-to guidance & informational resources.

Also consider this:
https://www.edx.org/leadpages/aws

Spend $100 to take an on-line class from MIT, (pass it) get $1000 in AWS credits free.

Hackerank: https://www.hackerrank.com/domains/sql/select

Dunno what the software you're using is, but if you want to get a hang of running queries, you could install mySQL workbench, then use its "practice" DB (I think it's the cities of the world and populations or something) to practice. Maybe overkill, but it's pretty user-friendly and easy to get it up and running in a weekend.

Btw, what are the key requirements for a data analyst job? Does one need a degree in stats/maths/science? I just checked some job listings and the main software requirement seems to be Excel (advanced Excel?). It's hard to gauge suitability for a job, but I'm wondering if a nooblet like me would be in with a chance? I've made fancy graphs and neural nets in Excel, and did a relational database systems module at uni (I can design and normalise a DB and use SQL). Would that suffice?

I wouldn't let you in my firm. Gotta crawl before you can walk. Not having any real experience maintaining those systems would just mean that there is no way i let you start working on our production servers.

​

i also don't want to spend the next 6 months paying you to watch me work. Since you wont be able to maintain those things by yourself anyway. Help desk experience will at least put you in scenarios that allow you to understand how the user is using their systems that are connected to the cloud platforms.

​

Putting in the effort at home for cloud while doing help desk to get hands on experience would really help you jump through the ladder of where you want to be. Find a job that the help desk and cloud teams can talk to each other. So you can learn from those guys making you alot more likely candidate to be able to work on their team.

​

Some examples of places to start would be mid size MSPs like $2 million+, cloud providers that resell cloud services like vultr.com or someone like that. Those guys should have help desk to get you started but still allow you to talk to the cloud team to be able to learn. It might only be 6 months at help desk but that whole time you are learning the cloud side.

Go into the interview saying hey i want to use my time in any position to get me where i want to be which is cloud.

What do you currently do in the health care field, and what IT job are you interested in? What attracts you to IT? I ask because IT is a wide field.

If you're stilling to work in IT in healthcare field, then your current experience in healthcare can be an asset, because you already know the jargon and how to talk to other healthcare professionals.

You have lots of options. While basic IT is a good skill set, IT paired with another subject is a killer skill set, because IT, specially programming, is a force multiplier that gives you a set of tools that can supercharge many other skills.

If you like programming and statistics, then you can look into health care analytics < https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_analytics >. You would need to know some programming, SQL, and statistics. To go this route, learn SQL, a few statistics courses, and either Python or R. I suggest the anaconda python distribution < https://www.anaconda.com/ >

I think you have to make a choice (I think because I am not sure). Either take the CompTIA route or go int to webdevelopment. If you go into webdevelopment, don't pay for something like treehouse. Take the webdevelopment course for free(!) at http://www.codecademy.com/ and their JavaScript course after that take the free courses at Udacity (https://www.udacity.com/course/cs253) or coursera.org. If you still have the need to learn "webdevelopment" then you can think of paying for courses :P

Go to AI meetups on meetup.com, meet a mentor, get a job at cyberdine systems, create terminator, realise what you have done, go back in time to stop me from making this post.

Ok maybe went a bit far on the last few suggestions, but the first few should be solid :)

If you're on Android, there's an app by ITIL themselves. It was the reason I passed the Foundations certification a month ago ($8.49, but 100% worth it)

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=uk.co.tso.itilfourfoundation

> I'm not the most talkative and i am kinda introverted but I don't want to work with someone that only grunts and smashes their keyboard as forms of communication

Years ago, I picked up this book - <strong>Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking</strong> -- and it articulates a lot of misconceptions that people throw at introverts, and even misconceptions some self-proclaimed introverts will make of themselves.

• Introvert typically refers to someone that recharges alone. You can enjoy being around people, but still want to be alone to recharge.

• Antisocial on the other hand are people who avoid talking to others.

• You can be a social introvert, an antisocial introvert, social extrovert, or even an antisocial extrovert (yes, this really exists) among a variety of other combinations.

I get the feeling the user you responded to might be conflating concepts into one lump -- maybe they mean differently, but the way they're currently coming across isn't the case, hence all the replies from multiple users thus far basically proclaiming, "uh what".

Hell, 2 out of the 3 active mods here are introverts, case in point.

In the past, I even called myself an extrovert, when in fact, I'm actually a social introvert. I like socializing but damn, do I need to hibernate and recharge alone while true extroverts just go find more people to recharge from... But I digress.

Hi, I'm a Unix/Linux Admin. (Solaris / RHEL, focus on RHEL)

Notes on that guide you mentioned: read the top comment. Personally I would go with CentOS8.

The RHSCA is the way to go for any Red Hat shop you're applying to. If you are applying to shops that don't use Red Hat, the RHSCA is still valuable to show you know the basics, but it's not worth as much as it would be at a Red Hat shop.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1775062120/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_fabc_mssbGbEASJJ5T?_encoding=UTF8&amp;psc=1

I skimmed through this a few months ago, it was dry but got the job done. The book assumes you have minimal Linux knowledge in general, great for just starting out.

Some may recommend the Linux+. Personally I found the Linux+ material to be a bit out-dated (init.d in 2019? 'cmon, systemd is life). If the material has been updated with more systemd info since 2019, it may be worth a bit more.

One of the major components of being a Unix/Linux admin is working with users. If you've got a good personality and a bit of personal experience + you show enthusiasm, a shop may take you in before you get your certs if you're lucky.

It sounds like you're already on a help desk. Are there Unix/Linux machines in the env you're currently in? If so, it's worth reaching out to one of the admins if they're friendly. Might be a nice way to slide into the group, ask for tips, become more knowledgeable about your environment, and perhaps ask if they've got an opening. I've had help desk fellas reach out to me with a "hey remember ticket xyz? How'd you end up fixing that?" a few days after escalating. Shows that they care, and want to learn more about the Linux/Unix env.

Good luck, feel free to ask any questions you have.

Not directly related to your question but you should get a college degree if possible. Check out Western Governors University for something that is really reasonably priced, and tuition includes the price of getting a crap ton of certs (CCNA, A+, Security+, etc).

If you dont want to look into college then you could start studying for your CCNA. Its 2 exams. I'd get the Official Cert Guide and maybe look into a video course like CBT Nuggets offers to get a full perspective. Boson ExamSim for practice exams and NetSim for labs.

Then get a job because it wont really click until you actually have a point of reference, which you get from working in the job for a while.

Not an expert but I have read a lot of posts saying that 2016 is still young. Take the 2012 first. I am currently reading from this book and I find it great :

https://www.amazon.com/dp/111885991X/ref=tsm_1_fb_lk

You might want to pair it with : Learning Powershell in a month of lunches. It's a bestseller on Amazon and highly recommended.

Edit : what did you use for CCNA ? I have started it in the past but I find the prices exorbitant for seminars !

I've never had any issues with mine - both arms covered from shoulder to wrist. As long as you don't have any nudity, offensive language, or swastikas you should be ok.

I never really worn long sleeves prior to my current position but I did have a few of these in case HR ever said anything https://www.amazon.com/Tat2X-Armor-Premium-Tattoo-Sleeve/dp/B0046O8S3W

Much better than wearing long sleeves on those 90+ degree days

If you already have SCCM in place, look into creating custom SQL reports. I've had my eye on this title for a while: https://smile.amazon.com/dp/9332578508/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_61hfFbTJJWSGY

If you do branch out this way, it could perhaps turn into specializing in data visualization and reporting, which to my understanding is like data science lite. I definitely recommend the free ebook Ditch Excel by Don Jones: https://leanpub.com/ditchexcelmakinghistoricalandtrendreportsinpowershell/read

Solutions and Performance Architect here as well.

To give you an idea on the job itself, your job is (a) be a consultant to customers/employer on the infrastructure and how it benefits, affects, improves, etc, to said environment. (b) provide technical hands-on support for said environment.

Now, how to become a SA? That kind of depends on what infrastructure you want to support. If you want to be a super SA, then you know most of them (but that's a bit down the road).

Pick one. AWS, Azure, GCP, OpenStack, etc. My personal recommendation would be AWS or Azure.

If you pick AWS, go buy the Solutions Architect Associate book on Amazon (about $30). Study the hell out of it (it's a "know this small mountain of info" kind of test) and take the exam. That's the best start.

If you pick Azure, there are host of certs to pick from. I'd recommend Exam AZ-302

It's gonna be info out the wazoo. Seriously, if you have questions or need a study buddy, hit me up at any time. It's a lot to learn, but boy is it a blast once you start getting the concepts down.

I liked the Practice of System and Network Administration by Tom Limoncelli et al. when I was starting out. Some of the specifics may be dated but the concepts are good.

https://smile.amazon.com/Practice-System-Network-Administration-Second/dp/0321492668

Edit: there's apparently a 3rd edition here

https://smile.amazon.com/Practice-System-Network-Administration-Enterprise/dp/0321919165

The AWS Certified Solutions Architect. It's pretty much the de facto standard for cloud adoption. Although Azure and GCP are catching up, it's still the most highly regarded according to surveys I've seen. https://aws.amazon.com/certification/certified-solutions-architect-associate/

This free course how to answer programming interview questions from Audacity May help. https://www.udacity.com/course/front-end-interview-prep--ud250?irclickid=1KRxspVmtxyLTR3wUx0Mo36aUkB3mdxVuSEaRs0&amp;irgwc=1&amp;utm_source=affiliate&amp;utm_medium=ads_r&amp;aff=2327655&amp;utm_term=&amp;utm_campaign=C4B89DA1DAF811E_C4B89DA1DAF81...

Okay, so the double vision is more common than I'd thought as part of eye strain from computer use. Here's some info from WebMD

Might be able to try some of those tips to see if they help.

Why did you go for the degree in psychology in the first place?

One IT field you should also consider, because of your degree, is IT security. Specifically, the human factor. Leverage your degree to become an expert in social engineering and or making IT security more understandable for the average user.

Over at coursera.org they have a course called usable security. It focuses on the human factor of IT security. https://www.coursera.org/course/usablesec

That's awfully ambitious!

So your best bet for low barriers to entry and very high pay would be software development. However, you need to be rather proficient at it and should enjoy doing it. Check over in /r/cscareerquestions for more details on that.

If you aren't feeling the development thing.... Amazon cloud administration is another one that's in very high demand these days - https://aws.amazon.com/training/

I tend to be against bootcamps since you can find anything and everything online for free. If software is what you are looking for, take a look at freecodecamp.

https://www.freecodecamp.org/

Salesforce on the other hand has their own free ecosystem that you can use to learn. To me, all these bootcamps are are a means for someone to get rich at your expense. If you are a self starter, there's nothing that they can offer that you can't get yourself.

The link for salesforce is at https://trailhead.salesforce.com/en/home

I see that you re-uploaded it to here:

https://www.docdroid.net/7SQVbaS/resumeanon-docx

Not sure why the thread hasn't updated yet... <shrug>

I don't know what contract placement agency you worked for.
I'm just gonna say Randstaad as an example.

You weren't an IT Technician employed by Company D.
Your paycheck were not issued to you by Company D.

You were a technology resource employed by Randstaad, as an IT Worker for Company D.

So, to communicate that efficiently you might say:

IT Worker, Company D (Contract Resource via Randstaad USA) <dates>

As /u/BeigeAlmighty points out when each of these somewhat short term positions are all indicated to be contract positions through Randstaad (or whoever) it shows you were a stable Randstaad associate for X years, filling multiple short-term contracts.

This makes lots of sense especially if you are hired as a surge resource to focus on a specific project, and then release upon project completion.

The way you have it listed here, it looks like you were hired by Company C for six months then bounced because you wanted to, to Company D.

The first two positions look fine.

This is an early career resume. Make it fit on one page.

Your technical certifications are not education. They are professional credentials.

https://www.careercup.com/resume

I managed a regional support team that was a mix of desktop support and system administrators. While most of my top pay people had 10-15+ years of experience under their belt they were all making 70k-130k in their respective experience and cities.

So it is entirely possible to make six figures but it isn't something you are going to do on your first job. Pretty confident you parents weren't making the salaries they are now on their first job.

As a side note don't focus on money. While it is nice it can't be your primary driver for 30+ years of your career.

If you want some reference data in addition to what has already been posted:

Indeed.com Salary with some titles already plugged. As you can see they pay scales vary greatly but if you plug in your city you can see how you match up to larger cities in your area.

You are making alot of assumptions. a degree is a base of knowledge. but noone is locked into one particular path based on their degree. Many go MIS and have no intention of being in management. They just want to learn more business type stuff to help them in their IT career. No different than those who study comp sci but never intend on being a programmer.

Certs are a short term game. So if OP plans on getting into IT like most people do in a helpdesk/desktop/other early career technical role, then you get the certs those roles are asking for. Maybe its a+, maybe CCNA, maybe ITIL.

Shoot here is a quick search on indeed of plenty jobs that ask for ITIL and A+!

Also you can volunteer your services to a charitable service and once they are happy with it put that on your resume.

Check out these resources. You will need great customer service because every customer will be your new boss:

How to Start and Grow a Successful Web Development Business https://www.udemy.com/share/10064kBEUfcl9R/

The Personal MBA: Master the Art of Business https://www.audible.com/pd/The-Personal-MBA-Master-the-Art-of-Business-Audiobook/B008XM83T2?qid=1537314329&amp;sr=sr_1_1&amp;ref=a_search_c3_lProduct_1_1&amp;pf_rd_p=e81b7c27-6880-467a-b5a7-13cef5d729fe&amp;pf_rd_r=QPA6YKAQ3FT2B1568E89&

I use this and saw another floating in the wild, nice and cheap too.

To make it easy, it's all a matter of if you know what kind of companies you can see yourself working at and if you want to leverage AWS as their IaaS provider.

Take a look at some of the customer success case studies:

https://aws.amazon.com/solutions/case-studies/

I know for sure that the Healthcare Industry and some of the larger financial institutions don't want to touch AWS even with a 10-yard stick because AWS isn't PHI/PCI compliant, and for those two industries it requires private IaaS.

For private IaaS, Microsoft or IBM are generally much better enterprise choices.

Code Academy could help supplement your online schooling. It covers the basics of Python, HTML and other languages. Udemy is another good one. They have a bunch of courses, free and paid. Someone who isn't me used firefox and video download helper to use the five minute preview of a paid course to download the videos in that course.

https://www.edx.org/course

I did their Intro to Linux course when it was free. It seemed somewhat reasonable. Really did it just for the honor code certificate..

Once you learn one programming language the next one is a lot easier. You mentioned C++, this site doesn't do C++ but they do several other languages. I have done 100% of the PHP and some of the others.

http://www.codecademy.com/

Wow, thanks man! This is so helpful. I guess I was imagining DevOps as something only established developers or Linux admins could get into. My biggest concern was I did not want to work really hard and train up to be a sys admin when the positions are evolving into DevOps, which is something I thought was unattainable for me. Ok, so the biggest takeways from me as I understand them are:

1. Train up and get some high powered AWS (or similar) DevOps expert level certs.
2. Join Slack/Discord channels and start getting a feel for real world DevOps discussions.
3. Get inspiration from real world examples to remind myself what I am doing this for.
4. Revise my resume to better sell myself.
5. Stop focusing my job searching to just "system administrator" jobs and additionally start looking for "DevOps".
   

I live in Charlotte, NC. I've been to Portland once many years ago and loved it, fantastic town! BTW, I just found out about the Southeast Linux Fest and am going to my first one this weekend. Maybe I'll finally meet some other Linux minded folks in the area. I've never been able to find anything in Charlotte in meetup.com for just "Linux", but there are some DevOps groups that I may have to check out now. I'm very introverted so networking and going out to meet strangers in meetups is somewhat terrifying to me! If anyone out there lives in the Charlotte area, let me know! :)

I'd also say to drop a "Senior" on the front, but if you're working alone make that a "Lead", i.e. Lead Infrastructure Support Technician. You can also go the "Specialist" route in place of "Technician".

Here's an indeed.com/salary breakdown ("Lead" had no data...)

http://www.indeed.com/salary?q1=Infrastructure+Support+Technician&amp;l1=&amp;q2=Infrastructure+Support+Specialist&amp;l2=&amp;q3=Senior+Infrastructure+Support+Technician&amp;l3=&amp;q4=Senior+Infrastructure+Support+Specialist&amp;l4=&amp;tm=1

"Specialist" wins the value comparison. Good luck!

http://www.indeed.com/salary?q1=System+Administrator&amp;l1=Boston&amp;tm=1 <-- Take this information with a grain of salt.

The reason your salary is so low is because of the total compensation package. Some things I would want to know more on:

• What are the bonuses based off of? Your salary? Their profit
• What are the conditions that a bonus would not be paid each year?
• Could you just get the pay differential in lieu of a bonus? (Depends on the bonus conditions)
• The 3% raise is a pretty standard cost of living increase. So don't bite too hard on that "incentive".
• Figure out the true cost of the commuter rail and negotiate the commute expenses up from there. I doubt you can do an entire month of commuter rail for $150/mth

The big question I have for you:

Are you willing to sacrifice 3+ hours a day just on commuting to and from work? Is that healthy for you and your family? You are talking about leaving on the train every morning by 6.30am and not getting home (if things don't blow up) until nearly 7pm. What are you going to do when you have to work until 9-10pm on a server rebuild? Or need to come in the office because a system went down over the weekend?

That commute concerns me way more than the salary.

EDIT: Formatting won the first time.

I would say check the job boards for data mining gigs and see what type of skills they are asking for(see the link below). That may help you target your best way into a role where you can use your current skillset and also move toward where you want to be.

In the meantime, maybe try learning some data mining on your own.

http://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=data+mining+erp+oracle+sap&amp;l=

On the application / job posting? Negotiable. Always.

Average PM salary depending on what part of the Midwest 55k-75k with only three years experience. After about 5-10 years your base will be closer to 70k at minimum.

Indeed for some Midwest Cities show that I am way off on my estimates but I didn't look in to experience levels on some of these postings.

Indeed.com and Dice.com are good job search engines. You may also check Craigslist for freelance and non-profit to help pad your resume.

But you will be looking at Help Desk/Tech type of positions.

Caveat: Windows 10 Home cannot join a domain -- https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/compare-windows-10-home-vs-pro.

Need to use VMs or PCs with Win10 Pro installed (even in trial mode) as clients for your home domain.

If you have a powerful enough PC, you can set up a virtual machine, and install/configure different OS's and features.

Virtual Box

I'd down load some Windows Server 2008r2, 2012, and CentOS ISO's and just get a feel for them.

Also check out /r/homelab

Pay to get your resume professionally done.
Make your LinkedIn look like your refreshed resume.
Add connections like recruiters.
Create a GitHub with even just one project.
Try meetup.com to network with local people (collect their business cards and LinkedIn profiles).
Keep your head my dude, you can do this!

I'd prefer to withhold my name.

I am in Richmond, Virginia.

I am employed by [redacted]

The Reddit Gold wasn't necessary, just mentioning that it was for a project/assignment was enough.

You might consider using https://www.surveymonkey.com/ next time.

This is really true. Newest tech products are always consumer focused - no ESTABLISHED company is looking at the latest and greatest gadget to buy for employees. Why do you think you see so many of those plain black Thinkpads being carried around? Because they're like tanks - they're thick and ugly and can be dropped and spilled on and still last forever.

So, assuming you're in IT and trying to keep up with the trends - there's no single source that will cover everything. I'd encourage you to load up a web dashboard (like http://www.netvibes.com/) and just bring all of the sources to a single point.