Help me start my career in IT.

In My Humble Opinion
1

Okay so guys, maybe you might remember my ongoing quest at a new career. Long story short. I have a BA in international studies, tried to get a job abroad and failed, and at 25 I am embarking in a new career by doing a MS in Computer Science.

I have always been a computer nerd, building computers and such. I also have about 2 years experience working part-time in a general computer-repair business that my friend runs. This was essentially troubleshooting of all kinds.

Currently I need a part-time job. I have extra time, and I need the money and I need the experience. I live in New York at the moment. Now, here’s the problem.

I would really like to get a job that would count for meaningful experience. However, I am only just taking my first class in C++. I do really enjoy it though. I also am good at MS Office.

I am thinking I’ll just send a cover letter to CUNY and see if they have any openings. However, I think they are mainly looking for full-time.

So currently I expect the whole process to take 3 years. I plan on doing summer school this summer. But the next two summers I’d like to do an internship. Sound good?

But my main concern now is, can i get a job that will pay well enough (considering I do have a degree) and possibly help out with future experience. I will take anything that fits time and money constraints if given the opportunity though.

What should I do?

2

Well, in my opinion, “What should you do” is RUN! RUN AWAY! GO NOW!

…umm…

…sorry, I think my work day is reflecting in my mood.

The first thing you should do is keep your expectations low. The glory days of IT are gone, the big bucks for low experience. The “Draw Tippy! Meet Girls!” advertisements were a product of the dot-com stupidity and went away when that bubble burst.

IT, to me, breaks down to several generic groups.

  1. Coders. Folks that write code to make software. Medium-sized bucks, often long hours when the deadline approaches. The meat-and-potatoes of the IT workers.

  2. Testers: Folks that test the software that Coders write. Less of an education needed, smaller bucks, kinda the low-end of the totem pole in my opinion. Long hours when deadlines approach.

  3. System Admins. Folks that run the machines, allocate the storage, do the backups, etc for all the coders and testers. Medium sized bux. Usually on-call around the clock in some form or another.

  4. Application admins. Generally this is database administrators (DBA’s) of one flavor or another. Medium to large bucks depending on experience and your application you’re running.

  5. Architects. People that meet with vendors, test software/hardware combinations, and generally say to the company “Here is how we’ll accomplish this job.” Entry is through the jobs above, no low-experience starters here. Medium to Large bux.

  6. User support. The bottom of the heap, in my opinion. May of the above started here. You’re either desktop support, application support. You’ll wear your headset from start to end of your day. Still, it’s an entry point for a lot of IT jobs. Beats the heck out of “Would you like fries with that.”

Starting in a university setting is usually very good for learning a broad range of tasks in a single place. Corporate settings tend to stifle, leaning to the “shrink-wrap” solutions. Universities, though, are notorious poor-payers so turn-over might be your friend on finding openings. They’re, again, notorious for seat-of-the-pants computing so it’s easy to pick up bad habits at them.

I’d stay away from the mom-and-pop PC shops if you can. They’ll pay the bills but learning PC’s, in my opinion, is too limiting an experience to transition to a full career.

Working as an “operator”, the 24-hour round-the-clock monitor for a large computer center is a good start. Three of our current 8 admins are promotions from our operator positions. Initial knowledge is expected to be low (and the pay reflects it) and shift work may be easier to work into your school schedule.

Well - it’s a bit of info. I hope it helps.

3

Belrix is correct on a lot of points.

One thing to keep in mind, however, is that if you are really interested in writing software, go into commercial software development. The life of a coder in a software company is very different than a coder working in a place where software supports the main objective of a company. In other words, organizations like banks, hospitals, and universities who also happen to do some in-house coding.

In commercial software development, the coders are the stars of the company, and are (at least in many places) treated very well. Salaries are high - six figures is common for senior coders in my experience. The work is more interesting, your skill set gets very good very quickly and you tend to work on state of the art stuff.

4

May I add?

Business Analysts - may be a good job to look into - its defining user requirements and translating tech speak between users and technology - a great job for someone with low tech skills and an interest in IT.

Project Management - less business interface generally, more “making sure the testers know the code is coming there way.” Another “low tech skills” job for someone who doesn’t have a technical degree.

However, neither will be part time - in fact, it wouldn’t be uncommon in either to pull at 40+ hour week with regularity.

5

What do you really want to do? IT Career encompasses a lot of different things.

6

Hi guys,

Thanks for the responses. Right now I don’t really know what kind of job I want to get into. In the beginning I didn’t think I’d ever like coding. I tried to teach myself C++ but I never really got into it. I suppose I had no reason or context to be interested in it. But then when I started my new degree, I obviously had to take it, and I really enjoy it. Granted, all we’re doing now are arrays, functions, loops, control structures, and other basic intro to C++ stuff, I really have discovered that I might have a hidden talent here. I’ve always been interested in computers and computer-oriented in the past, but I’ve never had a proper outlet, I suppose. Programming is fun to me, and I find myself trying to code programs for the challenge of it.

So I suppose it would be nice to end up in project management one day. Possibly.

But I’m generally interested in all areas of the field that aren’t TOO heavy. I’m not particularly interested in artificial intelligence or any of the extremely numbers-intensive side of things, but who knows? Maybe I will learn what I like as I go down the road.

But what I mean by “Help me get my career started” was, "what part-time job can I do now that wouldn’t be completely unrelated. Maybe some place where I could start low and then move up? I would obviously like a lot of money, but don’t expect a whole lot. But this is NYC, so the expectations would b higher here anyway. I can make 15 dollars an hour doing some kind of office drone work right now, so that has to be kept in consideration.

Anyway, I’d really like to keep this thread going, as it seems to be full of helpful people in general.

Working for a specific software-producing corporation? I don’t know, that could be a good idea. I do think it might be cool to code for some organization like that. FTR, I’ve temped in an IT department (not IT related though, I was putting numbers into excel) and they had some of their own (in-house) coders. They didn’t seem to be particularly high on the totem pole, I can say for sure.

I like working on the higher-level of abstraction at this point, but I am liking coding so far, so we’ll see if I might like to work on a lower level. It’s all open at this point, I guess.

Any ideas on a first move I could make?

7

Does your school offer any jobs? That’s the first place I would check. See if you can find a relevant job doing something fun there.

Other than that, what about part time QA/Test jobs? Seems like in a city as big as NYC there’d be some organization that wanted someone to do some software testing. It’s an easy way to gain experience and also maybe get a foot in the door.

8

You may be able to find a small organization - like a non-profit - that needs someone to do some database design and basic IT work. I remember doing some of that - but it was 20 years ago. Pay may not be much (or anything), but its experience and the time expectations will be reasonable.

9

What do you mean by “IT”? Do you mean working in a corporate IT department? IMHO, that kind of work sucks. Often, you are working in the bowels of the building, providing help desk support for impatient, frustrated people who don’t understand or care about technology. It’s often a lot of weekend work or long hours rolling out new hardware or systems and the really interesting stuff is outsourced to management consulting firms anyway.
You could try working for a consulting firm like Accenture, CSC, EDS, Deloitte, BearingPoint or many of the millions of smaller firms. These jobs usually require excessive travel and long hours implementing SAP or Oracle solutions.

Working as a developer for some Silicon Valley start up is always still an option. Problem is they seem like they are always run by some 26 year old obsessive compulsive dork who sleeps at his desk and expects his people to drink the coolaid and do the same thing.