What is the best degree for IT?
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Academia is important... I'm not sure the American college system could be considered academia anymore.
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@Draco8573 said:
SO they don't teach what you can learn on the job but people are still learning. and I know a lot of people both working and going to school.
Who said learning on the job? You won't learn enough on the job to be any good. You have to learn how to teach yourself! That's something that jobs require but don't teach and the antithesis of the university systems.
You want to know why I don't like to hire college grads? They are helpless. They almost always lack the basic self motivation and self education skills that those that skip college have to have to have made it at all. The university system is a hand holding and coddling system. They tell you what classes to take. They tell you want to learn. And the worst ones even use tests to "see" what you know instead of having you produce results! It's terrible. It's nothing like how you need to be able to learn to handle the field and it is not training you do be good at it.
It's lazy compared to how people need to learn. IT is not a field like art history where you study the past for four years and talk about that same knowledge for forever. You have to know how to learn, on your own without someone to guide you and to tell you what you need to know. You have to be motivated and go out every day and learn new stuff.
Universities not only fail to teach you how to be a successful IT pro, they actively train you to be a bad one!
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@coliver said:
Academia is important... I'm not sure the American college system could be considered academia anymore.
And, and this is big, the university system was never designed to get people jobs. That's not its purpose. The things that make academia good (for some of us) is also what makes it bad for you if your career is the goal.
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@Draco8573 said:
The only people who have a degree and are unsucessfull are the little idiots whose parents pay for everything and they have never lifted a finger to do anything in their life.
One could say the same thing for anyone who skipped college and didn't excel, right? If someone puts in the effort without going to college they should not just do as well as college students but have a few years jump on them.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@coliver said:
Academia is important... I'm not sure the American college system could be considered academia anymore.
And, and this is big, the university system was never designed to get people jobs. That's not its purpose. The things that make academia good (for some of us) is also what makes it bad for you if your career is the goal.
No arguments here. I had a few college professors (at the grad level) tell me the only career options for grad students is in academia.... so I better publish something before I leave school.
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@Draco8573 said:
and once again we have established that yes there is a bit of emotion in the descision but I am four years in I can't just drop out now, that would be a LOT of money wasted.
That's why I warned you to read about the sunk cost fallacy! Because this is exactly the emotional reaction to watch out for. The amount of money you have sunk into school already is completely irrelevant. Completely.
I hate to say it.... but what are schools teaching these days? Good decision making like this, not IT tech skills, is the one spot that colleges, in theory, could be good. But I seem to find the worst aspects of bad decision making often come from the college grads - the schools are too often failing where they should be strongest
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@coliver said:
No arguments here. I had a few college professors (at the grad level) tell me the only career options for grad students is in academia.... so I better publish something before I leave school.
Which I did
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@coliver @scottalanmiller the school I go to used to be known as Southern Polytechnic State University but it is now Kennesaw State University. The name has changed and the tuition has gone up but that is it. It is pretty well known in Georgia at least for being able to teach its student useful hands on stuff that actually helps when they graduate.
and like I have said it is actually helping me to learn some things, I enjoy the field but I am a moron. And earlier I mentioned that I was going to start playing around and seeing if I can make a beowulf cluster. and you shot it down because it was old and isn't widely used anymore. But that would still be me teaching myself to do something. I understand I will need to learn newer things but it can't hurt to start with something like that and work my way up.
And learning on the job is teaching myself. My boss doesn't hold my hand. He gives me stuff to do. Nothing over the top but if there is something I don't know what to do he throws it my way and wwants me to figure it out. -
@Draco8573 said:
@coliver @scottalanmiller the school I go to used to be known as Southern Polytechnic State University but it is now Kennesaw State University. The name has changed and the tuition has gone up but that is it. It is pretty well known in Georgia at least for being able to teach its student useful hands on stuff that actually helps when they graduate.
and like I have said it is actually helping me to learn some things, I enjoy the field but I am a moron. And earlier I mentioned that I was going to start playing around and seeing if I can make a beowulf cluster. and you shot it down because it was old and isn't widely used anymore. But that would still be me teaching myself to do something. I understand I will need to learn newer things but it can't hurt to start with something like that and work my way up.
And learning on the job is teaching myself. My boss doesn't hold my hand. He gives me stuff to do. Nothing over the top but if there is something I don't know what to do he throws it my way and wwants me to figure it out.Oh I'm sorry someone shot you down for the beawulf cluster. That's was a project I did when I was in undergrad. It was a fun project but even then it was an old technology (my professor recommended I try it). There are lots of things to get you started around here, look into @scottalanmiller's list of things to get started in Linux those will be much more relevant when it comes to searching for a job.
One of the biggest things I can't recommend enough... Look into getting some older servers or used equipment and setting up a home lab. It doesn't have to run 24/7 but getting hands on with enterprise gear and operating systems is generally a huge benefit.
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@Draco8573 said:
I know a bunch of trivial knowledge and am more of a jack of all trades than anything I can do a little bit of everything but there is nothing that I excel at. I want a job and security. But I still want to get better with IT. I am doing that on the job and I am learning way more in school than what I knew, plus if I switch to IT there are a couple classes that look like they may be cool. Even though you say it can hurt it is still helping me figure this stuff out. To be honest IT is not my dream job. I am decent enough at it and I find it interesting. So I am not looking to be an IT manager or anything, I just want something that I can enjoy and live comfortably
IT is probably a bad field for you then. This is a field that seriously punishes people who don't love it because there are more than enough people that are passionate about it that you will always have to contend with them. There is no shortage of people who are in love with the field. They will be the ones getting the good jobs and the stability. Picking a career that you are passionate about is critical not just to IT, but to being happy in life.
Being in impassionate IT pro means, at best, a very rough life. And very likely being completely left behind in less than a decade into your career. You are looking at a seven year road to get a BS degree that will cost you a fortune, just to get into a career that is unlikely to offer you any longevity.
When we say college is bad for us in IT, we are hard core IT pros. For me, college would have been a three year investment (I go through quickly) leading on a 45 year career - and for me the investment would have been a waste.
If college, not career, is your goal (which it sounds like that is really where you are if you dig deep) then avoid anything remotely associated with IT for your degree and get something much more generic as you will need to rely on that when you are switching out of IT down the road.
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Someone who hasn't done at the VERY least an internship, I wouldn't look twice at.
Every applicant is asked about past job experience. I have hired young kids who have never worked in IT but who have had all kinds of jobs from picking berries to working at a fast food restaurant. You have to show initiative.
Even those with years of IT experience, they Must talk about their home lab and what they do on their own. I also want to see online contributions either in a community, personal blog or just writing in general about IT. I want to hear about the worst IT disaster they have dealt with, or the craziest. I want to hear about their troubleshooting steps.
If someone has an IT degree I question why and what they actually got out of it. I really am confused as to why someone would go for an IT degree. If they have no job experience at all in any area, my interest stops there. I have people on my team with college degrees neither of their degrees are in IT.
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@Draco8573 said:
@coliver I undestand that but what do you think about someone who is going to school and working an IT job at the same time, so that they are learning on the job and in a classroom. Plus this person has about zero previous knowledge of IT stuff.
Keep in mind that while working is important (learning how people work, putting food on the table, etc.) that when we talk about learning outside of university it is not on the job learning that we are talking about. I did the bulk of my learning while managing a hotel over a period of two years. I worked my butt off studying IT on my own. I read voraciously, I build an epic home lab, I build anything and everything that you could imagine. I got certs but they were useless.
At the end of two years I had spent almost no money, built a good work history, paid all my bills, built up no debt and was hired right into being a corporate director with over a hundred reports.
But the most important thing, I had learned everything soup to nuts, from the best people in the industry (through books), built up a critical library and taught myself not just the tech, but how to teach myself which is the skill that I would need always.
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@Minion-Queen said:
Even those with years of IT experience, they Must talk about their home lab and what they do on their own.
Same here. When I'm interviewing people, talking about their past jobs is small talk. What I want to know is what are their projects at home. Where is their passion. What are they learning when it is not required.
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@scottalanmiller that is great for you. but I don't want to be anything that high level. being a boss is not my thing. I honestly have fun being a system admin. It is really cool playing with all the new stuff that we get. I get to figure out all the new types of thin clients that we get, I have learned a lot about messing with routers, and my boss put me in charge of our trend micro server so I dig through that and learn how to use that properly. Only thing right now that I want to try is server side. I think being a server tech might be really cool as well.
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@Draco8573 said:
What I am trying to get at is that I know next to nothing about IT, but I am learning from two sources and I don't think that can really be as bad as Scott is making it sound. He makes it sound like I am throwing my money into a fire and not getting anything out of it. When I know at least 10 times more now than I did last year.
And you are 21, not a big deal. Few people know much IT at your age. You are doing fine. There is plenty of time to figure out what you want to do and how. You are already interning so you have your career clock ticking, which is important.
The bad thing is.... you know 10x what you did last year. But could you have known 20x or 100x? If so, yes, throwing money into the fire because you have been learning less than you should have been. I know no college that teaches at the rate you need to be learning or should be just teaching yourself, for basically free.
Everyone starts somewhere. That's perfectly fine. But what do you do now, that's the question. You are four years away from a degree. You'll be 25 before you are ready to face the field. Is university going to prepare you for the IT landscape half a decade from now? Will you be prepared to go out and find the work that you want? Will you be as far along in your career then as you could be if you buckled down for one year, right now, and taught yourself the IT skills that you need to be truly useful right away in a job?
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@WingCreative said:
My Most Valuable Psych Classes:
- Cognitive Judgement & Decision-making: Helped me realize what sorts of errors people can make that can lead to tech issues.
- Statistical Analysis: Learning the format for non-leading questions on surveys helped me learn how to ask questions without letting my assumption on what the underlying issue affect the response I get.
I ended up getting no psych in college but have studied a bit on my own since then, quite a lot. But I did get some good sociology classes in engineering school that helped a lot.
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@Draco8573 said:
and like I have said it is actually helping me to learn some things, I enjoy the field but I am a moron. And earlier I mentioned that I was going to start playing around and seeing if I can make a beowulf cluster. and you shot it down because it was old and isn't widely used anymore.
I think "shot it down" is strong. It's a neat project, but if your goal is to build a career in IT, it's not a place to start. Much like university - doing it for its own sake because you think it is fun is great, have at it. Doing it instead of learning stuff that you need for your career will hold you back (compared to where you should be.)
You have pointed out that there are tons of gaps and things that you don't know. Totally expected at your point in the field. But why not spend the time learning those things instead?
Why not learn how to run logging servers, monitoring services, VDI, several virtualization platforms, several operating systems, scripting, databases and other skills you would need for 99% of careers first? Save the fun Beowulf cluster for a time when you don't feel the pressure of getting into a solid, stable career?
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We have one member of our team that has put what @scottalanmiller is talking about into practice.
We have just hired @Mike-Ralston, who has been an Intern with our company for 3 years. He is 18, and is now a full time employee on my PBX team as a junior PBX engineer. He is still learning and working with SAM and others on my team to fill in any gaps he may have. But at 18 he will not have any college debt over his head. Will have had a full time job for 7 years by the time of his counterparts have graduated college, and will be making more than most of them will coming out of college with a degree, just based on his job experience in the next year.
He spends hours playing on our servers, because he wants to. He has built out some very cool stuff and has learned how to troubleshoot and does a great job diving in and researching on issues he hasn't seen before. College will not teach you any of this.
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Not that doing a Beowulf cluster won't teach you some things, but as a starting point it seems very "hobby." Exactly the kinds of things I would expect professors, who are completely out of touch with IT as a field, to point you. Remember, professors don't work in IT, they work in academia. Typically they have little idea what IT as a field is doing and often are unemployable themselves. They teach at a fraction of the income of normal IT pros because it is what they can get, not because they are passionate about IT. They tend to see IT as a very "geeky" and "hobby" activity and lack the business context essential to making IT make sense.
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@coliver said:
One of the biggest things I can't recommend enough... Look into getting some older servers or used equipment and setting up a home lab. It doesn't have to run 24/7 but getting hands on with enterprise gear and operating systems is generally a huge benefit.
This cannot be overstated. The value of this is huge. Even when I was well into my career and making six figures, my home lab remained a critical part of my resume and something discussed heavily in any interview.
