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Spiceworks users have various backgrounds. Some are experienced pros who have phased out more technology than most have even heard about! Others are just starting out in their IT career and are learning as they go. We see questions now and then from folks who are new to IT on how to walk the tightrope of learning on the job, meeting expectations, and doing it all without spending too much money.

So. What career advice would you give new IT pros?

To kick start the discussion:

  • Are certifications worth it? What certifications would you recommend?
  • What books do you think every IT pro has to have on their bookshelf?
  • How do you convince the boss your network needs that upgrade?
  • Any other lessons from the school of hard knocks?
50 Spice ups
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  1. Keep it simple. Complexity leads to errors and mistakes.

  2. Remember that you are in a service industry. Be nice to your customers (and your management). I’ve found that tech\IT is a small, close-knit community, and your reputation will precede you.

  3. Do it by the numbers. You are managing equipment- the only way to know how they are performing is to collect metrics.

  4. You don’t know everything, so don’t act like you do. Ask questions of everyone around you… most people who really know their stuff are willing to share knowledge.

Are certifications worth it? Some are, some aren’t. The Microsoft MCSE, Cisco CCNA, and ISC CISSP seem to be respected and sought after in job postings. The “smaller” certs from CompTIA, BrainBench, SkillDrill, etc can be useful for assessing inhouse staff, but do nothing for career advancement. Then there are specialty certs, typically from vendors (such as VMWare, Dell, HP, NetApp) that can ‘put you over the top’ when applying to jobs needing those skills.

Books? There are the classics, such as Comer’s “Internetworking with TCP\IP” (all 3 volumes), and Limoncelli’s “The practice of System and Network Administration”. But the most practical are those reference books that you will turn to time and again for reference that is hard to find online, typically architectural guideline stuff.

Convincing people of anything requires people skills, something that is sorely lacking in most of us IT types. Sorry, but it’s true. Being able to convince management requires equal parts diplomacy and fact. Get the details of your argument together, plan your attack, know your opponent. Perhaps you should include SunTzu’s “The art of War” on that bookshelf!

2 Spice ups
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I laughed when I read the last part of your post.

“(Convincing people of anything requires people skills, something that is sorely lacking in most of us IT types)”

This hit me square between the eyes.

I escaped my career as a counselor because I don’t consider myslef a “people-person.” Here I am in IT management, thinking that it would be “easier” on my social skills. But, you are right. I am finding that I have to be a negotiator, a counselor, and a workplace contributor instead of the guy who sits behind the computer and communicates ONLY with machines all day.

I think this “talks only to machines” idea is a stereotype that has been cultivated about the IT field. Now that I am in it, I realize that the stereotype is NOT true. IT people CAN communicate, it’s just that they have an easier time communicating with each other than they do communicating with the rest of the office.

I am the only IT person in the office, so I might be at a unique situation/advantage. I HAVE to communicate to others outside of IT becasue there are no IT people to socialize with. Curse or blessing? I have not decided yet.

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I’d say a big thing I’ve learned is don’t take things personally. User perception is the key. When things fail, they want to string you up, and when you successfully complete your projects, it usually goes overlooked. Find a sense of pride in the fact that you are keeping the business going. Find a balance between socializiation and burying yourself in your work.

And above all else, don’t take this thankless job too seriously. Do your best, but at the end of the day, focus on the more important things in life.

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I’ve been holding back on this thread because part of me wants to offer sage advice (I’ve been working in IT for 7-10 years), but the other part of me still feels like I’m new to this. I guess that’s the great part about IT, unlike other jobs where nothing changes after you’ve been trained, IT offers a job where things are constantly changing and evolving. Everything from technology itself to technology driven ideas, like policies and procedures. Even the products we use are on cycles of change, Spiceworks is an excellent example of this.

So I guess my advise is this:
Take advantage of being in the IT industry by allowing yourself to grow and change with the environment, become great at everything you do and you’ll have plenty of people looking up to you. There are plenty of resources to help along the way . . .

1 Spice up
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Your job is sales, this holds true regardless of whatever job you think you are in. Everything you when you are dealing with someone else. You are selling something. There may be no money being exchanged, but believe me you are selling something. So with that in mind whenever you are dealing with someone, if it’s to get your view across or even just help someone with a problem. Remember that you are a salesman and act that way. This may sound rather obvious to some or completely foreign to others. But it’s the plain simple truth and far to many people in the IT world forget this simple fact.

All the knowledge and talent means nothing if you can’t sell it.

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Lots of good advice above from Eric.

Cisco CCNA helped me get started after college. Microsoft certs aren’t as hard as Cisco or ISC2 certs, but you have to do more of them…Competencies only come with time and exposure to tech, no matter what letters come after your name.

If you haven’t built a domain, a dns server, a dhcp server etc etc etc, you need to asap. Get microsoft technet, some old hardware and start a lab at home. Push group policy and install wsus on your server…

Everyone expects you to know everything; windows/mac/linux to car amp wiring/ vcr’s you need to tinker as much as you can so you have experience

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In a similar vein to what Groffer says above regarding being able to sell yourself and your ideas, I would suggest that you remember you are there for the business.

It used to be that IT was it’s own little world and you provided computers for solitaire, I mean Word, Excel, email… If the computers failed the business carried on and paperwork got done later.

Now almost every facet of the business is affected by computers, from the warehouse to the production floor to the sales guys and the building maintenance. Automatic systems for this, remote access, email alerts, the list goes on.

You need to build relationships with the business sides of the company, find out where your industry is heading and get there before you have to. Walk around and talk to end users, find out how you can make their jobs easier, reduce mistakes, simplify.

If you want IT to be viewed as other than a cost centre this is the path you should be pushing yourself down.

Mike229 You are right on target. I don’t have any IT certifications but in my 10 years as IT manager for the same company (my current one, and the only one I have worked for since 1986), I have done all those tasks. You have to get your hands dirty, no job is beneath you, or above you for that matter. Telephone systems, paging, security systems - my common line is “If there’s a plug on it, it’s my responsibility”.

Common sense and a Can-Do attitude will go a long way. In any field. As my department increases in size, from 1 to 1 & 1/2 right now, I would like to get some management training, I would also like to have better skills in some areas such as report & proposal writing, but that does come down to selling the product as Groffer says.

If I had the choice of going back to school I would choose business classes over IT.

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Get a Degree, Get a Degree, Get a Degree!!!

As someone who has worked both sides of the IT equation (management and staff) I can tell you that a degree is MUCH more important that certifications. A Degree demonstrates that you have an overall knowledge base to build off of that should include critical thinking skills. These skills and knowledge allow you to be flexible where you go within IT. The certs tend to demonstrate that you are knowledgeable in that 1 subject area. I worked with a consultant one time that had an insane number of certs (200 +). When it came time to put the equipment together a 10 hour project became a 4 day project because he couldn’t think outside the box enough to configure things in a way that he hadn’t seen before.

Also, if you are on the cert path, look for ones that will enhance what you are currently doing. Don’t go for a cert to get a job that you’ve never performed before. It becomes clear in the interview process that a person may know the information from the cert, but they have never had hands on experience.

Another point (and this comes from carpentry) Measure Twice, Cut Once. I’ve been burnt and burnt myself by being too quick to get a project underway that was not completely analyzed. It is very painful to explain to everyone that no, you didn’t see this coming and yes, you probably should have. There will always be situations where things are out of your control and even experts with 30 years experience in an area will scratch their heads over it, but the better prepared you are before going in the fewer things will trip you up.

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Don’t be afraid to promote yourself and your accomplishments.

In the IT field, your customers (internal and external) have the expectation that everything will “just work”. So, when you are finishing a 6 week of 14hr days to ensure that the new system works, nobody will notice. People will definitely notice when things are not working, but when your system is working well, it fades into the background. This is as it should be. A well designed server/network/webpage/application should not jump out and smack people in the head; it should just quietly do its job and get out of the way. So, unless you promote yourself, the only time people will hear or mention your name is when something is broken.

Learn about your company/industry.

The job of the IT manager/staffer is to help the business do what it does. If you wish to advance, or in many cases just hold your own, you have to gain an understanding of your business. The more you understand your business, the better equipped you will be to provide solutions to business problems.

When all you have is a hammer, everything starts looking like a nail.

Understand that technology is not always the answer. Just because you have a hardware/software widget that will solve a problem, continue to examine the problem to determine if there isn’t a simpler solution. Often modifying a business process, or making a configuration change elsewhere can make a problem go away. Here is where understanding your business can really pay off. If you understand your business and the processes that make it go, you can get closer to the root of problems. Trust me, when you come up with a great solution to a business problem that does not require purchasing hardware or software, you will be showing that your priority is the success of the business, not the defense of your corner of IT land.

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Jeremy-

3 most bodacious points dude! ← my Keanu Reeves impression :smiley:

I tell many clients that staff defection many times is a direct result of management not touting their accomplishments- management is two-way; both down and up. A manager has to be part cheerleader at times.

“Know the business”- single best thing you can do to gain respect within the company.

“When you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail” is one of my favorite quotes… slightly different from how you put it, because its usually not the only tool they have, it’s usually the newest tool, and they try to apply it to everything. I have a client that learned Content Switch configuration for their website, then immediately created farms for DNS and email… hammer,… nails.

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In line with Mike229’s comment, if you are more of an outside consultant as some of us are, instead of technet, you may want to look at the partner program. It will save you a bit of money if you are starting out, and you still get the software for just about everything, giving you the change to play with different configurations.

As much of a cliche as it sounds, the only thing constant in IT is change. Keeping up with new things is always an asset, as specialization may provide good advancement at a certain job, it’s always good to have a broader frame of reference; rather than bringing a hammer (to borrow an idiom from above) bring a swiss army knife.

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After 22 years, I am going to try to keep this brief and succinct:

  1. Your Disposition - Affects EVERYTHING. It’s to your benefit to lose the ego and have a little humility in your career. Great Minds don’t feel challenged by every opposite opinion, but rather, mull it over for it’s worth. It’s called learning.
    A bad disposition can alienate you from those you need to work with in other departments in order to accomplish a goal. The one’s who are “approachable” are usually the one’s who can pull out that magic-trick in the 11th hour to make sure something succeeds. It’s because people are inclined 'towards" them, not “away from” them.
    Like it or not, your disposition influences your reputation. You can be brilliant, but if you’re an @$$, you’ll need to have Einstein qualities to offset it. Why make the road harder for yourself?
    Lastly, a bad disposition comes across - to me - as compensation for either “insecurity of Knowledge” or “laziness”. Neither are pretty.

Basically, mom’s old addage applies: “You get more with sugar, than you do with vinegar.” - add a little spice, and it’'l be just nice!

  • Take it to heart -
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I come from a new place in IT as I have only recently gained employment in an IT position, as opposed to a normal job with the 'Oh, and you know IT, do that too!" add-on.

First off, my new boss (who has an IT degree!) gave me some sage advice:
‘The best day you will ever have is when nobody notices you’.
We all know that that is the best possible day, and it rapidly goes downhill from there.

Lots of great advice above me here, I find myself nodding in agreement with 99% of it. here’s my contribution:

C.Y.A.M. - Cover Your Ass Management.

  1. DOCUMENT EVERYTHING. Find a good Document Management System and implement it (I inherited Atlassian Confluence here and it works pretty well and has some nice features).

The great thing about a good DMS is that you can set it up for EVERY PART of the business, not just IT. All business processes should be in there. If the whole organisation makes an effort to enter this information, then new people coming into the business have a HOWTO on their jobs, and the things they need to do.

Put all your documentation on your current IT setup in there. Update it religously. This is a great way of implementing Odom’s 'Reclaim the Network" project. If you change something, note down what you changed, and why. Save configurations in there if you can. Screenshots of web interfaces for those you can’t save a config file out of.

Also, make use of the security features of your DMS and lock down pages with sensitive information. I class most of my documentation of IT in this way. I leave a few basic pages open for users to interface with the IT function (basic password reset, logging tickets etc etc).

  1. FOLLOW BEST PRACTICE. Read up how to best do a particular IT function, and migrate that way. Get your AD into some semblance of order by sorting into Organisational Units (OU’s) and generally clearing out the flotsam & jetsam. Fix DHCP, sort out your DNS, and then use the tools such as Spiceworks to make your life easier.

  2. TEST, TEST AGAIN, THEN DEPLOY: Make sure that you are 100% positive that a new box you are about to deploy has all software and settings correct. Nothing worse than putting a machine on a new hire’s desk while the boss is there and welcoming them, and then your newly-imaged box falls over. I have had it happen (no fault of my own… but dot your i’s and cross your t’s)

  3. FAILURE TO PLAN IS A PLAN TO FAIL: Develop a strategic plan for the IT function of the business. Break this down into smaller, bite sized operational plans that you can implement on a scale of days, weeks and months.
    Some of the planning I am doing now includes:
    a) Backups - Methodology of backup jobs, and putting a proper tape rotation into place
    b) IP Addressing schema - getting rid of the unnecessary VLANs and subnets that just cause hassles in a business this small, and allocate the IP’s in a much more defined way (ie servers in .11-.24, printers from .25 to .30, workstations from .50-.254 etc etc
    c) Hardware proposals - looking to condense our 8 disparate (IBM, HP) servers into something more manageable - say 2 beefy dual-socket quad-core servers to virtualise everything we need, plus a 2Tb NAS for storage.

The best thing to do is liaise with your boss or CEO and find out what plans they have for the business, what demands that will place on IT, and any extra regulatory conditions that are coming that may impact on IT (New compliant versions of software, or need to migrate to another platform/ERP to be compliant). You can then be informed and start checking whether you can meet the coming needs with what you have now, or search for systems and/or software that will, and budget for this to happen.

Hopefully the great suggestions will keep on coming!

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Some great advice in this thread.

A simple thing that I learned long ago is to stay aware of the basic processes and functions that are going on beneath the surface. So many times in my career I’ve seen where the client wants to implement a technology solution for a problem that doesn’t need one. A computer or program is not always the best solution to a problem and only makes you look bad in trying to implement it when it is sure to fail.

The points made about communication and people skills can’t be emphasized enough. I try to keep a fresh perspective everyday on how I can make people jobs easier through IT. It doesn’t take long for people to respect you and what you do because you are an invaluable member of the team making them better at what they do - so they have more time to ply their people skills.

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dear all

am a new guy to IT and i have been working for a bank as help desk operator for more than 3 years now
i have the feeling that i did not learn anything new in the past 3 years since Help Desk staff is not being involved in the Devlopment or Network side, the maximum you can do is reading the documentation provided by the IT Development team ( if any) and start supporting the product which the user might have been stared using ages before you know that it exsists!!
for the network side it is the same story!!
my boss refuses to send me to any courses and i have paid from my pocket for the MCSA course ( may 2007) but jutst wrote 1 exam until now
as all of you i believe, i feel am burning my self at work with no use
currently am consedering Oracle course ( wich i will pay for of course), and with no offence, non of the advises you provided in this thread helped me getting clear idea to start planning my career
some clear advices are required like: a list of books that i shouyld read, list of websites which are useful for new IT guys like me, which courses to go for and which not

best regards and waiting your soon feedback

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Here are some dont’s that have caused me to fire or write IT people up for over the last 15 years (and yes, they are all true):

1). Don’t bring your girlfriend out during the nightshift, drink wine, and then leave the wine bottle in the fridge. (doh!)
2). Don’t beg and plea and whine then complain to the VP about how I never train you or send you to a training class, then get sent to the class but refuse to tell me what you learn, then refuse to write a plan about how we are going to improve the software configuration post-training, and then never do anything about the software. Especially when the training was $3K.
3). In staff meetings with senior management don’t respond to senior VP questions by keeping silent, having them re-ask the question, and then keep looking like a deer in headlights until I have to respond for you. Trust me, they will want you fired for being a dumb ass.
4). I tell you to do “A”, that it is important. A week later “A” is not done because you are “too busy”. When I ask what you are busy with you say “stuff” (Which actually turns out to be unimportant pet projects you are doing on the test system trying to learn new software you downloaded off the web).
5). I hire you as a programmer and tell you to make sure you do all programming on the test system. You proceed to do it on the production system even though other programmers warn you. Because you are good. You crash production. I call the headhunter and he comes out and leads you from the building as you yell towards my office “let me explain”, “let me talk to him”, “it won’t happen again”. You never see me again.
6)… and the winner: You find a loophole in the help desk ticket system that causes you to reset due dates. This causes tickets never to be past-due, thus increasing your quarterly monetary bonus. Every IT VP can’t fire you fast enough, especially when we find that you taught a newcomer how to do it. The newcomer is placed on a 90 day suspension. And everybody else gets zero bonus until we can fix the loophole (vendor problem). This even goes on my record because I didn’t find it fast enough (even though I am the only IT manager that did find it).

There you are people … real life, real examples from an IT manager. My style of management is summed up thus: you are professionals, not ditch diggers. You should know your job and be trusted with it. It is a job filled with career advances. It is a team atmosphere. I give lots of leeway, and take lots of bullets. But don’t violate my trust. And I think that is true in every IT department.

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Know what you want from your career. I’ve spent 10 years in various jobs before actually sitting down and seeing what fields I’m good in and going for a new job that met what I wanted. IT is such a massive field these days that although you can chop and change, you can’t keep up with everything in the industry. If you can choose a specialisation to start with and know it’s what you want to do, you’ll be in a better position to start with.

Also, don’t be afraid to get your hands dirty. Obviously applying untested updates on a live production system isn’t going to win you any friends, you will learn far more by doing than by reading purely from a book. I’ve seen people come into businesses with all the right certifications but having zero knowledge about how to apply those skills in a business.

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Younis,
That’s a large question. If you studied for your MSCA and are considering jumping to Oracle, I would think you’re probably still searching for what , in IT, piques your interest and you find stisfying.

If I were just starting out in IT, I would study Infrastructure first. NBo need to strive for the guru level, just a sound, fundamental understanding. Reason being:
a) You’ll get a global picture of how everything works together in it’s most fundamental aspects, which will only serve you better regardless of where you eventually go, in the IT realm.

and

b) It will help you discover what area intriques you most.

From there, once you’d identified what you like most, I would specialize. Find an area of IT and focus on it, become great at it. In this day and age, it’s almost impossible to be great at all things. Areas could include:
Infrastructure: Wi-Fi ; Routers ; Satellite ; RF ; Broadband ; etc
Servers: IIS (Web) ; Domains & Controllers; File & Print ;
Storage: SANS ; Portable Media ;
MultiMedia: WebBased ; Music; Video; Flash ; etc
Security: Compliancy (My Field) ; Consulting & Assesments; Desktop; AV; Antispam; Wi-Fi ; Firewall ; Intrusion Prevention & Detection ; etc
Services: Applications ; Software as a Service (SaaS) ; Network Monitoring ;
The list of categories and fields is endless…

Locate & Tag Internet resources for reference and learning. A good one for network infrastructure is this:
http://www.networkworld.com/index.html

If you haven’t already, study and learn the OSI Model - It’s a 7 layer model which details how information flows over the network, and the base fundamental of understanding how IT works. Here are some links:

OSI Model Explained:

http://www.matcmp.sunynassau.edu/~kaplans/classes/osimodel.htm

Quiz:

Also, get yourself a lab environment going at home so you can study, apply, and understand what you are learning. VMWorkstation is an excellent tool for this. It will allow you to create “virtual” machines in your desktop environment that you can tinker with while you work through courses of study. I’ve built and run 5 machines in 1 environment on my laptop to test the configuration and funcaionality of a specific service. (granted, 5 VM Machines stresses the my laptop, but it still functioned ok.)
Download the trial version here:
VMWare Workstation

Let meknow if this helps. I’m trying not to flood the board with an endless “run-on” post, but would like to get something useful into your hands.

Most of all, just remember - IT is a career of endless learning.

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Hi

get out while you can, you need to get your hands dirty, meaning actually setting up Ad policies and other stuff, books are great but no one keeps the info fresh in their minds for years if they never applied it somewhere.

like i said books are great but they are written like everyhting roks fine,it usually does not work 100% like they say,there comes the best knowledge,fixing it.

I was in a job where there was employment advancment, i am switching to a bigger company where IT ranges in the 300 employees, i’ll be able to grow there but there’s nothing like having your own lab at home like the others said, specially with DNS, DHCp, Ad and policies, Wsus is definelty one thing to do as well as deploying anit-virus but they are usually easy to setup.

But again Get out because the IT field is ever changing and you dont want to miss the boat, if you smell the stagnation, that 's your wakeup call.

Dont put more effort if they are always turning you down, another company will want you for the skills you have and drive