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Associates in IT worth anything?
Derpan
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Hi there, I really wanted a busy job, I figured it would be satisfying and whatnot, but after working overnights at a wal mart for five months during my second semester of college, I have considered the option of a job involving chairs and letting me stack boxes on MY time.
Is there any hope career wise with an associates in IT? Specifically System administration?
Is there any hope career wise with an associates in IT? Specifically System administration?
Derpan on
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Do you have any of intention of finishing your undergraduate degree? If you can find something better and keep working on a BS/BA, that would probably be the best route. If you need the money though, don't leave this job until you've found a new one.
I have an Associates and no certs, I worked my way up from helpdesk to support staff supervisor overseeing about 25 guys, and I make damn fine coin. So you don't need to languish in college forever taking bogus classes that don't interest you whatsoever to get something you find fulfilling.
That said, don't expect to jump right into a proper sys admin job after getting the degree. While I've done well for myself without the degree, I have been held back on occasion due to the lack of it, so I am currently working on an Associates Degree and depending on my position, job market, etc. I may continue on to get a Bachelors Degree. I've taken several networking classes in my time at community college, including the highest level networking class they have. I have talked to teachers, I've talked to students, I've helped the students who don't have the experience I have. As much as I like some of these people on a personal level, I wouldn't hire ANYONE graduating from this program without some other real experience for anything beyond desktop support and I'd be hesitant to even do that with many of them, a lot would go on level 1 phone support.
The degree will be your foot in the door for a fairly entry level position, but it will help you get that position and it will help you move out of it to something more interesting sooner. It will also give you a good starting point for learning on your own - figuring out what you enjoy and want to know more about, what you need to know more about, etc.
1) The most important reason, imo, is that shows employers you're willing to take the initiative and spend time learning these things on your own. That's very important in IT work and something that is very lacking in a lot of IT department's employees. This is what has gotten me basically every job I've had so far.
2) It's community college, hardly the pinnacle of education. I've seen flat out incorrect information in the books (for example claiming that Perl, PHP, and Javascript all have very little functionality built into them and do most of their work by calling other binaries on the system and using their output more like batch, bash, csh, etc scripts), have had teachers say things that are completely wrong (my network security teacher insisted to block pings you wanted to close tcp port 7 with the firewall because that's where the echo service listens), and teachers that just aren't very good teachers. Learning on your own helps you not come out of these classes and say something stupid in an interview and makes sure you're getting info from multiple sources so that you can figure out what's right and what's not.
Are you planning to have an IT as the career path?
I like them, Ideally, I would really like to install and maintain computers, as I am more of a hands on person, but there doesn't seem to be anything like that at this college.
https://www.hvcc.edu/programs.html
Mostly all system administration. I took take an introduction to data communication class and I seem to have grasped it well enough, but most of it is still a mystery to me.
I was considering nursing, criminal justice to turn into a police officer, or something computer related.
Speaking from experience, the best thing an associate's degree can do is get you in at Geek Squad/similar tech place. Little or no upward movement available at places like these, at which point you either decide to strike out on your own with your own shop or go back to school and get the four-year degree which will lead to jobs/internships that have lots of upwards mobility. Plus a lot of four-year places have intership programs that can get your foot in the door as needed.
I can has cheezburger, yes?
Way to shoot for the sky. If you can’t summon up more ambition than that, maybe you need to keep working night at Wally World. An associates degree doesn’t mean much, and you’ll be competing with tens of thousands of experienced, educated workers who just got laid off. Better to just suck up the debt now and ride out the recession at school. Do yourself a favor and just plan to do the four years!