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So, I'm an old computer hobbyist. How old? My first build as a wee bairn involved putting a 10-megabyte hard drive mounted on an ISA card into an XT. That's how old. I've been a hobbyist all my life and I've never used a desktop PC I didn't build myself. I've had a few vaguely computer-toucher jobs over the years, but never really did it as a career. I'm thinking of changing that, as my current industry is finally starting to be encroached on by technology and globalization. My brother ran the IT department for a non-profit, and he and I had always talked about me getting certifications and getting into IT. I always kind of pushed it off because I really dug working from home and the flexibility was nice to take care of family, but when a lot of tech stuff moved to remote with the pandemic it started to seem more appealing. When my brother passed away earlier this year-- he managed to avoid COVID, but heart disease got him-- he left me enough money that I could take the time and get said certs, so I'm going to do that. I'm planning on doing the A+ first because that seems to be the start-here certification and I'm pretty sure I can get that done relatively quickly given the knowledge base I have. Net+ and Security+ would be obvious next choices, but I get the vibe that the CCNA path is a little more respected despite being vendor-specific. I've also looked into those Google certs they've been pushing everywhere, as well as stuff like that free-to-audit Harvard CS course and things like that. So what would be a good path for someone who's pretty computer-competent but doesn't have the experience on his CV to get into this? I know I'll have to start off with something pretty low-level to get the resume built up and I'm fine with that. I'm not really sure what subgenre of IT I'd like to end up in at this point, so I just really want to get some certifications to get a foot in the door. Any recommendations as to what to do or oh my God what not to do?
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Aug 18, 2022 03:42
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guppy posted:You're right that the A+ is the place to start, and also easy. It's also stupid so don't be surprised when they have you memorize ancient arcana that doesn't matter. I actually started to go for my A+ back in the late 1990s before I tripped and fell into a job with the Postal Service, and the prep course I was taking involved loving soldering. Never got to the test so I don't know if knowing poo poo about resistors and capacitors was actually a part of it back then, but yeah even then I had a lot of "why the gently caress would I need to know this" vibes from the thing. The good news is the ancient arcana is probably poo poo I experienced first-hand. LochNessMonster posted:Before you dive into a specialization you should ask yourself what type of work you would like to do a few years down the line. Yeah, I definitely don't want to go too specialized before I realize what I really want to get into. I figure the A+ and the Network+ will be generalist enough and enough to get my foot in the door, just looking for other basic certifications that will help starting out. Cloud definitely intrigues me, but I don't know if that's enough to consider it as a field. kazmeyer fucked around with this message at 10:59 on Aug 18, 2022 |
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Aug 18, 2022 10:56
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So let's say my plan is to do A+ and Network+ before I start job hunting for serious. If I was going to add one more to that, what would be a suitable choice? (I could probably spend up to 12 months skiving at my day job and working on certs before I'd really need to start hunting for real.) The only thing I can say for sure I'm looking for in terms of a dream job is something loving remote in the plague year. 
kazmeyer fucked around with this message at 01:34 on Aug 20, 2022 |
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Aug 20, 2022 01:31
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So I'm zipping through WGU's Cloud program and approaching the point where I'm going to have to make a decision about which way to go. I think we take one Azure cert and one AWS cert and then have to decide to specialize or go generalist; is the "AWS has more share, but Azure's growing faster" thing still holding true? I know it's not super hard to translate skills from one branch to the other, but if there's any cloud wonks here right now which way would you jump?
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Mar 23, 2024 20:30
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