Could you tell me what its like, especially right after graduation? I'm in the business school at my university and have to declare a major soon. I'm thinking about CIS, but I'm not sure yet. I've read plenty of online article about different IT jobs, career pathways, and the culture of IT work, but haven't talked with campus resources yet or an IT professional in person. Any advice?
Does anyone here work in IT?
Débuté par
lil yonce
, sept. 05 2014 05:55
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#2
Posté 05 septembre 2014 - 05:59
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I don't work in IT, but I still recommend doing this.
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#3
Posté 05 septembre 2014 - 06:55
Kaiser Arian XVII
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Don't remind me of Microsoft Visual Studio. It brings headaches.
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#5
Posté 06 septembre 2014 - 08:36
Eternal Phoenix
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I'm an IT Graduate.
Still can't find an IT job.
Oh well. It's not like I liked doing IT anyway. I just did it because I was forced into quickly choosing something after finishing school and I chose IT.
Whilst the IT industry is huge with thousands of jobs, getting those jobs can be quite hard. Here in the UK, many IT jobs ask for years of experience in the industry not to mention that many more people are taking IT courses nowadays so there are just as many people applying for these jobs. In other words, it's very competitive so you'll need something that'll make you distinct to all the other hundreds of graduates with the same qualifications (i.e a great personality and CV).
My expertise is as a IT technician but many of these jobs in my area require field work which is impossible for me as I can't drive so that's out of the question. Retail is only what I can do and have experience in.
I suppose it's worth considering but only if you think you can handle it.
Don't remind me of Microsoft Visual Studio. It brings headaches.
Oh God, that reminds me, I had to work on Adobe Dreamweaver in the final year and had to build a site from scratch by HTML. Had to learn about the boring and technical scripting languages too. Best part of the course was working in Photoshop and Adobe Flash to produce animations. I became quite literally a pro with Photoshop. How unfortunate that I can't be bothered to buy it for personal use so I'm stuck with crappy MS Paint which is hell to use.
Strangely enough, I enjoyed learning about how data is transferred and the TCP/IP - OSI models for the entire process. Strange because I hated all the other technical modules on the course save for the data and networking one.
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#6
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Posté 06 septembre 2014 - 10:59
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Could you tell me what its like, especially right after graduation? I'm in the business school at my university and have to declare a major soon. I'm thinking about CIS, but I'm not sure yet. I've read plenty of online article about different IT jobs, career pathways, and the culture of IT work, but haven't talked with campus resources yet or an IT professional in person. Any advice?
I work in IT. I work as an app developer for virtualizing hardware domains.(C++/C,Java,Boost:asio,Android and Spring). I will give you advice based on my programming experiences as I have not worked in other sectors.
Advantages
-Out the gate, the first thing I can tell you is that the pay is good(not always but for the most part). Mostly because there is a lack of good software engineers in the field. Software engineering is one of those fields where if you are not passionate about can be very difficult. It requires a very logical thought process, they are many answers to your questions but you have to choose the absolute best and one mistake can cost you a lot of money. The advantages of this is that, it is easily changeable as it is not tangible. This is relative to other sectors of engineering that require re-manufacturing of objects.
-The skills you learn at one job are easily transferable to other positions. There is a lot of opportunity for career growth in software but you have to be willing to work hard for it. The domain of problems that you work on is not what you will be doing for the rest of your life if you had to change jobs.
-Due to the influx of software, there is are a lot of software jobs that are advertised. This also seems to hold weight now as they have been studies done which say software jobs will continue to grow as projected to 2020.
-If you like working on unique projects, it can be fun.
-You make cool ****.
-You do not need a huge team for some of the projects and you can get your feet wet in start ups/contracts
-Possible to be done without a degree(although some jobs have reinforced the idea,it will be extremely difficult to get in the door without one and some concepts would be nice to learn with one)
Disadvantages
-Working long hours. Software can easily break,anything can happen from server faults to run time bugs. When this happens, they sometimes require an immediate response from the developer. Not only that, software has had a problem with schedule. This means, the next coming weeks that you will face will probably have really long stretched out hours.
-Business management does not understand. At my last job I was required to add a feature in the next 2 weeks which was almost impossible for that time frame. The business side of the job did not care and they wanted it done. This resulted in messy coding practices for the sake of delivering th product. The worst part is that when it was time to revisit for a re factor, I the business came with another "feature"
-If you do not have a passion for it, you might hate it.. a lot.
-If you expect the culture of it to be like any stereotype you see in the media you will be dissapointed.
-Software is changing, you have to stay ahead of the curve. This is a good thing for your career but bad thing if you don't want to put in the extra effort.
Take Software Engineering
-If you are interested in the field
-Can think logically
-Are ready to put in the work
-Can communicate your ideas clearly
Do not Take Software Engineering
-Because you could you know.. "program games." Now, a game development path is amazing from software engineering. However, you have to be completely sure this is what you want to do. The amount of people that have flunked the program because the wanted to program games but couldn't understand what is the necessity of algoritmn complexity or why a Push down automata is able to backtrace are pretty substantial in my experience.
-Because you heard it could land you a good job. If you do not like this field, you will hate it. A whole different ball game.
Either way, I wish you good on your endevour but realize they are other fields for a computer scientist or IT person to explore. Software engineering is not the only one. Examples of some are:
- Aerospace
- Artificial intelligence
- Computer system design and analysis
- Information technology and data processing
- Research operations
- Simulation
- Software engineering
- Teaching
- Telecommunications
All the best and I wish your well
#7
Posté 06 septembre 2014 - 02:32
lil yonce
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@Eternal Phoenix and LLCOOLBAE; Thank you both. 
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#8
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Posté 06 septembre 2014 - 02:35
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No problem! Message me if you have any questions
#9
Posté 07 septembre 2014 - 04:23
Kaiser Arian XVII
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Disadvantages
-Working long hours. Software can easily break,anything can happen from server faults to run time bugs.
The thing that let me down. I worked hours and hardly got acceptable results. With that amount of time I spent on, I could get a master degree in a humanistic studies easily! Also my forehead would hurt after long hours of writing faulty formulas in Visual Studio.
This quote is appropriate here:
Computers are like Old Testament gods; lots of rules and no mercy.
- Eternal Phoenix et TheChosenOne aiment ceci
#10
Guest_TrillClinton_*
Posté 07 septembre 2014 - 04:28
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The thing that let me down. I worked hours and hardly got acceptable results. With that amount of time I spent on, I could get a master degree in a humanistic studies easily! Also my forehead would hurt after long hours of writing faulty formulas in Visual Studio.
This quote is appropriate here:
Computers are like Old Testament gods; lots of rules and no mercy.
LOL!! That is an amazing quote! I will put that as my sig.
I personally like it, I feel like it the perfect marriage of creativity and logic. To design a good system and come up with a good algorithm you need both some creativity and logic.
- Eternal Phoenix aime ceci
#11
Posté 07 septembre 2014 - 04:32
vometia
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I'm a programmer/sysadmin type. Generally speaking, I love what I do, but IT is notoriously badly managed. IT staff are also just seen as a "cost" by senior managers, so don't expect any appreciation...
A bit of a mixed bag overall. If I were starting over, it's hard to say if I'd take the same career path.
- Eternal Phoenix aime ceci
#12
Guest_TrillClinton_*
Posté 07 septembre 2014 - 04:40
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I'm a programmer/sysadmin type. Generally speaking, I love what I do, but IT is notoriously badly managed.
Very true.
#13
Posté 07 septembre 2014 - 04:42
Orian Tabris
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Have you tried turning it off and on again?
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#14
Posté 07 septembre 2014 - 02:28
lil yonce
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Are many of the upper level IT jobs program heavy, or prefer program heavy backgrounds? I'm not looking to pursue a degree in Computer Science, rather, I was looking at my school's Computer Information Systems program within the business college. The only programming track there is Web Programming. The other concentration they offer in CIS is in Information Security. I wouldn't be anywhere near a software engineer, I know that. Would it still be a worthwhile career choice without a CS degree?
