Omega Owners Forum
Chat Area => General Discussion Area => Topic started by: tigers_gonads on 21 June 2011, 23:55:30
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As above
My lad is nearly 16 ( leaves school next June) and is mad on anything IT :y
Yesterday, he started his 2 weeks work placement at a local IT firm.
Now here I was expecting him to be making the tea and coffee for the next 2 weeks but it would seem Ian ( the boss ) has thrown him strieght in at the deep end and much too there suprise, he isn't just swimming, he is out swimming a bloke who has been there 2 years and in the last 2 days, has put together ................
2 pc's
Fixed 3 customers laptops
Being out on site with the boss to sort out some sort of server problem.
Bottom line is the boss is rather giggleing and can't believe he is picking it up so fast.
Ian is a friend of mine ( my lad doesn't know this ) ;D ;D
For those who work in I.T
What sort of qualifications does he need to advance ?
Anything I can do to help him progress ?
Any idea's or advise welcome
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Not a proud father at all, are you!! ;)
Best of luck to your son in his future career, not that he'll need it, he'll be the boss's right hand man by the end of the week! :y
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Not sure about the qualifications, there are so many, but it sounds like he might be half way there, will the company not take him on and train 'in house' with college release? Good for him anyway and good luck.. :y
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Qualifications all depend on which area he wants to concentrate on but a good starting point would be something like CompTIA A+
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there are many microsoft certified X (http://www.ucertify.com/vendors/Microsoft.html ) programs that can help him.. However , nothing can replace real job experience..
And I must note when he becomes over 40, his interest on IT wont be same and as the subject internals change from day to day he'll struggle to follow :-/
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"IT" is a name that covers huge selection of jobs, from Developer, Analyst, Technician to almost anything.
Needs to select an area, sounds like Network Admin type route. If he can get a job where he is now and work up, you get the company to hopefully sponsor some Microsoft or Cisco type accreditations :y
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Experience is the most important thing.
Service & Repair - Experience
Admins - courses
Programming - courses and real life experience
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Depends what he wants to do. If he can stay there for a bit longer, be it on minimum wage and/or free for the holidays, as relevant experience is more valuable than qualifications. When I used to interview people to work for me, many had the required CCNA and MCSE qualifications (it was a Windows based role that needed an in depth knowledge of networking), but I usually found they were unsuitable.
Virtually no employer will offer instructor led courses any more, so college or self-study.
Generic courses might help get helpdesk type desktop support jobs, any form of specialism will need specific experience or training.
Additionally be aware that large companies have different requirements to small companies, so basic PC building is of no use if he wants to work for the big corporates. And corporate skills are no good if he prefers small companies.
Good luck, but keep in mind its quite a volatile industry to work in.
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he'll also need a bluetooth implant, an M3 and an ability to click "download" in my experience :y
seriously tho, i have several mates and a close family member, all mortgaged with kids and the work is getting harder to find once you need a certain income - luckily they're as old as me hence have vast experience - but you still sweat between contracts and going PAYE used to be the safe, albeit less well paid option - now its just as dodgy :(
but heck - its a s good a field as any - certainly pays better than civil engineering and you dont need to study for 5 years ;)
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]Not a proud father at all, are you!! ;)[/highlight]
Best of luck to your son in his future career, not that he'll need it, he'll be the boss's right hand man by the end of the week! :y
;D ;D ;D
Yeh, well proud of him :y
And to think that last year, his teacher banged on the door one wednesday night ( when he was at footy pratice ) and asked if everything was ok because she thought he was quite and lacked confidence ::) ;D ;D
Thanks for the opinions and advise lads :y
He came home a couple of hours ago with a right look on his face :-?
Turns out that he couldn't finish building a customers pc because the shop had run out of type of RAM he needed ::) ;D ;D
He is not doing that good at school at the moment.
Basicly, if he likes the subject, he is great but those he doesn't like, he basicly can't be arsed :(
He enjoys maths, history and anything to do with tech but his handwriting is about as good as my spelling ;D
I have sugested that he offers to go in on a saturday morning to help out ;)
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]Not a proud father at all, are you!! ;)[/highlight]
Best of luck to your son in his future career, not that he'll need it, he'll be the boss's right hand man by the end of the week! :y
;D ;D ;D
Yeh, well proud of him :y
And to think that last year, his teacher banged on the door one wednesday night ( when he was at footy pratice ) and asked if everything was ok because she thought he was quite and lacked confidence ::) ;D ;D
Thanks for the opinions and advise lads :y
He came home a couple of hours ago with a right look on his face :-?
Turns out that he couldn't finish building a customers pc because the shop had run out of type of RAM he needed ::) ;D ;D
He is not doing that good at school at the moment.
Basicly, if he likes the subject, he is great but those he doesn't like, he basicly can't be arsed :(
He enjoys maths, history and anything to do with tech but his handwriting is about as good as my spelling ;D
I have sugested that he offers to go in on a saturday morning to help out ;)
Good idea, that's basically how Tonygnome got his apprenticeship. He did work experience at a small garage who couldn't employ him but were that impressed they passed his name on to his present employer who took him on as a Saturday/ school holiday lad.
When he finished school he was taken on as an apprentice and trains on the job and day release at college. Another two years and he will be a trained mechanic.
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If he wants to work on the networking side he will really need a maths qualification. Networking is all about 8 bit numbers!
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Noted :y
cheers
If he wants to work on the networking side he will really need a maths qualification. Networking is all about 8 bit numbers!
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If he wants to work on the networking side he will really need a maths qualification. Networking is all about 8 bit numbers!
Can't say we've ever looked for a Maths degree on anyone we've hired into a network engineering position.. IT degree perhaps, but more importantly experience and/or relevant industry qualifications (Cisco CCNP & CCIP mostly).
For the OP, though - generally speaking there's break all money in what he's doing right now (building PCs, SOHO servers etc) - if he wants to earn a decent wage then get into networking & application security, core networking or development (in decreasing order of salary potential, from what I see when I look around at jobs - I fall mostly into the app sec & core networking area personally).
Having said that, doing what he's doing now is precisely how I got into the industry - work experience at a SOHO IT support place turned into a job supporting Novell Netware servers (3.12, mostly, for those who remember that far back) which morphed into a job writing accounting software models. That turned into a job writing software for the travel industry when I moved down south, which turned into a period of self employment and then eventually to a job at F5 Networks - one of the largest network hardware manufacturers & vendors in the world (I forget what our market share is, but we usually place second to Cisco in most product areas).
One thing to keep an eye out for are entry level jobs where he can progress upward. Take F5 - we have a position called "Technical Support Coordinator"; it's largely non-technical and involves getting problem descriptions down from customers, finding e ngineers to work the issue and occasional non-technical problems - but people regularly can and do progress from TSC to NSE (Network Support E ngineer) and then from NSE to ENE (Enterprise Network E ngineer) and upward.. (I went from NSE to ENE and then swerved off to Data Analysis for a change of career). We regularly hire people into the TSC role who can demonstrate a history of working customer support roles but not necessarily with the technical acumen to work an NSE role..
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If he wants to work on the networking side he will really need a maths qualification. Networking is all about 8 bit numbers!
Can't say we've ever looked for a Maths degree on anyone we've hired into a network engineering position.. IT degree perhaps, but more importantly experience and/or relevant industry qualifications (Cisco CCNP & CCIP mostly).
Yes sorry, didn't really mean a degree, was more that he needs to get his maths GCSE (or whatever they are these days!).
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If he wants to work on the networking side he will really need a maths qualification. Networking is all about 8 bit numbers!
Can't say we've ever looked for a Maths degree on anyone we've hired into a network engineering position.. IT degree perhaps, but more importantly experience and/or relevant industry qualifications (Cisco CCNP & CCIP mostly).
Yes sorry, didn't really mean a degree, was more that he needs to get his maths GCSE (or whatever they are these days!).
Ahh :) Yes, we definitely looked for someone having finished school with a clean sweep of grades (depending on what country they came from; we were often hiring language skills so had to figure out how various countries education systems worked! ;D) :)
I think the OPs son sounds a little like myself at that age - I sailed through GCSEs because they were, IMHO, piss easy.. A levels, however, were another matter entirely - I ended up dropping out without even finishing them because I couldn't be arsed to put in the effort for subjects that ultimately didn't really engage me..
Still, all turned out alright in the end (although I'm not sure I'd recommend the path these days - much better to go through GCSEs, A-Levels and then do a decent science/engineering based degree as there are simply so many 'mediocre' candidates out there competing for every job and you really need to stand out above the rest :-/ )
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If he wants to work on the networking side he will really need a maths qualification. Networking is all about 8 bit numbers!
Can't say we've ever looked for a Maths degree on anyone we've hired into a network engineering position.. IT degree perhaps, but more importantly experience and/or relevant industry qualifications (Cisco CCNP & CCIP mostly).
For the OP, though - generally speaking there's break all money in what he's doing right now (building PCs, SOHO servers etc) - if he wants to earn a decent wage then get into networking & application security, core networking or development (in decreasing order of salary potential, from what I see when I look around at jobs - I fall mostly into the app sec & core networking area personally).
Having said that, doing what he's doing now is precisely how I got into the industry - work experience at a SOHO IT support place turned into a job supporting Novell Netware servers (3.12, mostly, for those who remember that far back) which morphed into a job writing accounting software models. That turned into a job writing software for the travel industry when I moved down south, which turned into a period of self employment and then eventually to a job at F5 Networks - one of the largest network hardware manufacturers & vendors in the world (I forget what our market share is, but we usually place second to Cisco in most product areas).
One thing to keep an eye out for are entry level jobs where he can progress upward. Take F5 - we have a position called "Technical Support Coordinator"; it's largely non-technical and involves getting problem descriptions down from customers, finding e ngineers to work the issue and occasional non-technical problems - but people regularly can and do progress from TSC to NSE (Network Support E ngineer) and then from NSE to ENE (Enterprise Network E ngineer) and upward.. (I went from NSE to ENE and then swerved off to Data Analysis for a change of career). We regularly hire people into the TSC role who can demonstrate a history of working customer support roles but not necessarily with the technical acumen to work an NSE role..
NetWare 3.12... ...thats a bit modern ;D
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Networking will get harder when IPV6 properly lands - most of us have got lazy, and just remeber cidr/masks etc
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NetWare 3.12... ...thats a bit modern ;D
We still had some non-dedicated Netware 2.2 servers out there when I started but they were, thankfully, rare.. apart from the one that was sold to the guy on the basis it would be "Good for 20 years!". Er. Optimistic sales people..
Although non-professionally I still remember DOS 3.3 and prior all the way back to the Spectrum, I'm just not old enough to have worked on them in a professional capacity ;D
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Networking will get harder when IPV6 properly lands - most of us have got lazy, and just remeber cidr/masks etc
Yeah - world of difference between four sets of 8 bits and 128bit addresses. Still, it's coming sooner or later - actually been quite prevalent in Japan for a while now, they were one of the first places we started getting a reasonable number of support calls from about five years ago asking "We need to do X with IPv6"..
Fortunately BIG-IP has been all IPv6 internally for about the same amount of time, so we haven't had too many teething troubles - aside from getting our heads around it ;D
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NetWare 3.12... ...thats a bit modern ;D
We still had some non-dedicated Netware 2.2 servers out there when I started but they were, thankfully, rare.. apart from the one that was sold to the guy on the basis it would be "Good for 20 years!". Er. Optimistic sales people..
Although non-professionally I still remember DOS 3.3 and prior all the way back to the Spectrum, I'm just not old enough to have worked on them in a professional capacity ;D
The original NetWare applicance, thats what grown ups supported ;D
Mind you, NetWare 2.2, I have bad memories. Lots of bad memories. Mostly because we used to slap it on ZDS servers, with software mirroring.
I also am old enough to remember Windows 1 - yes, the one with no overlapping windows ;D. And would load every time from floppy. Although that was in a non professional capacity. Thank god ;D
I too cut my teeth on a ZX Spectrum. Still got it upstairs. And the microdrives. And the ZX81. And QLs. Bit of a Sinclair fan :-[
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Windows 2.0 (2.something, anyway) was the oldest version I touched - and much to my dismay that was in a professional capacity! Non professionally I used DesqView quite a bit, much better task switching than Windows of the time, and then moved on to OS/2..
As for Speccys - ZX Spectrum was my first computer too, followed by a +3 (then, when the floppy drive died in that, an Acorn Electron, Amiga 500+ and finally PC) - but I always wanted a Sinclair QL..
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Ahh the ZX81 what a wonderful bit of kit that was.
Dodgy keyboard, ram pack held on by velcro and printer that printed on tinfoil.
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Ahh the ZX81 what a wonderful bit of kit that was.
Dodgy keyboard, ram pack held on by velcro and printer that printed on tinfoil.
Breathe on the RAM pack, or touch that pesky power connector and it's good bye data. >:(
Ahh, the first of the flaky computers that trashed everything when you least expected it. I wonder if we'll ever see the last? Doesn't look good so far. ;D
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Ahh the ZX81 what a wonderful bit of kit that was.
Dodgy keyboard, ram pack held on by velcro and printer that printed on tinfoil.
Breathe on the RAM pack, or touch that pesky power connector and it's good bye data. >:(
Ahh, the first of the flaky computers that trashed everything when you least expected it. I wonder if we'll ever see the last? Doesn't look good so far. ;D
My 48K could do a pretty decent job of that, too.. ahh, audio cassette, what a wonderful storage medium that was.
Program won't load? Better get the jewellers screwdriver out and mess with the head alignment again.. ;D
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Ahh the ZX81 what a wonderful bit of kit that was.
Dodgy keyboard, ram pack held on by velcro and printer that printed on tinfoil.
Breathe on the RAM pack, or touch that pesky power connector and it's good bye data. >:(
Ahh, the first of the flaky computers that trashed everything when you least expected it. I wonder if we'll ever see the last? Doesn't look good so far. ;D
My 48K could do a pretty decent job of that, too.. ahh, audio cassette, what a wonderful storage medium that was.
Program won't load? Better get the jewellers screwdriver out and mess with the head alignment again.. ;D
Then some prat invented turboload which made it even more sensitive. Screwdriver was always next to the tape deck then and having a monitor switch made tuning by ear loads easier.
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Ah, those were the days! Simpler times.. :y
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Scary discussion, all this talk about new fangled Windows, I started out on ICL ME29s and 2900s! Want to run a program, off you go and punch the cards yourself or try to sweet talk the punch card operator.
For the OP i'd be inclined to say try and get an oik job in a datacentre. Desktop (and home) support will always exist but it becomes soul destroying, classic one man band IT manager roles will (and have) start to disappear as cloud services take the sting out of managing complex systems so IMO try to get a job managing the cloud.
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Some of you may asked if I still use the Spectrum.
Well, you know OOF has been running really slowly the last few days......
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Some of you may asked if I still use the Spectrum.
Well, you know OOF has been running really slowly the last few days......
Poke 23659,0 that will fix it. ;D ;D
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That sounds familiar zok, was that one that restarted it due to system variable corruption?
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Some of you may asked if I still use the Spectrum.
Well, you know OOF has been running really slowly the last few days......
Poke 23659,0 that will fix it. ;D ;D
;D ;D
I steel remember my enthusiasm writing numerical analysis codes on commodore.. years later all those feelings lost unfortunately.. :(
who knows.. may be payments for all those tiresome efforts were not satisfactory..
when I retire.. definitely I'll do something but not programming , definitely..
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when I retire.. definitely I'll do something but not programming , definitely..
What you like at Perl? The YaBB team are desperate for Perl coders who know databases ;D
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when I retire.. definitely I'll do something but not programming , definitely..
What you like at Perl? The YaBB team are desperate for Perl coders who know databases ;D
Nooooo ;D
Seriously I can paint cars and I can shorten my path to other side but no more programming.. ;D
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nowadays I feel new people not interested with details.. they want everything quick.. even in my job..
so generally the results are a mess.. and they wonder why :P
programming is a very detailed job.. and companies dont care for the details.. they just pay a fix money.. and force people for a bodge job..
even in paint.. :-/
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when I retire.. definitely I'll do something but not programming , definitely..
What you like at Perl? The YaBB team are desperate for Perl coders who know databases ;D
Guess what I do for a job these days...
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That sounds familiar zok, was that one that restarted it due to system variable corruption?
Sets the message area to zero lines so any status message such as pressing the break key causes a lock up.
Example of use (the display computers in Smiths etc)
10 poke 23659,0
20 Print "Your rude message here"
30 Goto 20
Hit enter and step back to watch the muppet assistant press break to remove the message and then panic as it locks with that strange electronic raspberry error sound.
Small things that used to keep us amused. ;D ;D
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That sounds familiar zok, was that one that restarted it due to system variable corruption?
Sets the message area to zero lines so any status message such as pressing the break key causes a lock up.
Example of use (the display computers in Smiths etc)
10 poke 23659,0
20 Print "Your rude message here"
30 Goto 20
Hit enter and step back to watch the muppet assistant press break to remove the message and then panic as it locks with that strange electronic raspberry error sound.
Small things that used to keep us amused. ;D ;D
Ah, yes, happy days.
Of course I would never do such things. Never. Not me. Oh no. Good boy, me. Honest guv...
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Ah, yes, happy days.
Of course I would never do such things. Never. Not me. Oh no. Good boy, me. Honest guv...
I still remember with fondness the virus I wrote for the school BBC micros. Installed itself in the sideways RAM and turned the display upside down after 255 key presses.
Was even more amusing when I went round and reversed the connections on the vertical deflection coils on all the monitors. ;D
The poor old techie who used to get called in to sort them out again had a hard life. [smiley=evil.gif]