Well i might have found a way to jump the line!

[emsley]

My friend is a network engineer and the amount of money he earns is pretty dam impressive, normally to earn 300 Pound a day you’re talking GCSEs, A-levels, and then a DEGREE.

 

That translates to 6 to seven years if I pass first time!! (Which I won’t because it will bore me)

 

But I think I have found a rather good way of jumping the above in the space of two years, I was thinking of becoming a network engineer a course in CISCO (Nearly all servers are CISCO) and SUN (Not sure what this is) looks to be something I could do within two years!!

 

Do any of you guys know anything about this? My friend is pretty sure I don’t require ANY qualifications just a good compous mentous of what’s going on in front of me which he assures me I will do just fine. Looking at my local college of technology it does indeed all I have to do is show up plant 700 bucks in their pocket and I’m half way there within a year.

 

This will cover me through my 30s for work – My friend is going to Afghanistan to do networks there and he says it’s up to three times as much pay abroad with little or no tax, so as you can imagine learning this trade would greatly improve my quality of life and if I’m honest with you guys could only get worse if I became seriously ill or a family member died.

What do you think?

[The-Ice-Man]

IT is my backup idea if this acting bollocks doesn't pick up. You just need to know the right course to do that will give you a qualification employers want. I'm not much good with networks. I'd need to do a course to set one up properly.

[VT-Vincent]

IT can be a great choice due to the income potential, but do you actually like the field? If you have an interest in technology and don't mind working with it, I would recommend it. If you are interested in it only due to the income potential though, you may find yourself getting burned out after a couple of years.

[emsley]

^ Indeed - but it seems the only option I got at the moment.

[The-Ice-Man]

I like IT, so I'd be ok with it. But it'd be a dream killer.

[ken_cinder]

IT? If you want to work at McDonalds with the other half billion people that trained in the same field, go for it.

[Shibathedog]

Yeah, I'll tell you right now, I have my Cisco and Nortel (competitor to cisco) certification, and I have yet to get a single job out of it.

 

The problem is for the first job you get, you need a lot of things in addition to the certification (like a college degree) and for some reason the more advanced positions just want you to have a certification and usually about 6+ years experience working for another company. Sometimes if they don't feel like the company is big enough or whatever it just doesn't count, so you pretty much have to go somewhere that requires a college degree. The higher the pay the more experience you need too. Then you have to consider there are a ton of people applying for every position. So chances are you are going to have to go through college anyway and even when you do it's going to take very long and be very hard to actually land a decent position unless you get insanely lucky. It's like drawing your name out of a giant hat.

 

Even when you get there, your going to hate it. I didn't get certified because I wanted a job (although I at least checked it out), I just wanted to learn the information. I was given the opportunity to take each class for free, I only had to pay for the test at the end. (which you can actually take without taking the class, but you won't pass this way trust me, you have to be able to convert binary to hexadecimal to decimal and back in your head and stuff.) It's the most tedious annoying work imaginable and you basically exist within the company only to fix things when idiot employees fuck it up.

[emsley]

^ Dream number 54 pissed on.

[emsley]

You know I think this stuff works a bit different in the UK guys I know learned the basics and landed jobs paying 15 pound an hour.

Maybe the market is crowded in america?

[VT-Vincent]

You know I think this stuff works a bit different in the UK guys I know learned the basics and landed jobs paying 15 pound an hour.

Maybe the market is crowded in america?

 

It really depends where you're at. Here in Pittsburgh, IT jobs are pretty abundant and well paying but I've heard from other people that it's next to impossible to find IT jobs in certain cities. The pay scale also varies pretty wildly based on location.

[LoRd_SnOw]

New york is one of those locations..

 

I think CISCO is great, but admittedly it can get frustrated from time to time. 5yrs ago i took some training in cisco, i did terrible on a few exams and then i dropped out because i thought "college is the better thing in life" and because I just didn't know anything about binary or hexidecimals at the time, i sure do regret it though... Would have been nice to be certified.