"I do understand that the career should not be based on *salary* itself" Not saying that. I'd be a public school janitor for a million dollars a year. :-) But in IT, you learn what you're interested in. If it bores you to tears, you probably won't learn it. And learning = $'s. How did I go from $35K to $72K? Well, remember I started out as a public school teacher. As you may know, here in the US, public school teachers are probably the most underpaid white collar workers. Didn't really have any direction but up. But how did I land that great first job? It wasn't easy. I spent three years studying when I could while teaching to pass the tests. In that time, I seized every available opportunity to get experience. I did volunteer unpaid network maintenance and design work for local churches and charities, built myself a small lab to learn Windows and Linux at home. While I was landing side jobs setting up networks and fixing problems for money for small businesses and individual consumers, a permanent IT job still didnt come that paid worth anything. I was actually offered a job for $22K/yr. for a network engineer position. Eventually, I broadened by search from my locality to a broader range of cities on the eastern seaboard while I totally revamped my resume. Worked in three different cities on the East Coast now. "Do you think that with the experience of 3-5 years in networking, I can think of good salaries (say if I am in US / Canada) like above $60,000 per annum." Gotta factor in cost of living. Don't let gawdy salaries fool you. $100,000/yr in Washington, DC is the equivalent to $70K in Richmond, VA, for example. Which of those certs? All have potential. VOIP is hot, but that's also specific technology that should it go out of demand, you're not left with a whole lot of relevant knowledge. But like i said, it is hot right now. Don't think I'd do CCDP. CCNP or better would trump it. Please help survivors of Hurricane Katrina. www.redcross.org

0

the 3-5 years of experience also depends on the quality of experience. If you can, try to find a local networking consulting service and see if you can intern there. The experience is much more valuable than the certs but both are needed. I know so many paper tigers with all the certs in the world yet no experience and cannot actually DO anything, you dont want to be like that. you really need to obtain real hands on experience that is practical and related (fixing a friends xp computer/wireless connection isnt networking although alot of new comers seem to think it is). Good luck and dont expect it to come overnight, I am sure heropyscho worked his ass off and put in alot mkore hours than you may think to learn and you are never done learing, it is constantly changing and ever evolving.

0

"I know so many paper tigers with all the certs in the world yet no experience and cannot actually DO anything, you dont want to be like that. you really need to obtain real hands on experience that is practical and related (fixing a friends xp computer/wireless connection isnt networking although alot of new comers seem to think it is)." I wholeheartedly agree. In fact, I "seized every available opportunity to get experience. I did volunteer unpaid network maintenance and design work for local churches and charities, built myself a small lab to learn Windows and Linux at home." One thing I will caution your warning is you can't let what needs to be done overwhelming. When you say "fixing a friends xp computer/wireless connection isnt networking", I disagree with that. It is on a lesser scale. You can use that to learn how this all works. I got into firewalls before I began studying to get into the IT industry by learning about ports, which led me to understanding how ports work, why we have them, how NAT works, etc. SOHO routers use NAT. NAT is NAT. Port forwarding is port forwarding, whether it be to make a counterstrike server in your network accept players from the net, or forwarding SMTP traffic to your mail server. SOHO routers have switches in them. The basic concept of a switch doesn't change from Netgear to Cisco. I know you can do a lot more things with a Cisco switch, don't get me wrong, but the concept of a switch didn't change. TCP/IP is TCP/IP. Routing is routing. A server is a computer, just like your PC is. It still has memory. It still has one or more processors. It still has hard drives. It still uses TCP/IP networking. Don't let a technology make you feel like you can't learn it. Obviously, you can't learn the basics of TCP/IP and overnight understand stuff like variable length subnet masks, or all the routing protocols, but understanding how subnetting works puts you in the position of being able to learn it. Just keep learning, and learning doesn't mean just reading a bunch of books. Find ways to learn stuff. I learned some linux by setting up a linux dedicated game server. I already had it running on Windows, but I decided to do it in Linux just because. Sounds stupid but guess what? I learned about accounts, wtf root is, the linux file system, how to install programs, how to install Linux, various commands. Heck, I even setup SSH access for a buddy to remote admin the server. Some may say that experience isn't "real" experience, but what's the difference conceptually between that and a business application? They're both programs! And by all means, have fun doing it if you can. :-) Please help survivors of Hurricane Katrina. www.redcross.org

0

very good post heropsycho! you and I did alot the same way. I dont know if it is still around but, I really learned alot starting out using a webpage called darryls tcpip primer, google it if you get a chance and check it out if it's still around. Hopefully he'll like IT as it can be a great field if you have the interest but, I have to admit some of the new guys in the field aren't anywhere near where they need to be when they are done w/school and certs, it shocks me all the time when you ask them to do something so simple and the get the deer in the headlights look. You mentioned you were in the east, what part, I'm in Atlanta?

0

"it shocks me all the time when you ask them to do something so simple and the get the deer in the headlights look." It doesn't shock me, nor does it bother me. All certs demonstrate to me is knowledge was known when the test was past, the person was smart enough to know and understand that well enough to answer the questions on the exam, and there was a willingness to learn the stuff. What DOES bother me is when you tell someone to do something, they don't know how, and they don't bother to go and learn how, or they're too stupid to learn it. You can forget stuff rather easily, and you're going to if you don't use the knowledge you have. Just the other day, I had to setup perfmon logging for a test of a product, and I totally forgot the best way to go about how to get the data collected that I wanted. No problem, I figured it out rather quickly. I have co-workers however that I don't get. One guy had problems patching servers with Windows Update. Would just get a blank screen in IE. What did he do? Just kept saying, "These servers can't ran Windows Update." Great, but DO SOMETHING! Figure it out!!! Nope, he just said it was broken. I wouldn't have been upset if he tried fixing it for an hour or two and gave up. At least an attempt was made, but this guy gave up before even trying. So I stayed late at work and investigated how Windows Update worked, found it used an XML parser, and noticed the dll was 0KB on the server. After experimenting a bit, I found that reapplying the SP4 Rollup fixed it very quickly. Imagine that! To fix it, you have to learn how it works, and check those components out! To top it all off, the next month he had it happen again to him on a different server, EXACT SAME SYMPTOMS! I told him how I fixed it, and I even sent an email to my team detailing what happened and how to fix it. What does he do? "This computer can't run Windows Update, not sure what to do." Now THAT is frustrating. I have infinite patience for people who genuinely want to learn, and do what it takes to learn it. People like that? ZERO PATIENCE! "You mentioned you were in the east, what part, I'm in Atlanta?" From Richmond, VA, but I'm moving to DC. IT jobs galore in DC, but Richmond SUCKS! Please help survivors of Hurricane Katrina. www.redcross.org

0

We had similar problems about people not remembering what they were told about fixes so we setup an internal intranet message board that lists fixes that we run across, maybe that would work for your guys? The thing about the certs is that it doesnt always show that they even knew it at the time as there are so many copies of the questions available they can simply memorize the words but that doenst mean that they know wtf the mean, knw what I mean?

0

"We had similar problems about people not remembering what they were told about fixes so we setup an internal intranet message board that lists fixes that we run across, maybe that would work for your guys?" Well, he hasn't been there that long, and those two incidents were only three weeks apart. Quite clear he didn't remember it, and he didn't care to read how I fixed it. We have a Remedy ticket system, but he didn't search through that either. He didn't care to fix it. He doesn't care to learn anything. "The thing about the certs is that it doesnt always show that they even knew it at the time as there are so many copies of the questions available they can simply memorize the words but that doenst mean that they know wtf the mean, knw what I mean?" But you know what? To me, it's irrelevant if they knew it or not. I know what you mean, but quite honestly I'd settle for someone who works hard and wants to learn. It's hard finding even that these days. Everyone is about creating the illusion of knowing instead of actually learning. Certs can be used for that, but so can claiming you have experience in doing something on your resume you know you haven't. We all sling the bullcrap around, but in the end, the difference to me are the people who work hard, want to do a good job, and are willing to learn, and the people who are the "paper tiger", whether it be the paper is a cert or a false resume. Help survivors of Hurricane Katrina. Please donate to the American Red Cross. www.redcross.org

0

How's the database field. Oracle, SQL Server etc. in terms of growth and money. Guess, there are no night shifts in Database Stream also. Can one move to Data Warehousing after having some experience in Oracle. Neeraj

0