Career question. Not *certification* related.

[bazoukas]

I will keep it short and simple.

Few days I graduated with an assosiates in Software Engineering. In the meantime i moved to another city. I want to go for my Bachelors at Devry.

I love programming but I really cant see my self having someone over my head telling me what how and when I should program and not having the code i wrote, my own to do whatever I want with it.

That is why I am thinking of majoring in another field. The lady at devry told me that Telecommunications Manager would be the best for me. The major consists of some "manager traning" courses and for the most part courses that deal with networking.

Their Network Admin program has the same courses in networking as Tel Manager.

How wise would be for me to go in such a major. I like networking as well but will be setting up my self for a fall (since from what I hear there are MANY people out with that degree) if I get that major?
Will it be better to stick with programming or even more go for Computer Science straight up?
And btw how good is Devry?

Thank you.

[scinerd]

If we are talk the US then the job market is a little tight right now. If you wanted to be a pure manager and not fix stuff then you would need to work for a big company. I work for a company that's about 300 and my manager is also the head tech.

The software development market I don't think is all that much better with jobs going to India. You would make more as programmer at least in the beginning. One thing that I have seen people do is in real small company is they work 50% programer 50% IT which might be a nice mix for you.

One way to look at work is if you own stock in the company then you own part of the company so in a way the code is still yours.

Or you could just write a killer app and get someone to hire you to work on it more.

hope this help in some way.

[Alex Cavnar, aka alc6379]

I just finished my AAS in Communications Technology, and I'm lucky to have just landed a job. I can tell you, I love doing networking, but you're going to be hard pressed to find a job doing pure networking/system administration. My reason: To this day, most businesses use Microsoft OSes to run their systems. I know that a lot of big companies use UNIX (which is smart, I feel), but many small to mid-level companies primarily run Microsoft products, on the desktop and on the server. Thanks to Microsoft, it's almost blindingly easy to configure many things. Just look at the Network Neighborhood for instance-- you can, under the right circumstances, just plug some machines into a hub and share files.

Windows has made it so a near idiot can do most of the rudimentary tasks, like user admin, password changing, even sharing files and setting up domains. The point-and-click nature of the OS allows someone with but a modicum of tech skills to fumble around, clicking icons and menus, until they find the right configuration option, where it's already configured with a reasonable-looking default. For this reason, it's almost nothing special to be able to "do Windows" in a business environment.

When I got into school, everyone was screaming about how big networking was going to be. And, boy, it did get big, I'll tell you that much. But, because it got big, tools were developed to make things "easy". Now, it doesn't take as much skill to get basic tasks done in System Administration.

If I had the foresight, I'd have gone into programming or database administration. Even though a lot of reports are made about how programming jobs are getting sent to Southeastern Asian countries, there still is a big need for programmers here. And, nearly every business has some type of information they store in a database. If you can program or work with databases, and you can do networking, then your marketability will skyrocket, IMHO.

To finish, these things, right now, to my knowledge will give you a good start in the tech fields. As you get more work, definitely check into other skills.

• Learning Visual Basic and Visual Basic for Applications (VBA)
• Learning SQL, specifically Microsoft SQL server, Oracle, and MS Access (which can be programmed with VB and VBA)
• Learning the ins and outs of Microsoft Windows 9x and NT lines.

These suggestions may not be that popular on a Linux or *NIX related board, but I guarantee that your first tech job will probably be one doing something with Microsoft products-- either supporting them or administering them.

[tecknophreak]

going with the above, "not liked by this board" suggestions, i'd say add the .net crap too.

[Radar]

As "Telecom Manager", it's doubtful that you'll do any real tech work. It's not to say that you won't make money, or be able to find a job. My feeling is that "Telecom Managers": Handle telecom system vendors, telecom providers (local, regional, long distance) budgeting, project management etc. I've been in that spot without the actual title. All this is'nt bad, but you won't be happy if you desire to get your hands dirty. You'll most likely have techs who do the work.