There was a thread on something similar but I can’t seem to find it so I’m gonna ask again.

Looking for some advice in getting into IT. Any tips or pointers are much appreciated. I come from a design background and have spent the better part of the last decade doing that until I got laid off in September. Most of the jobs in that field are now contract work and have a great deal of marketing involved which I hate plus the field is competitive. I’m just trying to make some decent money while working the least amount as possible. I’m fortunate that I managed to have some cash through art sales that I’ll be alright for a few months. Might as well took to a better career path.

I’m going to try to do the a plus certificate this month but what are some other areas to look at? I hear good things about Cisco or net app

  • JoeByeThen [he/him, they/them]
    ·
    4 years ago

    I second pisspissass's astute observation, IT largely became flooded back in the early 00's with all the certification bootcamps. It went from a field of self-taught nerds making pretty decent bank to low paying contract work. If you're looking to be a keyboard warrior you've gotta find a niche . I generally recommend people getting into some variants of pentesting and bugfinding; It'll give you a hacker mindset of always looking for holes to exploit, and realtalk, the mechanisms of capital's oppression are largely digital.

    Here's a bunch of resources I've posted before:

    jhaddix's bug hunter methodology - Two hour training video from defcon by jhaddix

    The Cyber Mentor's youtube channel some good info on getting started with Bug hunting here.

    Here's a Capture the Flag challenge that basically teaches how to work your way around Linux.

    Automate the Boring Stuff with Python

    Black Hat Python: Python Programming for Hackers and Pentesters

    Gray Hat Python: Python Programming for Hackers and Reverse Engineers

    Beginning Ethical Hacking with Python

    Defcon just released a ton of videos for their online SAFE MODE conference - some are shit, some are decent, find something that interests you and explore.

    Nahamsec is another good conference that releases a bunch of decent videos

    Null Byte on youtube - this dude releases very basic walkthrough tutorials on hacking concepts

    open source intelligence tools and resources

      • Tittyskittles [none/use name]
        ·
        4 years ago

        Aren’t the working conditions for game developers pretty bad? Also it’ll take a while to make a portfolio and on top of that i generally detest video game aesthetics

        • JoeByeThen [he/him, they/them]
          ·
          4 years ago

          That's why I was suggesting freelance and that subreddit. You might be able to pull in some spare cash helping lone/small groups of devs out with some projects. But it doesn't sound like that's something that you'd be into.

        • mayor_pete_buttigieg [she/her]
          ·
          4 years ago

          Yes. IDK what these other posters are on about but doing any sort of work like this will pay very, very little and probably be very stressful and full of bullshit.

          There's no point in getting into IT unless you get a normal job (which can be remote these days), because the whole attraction of an IT career is the stable job prospects.

  • sexywheat [none/use name]
    ·
    4 years ago

    A plus will get you an office job where you'll be spending most of your time swearing at broken laser jet printers. That said, it's good foundational knowledge.

    By and large the whole industry is being migrated to "the cloud". If you want to stay ahead of the game, my recommendation would be to get an entry level certificate in how to manage AWS or Google Cloud servers. Pretty much all the major hosting providers are migrating away from their data centres and towards Amazon.

  • heqt1c [he/him]
    ·
    4 years ago

    A+ is good to get into the door, and definitely a good path to set you up for a good career if you're looking to get into IT ops.

    Do any areas of IT interest you particularly? Might be able to give a more tailored response if you have some idea of what you want to do. I will go ahead and give a little spiel on how I got started and where I am.

    Personally I started at the helpdesk (basically the bottom of IT) doing support for retail offices for a large corp. I think this is a good entryway though because you learn a lot of soft skills regarding communication, incident handling, and ITIL which will set you up for the future. You also interact a lot with the users so you learn their motivations and how they perceive the IT dept.

    It was good for two years of experience, and enough to eventually move to a more desktop support/helpdesk role where I spend a year and a half.

    By the time I moved on from there I was managing and setting up automated deployments of desktops/laptops, managing file servers and doing some light AD work (gpo management) which, combined with a MS Server certificate, I was able to land a Jr. Sys Admin job where I currently work.

    I have since been promoted to Systems Admin and handle anything from application deployments, server configurations, security compliance, cloud migration efforts, and automation (infrastructure as code and scripting).

    • Tittyskittles [none/use name]
      ·
      4 years ago

      I’m not entirely sure which direction to go. I enjoy fixing shit and finding bugs or problems. Mainly trying to find away to get away from end users.