Would like some advice on career move.

[MementoMori]

Hi, after having been stuck this past year in a mundane, low paid job in which I'm making nothing of myself, I've finally decided that I want to go into working with computers. Specifically, and lacking in the correct terminology so bear with me, I'm mainly interested in building and repairing PCs, and in troubleshooting software problems.... kind of like tech support I guess.

I think programming would be something I'd like to get in to eventually. I'm also interested in web design. I have some experience in HTML and CSS although I taught myself so not the most reliable source and if I'm honest I've forgotten most of it now.

Eventually, I would love to learn how to do animation and digital art but that'll be more a hobby I imagine.

There is a computer repair shop in the estate in which I live, that I'm going to check out and talk to the guy there. I think taking a course in some form would be a good move for learning's sake but there are so many different courses out there, I really don't know which one to take.

For those of you that are experienced in computing, I'd really appreciate your advice on how to get started in this area. I'm really in need of a kick up the bum in life at the minute and seeing as I feel I'm fairly competent with every day use of a computer system, I think this would be a good move.

I hope you can help.

Thanks.

____________________
The tiger who came for a pint

[Kickstart]

Hi

Those are VERY different areas of computing. Crossing over from one area to another wouldn't be that easy, and doing it repeatedly would be difficult.

I would be inclined to say aim for the area that you are interested in and go for that.

People who make good programmers do not necessarily make good support bods, and to be honest are probably fairly unlikely to have the arty inclination to be good designers.

All the best

Keith
____________________
Traxpics, track day and racing photographs - Bimota Forum - Bike performance / thrust graphs for choosing gearing

[MementoMori]

[Kickstart]

Hi

Even tech support covers loads of areas. From help desk monkey (which depending on the company could literally be just answering the phones, to doing quite a few fixes by phone / remotely) to those fixing the problems.

Fixing PCs is one side of tech skills, although these days I suspect most of it is just a case of lob a new component in there rather than doing real fixes.

A small local shop doing PC fixes probably isn't a good way into doing more technical fixes or gaining more widespread skill. On the other hand if you go for a job at a larger company then you could land up doing rather limited work. Largely it would depend on the particular company.

Suspect to be honest your best solution might be to see what is available in the areas you really do want to go into.

All the best

Keith
____________________
Traxpics, track day and racing photographs - Bimota Forum - Bike performance / thrust graphs for choosing gearing

[Kwaks]

Seems to me that the job market for technical support has diminished over the years, as with them being able to do it remotely does away with the need for onsite cover.

If you are computer literate I would suggest looking at industries which are established, but maybe the current workforce are not so hot on computers? I know next to nothing about computers, however thats a damn sight more than most in my industry, leaving me a nice wee niche job
____________________
Fallen Angel "Nae sniffing my seat now!!!!! "
www.cliqueycuntsmcc.co.uk
I AM NOT A FAST RIDER!!!!!!!!!

[MementoMori]

OK, thanks a lot, I'll crack on and do a bit more research.

Thanks very much.
____________________
The tiger who came for a pint

[nowhere.elysium]

Speaking as someone who repairs computers, I'd say that yes, the technical workforce is diminishing slightly, but that's largely down to cowboy tech support people.
Is this a recent interest, or have you been playing around with the guts of computers for a long time?
Yes, it's feasible to maintain a sideline in building machines while fixing them fora company, but ti's time-consuming, and kind of soul-crushing. You may find (like some of my colleagues) that you start to lose interest in computers entirely. There's something about having new kids in the department that do the whole 'OMG! Vista is teh win!!11!' that makes you lose faith in the whole thing.
If you're really into it, you'll likely do fine. If this is a recent thing for you, put some years into getting the breadth of knowledge first. It's not essential, but it really, really helps when it come to job security.
Spend some time learning how the registry works in windows, how daemons and .conf files work in unix, what system services are and what they do. If you're serious, I heartily recommend the CompTIA A+ course, because it's not as prone to a short shelf life as the MCSE courses are, and it'll teach you about older hardware too.

In absolute truth, you've got to be careful with computer repair shops: there's so many out there which are staffed by muppets who know how to get money out of people, but believe that slapping a copy of Norton on a PC will fix it. Talk to the guy, by all means, but take it all with a pinch of salt.
The easiest way to get a fairly solid idea of what IT support in the business world feels like, get to know someone who does it for a living in a company, or school, and ask if you can do some unpaid work experience.

Finally, I'd just like to say (and I don't mean to sound nasty here) that competence on a day-to-day basis, and an understanding of what's happening under the skin are very different things.
If you want to know how a computer really works (for free, no less), get a copy of linux, and spend a month or so pulling it apart and putting it back together. Ubuntu is a good start; it'll function pretty much completely out of the box, and the community's very friendly, so they'll help you with the whole 'what happens if I do this?' aspect an awful lot. So much in Windows is built on the black box principle that it only teaches you how to fix windows, not what's wrong with your computer.
If I can help you with general reference questions or advice, I will; feel free to give me a shout for info and pointers.

Programming, I'm not so hot on. I can write system scripts, and I'm OK(ish) in scheme, but I feel there are probably better programmers on the forum than me.
I did a degree (BA) in digital art, mainly because I fancied doing it, not because I thought there was a career in it. It's fun, but hard to get stable employment from.
____________________
'10 SV650SF, '83 GS650GT (it lives!), Questionable DIY dash project, 3D Printer project, Lasercutter project

[MementoMori]

An absolutely brilliant post, thank you for taking the time to write that out.

[Kickstart]

Hi

Basic building and repairing of PC hardware is pretty easy. Like lego. Your skills from fixing bikes suggest that you would have no problem coping with that at all given a tiny bit of time playing.

Difficult bit is sorting out the software problems.

All the best

Keith
____________________
Traxpics, track day and racing photographs - Bimota Forum - Bike performance / thrust graphs for choosing gearing

[SlimRick]

By far the easiest way to get into IT, or more specifically tech support is to look for a short term helpdesk role. Contracting, although you don't have a secure long term position, is an excellent way to get in the door with a company.
I've been contracting for about 10 years on and off now, and have never been out of work for anything over a week. I finished a permanent role with BT last month, and within 3 days I was being offered a position in Sheffield where we wanted to move to.

Pay wise - for a basic helpdesk tech (answering the phone, logging calls, resetting passwords etc.) you'd be looking at around £7-£8 per hour which works out to roughly 16k pa.

Once you're into level 2 tech support you can expect around £13-£14 per hour (28k pa).

If you want the proper money, move into project management and get something like Prince 2 qualifications - you can then charge about £400 - £500 per day on a decent contract.

I'm the IT manager at this place, and it pays pretty well - 3 month contract initially, but already been told this will be extended to 12 months.

[nowhere.elysium]

MementoMori, I'm just glad that it was of some help.
That's some good advice from SlimRick. I've never had the patience for management, so I'm kind of permanently stuck on the actual technician side: which is cool by me, because it's what I enjoy.
As Kickstart says, modern PC hardware is a piece of piss compared to older hardware, because it's all very standardised these days.
OS Support is where it's at, jobwise. Get as many under your belt as possible; it'll do you so many favours it's unreal.
____________________
'10 SV650SF, '83 GS650GT (it lives!), Questionable DIY dash project, 3D Printer project, Lasercutter project

[Phoenix]

Not read most of the replies but following on from what Slimrick said, a friend worked in the PC World tech help call centre and was put through endless qualifications and so on and it really was possible to get a lot out of the job and give you a good start, so that's probably a good way to go. Getting a job in a PC repair shop on the high street really isn't going to get you anywhere I don't think unless that's what you're happy to do permanently.

Problem is so many areas are flooded now, especially web design so you have to really be something special to find work worth having. The only area I'm really interested in is Animation and modelling (of the 3D variety) I did it as a hobby for years and was quite good considering the limited hardware and tools I had, it's probably what I will be going back to College/Uni to study in a few years, it was always the alternative to Chemistry when I first went but I ruled it out for various reasons. Computer animation is getting bigger all the time especially with games and cartoons, movies and tv shows all relying heavily on it now so work isn't as hard to get, but as with everything you have to be good and will most likely to start in a very boring job producing generic rubbish.

[panrider_uk]

I think you'd soon get bored of building/repairing PCs.

These days its not a very skilled job and repairing usually just means swapping parts. It gets samey very quickly.

The more interesting side of support (for me at least) is troubleshooting server and network problems. Often with PCs its more cost effective to just replace the PC or reinstall the OS than spend time trying to fix the problem.

If you can get into a company with a small I.T. team then you'll have a better chance of gaining a wider variety of skills.

We have a team of 5 here consisting of the I.T. manager, 2 programmer/analysts and 2 infrastructure support.

Everyone on the team is on £40k+ so although you'll be starting at the bottom it can be worth sticking at.

Mark
____________________
Current bikes: Honda ST1100 Pan European. Moto Guzzi V85 TT Travel

[MementoMori]

Thanks for the replies.

Phoenix, computer animation is something that's always been of interest to me. My dream was to work for WETA in NZ, notoriously hard to get in to, the people who animated LotR, Chronicles of Narnia etc, except struggling to get a foot in the employment door over there saw me returning to the UK where I've had a hell of a lot of time to think and I've come to realise that the more technical side is the route I want to take for the forseeable future.

[colin1]

I work in a company alongside some tech support people in a software company.

They get skilled in their specific areas, and if they want can move into techincal sales where they do well as they know the product inside out, or they can stay where they are.

From the outside it looks like a bit of a doss, as their team have plenty of time to sit chatting between calls. There need to be enough people to cover the calls that come in, but obviously, there are busy and quiet times, so its not working all the time, as far as I can see.

Only thing is, you need to get up to speed with the stuff you are supposed to be learning. One guy who hasnt been there long, isnt quite getting it as quickly as they'd like, so he is feeling a bit under pressure.

You need to be able to do the job, but if you can, it looks pretty good really.
____________________
colin1 is officially faster than god

[user]

As has been said, building/repair work quickly gets dull.

I looked at studying programming when I was at school, decided not to in the end. Not saying it's not worth learning though...

Best thing to do is buy an old computer to run GNU/Linux on. Nothing powerful, hell I'm writing this on a 1Ghz pIII Install Linux, and poke around the system a little. Python is a brilliant language to start on, really elegant and straitforward, also some really good books on it. Look at C++ after that, more complex but most system/application programming is in C++ now. Learn command line stuff, don't rely on GUIs, they almost always break first

Probably none of this will help you get a job, I'm just waffling ...

[robbieguy2003]

Another thing worth looking at is VMWare. You can get the basic VMWare Server for free and stick it on Windows.

That'll let you run a number of 'Guest' Operating Systems at the same time on one physical bit of tin. This will let you play around a little and fix the hardware element.

Some really good posts have been dropped above though with some great advice.

The general entry route seems to be in tech support and lets you learn the ropes a bit.

I've sold my soul to the devil now and work as a consultant type (read help sales sell things that actually work).

Is quite good, my work has always been working for ISPs/Carriers focusing on Hosting and I've worked from support > sys admin > architecture > consultant/pre-sales

Can be fun but keep the technologies varied enough to be enjoyable. I mainly work with Networking (Routers/Switches/Load-Balancers/Firewalls/MPLS) and Server Infra (HP & Sun) + Storage (NetApp/EMC/Dell - Equalogic).

The main thing is to enjoy what you do and try to learn as much as possible on the way.
____________________
Current Bikes: Honda CBR 600RR - '07, Suzuki GSX1250 FA ST '11
Old Bikes: Suzuki Intruder 125 LC - '2001, Honda CBR 600F - '92, Honda CBR 600RR - '03

[G]

VMware is definitely a good start.
Using VMWare it's self is worth putting on your CV, as well as the experience that can then be gained from using different operating systems.
Incidentally, if you have a spare PC, you can run VMWare ESXi for free legally (look it up ) which is worth going for.

LINUX skills do help in a fair few jobs, but then so do Windows skills.

Set up home networks, maybe some media servers and other useful things.

I'm not sure if you've read my story when I've mentioned it elsewhere, but: I'm now technically a 'QA Manager'.
I started off getting a job in a 'production' department putting together PCs, where I proved my worth and became a valued member of the department. So when a position became available in the development department for a Software tester, the manager of that department had already worked with me and knew I had the skills, as well as enough common sense to get through the interviews etc.
Similarly, in that department I expanded my knowledge, becoming quite valued as I tended to be the one that knew how things worked; usually just because I bothered to try, google, then try again until I worked it out.
As I wasn't liking the way the company was going, idly applied for a few jobs recently and got my current one in a new start-up company for a reasonable wage (not excessive, but better than previous, though they did end up offering to match it). This is over a time period of about eight years; I'm now on a decent chunk over double the pay that I started on, going in with not much more than general experience working on other people's (and my own PCs) etc.


Help desk jobs can be a good way in, but often a frustrating job, however being female you may find you have an advantage for these in some cases (unfortunately could be the opposite for some other techy jobs, however.)

A good start might be trying to do some projects for charities.
How about setting up a local charity with computers donated from freecycle, installed with Linux, a web site with free webhosting, an appropriate email system and most importantly some training from you, including training manuals for important bits written by you.
Do this a few times and not only should it cost you nothing, but hopefully you will learn a lot, may get some paid-for business and could even blag a real job when the person running the charity talks to their son who happens to have a friend who owns a business that needs a new techy, or whatever.

Pretty much everything you need to know is available on the interweb, the trick is working out what and when .