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If you were going to re-train towards a career in IT; what area has the best prospects these days?
At the moment I am an architectural technician, but I am also my company's IT manager, so I'm not a complete stranger.
Where do you live? Round here (Spain!) it's programming stuff, Java and .Net, and not much else. I'd be looking at a jobs website that's good for jobs local to you, and search for:
Java
.Net
Cisco
c++
... and probably a few more terms that others can suggest.
The UK.
Is hardware specialisation worth looking at these days?
The UK.
Neither live nor work there, but I'm 100% certain that the opportunities available to you in London are very different to what you can find in Newcastle... living in a small(er) town or city you'll probably want to avoid specialising too much.
More specifically, just south of London.
SQL & Oracle type coding knowledge is a godsend, as is knowledge of SAP products where I'm based in the UK.
Don't know how much help that is to you thought.
Analyst/programmer here.
Two ways you can go - a) software development or b) networks & administration.
For (a) you want to be looking at .Net (Microsoft), for (b) Cisco or Microsoft or Unix/ Linux . Do not specialise in a niche language such as PICK DataBasic or you might find yourself stuck in Manchester or Sheffield.
However, without three years commercial experience (minimum) you'd be looking at entry level - trainee programmer or administrator, or God forbid, first line support (the help desk)
Is hardware specialisation worth looking at these days?
In a word, no. Most hardware is now seen as disposable, if it's broken it gets thrown away. There is some work in the EPOS area but that is not well paid and generally involves crap hours.
Voice and IP networks are a growth area, the convergence of IT and telecoms in general is worth looking at. ]
]Development is the other area but make sure you pick the right area and language, look at newer languages and make sure you can do it in .Net. Embedded development within industry is the other area of growth I've seen.
I dont think development is a good option for you depending on age. Do you really still want to be learning your trade at 45/50?
IT manager to techie is the reverse of what most people do, and then you often find great technical people are not always great managers, and vice versa. Understand what you are getting into, software development is much more than just code and can take a good few years to become truly experienced, learning the code, patterns, best practices takes time and youll be competing with kids fresh out of uni for trainee roles; those kids will also have a years experience from sandwich courses so will be at an advantage.
Play on your management experience and existing skills, look for roles like release manager, and possibly take ITIL exams. It could also be advantagous to look for IT jobs in a business similar to your current employer and aim to become a business analyst, project manager, or other "soft" technical role rather than the full on tech side.
Some good advice already given, databases can be fun as mentioned Oracle and MS SQL is always useful, databases underpin most applications and are must for warehousing, BI or data analyst work. If Application development sounds interesting; .net, VBA, C++, Java.
Where I work we have problems recruiting for some of the newer Microsoft stuff: Biztalk, Dynamics CRM, Dynamics AX. ITIL gives some professional reassurance. Agile project experience is popular too.
New MS stuff is a very good shout, Dynamics, Nav, Biztalk, etc. are very much in demand at the moment for the simple reason that, as its new, very few people have any knowledge of them.
If it helps, there appears to be a massive gap in the IT Security infrastructure management market. I simply can't get any good firewall/VPN/IDS/Proxy/Gateway/etc.. management people. I can find people who understand how to operate and troubleshoot a device but have no idea of the implications of what policies they assign, I can find people who understand the high level policies for a set of infrastructure (architects) but can I find anyone in the middle? Nope.
Next gen firewalls from manufacturers like Checkpoint, Fortinet, Palo Alto etc, I just can't get the staff at all and I assume plenty of other people are in exactly the same boat. It's been like this for years.
But to answer your question better, SAP appears to be a license to print money. Awful, awful product but businesses keep buying it because they're excellent at marketing to seniors and once you've invested, it's almost impossible to decide you've done the wrong thing so you have to keep investing more and more to keep it ticking over. It embeds itself into your business until it's impossible to extract it and it's impossible to live without it.
Get yourself into GRC for SAP. All the GRC consultants at our place drive ridiculously expensive cars compared to the moderately expensive cars the rest of them drive.
How are you with sorting stuff out? I moved into IT, I am a relationship manager. I sit between the delivery/customer, and whilst I have no background in IT, I have picked up enough to resolve any issues.
It's a busy, often thankless task...but the delivery/operational lot appreciate the buffer I provide, and the customer is glad not to be in a room with the techies!
@ sc-xc: To be honest, that is pretty much what I do at the moment. We have an IT support company to do the major tech stuff and I manage that relationship. I also manage software licenses and deal with any day-to-day issues, including some desktop support, as long as it doesn't take me away from my main activities.
I actually enjoy this more than my architectural role, which is one of the reasons I'm thinking about changing.
There are about 400 staff in the IT department where I work, and less than 10 are actually technical. Lots of rolls for people to manage each other.
SAP rates are rapidly going down as the Indian consulting companies are grabbing all the contracts, i recently saw a support role requiring 3 years experience for £60/day inclusive in London.
The indian companies know they can undercut and get the work then dictate rates, I reckon it will be tough in years to come and you cant get in to it unless you have been through an implementation cycle.
New MS stuff is a very good shout, Dynamics, Nav, Biztalk, etc. are very much in demand at the moment for the simple reason that, as its new, very few people have any knowledge of them.
I'm thinking of a sideways move, getting bored with Java - what kind of qualifications would you be looking for? Is certification available?
The relationship manager is a good idea.
WWe have service delivery managers who keep the day to day relationships between them an IT going. We also have business analysts whose job it is to gather users it requirements and try to turn them in a collated need for the architects to work with.
Hmmm that's got me thinking. Having used it for the last 15 odd years, I could look into IT/CAD delivery, or something like that.
New MS stuff is a very good shout, Dynamics, Nav, Biztalk, etc. are very much in demand at the moment for the simple reason that, as its new, very few people have any knowledge of them
The same with all the microsoft cloud stuff. Azure, Azure AD, office 365 API'S, sharepoint
Have a look as business intelligence. More so tableau and Qlikview as oppose to cognos/oracle and so on. From a data warehouse point of view, ODI is our current flavour of the month, and informatica seems to be making a return.
I'd avoid the hardware side of things as mentioned. And thanks to the big offshores, money in IT in general is no where near what it was. Specialist stuff is where the money is - teach yourself xbrl and you're laughing.
Me personally I'd avoid anything MS related. Whilst the wages are half decent now, companies like CAP and accenture always pick the MS stuff first so the rates soon drop.
What do you think of something like this:
CCNA is a fairly standard, generic networking qualification. There are a lot of people out there with the same qualification, many of then also have a few years of experience behind them and even they will only command maybe £150 per day on a contract.
If networks is the direction you want to go focus on voice or IP networks, much more demand for those skills and much less people with them.
I've got to start with something.. I'm not sure if networks is the way to go, but it sounds like it gives a fairly good introduction to the basics, forming a good foundation for further studies. I could be wrong, though.
If networks is the direction you want to go focus on voice or IP networks, much more demand for those skills and much less people with them.
What training/courses would you recommend to upskill into this? I currently study acoustic physics but I really want to work in IT. I do love working with people and clients face to face so tell me if this is a terrible idea.
If you are good talking with people and translating business talk into IT talk and visa versa then it can be a fun job with good rates and lots of variety as you are not tied to one technology. Even if you only do it for a couple of years you will see lots of different types of projects, get a good list on the CV and have a better idea of what you really want. Could be safer than specialising in something and then discovering you don't like it
What about Project Management or BIM software within your existing industry, I appreciate that these apply more to large projects, but if you can get these working for smaller everyday clients and show some efficiencies, it has to be worth it. The issue with smaller projects is less resource and staff to deal with the data. Anyway slightly off OP but perhaps using your existing experience in IT PM area.
CCNA will get you started on the network path and there will always be work in that field. You'd need to continue studying and getting yourself qualified higher to progress though and experience in the IT field counts for a huge amount.
I'd also add that all the network guys I know (and some of them work for me), work insanely hard. My best guy does 60+ hours a week. He's doing very well out of it financially but it's not sustainable and I have to manage him carefully and pull the hours back when he starts looking a bit tense.
It's a bit off putting when he pulls up next to me in the carpark in his brand new Q5 though.
Still, contractors eh? 😉
Thanks Samuri. I need to have a look at the type of job I want and then go from there.
@cvilla: That is also something I am interested in.
Cloud, mobile and/or social is where the action will be in the near future. If I was starting now I'd look for a role that ticked at least one of those boxes.
You could look at something Cloud based like Salesforce, bit like SAP, out the box it's next to useless, so needs lots of customisation. Hot company and product right now...