Another one of my job-skill threads

[MRT144]

I'm starting to take over some of the Director stuff and lemme tell you. Directors are in meetings all the time about trivial bull****.

[Elok]

I've only ever seen a systems guy at work once, when one came in to fix our server at work. He seemed to work by scowling at the black boxes, stomping out to his truck while growling and swearing profusely into a cell phone, then coming back in and repeating the process nineteen or twenty times until the server came back up. He got it going in the end, but it belatedly occurs to me that he might have been sacrificing small animals in his truck to appease the Network Gods. Is this a possibility? Because I just don't think I have it in me to snuff that many cute animals--unless they're cockroaches or something. But driving around with a truckload of roaches doesn't appeal to me either.

[regexcellent]

If he was physically coming on site he was probably one of the techs and not the admin.

[Spaced Cowboy]

Our company uses SAP, we have soooo many SAP weenies hanging on the payroll that it is insane. Just an FYI, since I seriously doubt that it is a glitch.

[Elok]

...what's SAP? Wiki lists a number of different technical SAP acronyms, and I assume you're not in the maple-syrup business.

[snoopy369]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAP_AG

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAP_ERP

Sort of a business management tool - integrates AP/AR, HR/Payroll/etc., and other similar things. Think 'technical HR person'. Quickbooks on steroids. Definitely a huge market right now for SAP and similar technical specialists - HR is one of those fields that can grow itself after all

[MRT144]

SAP also has a great competitor: Oracle.

[onodera]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAP_AG

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAP_ERP

Sort of a business management tool - integrates AP/AR, HR/Payroll/etc., and other similar things. Think 'technical HR person'. Quickbooks on steroids. Definitely a huge market right now for SAP and similar technical specialists - HR is one of those fields that can grow itself after all

The real strength of SAP is in manufacturing. Every half-baked piece of ****ty software can automate HR and payroll, but integrating the processes of procurement, production and sales is SAP's forte. Of course, they won't say no to anyone who buys SAP to automate HR, but it's an overkill.

[regexcellent]

SAP also has a great competitor: Oracle.

Oh god Oracle.

Life of an Oracle admin:

1. Get up, go to work.
2. Observe that your Oracle software is broken as usual
3. Call Oracle and get them to fix it.
4. Wait for it to break again.
5. Repeat steps 2-4 until workday ends
6. Go home.

[pchang]

I agree that Sys Admin or Network Admin is an easy job. However, you will not get into it without some sort of background on the resume. They usually have some classes in that in community college. That should be enough to get an entry level position.

If you can jail break an iPhone, you can probably do the job.

[snoopy369]

Oracle That's definitely job security

[pchang]

Provost Harrison went from an underpaid lab tech to a highly paid SAP consultant who now enjoys the pleasure of fast cars and even faster women.....


OK the women part was pure hyperbole

[Elok]

It's my thread and I can necro the hell out of it if I want to. I'm playing it somewhat safer and going back to community college. AFAICT SAP would require me to commute to DC and pay a large amount of cash for official certification in about eight billion different courses. Probably part of why demand is so high.

Anyway: which is more likely to be useful, a "Network security certificate" or a "Server administration and security certificate"? They have roughly equivalent hours, and no prerequisites or courses in common. The first requires Theories and Applications of Digital Tech, Network Essentials, Networking 1 and 2, and Network Security Fundamentals.

The server admin whatsit needs Intro to Unix/Linux, Unix/Linux System Administration, Windows Server, Windows Server Networking and Wireless LANs, most of which require a number of other courses as prerequisites. There's also a Cisco Certified Network Associate track that just has Networking 1-4 courses and qualifies you to sit for one of Cisco's official cert tests.

The impression I get is that the server admin deal is designed for much more advanced work, while the first one sounds like it's half of something actually useful. Theories and Applications is an introductory course (I took its alternative-for-non-majors back when I got my AA), and when two of the other requirements are "essentials" and "fundamentals," it sounds like it might prep me to compete with overseas Help Desk clerks.

So I'm leaning towards the official Cisco prep deal; I'm going to talk with a guidance counselor specializing in tech next week. There's also a certificate for "Cyber Forensics," which I guess might mean digging through a guy's folders to find "MethMoneyAccounts.xls" or something. But of course I don't know much.

As always, advice? What would all of this lead me to doing? I asked the guy who came in to install our ATM and he said a SysAdmin is a very stressful job that would leave me tied to a pager. I didn't know people still had pagers, but I took his point. His advice was to look into setting up wireless networks instead. Still...dude, you just spent eight hours hanging around waiting for somebody on the other end of the phone to upload the right software. Not sure I trust your career advice.

[snoopy369]

I would consider what is more interesting to you. Network Security seems less interesting to me as a job than Server Administration, but a lot of people would vote the other way. Server administration requires you doing pretty menial things repeatedly (setting up servers, which after the 15th time doing it, is pretty boring I imagine) but also involves some troubleshooting and such, as well as optimization. Network security seems to me to be a component of some other job - either a similar job to server admin but with routers/complex networking, or something entirely different like hardware installs.

You obviously spent some time researching these, but I'd suggest spending a bit more time finding out what kinds of jobs these would get you, both immediately out of college and after five-ish years (five years experience = usually substantially better job in the same general field, if you are good and want to look).

[snoopy369]

Probably translate into more than coaching for the Rams did...