Newbie

[Dooberz]

Hello I'm new here. My question is well I am 26 years old and looking to change careers and have been thinking about getting into IT. I don't have any degrees or certs yet and was wondering if anyone has any info about how to break into the bus. Do I have to go to University and earn a degree or can I just go to some vocational school for a year or 2 and get a diploma or certificate? Any info would be appreciated. Also, what is the outlook for jobs in IT anyways? Is it a safe bet to get into IT or am I too late or too old? Thanks alot.

[carl33p]

Hi Dooberz, Welcome to TechIMO.

Do you wanna be a little more specific on what your goals are here. When you say IT, what do you want to be doing? Its a pretty big field. If your not too sure, thats fine too.

Vocational schools, to the best of my knowledge, are very expensive. And usually are for web design, graphic design, etc.
Going to a university is a good option if you want to be a programmer, or head towards engineering.
Certs are good for networking, support, teaching, etc..

You are NOT too old. Do you have any experience with computers?
Why all of a sudden have you decided this is what you want to do?

[Dooberz]

Well it hasn't been all of a sudden, I've always been kind of interested in em. I'm not sure what area really, networking and web design kinda have my attention more than other areas. Not really much experience aside from taken a course in high school about them. So what would be better getting certs ? What's the best and fastest way ? To get a job that pays decent starting out, what do ya think would be best?

[nemowolf]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dooberz

Well it hasn't been all of a sudden, I've always been kind of interested in em. I'm not sure what area really, networking and web design kinda have my attention more than other areas. Not really much experience aside from taken a course in high school about them. So what would be better getting certs ? What's the best and fastest way ? To get a job that pays decent starting out, what do ya think would be best?

Since you dont know what you want to do exactly and you have two different fields you want to check out ... I would recommend going to a local jr college and start taking courses in both web design and entry level networking. You might as well try taking a programming course like java, C#, or C++ to knock out that avenue. With IT, there are so many different fields that you could spend a year taking courses just to get a path picked out and then the sky is the limit.

There is no point in suggesting certs for programing if your going into web design and vice versa. You should first figure out what you want to do so you can then proceed with educating yourself in that field.