[lopsa-discuss] Career planning

[Dan Foster]

Hot Diggety! Andrew Maddox was rumored to have written:
> So, I've landed in a "permanent" job now, after my long saga (recounted on 

Congratulations!

> How permanent is any job these days in IT? In systems/network fields, 

Well... that depends. Can say that the economic models of today and
likely tomorrow won't be anything like the traditional ones of
yesteryear. So, any given job could be a 6 month gig, a couple years, 10
years, or 'for life at a good place' if incredibly lucky.

But do keep in mind that the world is becoming increasingly reliant on
computers to an extent not previously seen. That in itself mandates
there *will* be a need for IT.

That was one of the points raised in a recent Slashdot discussion on a
question just like that asked.

http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/23/2055240&tid=146&tid=4&tid=218

631 comments, but you can probably read the top 20 or so that are rated
at +4 and +5 points in about 5-6 minutes.

Looking forward... realistically, I think one can expect jobs to be more
fluid given increasing mobility of the work and short-term hiring and
layoff frenzies being adopted at more places. So, while the jobs may be
there in some form, they may not be as permanent.

> especially? How do I keep myself informed of what's going on, current on 
> technology, moving forward in my responsibilities, and all that?

Read.
Practice.
Network.

:)

That's essentially what it boils down to. Education and experience forms
the backbone of the first two, and the latter assists (to some degree)
in making opportunities known or available.

A big part of networking would be conferences, user groups, mailing
lists, dinner with other like-minded friends in the field, meeting
people at different places, dealing with necessary evi^H^H^Hrecruiters,
and more.

(For the honest, decent, and clued-in technical recruiters here, my
apologies. :) )

> What does anyone else think? I think keeping in touch with people here is a 
> good channel, and LinkedIn seems to be popular (anyone who wants to send or 
> get an invite link and help me network, please let me know!). Got my local 
> SAGE-like group, which I'm trying to help make more active, and I'm trying 
> to find two or three reliable recruiters to build relationships with.

I'm not yet sold on the value of LinkedIn, but certainly does seem popular.
 
> But what else? Do I need a specialty? What should it be? Certifications - 
> training and studying for them, which are worthwhile? How do I keep myself 
> competitive so that when the company that never has layoffs goes into a 
> massive restructuring or downsizing, I can land on my feet?

In a fluid environment, specialities may be a little more dangerous.
They are still needed, but you also may run a greater risk when the
'bottom drops out' (when the need goes away). So I would caution against
over-reliance on this as being an essential component.

Especially consider that with the serious downsizing that's been going
on, a lot of places has a situation where there's fewer people that must
administer a greater number *and* variety of systems and apps. Certainly
true of my team at work!

So, while specialization may sometimes help, I'd say to make it a
secondary focus.

Certifications... well, depends. Often can't really go for more than a
few because they usually have recurring education and retesting
requirements -- which in itself is a time and money investment;
sometimes significant.

So if you go for that stuff, make it count. Tailor and target it towards
whom you really want to interest in the short-term (~2 years, length of
many certificates).

Don't just get certificates for the sake of having a longer .sig on your
resumes or in email. :-) Get it, if you think there's real need, value,
and use.

Otherwise, it's just a big waste of your limited time and money that
could be much better used elsewhere.

Some certificates looks good on paper but are essentially useless.
(MSCE, anybody?) Some certificates are must-have to get anywhere; that's
somewhat more useful.

E.g. to land a job at a third party VAR, you may have to have a vendor's
certification -- e.g. you work at a place that sells IBM AIX boxes and
McData FC switches... the VAR may require you possess AIX administration
and McData certification, so that you can better support customers'
inquiry for pre-sales, sales configuration, post-sale support, etc.

And in the security field, CISSP or CISM is often seen as an essential
baseline standard for indicating an experienced professional against a
well-documented and decent standard that doesn't facilitate a diploma mill.

For Cisco networking, there are gold-star certifications such as the
CCIE, which is pretty brutal, and really helps open up doors at some places.

Certifications is also often used by vendors as a subtle form of
marketing to technical influencers whom may push for purchase of the
vendor's gear since they have greater familiarity with all the options
due to the certification program education. (This is how I see Microsoft
benefits the most from the MSCE certification.)

Sometimes, the value of certifications is that they help recruiters or
HR people weed out 'weaker' candidates through paper reviews long before
anyone gets to the interview stage. That's somewhat common, particularly
when it's a job market that favours the organization offering jobs --
they can afford to be choosy and select the 'best'.

Here's my suggestion: try to learn the hardest and ugliest stuff that
'nobody' knows or wants to make the time to learn. It may look pretty
good to companies or organizations when they've been trying to find
someone with a special skillset but having no luck to date.

This is often especially attractive in certain environments where
they're more likely to have complex / non-traditional setups and legacy
applications to support... such as in financial institutions and health care.

Consider that in the mainframe and AS/400 shops, many of the greybeards
are not getting any younger. :-) While client/server computing has taken
firm foothold, there's still demand for people whom has knowledge and
experience with these complex and challenging beasts, to run some of the
most critical systems and applications that exists today. (And, yes,
some of the apps has been retooled for a C/S environment.)

And do note that today's AS/400 systems are nothing like what existed 15
years ago. Smallest one is a full PC tower form factor, supports C, C++,
Java, NFS, PHP, Apache, SSL, IPSec, X.509, LDAP, QoS, MPLS, IPv6,
LPR/LPD, TCP/IP, and many more other modern features.

You can buy an AS/400 model 9406-170 (the tower) for between USD $600 to
USD $1300, along with a preloaded copy of the almost-most-current OS
version, V5R2, and the license key. Apps are quite expensive, but you
can at least learn the OS, which may be enough to leverage a foot in the
door to get further training with actual apps.

Likewise with the mainframes, and they can be some of the most
incredible I/O generators on Earth -- zSeries 900 (about 5-6 years old
and one or two generations ago) could theoretically do up to 500,000
I/Os per second in a maxed out JBOD configuration, though it was
probably realistically more like 100,000 I/Os per second or more. Still,
who wouldn't want to work on these interesting beasts? :)

Learning mainframes is a bit harder, but one way to get a foot in the
door is to run an emulator like Hercules, run the freely available MVS
3.8j mainframe OS, learn that stuff, then try to get some kind of job
with promise of further training.

Or if you don't like these type stuff, there's tons of other sub-fields
and apps where people just aren't commonly familiar with them, but is
often in some sort of demand in the corporate world. PICK, OpenVMS,
anybody? :)

Or writing code for CMTS (cable modem gear) using DOCSIS 2.0... or
writing device drivers for embedded systems, or all sorts of things that
relatively few people do.

Or working in an academic computing environment. Less money, smaller
budget, but often greater freedom to implement things (within context of
natural human departmental politics) and a greater chance of an
effective "tenure".

One other suggestion: also consider learning a trade with no relation to
IT. That better protects you if there's a brutal downturn in IT that's
somehow worse than the infamous dot.com bust.

Story of how someone rode out the dot.com bust -- quite instructive:

I know someone whom was a refugee from another country as a child,
taught herself English, did well, then taught self administration for
less commonly used OSes: HP/UX and AIX, and got jobs with these. dot.com
bust hit, and she was in the worst of it, being in the (S.F.) Bay Area.

You know the tale... no jobs available, too many skilled people,
ridiculously high housing costs, no income, not a large nest egg to burn
through.

Luckily, she had also gotten training (and had held an actual past job)
in accounting. Accounting is currently experiencing bit of a boom at the
moment given the heavier regulatory requirements in the post-Enron world.

Also managed to find the accounting job at a place that allowed working
from home, which fit in very well with needs of attending to family.

This also allowed her family to move several hours drive away from the
office (with the understanding and approval by the employer) and reap
the benefits of *much* cheaper cost of living elsewhere, no commute
frustrations, fuel usage costs, and so forth.

So that's how she's supporting herself and her family now, along with
starting a small business (as a second source of income) delivering
frozen foods to small ethnic markets -- apparently can be pretty
lucrative with good vendor contacts.

Having had accounting experience, she already had knowledge of the
fiscal discipline and how to restructure everything effectively, which
helped a lot in riding out the bust. Also elected to move family to a
much cheaper location, well away from the Bay Area.

She may pick up IT again some day should the opportunity present itself
again, and has been diligently working on books/code/taking some classes
to maintain skills as the little time permits, and administering a
personal Sun Ultra 10 running Solaris at home.

Very hard to a) be a parent, b) maintain proficiency with accounting
(lots of changes all the time!), c) run a business, d) maintain
proficiency with system administration and basic SA-type coding, e)
participate in community and school events... but that's what some
people are doing so that their future and their family's is secure.

Where's that RFC legislating the definition of a day as 48 hours long? :-)

Point being, a job outside of computing or IT may be a very real and
sometimes underappreciated asset.

Another guy, before working as an IT project manager, was a pretty good
carpenter (working with quality art furniture) as a primary job before
becoming a construction project manager... then an IT project manager.

If he got laid off tomorrow, he'd get another carpenting job the same day.

> Doing a lot of musing out loud, I'm curious what other LOPSoids think.
> I'll probably post a version of this to SAGE-members, too, so ignore
> one of the dupes if you get it.

While that does 'cover both bases', sort of have mixed feelings about
that approach.

If you want to help add value to LOPSA, one way is to put the discussion
here... and if people want in on it, they can join. ;)

(This is why I ultimately decided to reply here instead of 'on that
other mailing list'.)

-Dan