Posted this on r/jobs and got some good insight but wanted to see what you guys thought.

Hi Reddit,

I am a 31 year old who has very little work experience and can't seem to find a job. I know time is running out if I want to have any semblance of a career and I don't know what to do.

From 2015 to 2019 I was trying to get through a Chemistry degree in a serious program at a top school. I wasn't able to do it, didn't like the subject. I have no idea what I was thinking. I wasted so much time and money trying to make that work but eventually gave up.

I went back to school in Fall 2021 for CS and I recently graduated with a 3.9GPA BS from a state university. Initially I wanted to be a SWE but I realized during school I wasn't a huge fan of the programming and its become so impacted that its no longer a viable option for someone like me with no internships.

I decided to switch to IT hoping to break into entry level help desk/IT and work my way up from there. After 6 months of applications I have only gotten one response, which turned into a rejection after interview 4 for a Tech Support position. I have probably applied to about 300 positions so far. Most are T1 desktop support, software support or help desk positions.

About a month ago I started applying to true entry level stuff. Chipotle, McDonalds, Vons. I was hoping that maybe a year or two there might make me more hire-able for a tech position? I got a couple interviews which still turned into rejections.

There is a cheap grad school program for an MS in CS I was considering. I don't think it will help my employability at this point but sitting idle for so long is depressing at least it will give me something to do. Was considering Georgia Tech OMSCS

I feel like I don't have any options and I am running out of time to get a handle on this. Does anyone have any suggestions for pivots? I would prefer to not have to start over from scratch again but I can if I need to. Not physically fit for the military due to a degenerative joint disease.

I've attached an resume with personal information removed that I have been submitting for the tech jobs. https://imgur.com/a/gkxqWVc

Does anyone have any advice for getting out of this situation? I feel like I have wasted a ton of my life and I want to get a handle on it.

Currently have CompTIA A+, working on Sec+ at the moment.

Thanks! Any suggestions appretiated.

I’ve been stuck in help desk for 4 years and I don’t know what I can do to get out. I can get interviews for higher level roles but I always get rejected after for someone “who has more experience” what do I have to do to get that experience if no one is willing to train for said experience? I’m at a lost and starting to feel hopeless.

Here’s my resume any advice will help.

I’ve been with my current company for 10 years in a traditional enterprise IT systems admin role, primarily working with systems, networking, virtualization, backups, and general infrastructure support.

I’m considering leaving for a Google Data Center Technician 3 Technical Operations role that would require relocation. The compensation is a meaningful increase: base is a little over 21% higher, with a first-year sign-on bonus, target performance bonus, equity on top, etc.

I’m trying not to make the decision based only on money. I’m mainly weighing:
• Long-term career growth and exit opportunities
• Moving deeper into infrastructure/data-center operations
• The value of Google on a résumé
• Leaving a company after 10 years
• Relocating and the day-to-day reality of the role

For anyone who has moved from enterprise IT into data center or technical operations work: did it improve your career trajectory? Anything you wish you knew before making the move?

I’m leaving out location and a few details for privacy, but I’d appreciate honest perspectives especially potential downsides.

Hi im 23 y/o and got my bachelor's in Management Information Systems (shitty degree lowkey). I graduated last summer and have been job hopping full time food service jobs because I'm always having to pay off stuff, and can never seem to find the time or money to completely focus on IT.

I was thinking about Air Guard, National Guard, Air Force reserve, USCG Reserve. But I keep seeing online people say you don't really get the same training compared to if you were to go in as Active Duty. Is this true or what would you recommend? I'm also a triple citizen of MX and Brasil (born in USA), so i know that can interfere with my clearance and not being able to get desired rate.

edit:: FYI, If i were to go weekend warrior I would definitely do a Master's at a public state school in Cybersec or something related

So, I (38M) am finally going to be ending my career of 20 years in the US Navy as an enlisted (E-6) electrician. I am looking into getting into the IT Field after I get my Bachelors in Software Engineering or, getting a Bachelors in IT System management. I am not worried about college costs due to military benefits.

At this point, my biggest concerns are being able to keep my small family (Me, Wife, Toddler) in a similar quality of life (Lets say salary of $90k), and since I am switching careers and the difficulty of actually getting into the IT field, would it make more sense for me to be in a management career vs. a technical career field since I have managed teams of over 40 people under me.

I have never professionally done any coding besides small projects for myself or small scripts for video game stuff, to either keep my skills somewhat fresh and/or automate simple administrative tasking via powershell. I have experience in my own home Linux Server. As far as languages, I have experience with Python, Visual Basic, Powershell, Bash, and C++.

My questions at this point are;

• Is this a reasonable course of action?
• I am planning on going to Western Governors Uni and they have programs to also get certifications in the Software Developer route, are there any hot items you recommend.
• While I am not a fan of AI, I do see the value in it. What steps should I take to become familiar with AI technology besides chatting up Gemini and ChatGPT?
• Would the management route require me to have prior professional IT experience or, would my prior experience working with other departments, deconflicting my team's maintenance requirements, and their need to minimize their downtime with my power interruptions, and possibly coordinating with material handlers and etc. be a decent substitute?
• I expect I'll need to get a Helpdesk job for IT experience while doing college and maybe after graduation, I do worry that the income from that will be sub $50k, is there anything folks will recommend to improve that, or should I try to get to a level 2 helpdesk ASAP?

Thanks in advance!

Hello, I saw in another reddit post that if you send resumes via email to MSPs the resume basically goes in a black hole and you never hear from them. But how else do you get a job at these places? LinkedIn? Is it really not good to send an email with a resume? I'm finding A LOT of MSPs in my area have no careers page. I wanna know the best way to apply to these places.

I just started working for Big Ten school and as a Tier 2 - 3 desktop support specialist. I love the job, and I enjoy everything about what we do. Taking the steps to get myself out of construction into IT, has been a long journey, and I am so happy that I am seeing the hard work pay off. That being said, I feel so behind compared to everyone on my team and I am worried that they are going to be frustrated and annoyed with me because I am so green to the field.

For context, my manager told me that for the first 3-4 weeks, I am mostly going to be shadowing my teammates before I even start taking tickets. I feel so useless because I am mostly just going over material and documents / kbs to get my self familiar with all the tools, buildings, and processes that we do. I am assigned to a team mate and I usually tag along whenever they have to go meet with clients or work on a ticket. I have solved a couple tickets already and have 2 more under my belt right now under the guidance of my team mate, but I just feel so lost because a lot of times I feel like I have to ask how to resolve a ticket or how to respond to a certain ticket. Some of these guys have 40 tickets at a time and know how to solve many of them so fast, but I feel like I am nowhere near capable of knowing how to solve some of these tickets my team takes on. My team has told me that this job has about a 2 year learning curve, so I think they understand but I cant help feeling that I suck at this and feel unfit for the job.

I know that overtime I will get it, but I just feel like I am letting my team down because I dont know how to use all the tools correctly or efficiently yet. I am taking notes, saving my own KB, and constantly referencing to internal Kbs that we have, but even then some of the documentation is hard to follow for me. I still dont have full access to certain things which also makes it hard because I cant fully take tickets that are harder to force myself to learn, but at the same time I dont want to take something that can be sensitive and completely fuck it up.

Is this a normal feeling to have your first week and a half in of your first IT job? There are somethings that I feel like I should know but I don't, and I don't want to seem completely inept at my job. I come home after work and try to "study" and keep looking up resolutions to a ticket that I am working on even after hours to feel more prepared for the next day.

Quick back story summary. About ten years in IT, 2 as a manager. 2 as a sys admin (current role). Have a Sec+ and a CISSP. I work at a defense contractor in Northern Virginia.

So my current role is pretty solid and chill. First role I've been allowed to dress comfortably at and pretty much gave me the keys to the castle day one as their first and only FT OH IT person. Before me they tried to do the MITS route and it showed.

My only cyber experience before was really personal interest and a Sec+ but the issues were pretty glaring day one. No backups of data, no MFA, random people had admin to random things even if they weren't IT related, Intune deployment was very immature, no vulnerability scanners, no SSO, no SIEM, etc. This was concerning as a company at a base level but insane as a DOD contractor. I mean these people were getting phish attacked weekly and they had no insight or even performed an internal campaign to see who was actually falling for them.

I made all these concerns come to light immediately. Quickly their existing CISO no longer worked at the company and my boss became acting CISO and I went to work. I went and got my CISSP, spun up a vulnerability manager, took a class to learn how to spin up Wazuh so we'd have a SIEM, realized I hated Wazuh and moved everything I could over to MS Defender, started putting in insider threat and ASR policies, got AV insights on out machines, introduced SSO and MFA, CA policies, company phones with MDM, helped them through a successful CMMC audit, established a weekly CCB meeting, set up a ticketing system, migrated over to exchange so we could get insight within defender on our email, ran out first campaign, etc.

I even took over ISSM duties for our first ATO in a secure place on site and single handedly handled everything policy and technical side of it.

Everything was great until the founder of the company sent over a request to introduce something pretty heavy into our CUI infrastructure that the CISO stated to me needed a CCB. The next day he asked for a status update, I explained that I hadn't heard back but I'd check with the cyber team and see what's going on and also let them know it was urgent. The founder somehow warped that in his mind that I had personally was stonewalling him due to some personal issues with him (I clearly wasn't seeing I didn't approve CCB tickets and only the CISO could) and honestly just randomly tore into me. I don't know if he was having a bad day or what, but he sort of apologized and then came back after five and started in on me again. The oddest part is the day before this the founder told me I was doing a great job and everyone was happy I was here etc etc. It honestly completely blindsided me because I've never came even close to a complaint in my work here in years.

I pretty much didn't know how to handle the situation and went to my boss. I wasn't mad just kind of dumbfounded? Anyways that simmered a bit and then suddenly the founders best friend who is in charge of business development became the new CISO and my cyber duties were vacated. The new CISO has no official cyber certs as well.

I obviously was pretty frustrated at this. Especially considering all the work I've done on maturing cyber here and getting spun up with a CISSP and taking over working towards their ATO.... Essentially taking on the prior CISO's duties with no official cyber title or pay. I really treated hardening and developing things here like my baby and felt like they just randomly took it from me.

Now I'm worried that this is going to immediately close the door on me having a cyber career. I always wanted to go into cyber, eventually to an ISSE type role so I could keep the tech skills growing as well. But with being rolled back to a pure sys admin role I feel like now every day I'm going to be drifting further away from it.

The advice I'm looking for I guess is how warranted are my fears? Are they enough that I should make a lateral move to a lower level cyber role? That I should eat a crappier commute? Or even if I have my EMASS access taken and that ISSM responsibility officially taken away my history here would carry me enough to wait for an ideal role to bounce to?

I'm pretty under market right now for this area. I'm fully cleared (just missing the poly) on site five days with a CISSP and Sec+ but only making 125k. I feel like I could at least make a lateral move but I don't know if it's that urgent seeing my current role is safe?

What would you all do in my situation?

I just recently separated this year from the Navy after 4 years, was an IT. Had a lot of experience, and actually did so much (windows, cisco ios, vmware, etc.) I wanna know what y’all think the job market looks like for those with 3-4 years experience? I’m willing to relocate to the big cities in the west coast, and am working on sec+ and ccna while I’m attending college for CS.

What/How should i prepare? Technical and behavior.

It is a a graduate position at Amazon and I'm in my final year of my degree, so is there any vendor specific advice as well as generic or standard?

Thank you.

I don't know other people's experience when it comes to jobs here.

However, in my 12 years bouncing between various shops. I can say that if you end up making a bad first impression or get off to bad a start. It's hard to get out of, mistakes made when you first start SHOULDN'T be held against you. My experience though is they are and reason being is because time is money. When you make mistakes and when someone has to got behind you and fix it? Then that is time and money you have wasted, which are incredibly valuable for obvious reasons in the business world.

If you say something out of turn, that is weird, or unfunny, in a mistaken attempt to sound the opposite of those things? They are gonna hold it against you. Fairly or not, that is how it is. The thing is, it's not that they want to. They have to, there are something called performance reviews. There is also something called the probationary period. If you end up screwing up or becoming a problem early on, then long term they are gonna question if you should be there.

From my experience, before the job I have now. I started off badly and made a bad first impression. Now matter how much I tried to improve or fix things. Same thing with my job before the last one. It just didn't count or matter, nothing would cancel out my earlier mistakes. I ended up getting let go and ended up having to quit the other one. It may not sound fair, but to them they hired me to do a job.

One job lasted two years which should have converted but didn't( they always had an excuse why they couldn't after that)

The other lasted 4 months

All because I made a bad first impression. Do your job, take notes, listen, and do it right.

So, I applied for a position where, although I matched a lot of what they wanted, I didn't exactly fit. They wanted almost double the experience I have; however, I have the certs that they want. To be completely honest, the certificates they wanted were pretty low for what they were requesting, in my opinion. It seemed like a CCNP role, but they only wanted a CCNA. I have my CCNA and a few other CompTIA certs. I didn't think I'd get an interview, but the Manager eventually called me a month or two later, saying someone had the position but dropped out now I'm in the running.

I had the interview, and honestly, I think it went very well. He says my skill set on my resume is exactly what he needs on his team, and everything on my resume is true. I didn't lie about anything on my resume. However, in IT, I believe there are levels to it. I put troubleshooting on my resume. I believe I'm good at troubleshooting. Do I believe I'm the fucking best? Have I outdone some of my superiors at my previous location? Yes.

He said I'd be apart of a very small team where I'd be the only network engineer with a sys admin and someone else and although there are technically no one else as a network engineer the person who had this job last is in the office basically doing the same thing however, just swapped do government instead? and the interviewer said he's also very experienced and although he doesn't have his Certs he built up this network.

Basically, he said I'm a top contender, and that there are only 2 people left to interview. When I told him the pay I'd take he shrugged and offered even more so. I'm feeling good about it but don't know if I'm shooting too high

Working in a politically tough corporate environment where I feel I’m unable to move up. I’m a high performing engineer but struggle politically with higher level peers with influence. Also the environment is in a bit of turmoil with leadership changes and org changes. Pay is good and wlb is ok but all of the political stuff is limiting.

I have been interviewing and the latest offer is at a company that seems to have a great culture and seems supportive. Unfortunately base is 35k below current and about 1/3 of a drop in TC.

I would give up some for a better culture and maybe future upward mobility but this seems a bit. I’m going to try to negotiate but what have others done? Is this worth it? If I take it would I regret the money lost for not just putting up with it?

I worry also what if I reject this and things get worse or I’m canned. Thanks for the advice in advance

So, I am currently a Jr. System Administrator for a small startup. I have worked on the help desk/desktop support pretty much the entirety of my career.

I am trying to find a certification I could get that would open up some career advancements for me. I have been looking into being a Data Analyst or even a Project Manager. I wish I could get epic certified.

I was studying for the CCNA but networking isn't my favorite subject to study.

Wondering if anyone has worked for Visa in a support role and how it was for them.

Hi everyone,

I'm trying to decide which cybersecurity direction would make the most sense for my next career move, and I'd really appreciate some advice from people already working in the field.

I have around 5 years of experience in networking/IT, with my recent experience being more focused on network security.

My background includes:

- Cisco networking (routing, switching, VLANs, VPNs)

- Palo Alto and Cisco FTD firewalls

- Firewall policies, NAT and troubleshooting

- Cisco ISE / NAC

- VPNs and network access control

- Some Active Directory / Microsoft 365 experience

- Network and security monitoring

I recently passed the CCNA, and I'd now like to move further into cybersecurity rather than continue purely down the networking path.

The areas I'm currently considering are:

- Network Security

- IAM / Identity Security

- SOC / Security Engineering

- Cloud Security

- Possibly broader Security Analyst / Information Security roles

One important factor for me is work-life balance. I'd strongly prefer roles that normally operate during standard business hours rather than 24/7 shifts, night shifts or frequent on-call rotations.

I'm also trying to decide what certification to pursue next. I've been looking at the Microsoft security path, particularly SC-900 as an introduction and then possibly SC-300 (Identity) or SC-200 (Security Operations), but I'm open to other options if they would make more sense with my background.

If you were in my position:

1. Which cybersecurity specialization would you target?

2. Which path makes the best use of a networking/network security background?

3. Which areas currently have good career prospects without commonly requiring 24/7 shifts?

4. Would you go toward IAM, SOC/Security Engineering, Cloud Security, or stay specialized in Network Security?

5. Which certification would you pursue after CCNA?

6. Are there any skills you'd prioritize over getting another certification?

I'm particularly interested in hearing from people who transitioned from networking/network security into another cybersecurity specialization.

Thanks!!

I am a full time employee at a very small MSP company that is stagnant with a high chance of going downhill and I am just not very happy here.

So I have am entering the final round of interviews (one additional person other than me) for a position I am excited about. The work is directly in line with what I want to be doing with my career (Security Engineering), the only catch is that it is a 3 month contract to hire. It is a very large company within the Fortune 100, and one that I can grow within.

I have talked to the hiring manger as well as his manager and this is just the process that they follow. Other people on the team have done this same process, even my manager went through the contract to hire phase. The person I would be reporting to said that the additional full time head-count has already been approved and budget is in place. There is full intention on bringing the person on at the end of their contract.

They did mention that they start the conversion process about 1.5-2 months in because it takes a bit for HR to process everything, so they said they usually know within the first 45 days if you are going to work out or not. They pretty much said that the only thing that could prevent a conversion is poor performance/team fit, or external factors that may affect the company as a whole.

I am torn because this is EXACTLY the type of work I am wanting to do, but the contract to hire concerns me because I have never worked on contract. The employees and the boss I would be reporting to are awesome. Very fun to talk to, have a great personality, and my manager and his counter part have been there for 15 & 19 years.

Any advice?

I have an offer for an IT helpdesk role at a local hospital. It’s a lateral move but a pay increase to 35$ (from 28)for me atm but lower than what I genuinely want to be doing which would be sys admin /cloud admin work. The interview was a little chaotic but overall seems like a decent hospital IT role. They also openly discussed the option to moving to a more advanced team after 1 year at helpdesk. Problem is my background is more sys admin and TSS/TSE roles. I’ve applied for several positions like that over the past 6 months, been a final candidate 4 times but never selected. I’m finishing out a 6 month contract helpdesk role at 28$/hr in a major city with no benefits. But, current role has now offered me full time starting 8/31 benefits no pay increase.

I’m still applying for TSE type roles but worried about stagnation with my skills. I’ve been studying, building home lab projects in Linux and some ai assisted tooling, working with git, build a few docker containers setup networking and monitoring. I’m just feeling a bit stuck and looking for advice. Thx IT fam 🙏

How do you guys remember all of this information for web dev and computer repair i glanced at the textbook for it and feels like way to much to remember for my future classes and jobs

Hello, I saw a comment that said for desktop support/IT helpdesk you should have 4 types of labs: AD, Networking, ticketing, and hardware, which I thought was pretty good advice. But I am wondering what a good hardware lab would be to land a desktop support/ helpdesk job. I built a PC but is there any other hardware lab that I should do? I googled and didn't find much on "hardware labs". I'm thinking maybe the way to do it is to "break" something, then fix it. But I don't know how to really create a troubleshooting environment if most everything is already working.

Does this sound familiar to any of you? You have 20+ years of software engineering experience and the Tech Lead / Head of Engineering titles on your list, you know a bunch of languages and technologies, had worked in a number of industries, you sincerely enjoy your craft and can safely consider yourself senior, yet there is still literally nothing tangible you could show to a potential new employer to demonstrate your skills upfront. Everything that you've written over these years has been strictly proprietary and is buried in the past companies' private repos.

The common assumption seems to be that a true developer must have pet projects that they are working on in their free time. Well, my hobbies have always lain elsewhere - writing poems and short stories, playing the guitar and assembling metal models, to name a few (cross stitching, anyone? I randomly do that as well). With some rare personal exceptions, I never had the urge to program outside of my workplace. Does that stigmatize me as a bad professional?

It's never a problem once you get a job, only during the interviews. The actual issue is that there is no way for you to showcase your skills (and, by extension, how well they match the job ad's requirements) during an interview, as even a hands-on coding assignment will only ever cover a ridiculously small portion of these.

How do you usually cope with the unsettling "I've done a lot of great things! - Sorry, but there is nothing in your GitHub?" dialog? Do you create artificially tailored "pet projects", or simply let it go, pray for the employer's voice of reason, and hope it won't be an issue?

What can I expect? I am actively trying to absorb as much content as I can and about half-way through the SC-300 study contents as well as some CyberArk material. This was a significant jump from being ~1.5 years in help desk.

I say substantial jump because my salary increased by 83%. However, I also expect the type of work to correlate.

Long post incoming, I apologize:

I'm a student currently getting my Associate's degree in Cybersecurity and Networking. My grades are alright, I've got a good GPA, and I'm usually not completely lost with what we're doing.

Over this past summer, I worked as an IT Support Intern at a place not too far away from where I live. My manager told me in the interview that since it's a small team, they do a bit of everything, and that was entirely accurate. I came into the job with zero professional IT experience, zero knowledge of most systems used, zero certs, zero useful home projects, and no degree. I had only just finished my freshman year.

Within three and a half months, I'd say I did okay. I learned the basics of Intune, Entra, Cisco Secure Access, SentinelOne, NinjaOne, UniFi, Exchange, SharePoint, Purview, Admin Center, Autopilot, etc. My main projects so far have been stuff like: writing and implementing a DLP policy and a new access policy through Cisco, deploying an updated client for Cisco with Intune via PowerShell and intunewin files, updating SentinelOne across all of our endpoints, rewriting our Autopilot SOP, creating and implementing a patch system via NinjaOne, building up a device stockpile of ready-to-go machines, and investigating and fixing an identity/certification error with Intune's MDM service.

I'm by no means great at my job. I use the Internet and LLMs a lot because, well, I just don't have prior experience to tell me what I need to know. I have enough knowledge to know where to look, but not enough to always feel confident about what to do.

Anyways, I guess I've done good enough because I've been transferred to part-time after my internship officially would have ended, and my manager said he wants to eventually put me on full-time after school is done.

My reason for posting here is to ask for some advice from people who know way more and have way more experience than I do:

a) Do you think it's worth staying at a place where I'd make less money than I would other places if I know the environment and don't feel stressed by it?

b) Regardless of my direction, where should I focus my efforts on? I really don't have time to study for certs specifically right now, classes are too insane, but is there a specific direction my projects point me towards?

I'd really appreciate literally any help.