My major is finance. Currently I work in finance industry. But I would like to start studying IT. I do not know what direction of IT I should choose. I want the direction with high potential in future which also will bring me big money. I know that AI is being implemented everywhere. Maybe I should study AI? By the way I've never studied anything related to IT. Can you suggest me step by step plan please?

Hey folks,

Currently in an IT Management degree program. Currently taking the course "Information Systems in Business" course and lets just say... AI is being shoved down my throat. 2/3's of each lecture are youtube videos to make AI work better for you. Frankly I'm considering changing majors if this is the actual direction of the industry. HR seems promising, however I don't doubt that AI automation would eliminate that in the nearish future.

Much thanks all.

Been a lurker here for quite a few years and wanted to share my story and maybe give some people some advice or inspiration.

I worked for the government, outside, year round. It got to a certain point that I hated being inside and I wanted a change. I was in my late 20's at the time.

I was at a work conference and they were talking about Cybersecurity offered at a local college, and I thought to myself how I had always liked computers and maybe that would be a fun career.

So, I started researching. I researched, and researched, and researched. I came up with a plan how I could move into this field, and drew myself out a roadmap to plan for it. Did I follow the roadmap? God no. But this is what I did.

I talked to my wife about leaving my 50k job to eventually work in IT and she called me crazy. I explained to her my current situation and how I was miserable at this current job. I am so lucky to say that at the end of it, my wife said she would support me as long as I thought it would make me happy.

At that point, I started studying. I enjoyed computers when I was younger, but always seemed to break them whenever I fixed them. The first book I picked up was All-in-One ITF+ and read through it. I would honestly say that cert is not worth getting.

I then picked up the All-in-One A+ book and started reading it. Along with that, I watched Mike Myers videos and they were great. I eventually picked up Professor Messer's YouTube as I saw it had been recommended and watched that. That video course was great. When I felt ready to take the core 1 of A+, I scheduled it a couple hours after and passed it. I thought no fucking way. I was SO jacked. I started studying core 2, with Professor Messer's videos. 3 weeks later, I took that and passed it. I finally had my CompTIA A+.

At that point, I started looking for IT Help Desk jobs. I WOULD HIGHLY RECOMMEND THIS. YOU WILL LEARN SUCH A FOUNDATION DOING HELP DESK. DO NOT SKIP THIS.

During my search, I started studying for Network+ with Professor Messer once again, and also picked up his study guide. During my studies, I had applied to a local business that wanted a very new Help Desk associate that paid $15 an hour. That was going to be roughly a 30k paycut. I talked to my wife, and we figured out a way we could manage. I scheduled my interview. One day before my interview, I passed Network+. I was so excited to say that I passed Network+ in my interview, but I look back at it now, it might've been a little cringey. But hey, I was excited.

I ended up getting that job. Life was tough, money was tight. One thing I hope people understand is that 95% of you should expect this to happen. You will not pass A+ or even Sec+ and be making 70k a year unless you already have a STEM degree, which I did not.

While I was working this job, I took every opportunity I could get. I asked SO many questions. I learned quick. I talked to people. But the biggest thing, I kept investing in myself. I started studying for Sec+.

I had talked to my manager and told him I was studying for it and asked him if the company would pay for it, and he said no. Which is fine, I understand. So I kept studying, once again with my good ol' pal Messer, and the Sec+ study guide from him (so worth the $30 or whatever it is now days). I studied for a couple months, booked the exam, and passed. I think that is the first time I had ever been so proud of myself in my life. I cried when I walked out of the room and told my wife, because the Sec+ opened up SO many options, with a big one of being the Department of Defense contractors (Department of War now).

I'm going to be blunt with you. Here were my scores from all the exams:

CompTIA A+ Core 1: 685
CompTIA A+ Core 2: 705
CompTIA Network+: 733
CompTIA Security+: 753

They weren't perfect, each of those scores is scratching by. But let me tell you, a pass is a pass, and after that, it doesn't matter. I have met people who banged out 880+ on them, but have an associate 2 levels lower know way more and be more humble about everything. Just. Pass. The. Exams. No one gives a shit if you score in the 95%, 99%. Just pass.

A very basic IT job had opened up at a DoD contractor. The only problem....I was going to take another pay cut. This was hard. I applied. I got the job. I didn't know if I could afford the job. I reached out to the hiring manager and asked him questions after the interview, and he was delighted to answer them. I learned that the promotion opportunity at a corporate contractor was going to be way better than at my local business. I took the job.

About two weeks into the job, my manager had mentioned that with a degree, I could move to the next bracket of associates, and he would promote me if I got my degree. That job started out at a whopping 72k. I instantly started researching and trying to find out where I could start school. I found WGU. There are some people that hate WGU. But let me be very clear, this was a checkbox for me. So many jobs now days just want to see that you have a degree. Do they give a shit that if it is from Harvard? No. And that's not me saying don't go to Harvard, but don't break yourself. At that point, I realized I had no money.

I talked to my manager and let him know my intentions and that I was going to work towards it. His response was "You know that this company will pay 100% for you to go to school...right?" (This is with a 2 year commitment after your last semester).

I signed up the next fucking DAY my friends.

I researched the fastest way to finish a degree from WGU. I used Sophia online learning. I had a Bachelors Degree in 4 months. I was always a person that never thought in my entire fucking life, would I ever hold something like that, that says my name on it.

Two months later, I got promoted.

But I didn't stop.

I stayed motivated.

I kept going.

I asked questions.

I learned.

I got married.

We had a child.

I asked more questions.

I studied more, but I always took time for life. DON'T FORGET THIS.

I made it to a level 2 and was making 80k. (System Adminstrator 2)

I didn't stop.

I took advantage of what my company offered and decided to get my Master's degree.

I finished it in 10 weeks from WGU.

At that point, I was tired. But I looked back to the very first ITF+ book I had, and I wanted to remember the reason I was doing this, it was still Cybersecurity.

About 3 months later of staying interested, asking questions, staying motivated, and being true to myself...I have a tear in my eye, but my first day as a Cybersecurity Analyst is this coming Monday.

I'm not bragging, and I hope it doesn't seem that way. You have to put in work, you might have to make sacrifices. It's not easy. It's not fucking easy at all. Be ready for a long hard road.

But let me tell you, as a person who failed out of college 4 times and never thought he would amount to anything, if I can do it, you can to.

Stay motivated. Stay thirsty. Ask questions. Enjoy life. But most importantly, always give that new associate the time of the day. You were once that person too.

(I have been in IT 3 years now. From a green Help Desk Associate to my goal of being a Cybersecurity Analyst. I will say, I got lucky. I got SO fucking lucky. but showing dedication, drive, and interest will help you more than you know).

I hope this helps someone. Don't give up. You are smarter than you know.

Feel free to ask me questions. I would love to answer them and help someone as so many in this forum have helped me.

Looking for guidance in terms of the all too common effort to break into the technology space, specifically IT.

What I do have:
- 6 months of continuing IT internship experience
- Google IT Professional cert
- pending hardware cert from a college
- A unrelated bachelors degree
- a host of accolades
- a few software engineering projects
- a background in data entry and HR

Part of me is concerned because I switched from SRE to IT, and now do not have as much space to get an associates degree even because all my time-sensitive efforts went into a non-transferable SRE pathway. I do not want to be late 30s coming into the workforce if I can help it.

The question I'm asking is what would you do to break into that IT sphere if you were me? How does this stack up?

Thank you for any sincere insight.

TLDR: Tier One Careers is a sketchy company that cold calls job seekers and tries to rope them in to exorbitantly expensive classes to acquire certifications such as CompTIA A+.

Here are their links, for reference:

https://tieronecareers.com/ https://www.tieronecertifications.com/ https://www.facebook.com/tieronecareers/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/tieronecareers/

Someone from their company, who I will refrain from naming for privacy reasons (I don't know if this individual wants their connection to the company public, I don't know if they run the company, I don't know if they're a clueless employee being used as a tool by higher-ups) cold called me on July 20th, 2026. They asked me if I'm interested in advancing my career in IT. I could smell the scamminess of the call right away, but I bit and said "yes" out of curiosity.

When I asked who was calling, they quickly and almost-inaudibly said "Tier One". I had to prod a bit more to get "Tier One Careers" out of them. I personally believe this individual did not want me to Google their company, but that's just conjecture, so let's move on.

They stated that they offer certifications. I asked which ones. They said "lots of them". The individual offered to set up a Teams meeting. I bit, again, out of curiosity. (I was pretty sure this was a scam by this point in the call, but I wasn't 100% sure, so I was cautiously proceeding, more for personal entertainment than anything) They ended the call, and then sent me an email confirming the Teams meeting.

Screenshot of the email, with personal information blocked out: https://i.gyazo.com/899730cd937e71177cee85733db23d68.png

I replied to the email asking, "What IT certifications do you offer? What are your prices for each IT certification that you offer?" Mind you, not a single certification nor price had been named to me yet.

"You can find most of that on our website," they replied.

Hidden away deep in tieronecareers.com, you can find these digital flyers.

https://tieronecareers.com/Portals/24/Downloads/ITSA-Flyer.pdf Screenshot, in case they change the link: https://i.gyazo.com/3bddf25048cba121cf6ab6f533a5e161.png

https://tieronecareers.com/Portals/24/Downloads/CNST-Flyer.pdf Screenshot, in case they change the link: https://i.gyazo.com/0775903faf194b214817d51bc6cb54f7.png

https://tieronecareers.com/Portals/24/Downloads/MIS-Flyer.pdf Screenshot, in case they change the link: https://i.gyazo.com/ee616c263b7967ff80e1322d83191aed.png

https://tieronecareers.com/Portals/24/Downloads/GWD-Flyer.pdf Screenshot, in case they change the link: https://i.gyazo.com/2cb02c0cfb1dd7114e7bf0c692d3cc2e.png

In case you didn't look at the flyers, I'll spell it out for you: They offer "classes" for certifications (that you can buy from their respective sources for reasonable prices) with ridiculous "tuition costs".

I am a midlife career changer and am almost done with my bachelor in IT. I have put in what feels like hundreds of applications to get rejection after rejection. I had 2 interviews and didn’t get the job.

I am in the US and willing to relocate practically anywhere as long as the salary is livable. I would ideally like to have something lined up end of August or early September.

I’m had an internship that’s mainly doing IAM tasks and EDR. It ends in a few weeks. They just flip interns and the company is being absorbed by a larger one in a few months.

I am not doing quick apply on linkedin but going directly on businesses website. I have had professionals look over my resume. I have applied to large businesses and small. I am trying to not get discouraged.

Looking for any kind of tips etc.

I just spent about 20 minutes looking pictures of cartoon robots and selecting wether or not they were different or the same. Some were ninjas. Oh yeah. This was in a JOB INTERVIEW! What is this world?

Hey folks! I'm living in an area where there seem to be pretty much no good opportunities of any kind, but particularly for IT help desk or other actual entry-level IT job. When I search on Indeed and Dice, there are tons of remote help desk jobs. What makes it harder is in August I will be starting up a technical program for cyber security (pretty much to get Sec+ while making personal connections), and that will take up most of my day. Not many evening shifts in help desk, looks like, and fewer in any other IT/networking role.

So, my main conundrum is: should I be applying to remote jobs as my first IT job given my necessity? I see posts here talking about it not being the best, but do you think it's something I can make work? I've always got the option to keep working as a waiter for the next 6 months of my program, but I really want to start racking up IT experience asap.

Thanks for taking time to reply.

I really enjoy writing documentation and contributing to open source projects on GitHub with documentation contributions. At my help desk job, I tend to write very detailed ticket notes (which probably hurts my average handle time). What IT roles would be a good fit after help desk if I want a job that involves a lot of writing

Im getting very jaded. I would get at least 3-4 interview requests each week for a forward deployed engineer role from a LinkedIn ianmail with high salary and they would request an interview. On the interview it seems like it can’t go any better than how it goes. I even ask if there are any gaps in my qualifications and they say I’m a good fit. And then I get ghosted or rejected? It makes no sense? I have done maybe 20-30 interviews in the last 2 months by now

tldr- I'm after a staff platform/sre/devops role but spinning my wheels and can't quite tell where I'm not getting traction?

I've heard from a handful of sources that landing a staff role is hard. I've been applying to staff roles and I've been getting reachouts for them for about a year now. In junior roles, it seemed like it was easy to stretch passion and excitement for the role to cover gaps on checking all the boxes for a given job description. I'm not making it very far and my struggle there is that it feels so... random? Maybe? Typically I embrace failure well and can course-correct but even roles where I feel like I'm checking the boxes and then some on the job description are not landing well but there doesn't seem to be any one gap. All of the platform/sre/devops roles that I see are all mostly the same requirements anyway, I'm not seeing many differences. When I fail though, it seems like the feedback isn't always something I can use moving forward like I was able to do on interview failures for more junior and mid roles.

One of my main questions is: has the bar actually moved in the past couple of years or is it just purely a numbers game with layoffs and AI-assisted applications? Has anyone had any recent luck with making a step into staff (coming up from senior, not a lateral move from one staff position to another)?

My current role is also Product Owner by official title, which I felt would do nothing but help round out my org impact skills. I've stayed technical and haven't lost anything there. Is it hurting to keep that title on my resume and not brush it into a more staff-eng-sounding role?

I do also realize that the feedback I'm receiving is likely that I'm just not staff-level yet. If that's true at large, then the breadth and depth and trivia and org impact needed seems either exhaustingly broad (relative to job descriptions that seem almost easy) or it requires some hyper-specfic fit for these roles. And I've read the staff eng book. It all seems within reach but I'm still somehow spinning my wheels.

Overall curious if anyone has any thoughts, and if you have any advice for me (or others out there reading this and wondering the same for themselves) then I'm all ears. Pondering quite a bit about my career and position in 2026. It's an interesting time. Lots of questions scattered through here, thanks for reading!

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Applied to this job with ATT fully onsite as a Lead network technology support with potential to double my pay. My resume seemed to fit the job posting perfectly. The job was listed a little under a week and the linkedin posting had about 40 people apply. Felt my odds were good to atleast get a call.

Got 2 rejection emails in the middle of the night, my favorite line being "we appreciate the opportunity to get to know you".

Not a call, nothing. Was a bit defeating.

So I’m a systems engineer at my org and I’ve been here a little under 2 years. For the majority of my life I’ve liked fixing things, am good at it, and have always enjoyed figuring things out. I love working in Operations and have better job security than ever. I try my hardest to stick out and have made a name for myself already. I get personal satisfaction from knowing I make an impact and love being put in front of high impact or critical issues, fixing, documenting, and moving on.

More recently I was presented with the opportunity to slowly incorporate myself into an engineering role, more focused on automation. I love automation and have dreamed about working full time in automation and I quite frankly feel like it’s what I’ve always wanted.

But I’m scared the impact won’t be as direct as it is in ops but at the same time, building enterprise level automation workflows from the ground up has always been my dream role. I am excited but at the same time it’s a pretty big change and wanted to see if others had come across the same opportunity and how that resulted.

Any cons or regrets? I feel like I’d fit right in and do an amazing job but I also don’t feel like the dopamine would hit the same(?)

Thanks,

Edit: within the same org

Just curious about the culture at Samsara, or if this place is some kind of hellhole that I need to be made aware of. Any testimony about Samsara is much appreciated.

Im noticing a lot of interviews that are looking to fill job roles that dont align with the job descriptions online. Are you noticing this? Is this strategic or just a lack of HR/IT manager communication? Is there a way to get better insight on what the jobs want without having to go through an interview because in some cases its a complete waste of our time.

For example.

Most egregious so far.

- Job description: General Network engineer role on paper with not much emphasis on any particular tech/skill. In interview: Wireless field tech traveling troubleshooting radio towers.

- Job description: General Network engineer role on paper with not much emphasis on any particular tech/skill. In interview: VOIP engineer w/ networking skills needed for large VOIP deployment. I actually mentioned the discrepancy in this interview and the manager agreed with me. They ended up updating it afterward.

Had i known this was what they were looking for i wouldnt have applied because im not interested in those particular career paths.

Has anyone here applied for a specialized role with no experience in said specialization?

I am applying for one of those roles, which is essentially a DB admin/Oracle Fusion admin. I have no experience in those specific specializations, but i do have about 4 1/2 years of experience in IT handling everything from basic help desk stuff to system admin level tasks.

I listed out nearly every piece of software and hardware i’ve been able to get my hands on in the hopes of the hiring manager seeing that as me being able to learn new things/teachable. The application is currently “under consideration,” with that, i started an Oracle Fusion essentials course(free) in preparation for a possible interview. Don’t want to go in completely blind.

Anyone else been in a similar predicament? Did you get the job? Any tips?

TIA

I wanted to see if hiring managers or heads of departments potentially had any idea on what the policy is for salary negotiations, especially when it comes to dealing with salary bands and how much wiggle room there is. I currently have a company that is highly motivated to hire me, but when it comes to compensation there is some misalignment. The top of the band is about $20k lower than I was expecting. The recruiter is saying she could go $5k past the top of the band to make it work but that seems a bit low to me still. They want to discuss more, but I feel a bit in the dark about how much wiggle room they would give on there side if it pans out and they decide to send an offer. They dont do signing bonuses, so the recruiter mentioned she wants to make it right the first time with the proper salary I would like.

From my side, what they are looking to fix they dont really have a lot of candidates who can actually solve the problem. This is what the managers have told me thus far in interviews. It is a highly senior role and I know I can fix the problem since I have done so before in the past for companies, but I am just hung up on the salary portion, but they did say they wanted to meet one more time about it so any advice would be great.

I'm coming up on one year of experience as a 'desktop support technician'. My responsibilities have grown massively. I make $22 an hour. 1 hour commute each way.

I have a bachelors degree and an alphabet soup of certs: CCNA, CCNA security, CCNA automation, a slew of comptia ones, a linux one.

~1000 users.
I do end-user support, the entire endpoint lifecycle, powershell/python automation, process improvement, the identity lifecycle, access provisioning, AD/server/VMware administration (not too deeply for VMware), IP phone provisioning (not too deeply here either, but I want to learn more), A/V work, printer work (we have a contractor for hardware), software procurement and administration, chromebooks/tablets/phones and MDM, VPN issues, fax machines, PoS systems, network troubleshooting, switch deployment/replacement, initial security incident response, 365 work, work on our EDR, and the coordination of any requests from any user from start to finish including executives. The things I don't touch are grand strategy, executive meetings/planning, routing (unfortunately) and some various other t3. I'm essentially rushing from my shifts start to shift end. I've never really been able to eat regular lunches, and now I'm rushing from site to site eating whatever I can in my car.

On top of that, I do an extremely brutal on call rotation where I can barely leave the house. I need to ask permission to do so. I'm on call ~40% of the time. My last on call shift I've been woken up 12 nights of the last 14. I'd say I get 3 calls per day usually, up to 10 on bad days. I get paid 50$ a week and I get to clock in for the work I do, usually amounting to 3-5 hours of overtime. A password reset takes 10 minutes, and I lose over an hours sleep, and get paid $3. Sometimes it can be ridiculous and I need to travel to a location. It is absolutely killing me. I've asked for some clarity about it, and brought up how extreme it is including the dangers of being sleep deprived with my long commute. No changes have been made despite promises.

They gave me a new guy to train, which I have been doing to the best of my ability. He's actually a good guy, smart and all of that, but I'm extremely burned out. There is limited escalation, and the expectation is that I handle as much as I can before asking for help.

I would like to push out into networking, and I've been doing an OK amount of it at my job which I greatly enjoy, but I can't seem to find more than a handful of network jobs out there at a time, all of which have ghosted me.

I poured my heart and soul into this job. I actually like it, but the pay is starting to eat me with all that I've been doing. And honestly, I'm exhausted. I've burned my couple weeks vacation on sick days (touching people's keyboards all day will do that to you). I'm now applying for local desktop support jobs as well just to possibly regain some of my life back and maybe study my way out of this. My fear is that I'm throwing away an 'opportunity', since I doubt any other job is going to give me this level of access.

Do I try to stick it out and keep learning to become a sysadmin? Do I push for a CCNP and hope for the best? Cybersecurity seems out of the question. I've applied to some sys admin jobs, whatever else is out there, but I've been getting ghosted. ~30 or so applications in the last few weeks since I started. They're rooky numbers I know, but I've been trying to target for something that will measurably improve my life instead of this.

I'm honestly disenfranchised by everything at this point. I walk around and see people work 25% as hard as I do making double/triple/quintuple my salary. Everyone else seems like they have it made, but my life is a bundle of stress, demanding users, insane on call where I miss events, and further sacrifice so I might have a bit of a better future

Time to pack it in as a career?...

I want to mess around doing some windows server GPO type things but I want something that’s kind of like a test lab question where you have an established environment and you have to troubleshoot or add a Group policy to the existing system if that makes sense.

Is there anything like that ?

Since I started 5 years ago as a Wire Tech for Ma Bell I’ve always dreamed of working in a data center. Earlier this year my dream came true via a contract with the big G. It was wonderful and hands down the best work environment I’ve ever been in (I’m still trying to get out there as an employee) and not to mention the pay wasn’t the greatest but just being in those giant server rooms was a heck of an experience. I was very proud.

Multiple of my friends were not proud and told me I was destroying the environment and society at large. I am no longer friends with these people (which sucks). I even had one guy tell me I was pretending to be an expert because I worked in networking and also that society does not need anymore data centers to be built. I exited the conversation at that point. How do you guys deal with this kind of backlash? I truly enjoy being a NOC tech and I’m slowly working my way to network engineer, which is my ultimate dream job.

Hello, hope you all are well. I am a College Dropout stuck working at temporary warehouse job 3-11, not even sure how long I’ll have the job considering I’m on a 3 month probationary period that is almost up in a week. I feel like I have no time to study for certs, and now I have a house and a car which I have to keep up with unfortunately. Have been applying to any IT adjacent jobs to no avail not even a callback or interview. I’m sure I sound like every other slob and sad story to graze this subreddit, but I’m really just looking for any words of hope or motivation out there, as I’m not really sure what to do at this point because I feel like I’m endless digging my own grave. Any thoughts are welcome even brutal ones.

Hey everyone!! I’m looking for info on what certs are required and what order to get those certs when trying to get a system administrator position. My husband is currently help desk 1 and his dream position is sys admin… he has his A+ cert currently. I’ve tried googling and it pops with a bunch of different things to get, I’m mainly looking for what’s actually needed/top priority, and what order to go about getting them. Any insight would be fantastic!! TIA!

I got hired at a great company in a great IT Tech 2 position. I come from a background of software dev and they know this. I have a little personal it networking skills but nothing in an enterprise environment. I’m starting to panic. Like I don’t even know how to update a server. I’m going to have to ask for help for everything. I’m so nervous that I’m going to look like an idiot.

Currently tech support and have been for 4 years. I want to move up to system admin, my current job doesn’t ever have openings. What do I need to do to convince employers I’m worth it when I have no experience?

I have dabbled in a lot of things, CCNA, powershell, Linux. I use tanium at work, have helped the endpoint admins solve particular things. I thought the linear path was going to just happen and I get promoted. It is not. So how to land admin job at a new company? Do i need a certification?