Need advice from professional IT folks

Hi guys! I have a little of a problem, I graduated from college in '03 with a major in Computers Information Systems. I joined the military and my military duties have nothing to do with my studies. Now that I have less than a year of service left, I thinking that I want to try and do a career in the IT field.

My first question will be, how is it? How is the day to day taks that you do in your job? Do you like it? Is it challenging?

My second question will, since I only have a very basic knowledge and its been a while, what kind of literature is out there that can give me an update in the new things about the career field?

[edit on 8-1-2008 by Bunch]

I can tell you that it pays well and there is often room for advancement (unless your company decides to outsource to India). The day to day tasks for me are usually pretty easy. I occasionally have to reset a wireless keyboard or configure install an OS here and there. Personally, I work with a windows environment and mostly on the server side since I got my own little lackey...er..intern. Once you get into the swing of things at your position it should all come flowing back from the college days.

There haven't been too many changes since '03 as far as Windows systems go aside from Office 2003, Server 2003 and Vista. Office and Server are almost identical to previous versions except with a few extras that make things a bit easier. Vista however is whacked and you'd probably want to use it a bit before claiming to be versed in it during any interview. Most companies know enough not to have deployed it yet though.

If you want to bone up (and bone you should) you may want to check out the wiki page on server 2003
en.wikipedia.org...

If there's anything you don't recognize on the page, click it, or google it. That's how I do it, and I'm in no way certified or have a college degree in IT and I'm doing fine, so you should do fine too.

Good luck

i like my job. i was doing desktop support for a few years up until last winter. i switched to a position that lets me admin unix servers and stuff which is (for me) interesting and challenging. the pay is decent and from what i hear (as far as take home) i could do better. my company makes up for it in benefits though. tuition assistance, lots of paid vacation, etc. "IT" stuff has always come pretty naturally to me and I love what I do. The only downside is dealing with people that treat you like crap. Sometimes you're not seen as the guy that fixes things, you're seen as the guy that could have prevented it from breaking in the first place. I haven't had a lot of that here, but I've seen it a lot elsewhere.

look at that, my fingers started using the shift key about half way thru that... =)

Amen to that. When things go perfectly for months on end, we get no praise, but if something goes wrong BLAM you're slammed by the guys in charge.

Here's a good link called 10 dirty little IT secrets.

www.globalknowledge.com...

10.) The pay in IT is good compared to many other professions, but since they pay you well, they often think they own you
Although the pay for IT professionals is not as great as it was before the dot-com flameout and the IT backlash in 2001-2002, IT workers still make very good money compared to many other professions (at least the ones that require only an associate's or bachelor's degree). And there is every reason to believe that IT pros will continue to be in demand in the coming decades, as technology continues to play a growing role in business and society. However, because IT professionals can be so expensive, some companies treat IT pros like they own them. If you have to answer a tech call at 9:00 PM because someone is working late, you hear, "That's just part of the job." If you need to work six hours on a Saturday to deploy a software update to avoid downtime during business hours, you get, "There's no comp time for that since you're on salary. That's why we pay you the big bucks!"

9.) It will be your fault when users make silly errors
Some users will angrily snap at you when they are frustrated. They will yell, "What's wrong with this thing?" or "This computer is NOT working!" or (my personal favorite), "What did you do to the computers?" In fact, the problem is that they accidentally deleted the Internet Explorer icon from the desktop, or unplugged the mouse from the back of the computer with their foot, or spilled their coffee on the keyboard.

And I'm sure those with experience can attest to these facts.

What about moving into systems/software sales, consultancy, project management, R&D.

Just think about an area of IT you enjoy. Me, I am into ERP systems (SAP, JDE, Oracle, Exact and the like)

I got lucky with my job. I get to travel to my company's remote office. I'm covering for our London IT guy for the next 10 days and am here in Jolly old England. Before that, I was on the slopes Utah for a week while fixing my CEO's home computer. Before that, I was in Hong Kong building a remote office. So there are certainly percs to the gig, but also drawbacks.

Today I forgot to change the backup tapes and didn't realize it until by blackberry started buzzing off the chain with failed backup alerts. So, I had to go back into the office around midnight to swap tapes and confirm the starting of the job.

So, because it's such a specialized job, and there will likely be only a few people who know how to do it, you may end up working late late nights and early early mornings. Sometimes both in the same day, sometimes one leading into the other.