I recently landed my first job in IT (NOC), and I'm really nervous. Are there some things I should do and things I shouldn't for when I first start?

My knowledge on networking isn't very deep, and I made sure to let them know that in the interviewing process. I'm not entirely sure what is expected of me, and I'm worried I'll mess up this opportunity.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

I'm curious what other IT departments are issuing to their users. Are there any models you've found that are actually reliable and hold up in a business environment? I'm at the point where I'm ready to throw every headset we own in the trash. Reasonably priced to buy in bulk (we're a sales call center).

How accurate or relatable is servicedesk simulator to real life scenarios and actual work? I know every company can operate differently, but I've been using this simulator for practice and enjoying it but wasn't sure how practical it really was to the real world. TYIA!!

I just recieved this dc to hirose cable. The hirose side plugs in just as needed. The DC side... has this ring on that that sometimes comes with cables to tighten them up. I really don't understand the purpose here, because because of it, I can not plug this fully into my powerbank, it's extremely lose. This is the 2nd DC cable I had to order, last time I got the width wrong and has a 2,5mm one instead of the needed 2,1mm. I have a 3rd cable on the way anyway from ebay because the seller of the first one sent me another one for just 3$, maybe that one will finally work...

Hi everybody,

Sorry for the repetitive question but I feel stuck and some advice from experienced users would be appreciated. I've been working as a school "IT engineer" for around a year and ten months now for an education trust. Everything is in a single tenant and most things are centrally managed. I knew virtually nothing about IT and did work experience for the trust after which I was onboarded. I have global admin permissions so I do have access to entra, azure, intune, jamf, datto, Meraki (cloud switches) but I feel like I don't do/know anything. Sure I've pushed out a few conifgs and packaged a few apps, but I feel like I mostly just re-set passwords, authenticators and every once in a while I may switch a port to a different vlan if they move their VoIP phones. I'm just wondering which certifications to look for or what to pick up.

I do have a basic home lab I used to experiment with but lately haven't had the time. I'm hoping to get back to it and get some certs along the way. Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks.

I am currently in the beginning of my second year of my 2-year college, and seems like I may have to choose between these 2. just not sure which would overall be better for my resume.

Option 1 is a 2 month part time internship for a software support 'engineer' position at a video surveillance software company, so 50% of the job would be around troubleshooting (likely basic) network and server issues for customers, with the other 50% being basic helpdesk duties attached, some scripting, and building and setting up servers for clients as well.

Option 2 is a part time it tech at a college I'll be transferring to, duties are mostly t1 and a bit of t2 support, hardware repair/upgrades, End-user support, basic networking and the usual IT deployments.

Issue is that option 1 gives more networking duties, which is what I would like since I want to eventually be in the networking space. But the pay is a bit low compared to the college role. 16/hr, and on-site.

While option 2 is a permanent part time job, pay is 22/hr, but has less of the duties I want. also on-site.

I have to commute to both most of the time by Uber too. So cuts into pay.

I don't actually have the offers right now just interviewing for them, but I want to figure out which would be better before I actually have to pick.

What would you choose if you were in my position?

Im leaning towards 2 but just wanted some opinions on which one looks better on my resume.

I'm 27 right now and I'm worried I've completely screwed myself in the job market. So for context, I went to college for two semesters straight out of high school with the goal of becoming a doctor. My classes were nice and I was doing well, but I couldn't afford the tuition, and on top of that there was this too long to explain situation that basically left me living in a two bedroom apartment with only me paying the rent while my roommate did nothing. I was working at gamestop on minimum wage so that didn't work. I moved back in with my dad while I was being evicted. I quit school and worked at a casino from 2019-2021. I got sick of working there and decided to try becoming a pilot. I quit my job and talked to my family about cosigning a loan for ATP flight school.

Everything seemed good until I tried to get my first class medical. My blood pressure was too high, vision was bad, and I was diagnosed with ADHD as a kid. I spent two years sending off documents to the FAA and waiting months for a response only to be asked for more documents. Eventually they asked me to get a transcript of every school I've ever been to, which was ridiculous and I only had a month to do that. I gave up on the pilot path. Then for another year or two I was lost and felt hopeless. I went to counseling and after talking I thought about technical school. I signed up for their IT program and did that for a year and a half. I really enjoyed it. I got a lot of certifications (though practically all are not competitive and really don't make a difference on a resume), was student of the semester, and competed at the state and national levels. I graduated in May and I've been job hunting since. I've tried applying for entry level positions and I never hear back. I've had interviews and most have the problem of me being way underqualified.

It's really upsetting that 1.5 years of tech school and doing well in class, achieving first place at state and completing several networking courses, I'm still apparently not good enough for even an entry level job. My gap in my job history is a problem, and to top it off, my instructor, a guy who was in IT for years and was my biggest advocate, died from cancer just a while ago. I have no references, nothing to show for the time I spent. To anyone reading this, does this seem like a hopeless situation or should I keep trying to find a job in IT? It feels like this is the third time I've tried to pursue a career path only for it to just not work out and fall apart in the end.

Hello newbie here, does anyone using Intel core 5 120u for coding?, like what is your experience and how's the performance? Does it have limitations or issues?

Basically title. I spent the past few months studying and passed Sec + about a week or so ago. I’m looking for a remote entry level gig (golden goose, I know), simply because there’s little to no spots like that in my city or really anywhere nearby. I have a few interviews lined up this week and next week, but I’m starting to worry that Sec + isn’t enough to try and get a low level entry level gig going. I had 2 friends with long term IT careers suggest looking into AWS, Azure, and Cloud +, another person said go for Network + and then CEH but that would be years from now, and I’m eager to get on the ground now. Any advice?

Yesterday, I spent an hour and a half watching a senior programmer - someone with ten years of Django experience and a 150k salary - struggle to debug a migration error. He couldn't figure it out because he lacked a solid grasp of SQL and didn't know how to create tables manually. He managed to burn through his remaining AI tokens by feeding it every bit of terminal output, even though the logs clearly stated at both the beginning and the end that the issue was an attempt to create an association with a table lacking a unique key.

While he was switching between windows, I noticed in his IDE that one of the tables didn't seem to have a primary key defined. I pointed this out, but he ignored me. An hour went by like this. He tried every solution the AI ​​suggested, but nothing worked; instead, it just created new problems and different errors. Eventually, he decided to start over: he rolled back to the initial state, ran the migration again, and encountered the same error as before.

I reminded him that the error indicated a missing unique key in that specific table, preventing the migration from establishing the association. Then I suggested checking the table structure in another database - a clone hosted on a different server. He did so, and I immediately noticed that the table did have a primary key there. He was surprised. He ended up creating the primary key. At first, he wasn't sure it would work, but I told him that a primary key functions as a unique key, so everything should be fine.

I asked why the model didn't specify a primary key or unique key; he explained that Django handles this automatically and speculated that something must have gone wrong with that specific table. Since I’m not a Django expert - my web development background is mostly in raw PHP - I couldn't really comment on that.

I’m not claiming to be a better programmer or to know more overall. I have limited experience beyond a couple of small projects where I was the sole programmer; however, during my computer science studies, we were taught to always start with fundamental technologies and code in simple text editors. I even tried building my own template engine and a very basic framework. With that kind of background, though, no decent company with a high salary will hire me, so I earn a fraction of what a senior programmer makes. I’m just glad I got hired at that senior programmer's company. I run scripts once a week and fix computers there - drawing on my years of experience as a service center technician (a job I held while studying computer science to pay my tuition).

Since this is just one of my remote gigs - I have three jobs - it covers my living expenses, and the work takes up less and less time as I gain experience. Still, I wouldn't say no to a full-fledged developer role on a major project at a large company with a six-figure salary. I think I could handle it. Unfortunately, the senior programmers interviewing me see things differently; in the years since I graduated college in 2018, I’ve made it to the final interview stage only a few times, yet I still haven't landed the job.

idk where else to ask this, but for a few days now i've been searching and can't find anything useful.
i want to buy some refurbished, 'bout 100GB, SATA SSDs for an experiment and need a cheap international, but preferably Europe based, supplier, pls help 'n tanks

I am millennial dev doing backend. A few years ago I got a job with a bunch of GenX devs. At first I scoffed at their old ways but after a while I realized they're actually pretty great. Everything is on Linux boxes with root access so if we need a new feature they simply write it themselves. Give them 24-48 hours and the problem is solved.

We were recently acquired by younger company with modern tech. Honestly, it's terrible. Everything is a third party tool. If the tool cannot do what you need then you need a second tool. Our systems are literally tool A, B, C, D all linked together and no one knows anything outside their own tool so coordinating is very difficult. The limitations of these modern tech tools has required us to build unnecessarily complex systems that are hard to maintain.

Hi,

I've heard about numerous companies building internal "AI Think Tank" organizations to evaluate new technologies, their uses, and practical internal applications to their businesses. I'm interested to know how common this is. Is your company setting up AI Think Tank groups (or similar) and, if so, how are they being set up? For example, is it a mix of business and IT? Is it heavy on architects or software engineers or developers or business analysts, etc.?

Thanks

I'm in England. I have a family member who has started using bots to trade and it's doing quite well. He's not set it up as a ltd company yet and is not currently paying tax on it.

He wants to set it up as a ltd company eventually and put a pc in our house that he can access remotely. He can only run a certain amount of accounts from one IP address so he wants to set one up at our address so he can run more accounts. He won't be doing this for a while but has asked to put a pc in our cellar to do this. I'm 40 and racked with anxiety, he's 20 and is carefree. I do not know the risks with this. I assume it's nothing dodgy, but what if it is? Plus could it be a fire risk if it's running for hours per day?

Can anyone tell me the risks involved and if I should be wary about saying yes. My mind always goes to the worst case scenario in any situation so I'm thinking about the risks and he's thinking it'll be fine.

I know I can isolate a guest account on my network and he has said he'll cover any increase in electricity bills or WiFi, but what else should I consider?

Hey guys im turning 19 i was better at humanities/creativity all my life, never really studied math or anything of that matter, math is hard for me but i definitely can push through im not stupid. I cant let myself be broke in the future, rlly wanna get into IT, major in cybersecurity or ai engineering. But i have absolutely 0 knowledge, i only see people starting at 10-13, in IT schools 15 year olds are considered "adult" groups, and here i am who never even owned a pc. Is 19 too late? Ive asked some of my friends and they all say i shouldnt even try bc people there have 10+ yrs of experience and still learning
PS: this is a genuine question
im starting to learn software this year and the course lasts 2 years, 4 years for my major, thats 6yrs before i have a chance to even get a job. im already 2 years behind to get into uni so this is real serious for me yo

I’m in a senior position now, and I’ve worked in both the private sector and government. If I ever end up in management, one thing I’d seriously push for is changing the current CompTIA certification model.
I entered IT around 2021, and while Security+ was never considered an impressive certification, it was respected. I have everything from A+ to CySA+, and while these exams aren’t easy, especially without experience, they’re very doable. The problem is that they’re one of the weakest ways to measure someone’s actual technical ability.

CompTIA exams are an inch deep and a mile wide. They cover a broad range of topics but rarely require you to demonstrate practical skills. I understand why managers value them since they’re standardized, but they’re not technical exams. Whether it’s CompTIA’s marketing, Professor Messer’s popularity during COVID, or the tech hiring boom, I’m seeing people applying for their first Help Desk job with nearly every CompTIA certification already completed. I’ve even seen people with SecurityX and only one or two years of Help Desk experience. To me, that shows these certifications don’t reliably measure practical ability and have become oversaturated.

I think one of two things should happen. Either more hands on, technical certifications should become the industry standard, or CompTIA should introduce meaningful prerequisites. A+ could stay open to everyone, while higher level certifications could require relevant education, work experience, or employer sponsorship. That may sound excessive, but it would discourage people from collecting certifications like Pokemon’s just to fill a resume and help restore the value of certifications that are supposed to represent professional knowledge.

Hello all. Sort of new to the IT workforce, and I have a question for other IT professionals/support agents.

What is your practice or policy for distributing laptops/other equipment to employees? Specifically, when it comes to new equipment vs. used equipment, and new vs. current employees?

For example: I have a user who has been with the company for almost a year (8 months), and their laptop is bugging out to the point we need to swap it out. I have a suitable replacement, in fact two. The same laptop, but one is used (previous employee, wiped, sitting on the shelf), and the other is brand-new in the box.

What makes more sense? Give the new-in-box, or the used on the shelf?

For reference, their current laptop was brand new when they got it, so it isn't like we gave them an old heap to start.

We don't have any specific policy that dictates this to us, and I'm wanting to work on establishing our best practices. So, I figured I would ask for other peoples' experiences.

Thank you in advance. 😊

Got the genius idea to replace my headphone's voice lines with a vocaloid's voice.

Would this even be a possible project for someone with basically no programming experienc?

Hello all,

I am trying to get into helpdesk and similar roles as my starting point in the UK as an international student. I am currently studying MSc Cybersecurity. While my long term goal is to work in Cybersecurity, I like to start from the basics and hence focusing on this. I have my bachelors in Comp. Science and engineering. Im currently working on BLUE TEAM LEVEL 1 certificate. Almost done with my 1 year masters course.

I have analysed job descriptions for IT helpdesk and similar roles ( including administration roles). I did find some similarities in requirements. However, I would to ask people what I should be focusing on to get actual experience so I can update my portfolio.

A general roadmap or guide from you all will help me a lot. For instance, relevant and most commonly used tools in that field, theory stuff, where I can learn on those tools, projects i can do on my own to showcase i have some basic applied knowledge in the field.

Please do help me by sharing your knowledge.

Thank you,

Hope you all have good week!

¡Buenas a todos! Les cuento un poco en qué ando para ver qué opinan. Actualmente estoy promediando el segundo año de la Licenciatura en Informática y Desarrollo de Software, y estos días me pintó armar una especie de mapa o "roadmap" para no avanzar a ciegas con mi carrera. La idea que tengo en mente para arrancar es buscar alguna pasantía o un primer laburo de entrada en el sector IT para empezar a meter las manos en la masa y ganar experiencia real. En paralelo a eso, mi foco va a ser estudiar para sacar la certificación CCNA de Cisco y tener una base bien sólida en redes. A futuro, cuando ya tenga más experiencia y horas de vuelo en el rubro, me gustaría ir escalando posiciones hasta llegar a meter de lleno en Cloud. Y ya una vez ahí, conociendo bien cómo se mueve la nube, el plan a largo plazo es dar el salto definitivo hacia el mundo de la ciberseguridad.

Ustedes me recomiendan algo mas? Me plantean alguna idea o los mas experimentado cuentan lo que hicieron en su caso?