Root's Words of Wisdom: School to Job

root — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 01:54:00 GMT

So sitting here at my desk, in my apartment, awaiting youtube to accept uploads (currently they aren't) for ep4 and came across this PM:

"I'm thinking of getting into Networking. Don't you do something like that? Anyways, what school did you go to, what suggestions do you have for the people getting into the Corporate world?"

Well, I'm paraphrasing there. He didn't really say that word for word but you get the idea.

For the record, I'm a Storage Area Network engineer (SAN). I deal with storage. This is not closet space or shipping containers in a network. This is data storage. Hard drives. We have refrigerator size frames that are filled with hard drives, for a centralized location for storage, that we carve up storage from (LUNs) and allocate them to servers/mainframes that do various things with the storage (Exchange, Oracle, SAP, etc).

How did I get into storage? I can tell you now I never said to myself "hey, I want to get into storage." Hell, I never even knew there was such a job out there before I entered that fateful internship.

I went through high school imagining that I'd get into computers. I'd get a degree in computers and then get into the corporate world, happy go lucky. Boy was I off.

First off, 'computers', at least in the mid to large companies, is a very very broad term. There is the application team (Oracle, Exchange, SAP, Webapps, middleware, etc), the hardware team, the OS team, the data center team, the storage team, the backup team, the network team, the Desktop team, the security team, the... well pretty much there is a field for just about any part of the computer, depending on how large (or specialized) the company is. And each of those fields will have a specialized component to that field.

There isn't just SAN. There is NAS. There is the individual vendors of those products (EMC, IBM, Hitachi, etc) and within those vendors there are different types of frames (CLARiiON, Symmetrix, Sharks, 8000s, etc). The networking part (CISCO, Brocade (now including McData), Qlogic, etc). And the various technologies of all those products (Replication, Virtualization, iSCSI, FCIP, etc). Everything can be specialized and everything can be generalized.

Then there is the management part. You have the technical and the management. Someone who is fluent in both usually has skills that few individuals posses. Especially having translating skills from technical to management and vis vera (that's where you here those favored "examples"... err can't think of the name of it right now).

Even in college there isn't just a particular degree. All of your electives that you have at your disposal means that you can specialize in a particular field within your degree. And don't get me started on Master programs.

Well if you can understand this, how there is a lot more out there than what you probably think (daunting really), I'm sure you are thinking "What am I going to do? How can I prepare?"

Simplest answer?

You can't prepare for it.

I mean, sure, you can study for particular certifications (there is literally hundreds of thousands out there), you can research into the various fields out there but... well to be honest you won't know until you try it.

I personally got a degree in MIS (that's Management Information Systems). Which I still don't know what they heck it was about. Mostly had to do with databases I think. Pretty much a degree that's between a Business and Computer Science degree (the C.S. majors called us wannabies). I landed an internship with a pretty good company and got a feel for the corporate life. I liked it, for the most part. I was sort of tossed into the Storage team and about a year later got hired on full time.

In my own humble belief, you will never know what you want to do until well after college, when you have enough experience in things of said Life. I mean, even the company to choose isn't an easy task. Small? Medium? Big? Each has it's advantages and disadvantages. Do you want to travel a lot? You might think it would be fun now but most people get tired of it within the first few months. Do you just want to go where the money is at? Specialized? Generic? Consulting? Management? Technical? Entrepreneur? It all depends.

First step is getting your foot in the door (college is a great opportunity for this). Degree in Business or Computers, either one helps. College can prepare you some, just not as much as you think. You can get a good foundation to build on and, as you get into your first real job, you can use bits and pieces of it. But it's all about getting your foot in the door and getting it wet. This is where colleges have internship programs set up with most companies. This is a great opportunity. Without these internships, you might have to start from the ground up (call centers, desktop support, etc). There is a reason why they say experience counts.

"Well that isn't helping me at all root."

Join the club. I still don't know what the hell I want to do with the rest of my life. Comforting, I know, but at least I have 40 more years to figure it all out. I'll let you know when I do.

Please post up your own School to Job transition, and where you ended up.

Until Youtube gets their site working again,

root of all evil : School

Root's Words of Wisdom: School to Job