Posted: 6/30/2006 12:12:37 PM EDT
Anyone here have a degree in CIS? Whats the job market like? what kind of work do you do? 
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Ehh, its okay, seems like more people then their are jobs. I don't have my degree in CIS although I do work in it right now. I switched, I thought the market was kind of saturated right now, plus I wanted to do something else. I run servers for and administer the online college (classes, organizations, student groups etc..) for a 2-year university in the city, as well as help desk user training, and support for our applications. |
| You DO NOT want a degree in any computer related field. You DO want Certs for things in that field, like MSCE, CCNA, CCNP, etc. The reason is, is that in a 4 year degree the curriculem is out of date and by the time that you get out of the school with a degree your knowledge no longer applies to the current level that employers want. |
...Got tired of that crap...now I am a Border Patrol Agent.
+1 CIS is for the geek-wannabes that can't hack the math. If you like babysitting computers and basically being a step-and-fetch-it kinda guy, CIS is the way to go. If you'd rather write the code that makes it all worth having, look into computer science. |
I'm a computer dude making decent scratch, and I don't have a degree. You either love it or you don't. If you're really into it, you'll do well. In my case, I don't have a choice. I'm no good at anything else. 
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I'm finishing up my degree in CSS @ the UW. About 2 years back I looked at the trends, talked to people in industry, & decided to move in a different direction: once I'm done w/ CSS, I'm off to a NucMed program, having just finished up the prerequisites while @ the UW. In general, the computing industry is hypercompetitve & in a constant state of flux. I've noticed a burn out rate of ~3-5 years. Margins are so thin & markets so tight that it often comes down to cost cuts to make a profit. Can't recall how many empty buildings filled w/ unused office equipment & PC's I've seen @ the MSFT campuses. I think the knowledge - particularly programming experience - is valuable, but the general instability & the outsourcing trend have taken their toll. Project mgmt is probably a better gig than programming/hacking in the long run, but any way you cut it, expect to put in long hours. Realize also, that the days of the big-bucks programming jobs are past-tense. No more $70K - $90K annual salaries + bonuses for anymore. The $$$ isn't there, unless you're up @ the top of the company food chain. For me, the necessity to move seemed obvious. |
Uh, plenty of folks in my company make more than that, and they're by no means at the top of the company food chain. They're engineers and programmers. It's competetive I'll grant you, but it doesn't seem that way to those who enjoy their work. |
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Business, Business, Business. Business administration, management, even accounting. As another poster stated, the fortran you bring out of your third year in CS or CIS isn't going to mean squat. Know your systems, get your certs, work in the industry for experience, and then lay that business degree on them and you will have lots of potential pathways for long-term success in the IT field. I look for business degrees like lootie looks for Heineken! I can always find someone that's an ace with Cisco, MS, Citrix etc. etc. but it's hard to find the guys that can build and drive the IT "enterprise" and culture within a given organization. Of course being out of the field for the best part of a decade now gives me a different perspective than the folks in the data centers and wiring closets. I do know this; the burnout is high and you aren't necessarily going to want to top out configuring routers and switches or installing networks and servers all day. Earn your stripes in the field and then go up the food chain. Get the administrative assistant, the free bennies, the big office, and all expenses covered. The surest way I know of to get there is an education and foundation in running a business from the ground up and a firm grasp of the technology and the culture of IT that you gain from working in the field. Edited for as much grammar and spelling as my badly hungover ass wants to deal with. |
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In over 20 years of computer admin experience I have worked with exactly one fellow SysAdmin who had a degree in CIS. I'm a Unix Admin, Oracle dba and have no degree. The best HP-UX admin I know has a Phd in philosophy (yes, that's right navel gazing) and the best back-up person I know has a masters in english lit. I currently work with another Oracle dba (she has a phd in math) and 3 other sysadmins. One is working on a BS in physics, another is like me, no degree and the last one has a degree in electrical engineering. Experienced dbas are very much in demand right now. I get at least a call a week from some |
Uh, your acqaintences should count their blessings - & maybe stash some of their earnings. I'll posit that the ratio of high-paid engineers/programmers to those making significantly less or being out of work is lopsided towards the latter group. I can attest to the number of savvy programmers I've known around the Pacific NW who have gotten fed up & moved on because of outsourcing competition undercutting the pay scale & the continued workload expectation despite the lower pay. The highly cyclical nature of the industry is also an issue. |
I get $70K and $80K offers from companies in California and Texas semi-reguarly. The work is out there, if you have a desireable skill set. The ones that don't do well guess at what pays well, and expect employers to agree. My current comapny has been successful for 15 years (even during the dot com bust) and has never layed anybody off. Ever. They attract and retain good talent, treat them like gods, and the customers are happy. There are no blessings to be counted. It's all hard work and sacrifice. |
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Unless you are highly specialized, most of the IT field today has been sanitized and is largely M&P (methods and procedures) driven. Who wants to do that? I have a mathematics degree and work for a large telecommunications company. The first five years I would consider as pioneering work. Now, anyone who can follow a flow chart and has a good base can do the job. Want to work in IT and not have it become incredibly boring and repetitive? Specialize in something like computer forensics or research. Even the computer security field in general (which I used to find highly interesting) has become largely "routine". Every Tom, Dick, and Harry in our computer security department thinks they're the worlds best hacker and they can barely spell UNIX. I wish quite often that I had stayed in school and obtained a Ph. D. in my field (assuming I could have and been successful). Certainly would have opened up the more interesting jobs in IT and elsewhere for that matter. |
You got it. The money is in consulting. You've got to find that one thing that everybody wants, but nobody knows how to design or implement without help. At one point, knowing how to setup a domain controller was knowlege not possesed in house - so it got farmed out. Now, that's not the case. It's become a commodity skill. I've been in IT for 10 years, and my job has been all over the map in that time. The trick is to stay ahead of the game, and recognize when something you do is starting to be handled by IT departments in house. When that happens, move on and pick up a new skill. At the moment, my "thing" is Cisco IP Telephony (for 3 years, now). Someday, that'll be as common as writing ACL's. I'll be out of it before that day comes, and on to something else. Most people grow weary of having to learn things all over again. Some say the hell with it and leave IT alltogether. I love it. 
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| if you want to keep a job in it, get your certs then put the time in to learn how the stuff really works in the real world. General IT guys are a dime a dozen on pretty much every aspect of the industry. Competant guys are hard to find and worth every damn dime they are paid. You want to be the guy they NEED when the SHTF. |
That's just it, though. I used to love spending hours engrossing myself in new IT topics but I quickly learned that unless I was willing to switch companies at the drop of a hat, opportunities within the company I currently work for would be limited. Let's assume that I worked hard and obtained a certification for IP telephony (since you used it as an example). Well, first off, it'd be on my own dime. My company doesn't pay for schooling any longer. Secondly, Cisco makes their certifications a little more difficult to obtain unless you use the equipment day-in-day-out. I obtained a CCNA w/o every having access to more than a simple router (Cisco 4000M) but anything beyond that is a little more difficult w/o shelling out some dough for a lab of your own to practice with. So, then there's the chicken-before-the-egg issue. Let's assume, though, that I work my rear off and obtain the certification. Fantastic. Now, I have to wait for an opening in my company only they tend to only hire from inside their own group or from a resource pool of people who once used to be mainframe user administrators. The above is my attempt at illustrating why mastering new skills doesn't necessarily buy you anything either unless you're willing to job hop quite a bit. I prefer stability so my options there are somewhat limited. I've been mulling obtaining a master's degree in mathematics (MS Education) during the evening so I can teach classes at a local university to augment income if I feel the need for more toys. Haven't decided yet though. My wife is a school teacher and I'm currently funding her master's degree in mathematics (Education) because our state law requires our teachers to have master's degrees. Nevermind the fact that most of the teachers we know have to go into debt to obtain said degree but that's a whole other topic. I'm seriously glad though that you really enjoy your job. I don't hate mine but it's nowhere near as fun as it used to be. |
This is the truth. I'm a team lead for around 10 individuals. Out of those ten, eight of them do the job their suppposed to do. Out of those 8, four of them are really technically astute. I really value the four that can think independently. I've been doing UNIX in general for around 17 years and AIX specifically for around 8 years. It's difficult to find qualified candidates. |
+1 No degree here either. Here's the deal with IT degrees, in my experience: They'll help you get some jobs with some bosses. They're certainly better than nothing. In order to move up to the more advanced work and more exciting positions, however, you're going to have to have real skills to go with that degree. Some of them you can learn on the job. Some of them rely on you being a natural geek. I wouldn't discourage you from getting a degree like that, but the question is: what type of work are you interested in? To answer your questions: the job market varies by locale a LOT. I started as a programmer and I'm currently team lead for planning / architecting / managing about 350TB of storage (and growing) for a large corporation. I consider myself a UNIX geek, but it seems I mostly end up doing storage and networking. I've done everything from phone support to designing fancy shmancy redundant global networks in the course of my career. In the end, it's just a job to me; I no longer see computers as a hobby. I take my check, go home, and spend my time playing with guns. |
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You want to work in IT? Get a pc with DOS as the operating system and then try to get video games to work. Thats how I learned computers. When windows came out I was actually downloading from the internet and playing Tie Fighter at the same time. It was a miracle! Its funny how my goofing off and gaming turned into a job. I know pc's so well now that I can almost "feel" whats wrong with one before I touch it. The college educated guy setting one module over just spent a whole day trying to figure out why he could not log into the domain with a new user account he created. He asked me about it and I instantly diagnosed the issue. Your not connected to the domain! Your normal user account is cached. His DNS setting has been set wrong for months and he never noticed. |
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Any programming should be ok. Babysitting servers, well, that market is flooded. The Network Admin types are a dime a dozen. But, if you're really good and passionate about it, you should be able to find some good work. Problem is that there are a lot of hacks with those jobs out there who are mediocre only no one knows it because IT is such a black box for most people. The IT job market in general is picking up but I always saw a demand for the java, web developers, and related programmers. Cisco and network infrastructure types also still do pretty good $-wise I think. $90k is not unheard of. I have a BBA in finance and 5 years as Director of IT, so the degree doesn't necessarily matter as long as you have one. I used the degree to get into a mutual fund company and later a life insurance company where I then broke into IT. The MCSE and Novell CNE cred did open a ton of doors. |
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If you want a job, get the certs. If you want a job and the potential to climb up the corporate IT ladder, get the CIS degree first and the certs after you graduate. You can probably get the certs at night while you're working. In almost every case, it's better to have a degree, because when it comes time to promote, they look at the guys with degrees first. Any degree is better than no degree. The people I know with CIS degrees work in IT management. If that is what you want, great. If you want to code or design networks, a BSCS may be a better choice. Whatever you do, go to the best school that will have you, even if it means you need to take out a student loan. The degree will follow you around for the rest of your life. |
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In St Louis there is very little in the way of IT jobs at all, nothing for new grads. What is advertised are jobs for Bachelors (minimum) Masters' (usually required), usually some certs they want in there too, and 5+ yrs experience in all the specific hardware and software that the particular job requires. If you know a kid in college and they're majoring in IT, do them a favor--tell them to change to something else now. The US tech job market is still dead, and will remain dead as long as the B1B program lets companies ignore US workers while stuffing jobs with foreigners. ~ |
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Or you can get an IT degree and sell IT HW/SW and consulting services for the enterprise. I don't have to make it work I'll let you smart guys do that. All joking aside, I made lots of money last year and this year is looking even better. (of course I have two kids in college and another going this fall so it doesn't FEEL like a lot but on paper it sure was) Semper Fi |
Just the opposite here. There are plenty of jobs for new grads, junior- and mid-level software engineers and admins, but not a lot for people with 10+ years experience (except in defense, but that's a very small market compared to the others). The Silicon Valley youth culture all but shuts out anyone over age 35 (I don't think it would make any difference if the H-1B program was eliminated either.) If you're over 35, you need to get into project management or engineering management to have any longevity at all. But that’s true in many fields.
I don’t agree the market is universally dead. It’s regional, and it’s very niche-orientated. More than ever, one needs a degree from a top school and the right set of 3- and 4-letter acronyms on one’s resume. I think in general, however, the industry is in decline due to commoditization. There will always be jobs for the smartest guys who graduated from top engineering schools, but everyone else is unlikely to experience the career longevity they hoped for. Some of that is due to outsourcing, of course. I think I would probably avoid software engineering as a major unless I was in a top program. Maybe electrical engineering or another “hard” engineering major is a better choice. |