YOUR CAREER GETTING STARTED, GETTING AHEAD, GETTING BETTER IN YOUR JOB ORIN THOMAS

[3/21/2007]

Degree or Certification.
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I’ve blogged on the Degree or Cert conundrum a bit before (see http://www.windowsitpro.com/Article/ArticleID/50081/Certification_or_Postgraduate_Degree.html) but the topic comes up enough in the Careers forum on the Windows IT Pro message board (see http://forums.windowsitpro.com/web/forum/categories.aspx?catid=53&entercat=y ) that it is probably worth another go around.

Those who have finished high school and might have a part time job in a superstore environment selling and repairing computers want to know – should they go to college and get an IT related degree or should they just pursue certification?

The first answer is “You Can Do Both!!!!”

If you are diligent and really committed, which let us be honest, most people around the age of 18-21 are not, you can fit your certification studies in around your degree studies. It just means a little less Xbox and partying and the reading of a few more Training Kits and taking of Practice Exams. This approach might be a bit optimistic for most people. One advantage is that you balance the academic nature of your degree with the vocational nature of the certification.

The second answer is “You can worry about the certs later, do your degree now”.

Conventional wisdom is to spend time doing the degree and then pick up the certs later. Working against this is the increasing cost of degrees which are still by and large non-vocational. If you’ve passed a certification, you’ve demonstrated that you have a set of specific job role appropriate skills. Completing a degree demonstrates something more ephemeral. You might not get a job because of the skills you learned during the course of your degree study, but as you progress in your career it is more likely that you won’t get higher level jobs if you lack a degree.

Degrees have been around several hundred years and even if they don’t seem specifically useful to whatever you are going to be doing in your job, our culture’s attachments to them isn’t going to go away. Choosing to pursue a cert now and not a degree may lead to quicker employment, but you might be setting up a career roadblock for yourself 20 years down the track. Most people find going back to do a degree later in life more difficult than they find going back to do a certification. If you’ve completed a degree, you will have the ability to ramp up quickly for each cert exam because getting the degree has taught you to study effectively. I’ve noticed that people who haven’t finished degrees tend to have a harder time self studying for certifications than people who have finished degrees.

The third answer is “Just keep up with the Certs”

For some people embarking on a process of continual certification will suit their career a lot better than spending several years working on a degree. That’s the thing you’ve got to remember about certification though: It is a continuing process. Certs are very suited to the modern workplace where you constantly need to re-skill if you are to stay on the ball. You can’t just get one cert and coast for the rest of your career. You’ll need to continue to take exams on a regular basis for the rest of your career because the technology is evolving. You’ll need to do this to an extent if you have a degree also, but just be aware that to get ahead without a degree you will need to study just as hard for your certs, if not harder (until you develop the appropriate learning skills) as you would have to attain a degree.
- posted by Orin Thomas

[1/24/2007]

Save Time. Work Early!
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Sometimes working extra hours is unavoidable. We might get behind in our work or we might need to get a bit ahead because of another project that is about to start. Rather than working back late at the office, you should consider starting work earlier. Think about the following reasons:

• Most people, suitably caffeinated, are more productive in the morning than they are after working their office hours. It is generally easier to maintain focus when you’ve just woken up rather than after a day dealing with work and other people. You may even find that you accomplish more at the office in the hour before work normally starts than you would at the office in the three hours after work normally finishes.
• If you arrive early at the office, there are rarely any other coworkers around to distract you.
• Spouses, partners, and family will rarely complain about missing you at breakfast. They are more likely to complain about missing you in the evening.
• Many managers automatically assume that an employee that comes to work early is highly motivated but that an employee who stays back for the same length of time is bad at time management.
• Coming to work early can mean that you miss the worst of traffic. It is a lot easier to get a seat on the train, tram or bus, and the roads are a lot less congested earlier in the morning. Depending on where you live, leaving an hour earlier might halve your commuting time.

[1/1/2007]

The inevitable New Year's Resolution Post
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Although we make resolutions about giving up smoking, losing weight or promising ourselves that, no matter the temptation, we will not watch any more reality TV, we rarely make new year’s resolutions about our careers. Why not try this. In the next week or so, make a few plans about how you can ensure that at the end of the year you feel that your career has progressed in some measurable fashion.

• Plan to learn at least one new technology that you currently know nothing about. Maybe you don’t know anything about SQL Server, Exchange or ISA Server. Maybe you don’t know how to write administrative scripts in vbscript. Find something that you don’t know, but will help you out at work, and resolve to become competent in it before December 31 2007.
• Take one or more certification exams. Certification gives you a reason to keep yourself up to date. Sure, you can buy a book on Vista or you can play around with the operating system at home or in the lab before your organization gets around to adopting it, but taking a structured approach to your learning, where you face an assessment at the end can turn idle exploration into a deeper understanding.
• Take precautions. Today’s work environment is far from stable and there is no tenure in Systems Administration. Ensure that you have a plan in place to find another job should your organization go out of business or decide on another round of cost cutting.
• Consider what you want to be doing in five years time. It is likely that you don’t want to be in exactly the same position five years from now. Think about the steps that you need to take that will move your career forward.
  - posted by Orin Thomas
  
  

  [11/22/2006]

  Understanding The Three New Vista Exams
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  With Vista already available to Technet + it won’t be long until the Microsoft certification exams that test candidates knowledge of Vista will be released. In this post I will provide some insight into the three Vista exam options that will be available in the first quarter of 2007.
  
  

  First of all, if you already hold an MCSE it is likely that you won’t ever have to take a Vista exam. Windows 2000 MCSEs didn’t need to take an XP exam to upgrade to 2003 and it is likely that 2003 MCSEs won’t have to take an upgrade exam to qualify for the Longhorn MCSE.  This isn’t set in stone, but generally by the time you are in the target demographic for the MCSE, you don’t do much in the way of client operating system support.
  
  

  Understanding the differences between the exams comes down to understanding the difference between the audience they are targeted for.
  
  

  Client Configuration Exam.
  
  

  This is the Vista exam for the tech working in the computer superstore technical department or on the sales floor selling computers that run Windows Vista. It doesn’t touch enterprise networking issues such as domains, but concentrates on installations, upgrades and making the most of features such as media centre, Tablet PC functionality and
  
  

  (It is likely that the URL will be corrected as the 71 designates the exam’s beta status.)
  
  

  http://www.microsoft.com/learning/exams/71-620.mspx
  
  

  Enterprise Desktop Support Exam
  
  

  This is perhaps the most traditional of the exams on offer, this one is aimed at professionals working in enterprise desktop support. These professionals will have a degree of experience with previous Windows operating systems and work for a medium to large corporate or non-profit organization. The objectives canbass issues such as enterprise deployment scenarios, group policy settings, security and advanced network connectivity to be present on the exam. The objectives are at:
  
  

  http://www.microsoft.com/learning/exams/70-622.mspx
  
  

  Consumer Desktop Support Exam
  
  

  The final Vista exam, 70-623 is aimed at people that provide consumer level operating system support. The sort of people this exam is aimed at might work the phones in customer support for an electronics superstore chain, or they might be out and about helping small businesses with problems they might encounter with Vista.
  
  

  For more info go to:
  
  

  http://mcpmag.com/news/article.asp?EditorialsID=1122
  
   
  
  
  - posted by Orin Thomas
  
  

  [10/24/2006]

  Mentoring a subordinate
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  As a system administrator yourself you should consider entering into a mentoring relationship with one of the first level support people at your organization. The system administrator at my first level support job taking on a mentoring role with me. It started off with small things, such as monitoring backups, but within a couple of months I was nominally responsible for the organization’s Windows NT4 Servers. Several years later when I was the system administrator at another company, I mirrored my mentor’s actions, taking on a mentoring role with one of the first level support techs there.
   There are benefits both way to mentoring a subordinate. Your subordinate will be happy because they’ll feel that their career is progressing. The benefit to you is that you will be able to delegate some time intensive, low complexity tasks away from yourself, leaving you more time to concentrate on more interesting high complexity sysadmin tasks.
   Prior to entering a mentoring relationship, you should run the idea past your manager. Some managers may resist the idea. One way of selling it is to suggest that by training the subordinate, it will allow some sysadmin tasks to be completed if you have a sick day or take some leave. Most managers are happy to support this idea because they get the benefit of having staff trained in house at no extra cost. It also can provide an important morale boost to the first level support staff. To them, being selected for mentoring indicates that they are seen as someone who does have what it takes to progress in the IT industry.
  A drawback to mentoring a subordinate is that if you have multiple subordinates, the ones that aren’t getting mentored might feel resentful. To ameliorate this, you could rotate mentoring  amongst the subordinates. Alternatively, have your manager make the selection or make the selection based on who has been with the company the longest.
  Mentoring is a very rewarding process. It can strengthen the sense of teamwork within the IT support unit.  It can also help you shed some of those tedious tasks you have to complete each day so that you can get on with the interesting stuff.
  
  
  
  - posted by Orin Thomas
  
  

  [10/11/2006]

  The Well Rounded IT Pro
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  There is a perception out in the industry that only holding certifications from a single vendor makes you less well rounded as an IT professional. There may be some truth in this perception. A great IT professional utilizes a wide variety of tools when solving complex problems. The more solutions that you understand, the greater the number of tools you have to solve problems with. If you’ve limited yourself by only understanding one particular platform and the solutions it offers, you may be missing a better solution offered by an alternative platform.
  
  

   
  
  

  Learning about how a familiar problem is solved on an unfamiliar platform can also provide you with greater insight. You’ll learn far more about DNS if you configure DNS on both Windows 2K3 and on Linux or Mac OSX than you’ll learn just by configuring DNS on a single platform. Similarly you may gain a better understanding of how web servers work in general by configuring both IIS and Apache rather than only understanding how to configure a web server on a single platform.
  
  

   
  
  

  Finally, you may currently work in a single platform environment and only need to know one operating system, but your employment future isn’t set in stone. You may decide, or be forced, to move on. One of the secrets to remaining employable is being adaptable. A candidate who demonstrates expertise in multiple platforms through multiple vendor certifications appears, at least on paper, to be more adaptable than the candidate who has only demonstrated expertise in a single platform. 
  
  Taking an introductory level certification in a second platform can be rewarding and will also give you some insight as to how the “other side” deals with the same issues you do.
  
  

  
  Windows IT Pro magazine has set up a site and some conferences that are devoted to cross platform issues. If you are interested in learning more about how to get different operating systems to complement each other, head over to http://www.techxworld.com
  
  
  - posted by Orin Thomas
  
  

  [9/13/2006]

  Your own business: Taking on a partner
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  You’ve gone out on your own and a few month later you find that you have more work than you can handle. This is not an uncommon occurrence for an IT Pro who is good at what they do. Word gets around that you are a person that gets things fixed and suddenly the phone won’t stop ringing.
  
  

   
  
  

  You don’t want to knock work back so you decide to take on a partner so that you can expand the number of clients you have and hopefully increase the profits that you are making.
  
  

   
  
  

  However, bringing someone else onboard, especially without significant planning, can destroy what you had.
  
  

   
  
  

  Unless your partner is as good as you technically and on the customer service front, your existing clients are not going to be thrilled when they call you with a problem and someone else comes to fix it. Almost all small businesses have been burnt by an IT cowboy. The IT cowboy says that they can fix a problem with a server, but leave more of a mess than where they started. There are a lot more IT cowboys around than there are true IT Pros so if you have proven yourself competent, they aren’t going to want to go through that same process with a substitute.
  
  

   
  
  

  Now you might say to yourself “I wouldn’t bring on a cowboy as a partner.” This is all well and good except you are already run off your feet, so how are you going to recruit someone who can be, with a little training and experience, as good as you are now? Unless you have some experience with it, recruitment is a lottery. Even experienced recruiters have trouble sorting IT Pros from IT cowboys, so your chances aren’t going to be that great. A final bit of advice on the recruitment front is never think to yourself “well I can train them to do that” because you most likely will never have the time.
  
  

   
  
  

  Another problem when you take on a partner is that you instantly halve the amount of work. If you were billing 50 hours a week, taking on a partner is going to reduce your take home pay greatly. You need to allow your partner enough work that it is worth it for them to work with you, but not so much that you both can’t make a living. Going from 50 to 30 hours a week is going to take some adjustment and even with new clients, it is going to take some time before your income recovers.
  
  

   
  
  

  You can get around both of these problems if you plan well. Of course, the catch-22 is that you need a partner because you are so run off your feet which makes that sort of planning difficult. If you can’t do that sort of serious planning, consider the following options:
  
  

   
  
  

  Raise your rates. The first thing to consider is that if you have more work than you can handle, you’re either pretty good at what you do or you are charging lower than the market rate. My general observation is that most small to medium sized businesses have been “burnt” by IT cowboys and are more than happy to pay a premium if the person they get knows their stuff and has good communication skills. Before you consider a partner, consider a rise in your rates. If you raise them too high it may backfire, but small rises may let you find out what you are really worth.
  
  

   
  
  

  The second is to ask around other people or companies doing the same job as you and see if they would be willing to pay you a referral fee for any new clients that you push their way.
  
  

   
  
  

  If you’ve got any career questions that you’d like answered, email orin@windowsitpro.com
  
   
  
  
  - posted by Orin Thomas
  
  

  [8/8/2006]

  Checking out your employer before you accept that offer.
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  Before you leap to accept a job offer, be sure to look first.
  
  

  
  At least run a search engine query!
  
  

   
  
  

  Do a bit of digging about the company that you might be working for. Is there any news in the media on their financial position? I didn’t do this and found out after I’d accepted one job that the company was likely going to be subject to a very hostile takeover. I only learned of it through water cooler gossip. The takeover threat had a big impact on company morale. I arrived at the job full of beans and most of my colleagues were preparing their resumes. Ultimately, no-one was making long term plans or starting long term projects because they didn’t expect to be around if the takeover happened.
  
  

   
  
  

  I had a worse experience with a training company, which has since collapsed. It cost me several weeks unpaid work. If I’d run a check I would have found that the owner of the company had been in trouble with the authorities before for not paying contractors. I only started to look around after I had troubles and when I saw that, I knew that I wasn’t going to be seeing any money from this guy.
  
  

   
  
  

  Occasionally you can find out about a company because its employees blow off steam in forums. Given that this doesn’t happen in 99% of companies, a few red flags should be raised if employees are badmouthing their place of employment so publicly. Most employees don't talk publicly about their companies, so something probably smells if you find some that do.
  
  

   
  
  

  Most of the time though, you won’t find anything. You'll have lost a few minutes. If you do find something, you won't regret looking.
  
  
  - posted by Orin Thomas
  
  

  [7/19/2006]

  So, you’ve got a bad manager.
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  Although it should be common sense that not everyone is cut out to manage other people, organizations often have a little too much faith in their ability to select staff that are up to this important task. Some managers aren’t really great at managing, but unless this is obvious to the person the manager reports to, not a lot can be done about it.
  
  

   
  
  

  Organizations have great trouble dealing with subordinates that have legitimate problems about managers. Most organizations implicitly assume that a subordinate that has a concern about their manager is a troublemaker. Once you are labeled as a troublemaker, it can be difficult to get anyone in authority to take what you say seriously. These problems will also negatively influence your morale. A bad manager can be a career stopper as people’s first instinct is to try to improve the situation by approaching someone else in the chain of command about it. Unless that someone in the chain of command is a very close friend or family member, chances are that things are going to get worse. The worse they get, the worse you feel. When you do decide to jump ship, the people interviewing you for your next position will see a deflated and defeated person, rather than someone happy and raring to go.
  
  

   
  
  

  If you have come to the realization that your manager is a problem, you should just grin and endure it until you can change positions. Once you’ve found alternative employment, you can make your legitimate problems about the manager known in your exit interview. The exit interview is the only forum where companies will accept subordinates commenting on the quality of their superiors because when people start to leave because someone is so bad, then something probably needs to be done about it.
  
  
  - posted by Orin Thomas
  
  

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