What IT certs/courses/programs helped you reach the next level or get promoted? Im working as a Sr Test Engineer

Not really a question, just a gripe. My current employer thinks they’re being slick and is hiring for my exact job while I’m currently working that job. I’ve never received feedback, a reprimand, guidance. They’re just planning to hire my backfill under the guise of “we need more people in IT”. I haven’t been happy here since day one, but it’s funny that they think I’m unaware of what they’re doing.

I just wanted to ask if anyone is feeling the same way about these tools. Our company is obsessed with AI at the workplace and prompting and using it for productivity. I like tool, but I hate how much it's used and the chaotic context switching behind it.

People like to compare it to a productivity tool or just a new way of working with data, like it's the new Excel. But no, it's not.

When prompting, you actually still have to care about processing the information and the constraints and you still have to focus on the problem at hand.

The issue is when you solve a bunch of different problems that would have taken you weeks before, in the span of days. I feel like a chrome'd out Nux from the Max Max movie, where the AI tool is the little inhaler.

If you have some any kind of ADHD, then good luck because it will absolutely fry your brain if you don't have any guard rails. I'm tweaked out at work and even when I try and rest or sleep my brain is trying to crunch an arbitrary IT issue or decision.

Software development and IT has the highest adoption rate of these agentic tools, and it's kind of like why I want to go on and switch careers or just do whatever. In many areas it also creates technical debt, therefore also increased loss of ownership and guilt because you are no longer in control of the output.

I also don't really feel I have anything to lose if I switch careers. There's no meaning in it for me. I have no loans, no car, no family. I could technically move and work with whatever.

I'm 27 and graduated about a year and a half ago. It took me around 4 months after graduation to find a job, and I've now been working for 13 months as a level 1 IT Technician at an airport.

Honestly, I feel lucky to have the job. The team is great, my boss is nice, and I've gotten to know a lot of people from different departments and backgrounds. The work environment is good, and the job itself isn't as demanding as I initially expected.

My schedule is also unusual. I work two 12-hour shifts: one day shift and one night shift, followed by two days off. While 12-hour shifts sound intense, there is usually some downtime during the shifts, and during night shifts I can get some sleep.

I also get some decent benefits, including health insurance, social security, pretty significant amount of money for food and drinks while there and free transportation to and from the airport on the employee bus.

So overall, it's not a bad job at all the main thing bothering me is the pay.

I want to continue building a career in IT, but from what I can see, salary progression here seems to depend heavily on seniority and how long you've been with the company.

I guess I'm torn between appreciating a comfortable and healthy work environment and worrying that I'm sacrificing too much financial growth by staying.

I'd really appreciate advice from people who have been in a similar situation.

I know imma get roasted to hell for posting but it’s been on my mind lately

I’ve been In tech for about four years and my current role is as a solo tech (desktop/help desk support and junior system administrator). I don’t enjoy IT because I feel like it was forced upon me when I was younger and I kept reinforcing it because “I’m ok at it.” I know what I need to do to move up to higher level roles (getting certifications, degree and doing projects) but I don’t have the drive for it because I just don’t care enough.

I want to make a career change but before I jump ship and leave all this behind, am I being unreasonable? Should I suck it up and push through it or should I abandon IT and start fresh with someone that might make me happier?

Every thread I read about people looking to get into IT and eventually Cybersecurity, I see folks saying a degree helps but is not required, that certifications and project experience are the way to go. I see people saying "build your own projects and list them on your resume".

What the hell does this even mean?? What are these projects?? No one ever seems to elaborate, only ever just keeping it vague with the "projects" label.

Hello again everyone, posted here a while back and got a new opportunity coming up, I’ve been offered a interview for a Data Center Technician later today and have been at my current position for Support Specialist for barely little over a month. If it goes well should I take this opportunity? It’s $18 an hour (high where I live) with OT/On Call/Overnight a given.
I plan to become a network engineer and feel this pathway will get me way more forward than my current position as I can only stay a support specialist in title where I’m at since IT really isn’t the priority, I just make sure our old computers last as long possibly. Also feel I’d be doing way more at the Data Center since it’s a backbone for Mexico connectivity to the United States and I can go up career wise. Thank You.

Hi all,

I transitioned from a much different industry later in life by going back to school and getting my bachelors degree in CS.

6-8 months after I graduated I landed what is basically a Help Desk/Tier 1 support role in a small company doing extremely niche government contract work on the overnight shift. I’ve since been promoted to a management role but as I mentioned, teams are small, just a couple of people.

I feel like I am constantly at a crossroads of what to do because on one hand, this is the easiest job I’ve ever had in my life. The most difficult part of the job was being on site 5 days a week but we recently transitioned to hybrid. The pay is only about $58k/yr but paid by the hour and I’m guaranteed 40. Health and dental is completely free. PTO is generous. I’ve automated anything that takes any time and when I’m at home, the only thing I have to do is let the outgoing shift know I’m online and let the incoming shift know we had no incidents.

On the other hand, I feel like I’m literally wasting my life here. I don’t see much growth beyond where I am now and honestly, with the AI boom, I’m not learning anything but how to talk to Claude. Even with that I do much more in depth stuff on my home server than our role ever touches. I’m not convinced they are going to replace us with AI, but I can’t see how upper management pays to keep this role around either, so that’s always in the back of my mind.

I guess my question is, should I just shut up and enjoy my “be present, get paid” job or is it time for me to move on before it’s year 6 and nobody wants the Help Desk lifer? Is work-life balance anywhere near this good at other jobs, maybe fully remote?

Landed an "Remote MFP technician" role, after about 4 months of applying everywhere, starting the search slightly before graduation. It is 22/hr starting, metting kpi metrics already so far, though it's hardly been a month in. I have an associates in network engineering and ccna that is active for another 2 years.

How long would one need to stay in this entry role before attempting to jump the the next thing for better pay and closer to my education? I am planning on possibly moving internally in the company to start in my moving up adventure, as getting a foot in somewhere has been the hardest part at least with no experience...

I have my CompTIA trifecta, a year of help desk, and I just got my CCNA. I want to do some projects and homelabs to add to my resume to up my chances of getting my first networking position, but I realize that might not happen for a while considering the market.

Right now I'm trying to get out of my current job because it's too easy and the pay isn't that great, plus im getting bored. Is it okay to apply for help desk roles while I try to polish up my resume with projects or homelabs? Or should I just wait until those are done and go straight for networking? I don't want to get a help desk job and then have to leave after 3 months when I get a networking role because I'm afraid that'll look bad on my resume for future employers. But... I also don't want to continue making 21/hr.

Any advice? Thank you.

I am wondering if there are any suggestions for my ride to work.

I am 6 years into IT, so not new. I am pushing to get out of helpdesk and would like to take advantage to my drive to work.

I am interested in SysAdmin work. Which I know is still a bit broad.

I am working in Windows Environment and long-term want hybrid skills (on-premise and Cloud).

Of course not looking for a car ride to be my sole time to up skill, but it is time I would like to use to learn things I can later apply.

I am currently working as a security engineer where I work on multiple fronts like end to end Incident response, SOAR engineer, detection engineer.
I have around 3.5 YOE.
I have no complaints at my current workplace. In the sense I have one of the most kind and understanding managers, team and work freedom and work life balance.
The only thing is I feel salary could be a little better and the growth is bit slow, but yeah apart from that everything is really good and I have the freedom to take on new projects in different domains.

I have a potential offer from a Fortune500 company where the salary is much better (almost 1.5x current base) based on what ive read the work life balance and everything is pretty chill.
The only draw back is the role has a defined scope of Threat Detection.
As such I enjoy the detection engineering role, in terms of doing research and log analysis but the freedom of working in different domains will no longer be there.

What are your thoughts on if should I take the new role!

I'm currently trying to get out of support and into a sys admin or junior cloud role and I'm really close to finishing my degree. My current job is basically more support and really only leaves me time to study on the weekend.

I feel like I'm at the brink of a breakdown and that in many ways not being finished my degree is holding me back, so I feel like I should focus on that instead of trying to work a job that is only contributing to my already poor mental health.

I'd be probably done my degree within a couple months if I quit my job now. I'd be okay for money for a while too.

Title. I have no professional experience in the field and they reached out to meet for an interview. I do have experience at home with building my computer and playing around with VMs but other than that, nothing. I searched this sub and saw that banks are usually more concerned about the customer service side of things rather than the technical part of the job. Is there anything else I should do in preparation for the interview or just practice generic IT interview questions?

Also, I’m aware that me getting an offer is slim as is due to my lack of experience vs other applicants but I still want to get good interview experience as it has been a few years.

How does this place work? seems like a MSP/consultant. Anyone ever had a job with them?

Hey everyone, I’m looking for some advice. I’ve had a pretty major 360° spin in life recently and could really use some input.
For some context, I’ve been passionate about IT since I was around 10 years old. I started with basic break/fix and troubleshooting as a kid and eventually fully committed to IT throughout high school and into adulthood.
Fast-forward to today: I work in desktop support for a company (had a transfer) . Originally, I had a great team, good support, and a good work environment. Earlier this year, I transferred to a location closer to where I live, and things were going well—until I was involved in multiple car accidents.
On top of that, I’ve since lost vision in one eye because of an eye tumor, and my overall condition has progressively gotten worse. My current job is primarily site-to-site desktop support, which makes things much more complicated because driving between locations is a major part of the job.
The difficult part is that I live in a relatively small town, and there really isn’t much other IT work available locally. I want to keep working and stay in IT, but I’m struggling to figure out what direction to take. I’ve already taken a significant pay cut just to remain employed, and financially, it’s becoming harder to keep up.
So, what would you do in my situation?

I’m graduating this December with a degree in cybersecurity, and I’m trying to figure out what I to the next few months to put myself in the best position to land a full-time job.
I had an IT internship from September 2025 through July 2026. Going into it, I was hoping there would be an opportunity to extend the internship and potentially transition into a full-time position after graduation. I felt like I was doing well throughout the internship. I never received any negative feedback from my manager/boss or coworkers that I worked, so I was a little disappointed when it ended without an extension or full-time opportunity.
At this point, I’m trying not to dwell on that and instead figure out the best path forward.
I currently have Sec+, Net+, and I’m working toward RHCSA. I’m interested in cybersecurity, but I’m also open to IT/networking/Linux roles that could eventually help me move further up.
For people already working in the industry, what would you recommend I focus on between now and graduation?
Also, with roughly 10 months of internship experience, Security+, Network+, and eventually RHCSA, what level of positions would you consider realistic for a new graduate?
I’m already applying for jobs that’s been a bit rough I’ve applied to about a little over a 100 in the past month in the central New York area as that’s where I live but most of the time I’ve been ghosted or get the usual hr automated response, but I’d really appreciate advice from people who have been in a similar position or who hire entry-level IT/cybersecurity candidates.

Hey guys,

Just wondering if anyone here has made the move from telecoms/field engineering into network engineering.

I’m in the UK and currently work as a telecoms engineer. Most of my experience is on the physical/network side of things – fibre, FTTP/FTTC, ONTs, exchanges, patching, troubleshooting broadband faults etc.

I want to eventually move into a junior network engineer/NOC type role. I’m studying for my CCNA at the moment and doing labs alongside it with Packet Tracer, Wireshark and some home lab stuff.

What I’m not sure about is whether I really need to go backwards into help desk/1st line IT first.

I see the usual advice of A+ → Help Desk → Network Support/NOC → Network Engineer, which makes sense for someone completely new to IT, but does that still apply if you already come from telecoms?

Would CCNA + labs + telecom experience give me a realistic shot at NOC/network support/junior network roles directly, or is the lack of traditional IT/help desk experience going to hold me back?

Would be really interested to hear from anyone who came from telecoms, ISP work, field engineering, cabling etc and made the jump.

I’m UK based btw, so I know the job market/path might be a bit different from the US.

Cheers!

I've been working in a variety of tech roles for 6 years from help desk, system admin, to cloud migrations now. I have multiple certifications in Azure, GCP, CCNA, and Comptia. My current role has had multiple layoffs, so I've been looking at where to go next in my career.

I've had one friend say to stay in cloud administration, devops, or to progress to SRE roles because a lot of my certs and what I have learned is similar to those paths. That it would be too long to start over and too hard to learn. He said that it may be too hard to get an interview with all of the candidates that I would be competing with.

However, I have had another friend say to switch to data analytics. He was saying to switch because the data analytics is not as stressful as SRE roles, the interviews may be easier, and there's no on call shifts. I have used power bi and sql in some roles briefly. I just have not had a full fledged business or data analytics role. I would have to take a slight pay cut. Some SRE roles require you to know multiple cloud systems, scripting languages, Terraform, Kubernetes, Grafana, Prometheus, Azure monitor, it gets overwhelming and unpredictable what interviewers will ask about.

Do you think I should stick with devops/SRE roles or switch to data analytics? Does it make sense to switch and is the business or analytics field even easier than devops roles?

Hi all,

I have an opportunity to transition to a new Site IT Specialist role at a mine site, it's a full time 6 month fixed term role [possible for extension]

I have been with the company for around 3 years now [full time and contracted], and I have good IT support experience [service desk / desktop support], most recently in project-based windows 11 rollouts at mine sites [fifo] covering Corporate and OT environments.

My main worry is that I don't have a lot of knowledge and experience around:

- Network configs/servers/netwroking lingo and terminolgies

- Setting up comms racks, configuring, troubleshooting Cisco switches, Wi-Fi APs setup and troubleshooting

I do have an open to learn attitude and i know alot of these things ill learn hands on when im up there and asking alot of questions etc.

Are there any readings/courses anyone can recommend i can look into?

Thanks in advance :)

I am 33 year old currently working full time as a solo onsite system admin (have some offsite MSP help if needed) for a medium sized company and have about 5 years experience working in the IT field. I only have my 2 year diploma and would like to finish a bachelors online. BCIT offers the bachelors of Technology Management fully online and seems to be built around people that are currently working full time.

Do you think this would be a good move for my career to get more towards IT management? Just looking for some reassurance or pros/cons to this type of move.

Thanks for any responses!

Hi all,

I’ve been in an internal IT role for a year, working as a generalist. I’m paid very much under market value.

I have 4 years of IT-adjacent and 1 year of true IT experience, and I’m wondering on where or how to take my career from here.

I’m in the final interview round with a director at an MSP, and I feel like my chances on securing the job are pretty high but I’m worried about switching to an MSP.

It would be around a 30% pay bump, with a potential career ladder (current role has no growth opportunities aside from marginal annual raises), and I’m considering taking it since I’m still pretty early in my career and there’s a lot more to learn. Is it really that bad?

Just started a 6-month W2 contract (through a staffing agency, not directly with the company) as an IT Service Desk Agent at a large Fortune 500 company. Posting mentioned "possibility of extension," and the recruiter said there's a good chance of conversion/extension, but obviously that's not a guarantee.

A few things going for it, from what I can tell:

It's ongoing ticket-queue work, not a project with a natural end date, at least one contingent worker on the broader team converted to FTE recently

A couple people on my team are young FTE employees who apparently started in this same role, but not sure if they were CWs or not

A few things giving me pause:

Found some Glassdoor reviews describing the company "cycling through temps" and one saying they rarely transition contractors to salaried roles

No idea what the actual budget/headcount situation looks like from the inside.

For anyone who's been through something similar, how often does contract-to-hire actually happen in your experience? Any signs worth watching for, or questions worth asking the recruiter/manager directly? Trying to figure out how much to actually bank on this vs. just treat it as a 5-month gig and keep job hunting in parallel. The company itself is somewhere I'd absolutely want to make a career at if given the opportunity but not sure how to feel about this.

Hello all,
Ive been working for the past year two IT jobs, but also feel like they arent giving me any good next steps if I ever choose to make a jump.

Maybe its because I see all the doom and gloom in the market with people losing their jobs, AI, and entry level being saturated, but its been keeping me awake at night fearing if IT is right for me.

I currently have a CompTIA A+, Net+, and Sec+ and no degree at this time

Job 1: Primarily working with Zapier automations for a companys CRM. ($20/hr)

Full time as of the past month (15 hr weeks), was part time since last fall

Job 2: Originally a hardware repair shop (PC/phones) , but the owner decided he wanted to become a cloud hosting company. (5-8 hr on Saturday). ($17/hr under the table)

Originally was factory resetting PCs, basic troubleshooting, hardware swaps.

Since hes made the shift to his goal of being a cloud hosting company Ive been working from the ground up in NON AZURE active directory. It feels like Im getting paid to home lab, but because of the time pressure I feel like Im reading off Claude/ChatGPT more often than digging into documentation or resources online.. Got to play around with a UDM Pro and VLAN the shop.

Being paid under the table for job 2 has made me question if this will even be worth putting on resume, the quality of my work due to being new, the time pressure, and being the only person working on this with the limited hours Im at the shop also feels like an insane security disaster waiting to happen too.

Even so I feel like I need to be upskilling more because the technology in job 1 doesn’t seem to be as translatable to a more standard IT shop. I feel like the next best steps would be to go to an MSP?

This might be more venting than anything because Im stuck in a fear loop. I could asking an LLM about this, but hoping to hear the human side from you guys whether its practical advice or as simple as a “be easy on yourself”.

I don't is Azure and Active Directory really that hard to learn ?
I need for the job if they will ask me some questions how can I sound knowing that I know Azure and Active Directory ? ( It's a junior position )
Thanks in advance.