(05-24-2017, 03:07 PM)JamesM Wrote: My experience is that this same kind of runaround never ends. I have tons of Microsoft, Cisco and CompTIA certifications and they don't help nearly as much as you'd think. My experience is that recruiters/HR will look for all kinds of reasons why you don't fit the job description based on their (very) limited understanding of what each job is supposed to be. Triply so if you are white with a penis. Once you have some experience you need more experience, or experience at a higher level, or instead of being a Windows admin you're going to the Windows admin, database admin, a developer and tier 3 helpdesk for 80% of the salary of one of those jobs. But if you take a lower level job for the money, then you get defined down as someone who is only able to do low level work and opportunities that should be there with your "experience" simply aren't. The IT job market in the US has completely gone to crap over the last 10 years. 10 years ago I was turning my nose up at 55,000 USD/year and now can't find a stable job at 35k with a much stronger resume.
If you're willing to take a low enough wage you'll eventually find a help desk job, but I'm not really interested in taking a high stress job with non-technical people breathing down my neck all day for $10-12/hr. Or even $22 for that matter. Every gray hair I have (I'm only 34) is a result of a horrible help desk job at Honda R&D that only lasted 3.5 months.
Some people I know who are developers tend to do better, but not great money with cheap labor being constantly imported. I tried programming in high school and college and found that it's not for me, but if you're good at it there is money to be made. Actually, I'd recommend going into making adult PC games if you ever want to code, as the indy market for that is quite strong and growing.
I've largely given up on ever getting another IT job and have been doing consulting for people looking to move offshore and maintain privacy, not pay taxes and provide solutions to make it happen discreetly and affordably. Since I'm not a lawyer and will, "for entertainment purposes only" as the legal disclaimer goes, answer questions like "how can I make sure the US government doesn't find about x" or "what do I do so all of the company's profits go into my hookers and blow account" and make introductions to make it happen. I also do freelance Japanese to English translations and write novels.
It sounds more glorious than it really is. In reality I've been hanging on by a thread for awhile. As for what I'm going to do long term, enough bad things have happened to me in life that I've come to the conclusion being happy and having no unnecessary stress is more important to me than an extra 20 or 30k USD per year. I'm thinking of getting into truck driving for a few years, saving all of the money I make, then taking some time to travel to Costa Rica, Colombia and Thailand to decide which country I'd rather live in. Hopefully along the way I'll have built enough regular income from translating. writing and other things on the drawing board to be able to live in a tropical paradise and have the option of paying hot chicks to leave when I don't feel like going to clubs to pick them up.
I also came up with a betting pattern that should yield a modest return long term on baccarat (or more accurately, I put the data into one of my workstations and it ran calculations for a few months). Unfortunately I need a few thousand dollars I don't have right now to properly test it in a casino before declaring victory.
That was more long-winded than I intended but I think it answers all of your questions.
Appreciate the detailed response.
I'm going to quit AYPJ as of now, don't even know what's happening anymore. Like you said they look to find why I don't fit the job description, it makes sense, I really hate when consultants don't even bother to ring or give feedback, at least let me the f*ck know I haven't been chosen. I think you'd do well on this sub given your experience as well as the certifications you have, but if the perfect job for you isn't in IT well then I don't know really. Help desk sounds like a pain in the a*s, I am hearing the IT field is expanding, I'm from the UK myself and the IT job market ain't bad here but still can't seem to get in to what I want. I can go in to development, but started to hate it during my final year of study lol
Making 55,000USD/year 10 years ago sounds real good man, how did that f*ck up, it should increase, not the other way around?
Good luck with your other stuff, don't give up on IT though especially with your experience, I know I could go a long way with it, I may jump on Luck Magnified it really helps all-round. I never do it for long enough to really see its power though.
Regarding the SUB:
I have been having reoccurring dreams which are starting to drive me insane, it's basically me back in the final year of studies going through my reassessments where I was failed in one of my units due to some bullsh*t issues I had with my tutor during this period I was running back and forth to uni trying to sort it all out, to cut it short it was a very stressful period for me and I am reliving this in my dreams every night to be fair almost every day for almost 3 weeks now wtf does this mean, that sh*t is long gone and done I don't want to be reminded of what happened let alone relive that during my sleep every night, f*ck this.
I also keep mentioning that I am doing my certification in my dream to random people that are asking me questions, I feel it's a strong indication from my subconscious to complete it, I haven't done any work towards it for the past 3 days.
IT is what I enjoy I mean I can go down a different path, right now I don't even know.. I guess it'll make sense eventually, but the time I lose, it's gone.
