Age and experience

Oh man! Ad-blocking software has been detected! :'(

This website is run by the community, for the community... and it needs advertisements in order to keep running. Blocking our ads means your killing our stats!
Please disable your ad-block, or become a premium member to hide all advertisements and this notice.

How important is age and experience in IT?

I see alot of people around that don't seem to know alot, but have been in the industry 5+ years and they achieve the more senior technical positions. Is it the same everywhere? Will I be facing an uphill battle looking for another role with the following stats?

20 years old
2 years exp (wintel support environment)
a+/n+
2 MCITP's
CCNA

Thanks

 

Oh man! Ad-blocking software has been detected! :'(

This website is run by the community, for the community... and it needs advertisements in order to keep running. Blocking our ads means your killing our stats!
Please disable your ad-block, or become a premium member to hide all advertisements and this notice.

Usually experience is what sells to the employer.. However it also depends on the individual... I work with colleagues who are 5+ years my senior, yet I have a more senior role and I do more complicated tasks/projects... Then I work with other colleagues who are more senior than me. There are a few factors to consider here, are you looking for a more senior role because you want to do more complex projects? or for pay? or for both?

Eventually you'll get to be in a senior role, but you have to put in your time, at 20 years old with 2 years experience unfortunately doesn't sell that well for a senior position. Certifications help, but experience matters more, in fact certifications will have more weight on your profile when you have more experience.

 

Experience I believe will always win it in the end. Anyone can be a paper engineer, but only those who truly know their stuff can be a proper engineer.

I think both should compliment each other, so keep up the work getting your certs, but it will be the experience you gain which will make you the senior engineer.

there are senior engineer's where I work who have half the certification I do but have been in the IT business 10/15 year and they know their onions.

I've been in IT around 5 years now, (2 1/2 years at my current place) and was as of about 3 months ago made a senior engineer purely down to my technical knowledge and the fact I fast became a main escalation point for my other colleagues, as well as helping them out in general. (be it on the service desk or helping guys out in the field). I'd say 40/50% of my day is taken up helping others.

 

I would consider myself a 'proper engineer', I do not utilise my escalation points at the moment because my knowledge is on a par/greater on the majority of incidents. They are just getting paid twice as much as me, for doing the same job. And by your 2 comments it seems elsewhere I'd have trouble getting into the job in the first place because I don't have the 'experience' (sidenote, please tell me how being in IT 15 years ago helps with current microsoft offerings?!)

 

I'm not sure I understand?

What do you mean current Microsoft offerings?

I meant the guys who have been in IT for 10/15 years have a great deal more experience with actually working in the real world. They haven't just studied in labs or read books. And the guys at my place have all that experience behind them as well as being up to date with server 2008/exchange 2010 etc.

E.G, You might read about how to do an SBS migration, but until you have a few under your belt (experience) then you are less likely to know what to do when things go wrong (as things will never go completely smooth).

so if you went for a job, 2 years in IT Server 2008 certs, MCITP:SA/EA and they said right first project is an SBS migration. IF they have another person come in no certifications but 10 years working in IT who has done 30/40 migrations in that time, they are going to go for him (or I certainly would)

 

I condiser myself a proper engineer after 5 years in the job lol, however I am still 10 a penny There are guys with more years under thier belts and who have proved themselves in certain areas, These guys earn more but have less certs... But a cert is just a piece of paper, until I prove myself in certain areas to match my cert I would not expect to be paid more or the same as them. In time I will but thats I.T.

 

I echo all what everyone has said thus far as experience counts more than certs in every respect. Certification just means you have some idea of how the software or hardware works but hands on experience of actually deploying a software product and or hardware in a live productive work environment would get you miles ahead.

All the best and keep on working hard and plugging away as you'd be there in time to come