what is the key to sucess??? Education or experience

Discussion in 'Employment & Jobs' started by coolc, Jan 7, 2011.

  1. drum_dude

    drum_dude Gigabyte Poster

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    I have to come in on a different angle on this one: Politics my boy!!! In my experience it has been the ability to bullsh1t and spin complete screw ups into complete success! The last PLC company I worked for was a total sham at the top and the IT Director was quite possibly the worst IT manager that I had ever came across but he managed to hang onto his position until a new MD came in and uncovered some pretty damaging info! The guy was dismissed straight away but within weeks he was back in a boardroom position for another PLC Company????

    Those that reported to him: our line managers, team leaders and project managers were exactly the same: bullsh1tters but with @rse licking qualities! Most of them had stuff like MCSEs but to us at the lower ranks we suspected that they had braindumped the certs because these guys knew jack sh1t! And to be a project manager there basically meant passing the buck onto someone who was lower paid and not employed to take on such responsibilities.

    So the key to success is this: @rse lick your manager, offer to do all his work for him, let him take the credit for your work and be prepared to take the flack for his failings and accept it in good grace too LOL! The plan is that when he gets promoted he will take you with him...wash, rinse and repeat!

    As for education, certs and experience well again at all the places I've worked there has been guys in the lower ranks who were qualified and intelligent enough to take on major technical work in the Datacentres...however, the management ALWAYS bypassed them in favour of 3rd Party Outsourcing companies who were prepared to bung the management "a drink" as a thanks for the work!

    Many occasions I walked into the Datacentres only to find some bloke in casual "cool" clothes buggering around with our DCs...that's basically how we found out about the extensive usage of a 3rd Party company! And it was a shame really because good employees were not utilised and the company wasted a lot of cash with these outsourcers who eventually locked us out of our own Datacentres!

    Just my take on things to be honest!
     
    Certifications: MCP, MCSA 2000 , N+, A+ ,ITIL V2, MCTS, MCITP Lync 2010 & MCSA 2008, Sonus SATP SBC 1k/2k
    WIP: Hopefully Skype for Business and some Exchange stuff...
  2. westernkings

    westernkings Gigabyte Poster

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    Part of me agrees, Part of me doesn't.

    I'll admit that talking the talk and convincing everyone that when you're crawling your actually walking is absolutely critical. You can be as intelligent and educated as you want, but if you don't know the right things to say, and when to say them, then you're left out, but then again, no one is going to give you a medal for being intelligent.

    On the other hand, the further up you get, the less technical knowledge you need and the more strategic and organisational knowledge. You should never expect a project manager or your boss's boss to have as much in depth knowledge as you, it's his job to know about technologies, what could fit in, and what might benefit it at a strategic level. If he knows a product, and what it does, the pros and cons and value, that's all he needs to know. I'm just at that stage now where I am caring less and less about the nitty gritty and more about, what it does, what is the value, and what benefits it brings to the table, I don't care too much about how it works, I mostly care that - A: it is working and B: That it's stable and isn't likely to break.

    I think it was Phoenix who said in another thread that you need to be able to talk in their language, and their language is not our language, why would it be? they don't spend every minute fixing stuff, they spend their days making decisions and deciding the way forward. It's someone else's job to worry about Service Pack benefits and the like.

    :D

    I do agree for the most part mate, at almost every level, you need to believe in the **** you are selling and always make a confident decision whether it turns out wrong or right, you should be willing to say "I am almost certain this is it, I'll guarantee it".

    Just like a lot of the interview stage is about who you want to spend the working day sat in the office with rather than the specifics of his MCSE. There is no shame is talking the talk and no one gives you a medal for never feathering your own nest.

    +Rep for you drum :)
     
    Certifications: MCITP:VA, MCITP:EA, MCDST, MCTS, MCITP:EST7, MCITP:SA, PRINCE2, ITILv3
  3. drum_dude

    drum_dude Gigabyte Poster

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    Cheers dude, I can understand that others will not see things the way I do...or did because it's totally different in my current job as I am incharge of everything.

    Perhaps I just got involved with the wrong firms!
     
    Certifications: MCP, MCSA 2000 , N+, A+ ,ITIL V2, MCTS, MCITP Lync 2010 & MCSA 2008, Sonus SATP SBC 1k/2k
    WIP: Hopefully Skype for Business and some Exchange stuff...
  4. Mariusz

    Mariusz Byte Poster

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    there are more factors to get success than education and experience. what else matters is luck, the way you talk, presence (for my first interview I went in suit when competitors were dressed casual, so I got the job, always when I go for an interview for office based job I go dressed in suit if it is manual job I try to dress smart, no hoodies etc), origin (yes it matters, policy of equal opportunities is bull****), it matters if somebody wants to give you chance to prove how good you are and doesn't throw your cv away, it matters what personality you are, if you care about hygiene, if you are always on time, it you don't act like "I know everything", "the truth is always on my side" etc, it matters how you treat people, it also matters where you start your career, what possibilities of training you have, and how stubborn you are to get to the point you planned to, I know a talented guy, who's about 30 years old, has no certificates but huge knowledge about IT, hardware, systems, linux, and many more, can fix things that are impossible to fix for "specialists" but he doesn't believe in himself, I told him many times to leave to bigger city and he will be easly earning lots of money with his skills, but he just doesn't believe it can happen
     
    Certifications: ECDL Extra, ITQ Lvl2, CompTIA A+, N+, S+
    WIP: MCTS 70-680 Win7
  5. dmarsh
    Honorary Member 500 Likes Award

    dmarsh Petabyte Poster

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    The most successful engineers in british history and probably world history have not just been intelligent and extremely hard working, they generally have been blatent self publicists or networkers.

    They have had enough people skills or employed people that did to make things work, no good having great ideas without a benefactor / backer.

    I agree the idea of managing your manager is pretty important in IT and spin and exit strategy can be more important than skills, tech people however seem to get stuck with stuff being at the coal face, its far eaier for business types to employ such tactics and distance themselves.

    Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Linus Torvalds, Tim Berners Lee etc being those that used their people skills to succeed, the traditional nerds like Richard Stallman while great men had less effect on the world. However it really depends on what you define success as, is it personal or commercial, creating just one thing admired by others could be argued as enough. How many have heard of Mike Muuss for instance ?
     
    Last edited: Jan 10, 2011
  6. JonnyMX

    JonnyMX Petabyte Poster

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    Education is a formal and measured process, whereas experience isn't always.

    If I look at a couple of people with 2:1 in computer studies, I know that they've both been through the same process and have a similar aptitude for it. If I look at a couple of people who have 'run an IT department for a couple of years' then their skills and abilities could be worlds apart.

    If I was looking for someone to run a garage, I might well look for someone with some kind of mechanical qualification, or perhaps something in business. A petrolhead or car thief may well have more practical experience in getting a car to start, but that's not really what I'm after.
     
    Certifications: MCT, MCTS, i-Net+, CIW CI, Prince2, MSP, MCSD
  7. Shinigami

    Shinigami Megabyte Poster

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    Interesting point you raise, and rings a bell for me.

    I never would have thought that my skills were sufficient to land me a job at Microsoft, but after enough convincing from one friend and hearing the work side of things from other Microsoft consultants, I plucked up my courage and gave it a shot. And it paid off, thanks to the encouragement from this one particular friend of mine.
     
    Certifications: MCSE, MCITP, MCDST, MOS, CIW, Comptia
    WIP: Win7/Lync2010/MCM
  8. Mariusz

    Mariusz Byte Poster

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    can you get me a job in Microsoft? :-)
     
    Certifications: ECDL Extra, ITQ Lvl2, CompTIA A+, N+, S+
    WIP: MCTS 70-680 Win7

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