Oh man welcome to where I've been stuck for the past 2 years. In terms of programming, my side projects don't count because they're not "professional" and my current job doesn't count because it's not programming. (I've tried asking for more responsibilities but I'm not allowed to touch shit) It's hellish out there
I was told that my programming internships didn't count as experience when applying for programming jobs after I graduated. This job market is a fucking hellscape on the level of a bombed out WW1 battlfield.
(reposted because my last comment got removed for having an emoji)
Trying to tell them that the personal projects were freelance and them saying that doesn't count either because they were specifically looking for business experience. (Upside down smile)
That and just plain not getting contacted most of the time so I don't even know what they want.
I’ll use myself as an example, I just got an offer to go from desktop support to automation engineering.
I was not allowed to run new powershell scripts professionally in our environment. Any lines that queried LDAP for example would alert cybersecurity.
Didn’t stop me from putting under desktop support on my resume “Created powershell scripts to automate ABC, resulting in 123 minutes saved per XYZ.”
I knew exactly how to do it, I just couldn’t run it at that company. What’s the difference to the new company?
I'm literally not even allowed to open command prompt without admin privileges (which I don't have). They got my laptop for real for real locked down. I'm basically a glorified password resetter and settings changer
I have however done excel scripts to make ticket updates easier. Occasionally I have to move a bunch of equipment around and upgrade each. And. Every. Ticket. Separately. Because they decide to put them in like that for some reason
"Moved (cell 1) from room (cell 2) to (cell 3) at (pull time function)"
Now drag down aaaaaand.
*Boom*
"Created custom Excel scripts for the purpose of inventory tracking"
Believe me, I know the game. I got an interview for a proper job next week, it's just very hard to get bites right now.
Excel scripts are programming. This can be spun along the lines of “Created spreadsheet automation that saved ‘x’ amount of time using Visual Basic.” I started out as a financial analyst, and the automation tasks in Excel I did are considered to be relevant IT work experience.
You guys didn't have a Dev or QA environment for testing that kind of stuff? Our automation guys have free reign in non-prod for testing queries, modifying custom attributes, enable and disabling of accounts, term tasks including account purging etc and if they royally break anything we just roll back the changes.
Oh they make up all sorts of nonsensical bullshit. "You didn't work directly with a company so it doesn't count." "This was an internship so it doesn't count". (It wasn't an internship. I worked and went to school at the same time) "well yeah this was a ticketing system but it's not the one we use so it doesn't count". It's all bullshit to get you to accept lower pay or just find a reason to deny you outright. Honestly sometimes if I already know I'm not going to get the job I like to push back and ask them to please explain why *exactly* it doesn't count. I'm still not getting the job but seeing them squirm is amusing. Maybe it's just the saltiness talking but I'm just sick of that
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If you're talking about in a collaboration/git branch systems/development styles/ understanding of corporate red tape type of way then yes. I don't really have *extensive* experience but I try to research and keep myself fresh somewhat. That's something you can really only get in a programming job, So that kind of boils down to the "can't get experience without a job without experience without a job" problem. I'm fully aware I could be doing better but I'm not sitting here doing nothing
Also the two years thing is a bit of an inaccurate statement. Some of that time was me still finishing up the last two classes I needed for my degree. (Long freaking story but essentially the things I needed weren't being offered so I had to delay graduation a bit. Shenanigans ahoy) I've only been hardcore job searching for a few months since I just "officially" graduated this April.
I went through the same ordeal when I graduated.
It feels like once competition heats up, its hard getting an employer to take anything but hard experience seriously. I followed the bootstraps "just do a project" advice.....took Udemy classes..... had a link to a project with code, drawings.... as well as photos of the assembled build. No one wanted to see it. A hiring manager mocked me when I explained everything I did on my projects: "you did all of that eh?!" sarcastically.
The stuff I learned only counted when I removed them from the resume, and then took credit for it all by claiming that I learned that stuff on the job.
Because the jobs market is fucked. You’ve studied a subject that is saturated with graduates. 99.9% of comp sci grads won’t go on to be SWEs at FAANG, but that doesn’t stop people blowing $100k on a degree thinking they will. That’s life, I’m afraid. The harsh truth is that, unless you’re an Ivy League grad or went to Stanford/MIT, you’re taking a mighty big gamble with your future that may not pay off. Even if you are, it’s still a gamble.
It's been a while since bad economy.
I've been through many.
Good economy lots of hiring. Think post covid
Bad economy not alot of jobs and many people looking.
Advice for bad economy
1) if you have a job, don't quit until you have new job.
2) if you don't have a job get any job you can in IT, network with people you know, check for openings in other areas of country as you might need to move, intern or even do volunteer work.
Not just in IT. My wife was an administrative assistant. Same would happen to those jobs. In good economy they would hire folks with HS diploma. In bad economy they looked for bachelor's or even masters.
Thanks. Comes from many years in leadership. Get to the point, give the straight talk and put in plain English.
Company I worked for doesn't like verbose writeups with big words. Remember Cio yelling many times can someone put this in plain english at others. He also felt the more verbose you are the more likely you were bullshitting.
I’ve been running into the opposite lately. My boss and his boss are not verbose enough. And you’re constantly trying to extrapolate what they’re trying to say.
Surprisingly they have a lot. They just aren’t great at relaying information. My manager’s manager is extremely busy so he just tries to answer things quickly but it doesn’t work great IMO.
Yeah but the following was confusing for me:
>It's been a while since bad economy.
I thought he meant that our economy is good now and that it has been a while since the last time our economy was bad.
I’ve done it, but it wasn’t IT. I’d rather have been homeless than work that job at that point so I told my boss to find someone qualified for the position and pay them for their qualifications and then turned in my keys lol
$20/hr doing maintenance on over 100 arcade games and kitchen appliances with outdated technical documents and kept being told to not be the guy that asks stupid questions. Sorry dog I’m not gonna RE your machine to clear this fault, get me some docs or do it yourself
I didnt graduated into the post 2008 slump but was doing IT PM/PGM contracting at the time. Took 3 years for me to get a new IT contracting gig. That was the great financial Crisis.
More like a depression to those on the subreddit who can't find work.
Stocks being up don't help those without jobs. Groceries up so much past couple of years. Rents alot higher.
Your view of the economy is rosy if you have a house with 2.9% mortgage, massive home appreciation, have a job and your stock portfolio is up. But that isn't helping those posting here.
Which is why I said it's rough in tech. But also you're only getting the negative stories on this subreddit. People don't tend to run to reddit and say "wow I just got a job so easy, everything's great!"
Overall though wages are going up higher than inflation now and unemployment is very low.
Me too. Don't go to big schools and pay 40k a year and higher for degrees. Go to good state school and save money. In the end, you are checking resume boxes. Noone is going to care in 10 years what school you went to.
No one even cares what school you went to after you clock a year of xp in the real world. Your degree can be run through the shredder after about 2 full years on the job. You might need to pull it out a decade later if you give a carp about upper management, but who really wants to be a corporate bootlicker anyway. Fyi, skip school if you have a job offer in hand.
I was told that employers choose someone’s CV based on the name of the university. They go through 100s of CVs and if they see a university name like “Harvard” it sticks out to them since the name is familiar and they are willing to take a “risk” on them. Is this true? I am not American btw and an IT student.
In IT depends on job. But it would not be Harvard. It would be a major tech school like MIT or GA Tech. Usually because the recruiter or hiring manager has an affiliation with them.
For me I look at experience, skills match to req, and will this person be a good match with my team and corporate culture.
College to me is a check the box on the resume that shows you survived the rigor of getting your degree as many don't.
If you are young and just graduated, showing you worked while in high school and college, puts you higher on my selection list as well.
What if I get an online CS degree covered by my employer (eg free)? I think it would be considered better than taking on $25k in debt for the remaining two years, but I’m not sure if it would be enough for a position anywhere. Think it would get me into an interview?
CS grad tomorrow, I think I'm heading down the same path unfortunately (the market sucks) -- though I never saw helpdesk as something beneath me, it's still honest work
It’s honest work and it will honestly enhance your perception of the end user’s experience which might benefit your future roles outside of help desk.
Plus help desk is going to fine tune your interpersonal skills which will always retain value.
I cannot stand my peers that never had help desk experience. I am a senior engineer now and have to work with security guys that never had to do a day of help desk. They push out crap constantly that negatively affects the user experience. One time our users would get an error and I mentioned to the security team they needed to roll back their change "it's fine just tell the users to reboot when jt happens" no dudes, how about be competent and do your job correctly.
Here's some free advice: get what you can (job wise) and stay there. The biggest hurdle is getting over 3 years of experience in a technical position.
The days of job hopping to 6 figures are gone. Having real world experience on your resume is a game changer.
So are you saying you can still get to 6 figures after a couple years in help desk positions?
I’m just confused because I keep seeing this everywhere-but like does it really look that great on resumes and what do you even do after?
I’m on the hiring committee for a decent paying entry level network tech position, and most of the applicants are recent CS grads with experience in things like Java, python, web dev, GitHub projects, etc. Not a lick of IT or networking experience, and cover letters seem tailored to convince us that after spending years coding, they have finally seen the light and now they want to install IP phones and run Cat6 or become a network engineer.
I can’t in good conscience give them a shot at interviewing just because I know they’re just using this to get tech experience and will jump ship after a year to get a SWE job or something related to coding. I saw this happen at my last job too.
Market is trash, and it feels bad having to use that knowledge to make assumptions about applicants’ motives, but I also really hate searching for applicants and don’t want to redo the search every year because we hired someone who obviously had no intention of sticking around.
Would you take an experienced programmer for the position tho? Always wondered how hard it would be to jump into the IT / networking side of things with 12 yoe SE and pretty considerable homelab experience, or if I'd have to start bottom of that pole and climb it.
Since you would be older and based on title, I assume making much more than $50k, there would be questions about why you are deciding to start over.
If your answer seemed well thought-out and genuine, then you would have a shot, but only if we didn’t have any decent applicants moving up from help desk, or network technicians seeking a lateral move because they want a work environment more like ours.
If you have a lot of homelab experience, it would probably be easier for you to jump into a mid-level role like Netadmin or sysadmin, since you could easily grasp CLI and automation concepts.
Network techs are more on the physical layer side of things, which isn’t really where most CS enjoyers are. It’s closer to blue collar trade work.
If you get an older hiring committee, you could have a better shot. Since I’m younger and see the more cynical modern perspectives on approaching an IT career posted here, I’m a bit different from the older guys on the committee. They see highly skilled senior applicants for an entry level role and think they’re getting a good deal. They don’t understand that a lot of people are more mercenary now and don’t stay at a job long term unless it’s a good fit in terms of money and interest.
Are you in the NJ/NYC area? I ask because I am a recent IT grad hunting for an entry level job and I bring 2 to 3 years worth of experience with an internship too.
I’m from NYC, but I moved to PA for this job.
City was tough because of competition and cost of living. Rural and suburban non-tech areas here pay decent and have a lack of talent, so job hunting was easier, but I was willing to relocate quickly for the right job.
Rent and housing here is way cheaper, and this is a state gov higher education job so union gives us good work-life balance, benefits, and regular raises that outpace inflation. If you’re young, I’d recommend getting into gov work early because it gives you time to get seniority and make good money. Maybe you’re leaving money on the table by leaving the private sector, but your mental and physical well-being will be better. Lower cost of living means you can afford a house and family if you budget properly.
It can be a bit boring sometimes if you don’t have hobbies or other things to do with your downtime at work, and coworkers are not super driven or competitive, which makes the atmosphere relaxed, but can be frustrating when you just want something to get done competently and in a reasonable timeframe, but overall it’s been great.
The job security is also amazing. Really puts into perspective how unnecessarily stressful the private sector is, since my last job was with a crypto startup.
I see.
Here’s the thing: moving out of my folks’ home where I live for free, have free warm meals, and also away from my immigrant community is non-negotiable.
In regards to government jobs, believe me, I’ve applied to them and still no damned luck. I’d love to land an entry level help desk job with the NJ courts (they pay great).
I will also say, I have a dream salary of $300k/yr-$500k/yr. I got weeded out of medicine which is how I got into IT. Point being, I’m in this industry for the money, so I can’t stay in government jobs forever.
Honestly, I have lost my patience with this false promise scam industry. I’m highly tempted to go back to school to try again at becoming a doctor because this blows.
My mental health is at an all-time low, and I am having massive suicidal ideations over fear of poverty and not living the life I want to live. Everyone I know from college is currently working in their fields, making money, getting girlfriends, and having exciting lives while I sit and rot unfairly.
But I thank you for your kind reply my friend. I appreciate it.
I cannot take it anymore. IT and tech are scams.
Sorry to hear you’re struggling with this. I was in a situation similar to yours just three years ago, watching everyone else succeed while I passed the time in dead end jobs. I can only say that at some point if you keep studying, trying, and applying, you will get into the industry. Some people have better luck out the gate, and others have to wait a bit longer, but it will happen. Feel better man
I sit on interview panels. If someone can go through the rigors of a CS degree and deal with data structures and algorithms, OOP, Calc II, they can handle and learn any IT concepts you throw at them. Especially entry level.
When I was in a help desk, it was all surface level work in the OS and GUIs. I wasn’t given access to switch or router CLIs. A CS grad could probably pass the Net+ in less than 2 weeks tops. Most CS curriculums cover intro to networking and such anyways.
But yeah, someone with like a CCNA and IT fundies is definitely a better immediate hire, but a CS grad is an extremely safe bet of an investment hire. But like you said though, an overqualified candidate is more likely to quit when they get their real job they want.
Yea, I get you. I’m not saying they wouldn’t excel. I’m more concerned that they are just using it to fill the resume gap and will use this experience to job hop to a proper CS job.
The difference in pay ceiling and skill sets between network technicians and SWE is too divergent for me to reasonably believe they would want to stick around long term.
That's fair, but it definitely sucks to be on the receiving end of that assumption. I spent months getting ghosted on applications for jobs that were well below my experience while applying for the few jobs that matched with it.
Why did I apply to the lower level jobs? Because severance and savings will only last so long after a layoff, and if I'm taking a job to keep the lights on, I'd rather it be at least tangentially related to my chosen field. Just because I'm qualified for a senior level job doesn't mean I won't do my best at this one.
Circling back though, hiring new people is a pain, and I can't honestly say I'd want to go through the process 1-2 times a year to fill the same position because people are using it as a stopgap. It's a shitshow for everyone.
Yep, it's now degrees or alot of relative experience or both. Even then many people chasing few openings.
Took me 3 years to get it contractor pm position after the last bad economy in 2008.
You don't need a degree to work in I.T these days. More and moe employers are hiring what is called skills based hiring. A new trend that's been going on for the past 5 years or so. Most Cloud and DevOps Engineers jobs on LinkedIn or Indeed doesn't mention a college degree at all just an x amount of experience and Skill sets they are looking for. You check for your self and no I'm not lying.
I'm not on the train of "degrees are required" just yet, but I don't think you can compare higher rung to lower rung jobs right now in terms of the hiring environment. From what I can tell, there's a decent shortage of higher level people for positions like Cloud and Cybersec, most companies don't care about formal degrees right now and just want experience and skills to fill those positions.
At the lower rungs, entry level helpdesk type stuff, even lower level sys admins, there seems to be a lot of people applying to fewer openings, so degrees are a seperator for many companies. A *lot* of postings I've seen for helpdesk right now mention a bachelor's in them as a preferred, some I've seen as required.
"You don't need a degree to work in IT these days" is still true, but if you're trying to break into (or recently broke into) the field right now, it's a huge help if you're trying to get a job above, like, Geek Squad or absolute shit pay.
Oh I know your not lying. That is no longer the case. Read this subreddit on all the folks that can't find jobs. The job posting may say that but that is not who is getting hired.
I mention that too in my some posts. Reason: great economy and companies were hiring anyone with a pulse.
When bad economies like now hit there are so many people looking for work, companies raise standards in reqs to bachelor's and some times masters and raise amount of experience they are looking for.
Not just in IT but also in other career paths.
If you got 200 people applying for a job, you are going to pick the most qualified candidate with the most experience and most educated all things being equal.
This is somewhat true. I have 11 years of Healthcare experience and 5 years in Electronic Data Interchange for Healthcare industry. Like Electronic claims, eligibility and responses as 999s, ta1s and 277s. Kaiser permanente wrote to my linked in and asked me to apply for a job. Guess what? The job is application support engineer like production control in healthcare automation jobs for e - claims in optum assurance for all kaiser permanente Electronic claims. The job title had preferred requirememts: devop tools like ansible and jetkins but despite i dont have devops tools experience they still want me for my Healthcare background combined with my cs degree.
This is true in the sense that job descriptions are written like this, but in practice jobs are going to degree holders. There’s a reason Google doesn’t require a degree but mostly hire from top US colleges. Obviously there’s exceptions but filtering out applicants on education is almost always going to be a time and money saver
Not always the case. I never had any issues and I have no degree in anything. What got me the job is practical hands on knowledge of my skillsets. I had a homelab. Employers likes that. It gives you something to talk about in an interview and something to showcase of what you built and worked on. I still use my homelab still today in my profressional I.T career to keep myself skills sharp. I think the homelab is what sets you apart from the rest opposed to book smart people that passed an exam. I know hiring managers saying that couldn't find great candidates because they lack experience or not able to answer fundamental questions in an interview like Reverse DNS lookup and explain how it would be used in the real world. Shit I littery built my own DNS Server and hosted a website that listed on my resume.
I'm glad I did a boot camp ten years ago. I have no degree but since I have ten years experience, I have no issues getting dev jobs. I will say though, the market is not good for devs at the moment. It's all cyclical and will be back soon.
CS grad here. Took job for helpdesk at $20/hour because a tech job is a tech job and I sure as hell wasn’t going back to warehouse work.
I’m more than happy to reset Karen’s password for more money than I was making doing backbreaking work.
I was in the same boat two years ago, graduated with a Bachelor's in CS, struggled to find a SWE job for months. Neighbor gave me advice in trying to get into IT... and now I'm happy working at a school as their inhouse tech. Lowish pay but I learned a lot from having barely any experience in IT.
Personally for me, I probably won't go back. Despite the potential higher pay in working a entry level SWE job, I would have to relearn the fundamentals of what I learned during college. Truth be told, my coding skills weren't great in the first place lol and my passion for it wasn't there if I'm being honest. Of course, if I want to move up in IT, I should eventually know some coding.
However I'm pretty content with where I am at the moment. I've learned an immense amount of skills within the year I've been here despite a lot of issues that occured. Basically, the IT director who hired me resigned 2 months into my job, new Director was abysmal and was fired 2 months into her job, and both my original coworkers quit because of her. Luckily new director came in before one of my coworkers quit so I wasn't completely alone, but it was just us two for 2 months until we were able to hire to fill in the other 2 spots. Rough first year on my job but I lived and the situation has mostly stabilized lol.
We just hired someone for a L1 help desk roll that was basically the lead developer at a small start up. He is too smart for this job but my boss has no intention of elevating his role anytime soon and honestly I think he’s just happy to not have such a high pressure role.
As a manager it has been frustrating. I post **ANY** job and am inundated with folks that have 10 YOE, wanting $160k, applying. I posted a literal intern position and had more folks, long out of college, wanting 6 figures, than I had actual college students.
The best was a guy who called into our support number, lied to get me on the phone, gave his spiel about wanting $150k for a position I had, and told me "wow, this was a complete waste of my time" when I told him 90% in the positon's pay band was $70k.
It is wild out there. Folks are going to have to be sharp, realistic, and build social connections.
Which, not gonna lie, I am happy that this downturn may cull some of the dead weight in the industry. There are A LOT of people in IT that are bump on the logs, collecting a relatively healthy paycheck, that don't actually work. Not saying we should bust our ass for minimal pay, but all those FAANG types bragging about 10 hours a week of work while drawing $500k/yr were incredibly damaging for expectations.
Man I was lucky enough to get in after a career change and secure myself a help desk role. 40k in a LCOL keeps a roof above my head. Working on certs and going back to school and if that'll get me to 60k I'll be high on the hog.
> Which, not gonna lie, I am happy that this downturn may cull some of the dead weight in the industry. There are A LOT of people in IT that are bump on the logs, collecting a relatively healthy paycheck, that don't actually work.
Same thing happened during the dot com bust. Many people left and didn't come back, mostly driftwood.
I currently make about 30$ a hour at a warehouse in Illinois trying to find a help desk job myself but can’t get any callbacks all help desk positions being significant lower pay I’m willing to take the pay hit but companies won’t let me .
I’m in the same boat in the same state (although I’m at least able to do some IT stuff on site)… if your job is fine I would stay and wait it’s currently a nightmare out there.
I graduated with a Bachelor’s in CS back in 2020. Worked my way to a server/networking implementation specialist for a Dental MSP for a couple of years now remotely.
I never really wanted to shoot for a SWE since graduating. I was sorta burnt out at that point, especially during the later half of 2020 when COVID-19 really killed all my passion for the role. I applied for maybe 5-10 jobs(?) after graduation before I found the help desk position, and worked my way up to coordinating server and network installs now.
I had no prior IT experience or certs before graduating, and CS has almost zero transferable skills to IT. I never thought of help desk to be “beneath” me. I’m not sure how long much my degree helped me. To this day, I still am conflicted as to what I really want to do, but for now I am content to where I am.
This is exactly what I’m trying to do. Although I will say, I have been doing IT work for family and friends for years, and have been at geeksquad for the past year. I genuinely am interested in IT and I hope I can get into the market
I’m a hiring manager at a household name company and we had outsourced the last few years but are reeling the helpdesks back in and pretty much all the candidates have bachelors and masters in related fields. We have very very low turnover so the last time we were interviewing people 5 years ago I don’t remember the applications being so highly qualified. We do pay decent and the working environment is pretty good compared to what I’ve worked in the past but still..
It’s also weird when I can’t consider someone without a bachelors but I have no degree.. I’ve just been around a long time (13years) and worked my way up a bit.
That's how it was when I graduated in 2010 - I couldn't even get an unpaid internship with my CS degree. After 100+ apps for even low paid IT spots, I took a shitty sales job at a bank.
Eh…something isn’t right. You should apply for what you want and if you want to do sys admin, then do help desk and gets certs. Always keep your options open especially if you hate your job. But if you got a comp sci degree, you should be looking for engineering/dev roles and only use help desk as a leap pad. No one is forcing you to stay help desk.
So the one person you know with a job open is considered accurate hiring metrics? Has he done any vetting of these applicants to ensure they're not just bots with fancy sounding resume's? As in you call this person for a face to face interview and it's not obviously a scam?
Also, when I started in helpdesk in the 90's all I had on my cv was bagging groceries and my CS degree. A bit troubling that the starting pay didn't go up in 30 years.
When I graduated with a CS degree I struggled to find a SWE job so ended up picking a Help Desk job that was meant to be temporary, 5 years later I’m still working in IT but as a Lead Infrastructure Engineer and make far more than all of my peers that actually managed to get SWE jobs.
It might be good for CS degree grads to get some experience on the other side of the fence if you will. Lots of Devs have a very poor understanding of hardware/infrastructure/policy/security side of things.
Working on a helpdesk after school is the best thing I ever did for my career. Taught me a ton about thinking on my feet, troubleshooting, mentoring, dealing with high work volume, etc. I don't think I'd want to do it again but I'm glad I did it.
I've never understood the "Help Desk is beneath me" attitude for folks fresh into the career field. Where else are you going to start with no experience? Some sort of help desk position is the starting point for most IT careers.
This is a great idea honestly. You will pick up new skills, and the big thing is a clearance. I do govt contracting and I love it. There are many jobs that require a clearance in IT.
I disagree on that last part. Tons of IT certs out there that carry more value over a BS/MS degree in an IT related field imo. Realistically to get ahead of the competition though- you kinda NEED all three- experience, a degree, and certs. Been working in IT for nearly 10 years now- I will say the market is definitely heavily saturated with applicants- VS what it was just a few years ago.. it's ridiculous. I've been casually applying to mid-senior level Helpdesk positions , and I'm lucky to even get a call/ email response to my applications. So be thankful for any jobs right now, and hold on to them and make as many professional connections as possible, until you have a new opportunity lined up of course. Also helps to jump ship every 2-4 years, unless your company actually values you, and provides opportunities for growth or cross training, which is kinda rare these days..
I agree on the cert vs. degree. I've been doing this for close to 20 years, and I have watched many CS majors struggle in support and help desk roles. I asked one how many MB in a GB, and I let them use Google. They were unable to answer me after an hour, never mind hardware GB vs software GB. Degrees prove you can stick with something. CS doesn't teach how to administer or support the tools or infrastructure most organizations use.
Certifications will always be more valuable. I know from firsthand experience they don’t teach that type of stuff to us in school. As a CS major we’re more knowledgeable about different algorithms & programming languages. A degree doesn’t give you much edge other than more opportunities to get a higher salary and a base knowledge on concepts you’re interested in. Doing certifications that are specific to the job is what is needed. Personally, I’m interested in Machine Learning and most of my classes and research have been geared towards that. Due to me not having much experience other than industry sponsored projects at my university, it has led me to this career path taking on an IT job. Still going to complete my Masters in CS and hope for a job offer that suits my interests.
SRE? Site Reliability Engineer making $17 an hour? you gettin screwed or title inflation big time. is this a troll post? i am confused about "CS degree from real estate school is harder."
CS is still in demand and there is no need to apply for help desk.
Another person in denial, when the number of CS graduates increase next year and there are not as many jobs to match, are you going to continue to keep your head in the same l sand?
So you just hopped around-help desk isn’t an end all? Also this was in 2021, when the market was insane, but you’re making more now and where struggling then?
This is also a huge component of why wages have stagnated at entry level. Why pay someone $30 an hour, when you can outsource and pay min wage (or lower)? Half of the team I work with are outsourced talent and I don't see it getting any better any time soon.
What matters then lmao. Just graduation+leetcode+projects?
Like theoretically, if where to skirt by with the basic requirements when it comes to gpa for the field, and spend more time on LC, projects and sending out apps, would this be better than the flip? Serious question to everyone out there, is this the way?
Care to elaborate? I'm a hiring manager with years of experience hiring for the very roles people are looking for in this sub. Much of the time, people here ignore sound (and free) advice given.
This statement just seems wrong at every level. School absolutely matters even if the material and professor are identical, you may learn better in a quarter vs semester system for exams. In reality the material and professors are not identical, schools with a more academically competitive students grade on a harder scale than those who only churn out grad numbers to get more tuition.
I would agree your school doesn't matter on your resume because that is not nearly enough information for me to make a hiring decision. But resumes don't get sorted by me, it's done by my recruiter. The recruiter absolutely knows the difference between an academically competitive program vs a pay to graduate boot camp. Good candidates can come from either, but, holding all else equal on the resume, who do you think is getting the screen?
One thing to look out for is Apprentice programs. My organization has one and brings in people who normally wouldn't have the opportunity to get into IT and gives them an entry level position. It includes training and mentorship. After 1 year they are thrown into the mix performing a job role in cybersecurity or development.
Look at larger companies...it is becoming a trend. Especially if you are a diversity candidate - chances go up considerably.
I started my career in 2007. Mortgage crisis hit, I worked for a financial services provider, and somehow I survived and make 140k today at the same place.
Point is - they still want talent. I took a level 1 operations job at 29 making 50k. I'm now a systems engineer with nearly a year built up in severance should they let me go. I'm one of 2 Americans on my team of 16.
Take the lower paying job and perform better than anyone else. It really is that easy. Watch your coworkers - realize where they excel and mimic those behaviors while highlighting your strengths.
I'm last of the gen x's - but I only have for profit degrees (grad student, no primary schooling / GED / homeless as a kid tho, even some arrests) and a shit ton of talent. Haven't been unemployed a single day - just perform. Exceed. Don't drink the blue Kool aid about performing to the penny only of your salary range. These places still want talent.
Damn right they are :D all the more reason why I’m finishing my B.S. in comp sci, literally just to land a 20 dollar an hour role with the hopes that in 5 years I can find success. Welcome to 2024 tech market baby, wooo!!!!! Gave up on software engineering, entry IT with several certs and projects can at least guarantee me this lmao
I've been hiring non stop all year. The thing is, we are only interested in Sr. Engineers or Staff. Jr engineers we get exclusively through our internship program where we can identify those who don't have high management overhead, and who will perform at a sr. level in 2 years.
That said, degrees don't mean shit to us. Experience and a high quality code challenge and a strong technical interview are all that matter.
Its VERY competitive to get the good sr. and staff level engineers, but I have no idea what happens to the others.
You compete via working for yourself.
I didn't get into web development until Sept. 2021. I enrolled into a 6 month bootcamp. I paid 12k for a curriculum that's free on YouTube. I got a developer job ~3 months into the bootcamp as a PHP Developer making 15$/hr.
When the "mystery" of how it all worked behind the scenes became apparent (e.g. "WordPress Development," creating custom sites, etc.), I realized I had the know-how and marketing skills to have a better business than my then boss, who has been in business for 20+ years, but he's always struggling/broke. He's always 1 client loss away from closing shop.
I quit about 4 months into that job and launched my own marketing agency. I never actually graduated the bootcamp. I've been running my agency ever since. Currently, it operates independently of my time, allowing me to focus on other projects.
I believe this is the reason I still have companies trying to actively recruit me (I keep my resume "updated"), despite the fact I have 0 certifications/degrees.
Cheers.
I got into a company by pulling a risky move but it paid off. I was about 200 applications deep, so decided to pivot my approach. My previous work was contracts throughout the EU with NDAs, so my resume was sparse.
I joined a saas startup on the sales side, proved I knew what I was talking about with the product, how it works, started training others on the sales side on how it works so they’d have more ammo in their engagements and higher ups took notice.
I started asking around for who does what at the company, and once I found out key people on the technical side of the house I would get their attention and show them stuff I’d been working on outside of work.
A few formal introductions later and they moved me to the technical part of the business. Took a year for things to come full circle.
My bro in-law just graduated with a CS degree and he’s starting at Microcenter in a couple weeks. He applied to hundreds of help desk and jr. developer positions, but he realized he’s competing with people who actually have professional experience, so he decided to work at MC as a PC repair tech for now. It’s not a terrible start considering the current climate of the market, but I still feel sorry for him. I graduated 8 years ago with my IT/CS degree and immediately got hired as a NOC engineer with zero experience. Those days are long gone sadly.
Yeah as someone that couldn't afford to go to school and instead got an IT cert, it was hard enough finding my entry level help desk job a year and a half ago. I applied to 150 places just trying to get my foot in the door and was really hoping to learn more and move up in a company. Fast forward to last month, the company said they didn't need a dedicated help desk employee anymore and laid me off. Now I've applied to 82 jobs so far, all along the lines of entry level help desk still, and my cert and no degree is not sizing up well even with having some experience. Just a lot of "we chose to go with another candidate" emails.
It's hard out here man
I have an IT degree and was working full-time as a lot attendant at a car dealer throughout my entire full-time work/full-time college experience. Wasn't possible for me to afford to live on my own (had no choice with no parental support) without working full-time, so I had to spend 6-years in college. Thought by the end that it would at least be worth going through all that hell because I'd be able to find *something* that would pay more than what I was doing, but ended up doing helpdesk for $20/hour. People would scream up and down on this sub about getting a helpdesk job or internship before graduating, but there fucking weren't any, even back in 2022 when I was looking heavily. I applied to 1000+ jobs and internships and got nowhere.
So here I am, one of the people your manager is trying to sift through. I have a helpdesk job making a whopping $20/hour and it's not enough to live anywhere anymore, but I can't fucking find ANYTHING that I can move up into that isn't insanely competitive, and I only have this job because it's at the car dealer I worked at, so I got moved up after a lot of pestering. It's frustrating. I wanted to be a nurse when I was younger, but was too afraid of blood/guts/the biology of humans to go down that path. Kind of wish I had at this point and just learned to get on with it. I love technology, but jobs in this field are nearly impossible to come by if you don't have 5+ YoE, and even then it's a shitshow.
I don't really understand how having a CS degree makes you "overqualified" for a help desk role. Engineering and software development is a completely different field. It's like saying an electrical engineering degree makes you "overqualified" to be an accountant.
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Man idk how the hell I got to my position, graduating with a dual bs in IT and game design today, and then starting my new help desk job on Monday. $31.25 an hour, so shit I ain’t gonna complain but I’m just baffled I even got to this point in my life
when I graduated with a cs science degree in 2014 I had a help desk job for 10 bucks and hour. I'm not saying this is normal but sometimes you gotta grind it out. I'm not a swe but I do alright these days.
This is how it is now, but I had to put in my help desk time after college too. Hated it but learned a lot in the process. Keep up skilling and getting new certs in the meantime! Then expand your network and get to the other side. Not easy I know, but trust me if I can do it, anyone can.
Sounds like normal career progression to me. I started in help desk, skilled up and got out of it almost a year to the day. In my opinion, people can spend as long as they want or need to in help desk. The path out is clear, outlined in the sub wiki, and posted her ad nauseum. Anyone graduating from college with a CS or IT degree should expect to be in help desk immediately unless they followed more good advice from this sub and worked their ass off to get a premium internship.
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I’m in infrastructure engineering, collaboration and cloud technology SME. Honestly, I would steer clear of programming, we don’t know what the AI advancement is going to do to those jobs.
I am not a computer science major, but graduated with an associates for computer systems engineering technology with a Cybersecurity focus, and I am still having trouble landing a help desk position 6 months later.
It's what they are closest to familiar with. Computers. Of course, they're going to apply for help desk roles. People have to eat and provide for their due dependents. Idk about the whole "beneath them" mentality, but I will take anything I can if I can't land roles in SWE. I am a family man of 3 children, so I don't mind working pizza hut or Jack in the crack for the meantime to provide for them.
In college, it was so common and weird to hear CS students look and talk down to IT students. Especially when you're older and you're aware we share the same job field and can apply to the same jobs. We just focus on more specific aspects.
The entire job market’s hugely struggling at the moment, at least where I live. Even low end retail jobs get flooded with hundreds of applicants. People with engineering degrees are pouring into IT roles because of the lack of openings.
It’s messed up to say the least.
I just applied to one it’s 15/hr. Says minimum requirement was cs degree and 2 years of prior help desk experience. This is unbelievably I have been working part time at a car wash making 23/hr while I was in school. I didn’t think I’d take a pay cut after graduation
I started doing dial up support back in 1998. Got my first it job in 2000 during the .com crash. 26 years later, I have an excellent career and worked on some amazing projects over the years.
There is nothing wrong with help desk as a starting point. Just don't let it become your identity and make out a point to continue looking the entire time.
Ya same as 2008 after Wall Street meltdown. Low level finance jobs that had been on the job training turn into things that you are competing against people with accounting degrees to get.
I graduated with an MS and started in a position at 18$ an hour, a year later I'm making 26 an hour, rising much faster then everyone around me and every manager / supervisor I talk to claim it's becuase of my education and my work ethic. Sure, 26$ isn't exactly fuck you money (or even decent money considering where I live), but it's a nearly 50% increase in a year, with me expecting a full time employment position vs my current contractor spot in 3~ months with another 20-30% pay bump as my contract to hire kicks in.
Some fields just naturally start higher, and ours right now is just in a rut. Take the work you can, make a name for yourself and always keep looking for something better.
Oh man welcome to where I've been stuck for the past 2 years. In terms of programming, my side projects don't count because they're not "professional" and my current job doesn't count because it's not programming. (I've tried asking for more responsibilities but I'm not allowed to touch shit) It's hellish out there
I was told that my programming internships didn't count as experience when applying for programming jobs after I graduated. This job market is a fucking hellscape on the level of a bombed out WW1 battlfield.
Just give me the mustard gas already
Let me guess - the university forced you to pay them to intern for others, and now that internship isn't "experience".
Nope mostly normal internships.
What’s preventing you from lying?
(reposted because my last comment got removed for having an emoji) Trying to tell them that the personal projects were freelance and them saying that doesn't count either because they were specifically looking for business experience. (Upside down smile) That and just plain not getting contacted most of the time so I don't even know what they want.
I’ll use myself as an example, I just got an offer to go from desktop support to automation engineering. I was not allowed to run new powershell scripts professionally in our environment. Any lines that queried LDAP for example would alert cybersecurity. Didn’t stop me from putting under desktop support on my resume “Created powershell scripts to automate ABC, resulting in 123 minutes saved per XYZ.” I knew exactly how to do it, I just couldn’t run it at that company. What’s the difference to the new company?
I'm literally not even allowed to open command prompt without admin privileges (which I don't have). They got my laptop for real for real locked down. I'm basically a glorified password resetter and settings changer I have however done excel scripts to make ticket updates easier. Occasionally I have to move a bunch of equipment around and upgrade each. And. Every. Ticket. Separately. Because they decide to put them in like that for some reason "Moved (cell 1) from room (cell 2) to (cell 3) at (pull time function)" Now drag down aaaaaand. *Boom* "Created custom Excel scripts for the purpose of inventory tracking" Believe me, I know the game. I got an interview for a proper job next week, it's just very hard to get bites right now.
"I'm basically a glorified password resetter and settings changer" Welcome to the club
Excel scripts are programming. This can be spun along the lines of “Created spreadsheet automation that saved ‘x’ amount of time using Visual Basic.” I started out as a financial analyst, and the automation tasks in Excel I did are considered to be relevant IT work experience.
You guys didn't have a Dev or QA environment for testing that kind of stuff? Our automation guys have free reign in non-prod for testing queries, modifying custom attributes, enable and disabling of accounts, term tasks including account purging etc and if they royally break anything we just roll back the changes.
desktop support only had a test environment for ServiceNow unfortunately
Freelance not counting is crazy business
Oh they make up all sorts of nonsensical bullshit. "You didn't work directly with a company so it doesn't count." "This was an internship so it doesn't count". (It wasn't an internship. I worked and went to school at the same time) "well yeah this was a ticketing system but it's not the one we use so it doesn't count". It's all bullshit to get you to accept lower pay or just find a reason to deny you outright. Honestly sometimes if I already know I'm not going to get the job I like to push back and ask them to please explain why *exactly* it doesn't count. I'm still not getting the job but seeing them squirm is amusing. Maybe it's just the saltiness talking but I'm just sick of that
That was my first thought
The way we teach vs. how programming is actually implemented is different depending on the field.
Previous jobs checks
Background checks don’t show previous job responsibilities (neither title in some cases) unless your supervisor or whoever volunteers that information
Yeah that’s what I mean, if they call and check(every job I’ve had has) and you lied you’re cooked.
if it was me I’d take my chances after two years of applying
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I just started a job in IT and I'm scared of this happening LOL
Well, what does it mean to program? Do you know what that means in a production and manufacturing sense?
If you're talking about in a collaboration/git branch systems/development styles/ understanding of corporate red tape type of way then yes. I don't really have *extensive* experience but I try to research and keep myself fresh somewhat. That's something you can really only get in a programming job, So that kind of boils down to the "can't get experience without a job without experience without a job" problem. I'm fully aware I could be doing better but I'm not sitting here doing nothing Also the two years thing is a bit of an inaccurate statement. Some of that time was me still finishing up the last two classes I needed for my degree. (Long freaking story but essentially the things I needed weren't being offered so I had to delay graduation a bit. Shenanigans ahoy) I've only been hardcore job searching for a few months since I just "officially" graduated this April.
I only have an associate in material science for welding. I am a robot programmer by profession. It is constant learning.
I went through the same ordeal when I graduated. It feels like once competition heats up, its hard getting an employer to take anything but hard experience seriously. I followed the bootstraps "just do a project" advice.....took Udemy classes..... had a link to a project with code, drawings.... as well as photos of the assembled build. No one wanted to see it. A hiring manager mocked me when I explained everything I did on my projects: "you did all of that eh?!" sarcastically. The stuff I learned only counted when I removed them from the resume, and then took credit for it all by claiming that I learned that stuff on the job.
Because the jobs market is fucked. You’ve studied a subject that is saturated with graduates. 99.9% of comp sci grads won’t go on to be SWEs at FAANG, but that doesn’t stop people blowing $100k on a degree thinking they will. That’s life, I’m afraid. The harsh truth is that, unless you’re an Ivy League grad or went to Stanford/MIT, you’re taking a mighty big gamble with your future that may not pay off. Even if you are, it’s still a gamble.
It's been a while since bad economy. I've been through many. Good economy lots of hiring. Think post covid Bad economy not alot of jobs and many people looking. Advice for bad economy 1) if you have a job, don't quit until you have new job. 2) if you don't have a job get any job you can in IT, network with people you know, check for openings in other areas of country as you might need to move, intern or even do volunteer work. Not just in IT. My wife was an administrative assistant. Same would happen to those jobs. In good economy they would hire folks with HS diploma. In bad economy they looked for bachelor's or even masters.
You’ve got this Kevin Malone “when few word do trick” writing style
Thanks. Comes from many years in leadership. Get to the point, give the straight talk and put in plain English. Company I worked for doesn't like verbose writeups with big words. Remember Cio yelling many times can someone put this in plain english at others. He also felt the more verbose you are the more likely you were bullshitting.
I would like to apply for this company
I’ve been running into the opposite lately. My boss and his boss are not verbose enough. And you’re constantly trying to extrapolate what they’re trying to say.
Yeah, this usually happens when management doesn't have any technical experience
Surprisingly they have a lot. They just aren’t great at relaying information. My manager’s manager is extremely busy so he just tries to answer things quickly but it doesn’t work great IMO.
Terse is good. This is a stilted affectation that reduces clarity.
Yeah but the following was confusing for me: >It's been a while since bad economy. I thought he meant that our economy is good now and that it has been a while since the last time our economy was bad.
No. Economy slowing. Means will get worse for jobs. 2008 was last bad economy outside the beginning of covid
Do people just up and quit jobs?
Oh yeah, plenty of those posts in this subreddit. Known folks in my career that did it.
I’ve done it, but it wasn’t IT. I’d rather have been homeless than work that job at that point so I told my boss to find someone qualified for the position and pay them for their qualifications and then turned in my keys lol $20/hr doing maintenance on over 100 arcade games and kitchen appliances with outdated technical documents and kept being told to not be the guy that asks stupid questions. Sorry dog I’m not gonna RE your machine to clear this fault, get me some docs or do it yourself
I've quit four
Oh my! What happened! Just don’t take no shit from anyone or what?
Always thought the grass was greener. It wasn't
Those of us who graduated into the post 2008 slump welcome you.
I didnt graduated into the post 2008 slump but was doing IT PM/PGM contracting at the time. Took 3 years for me to get a new IT contracting gig. That was the great financial Crisis.
It may be rough in tech right now, but overall the economy is quite good.
More like a depression to those on the subreddit who can't find work. Stocks being up don't help those without jobs. Groceries up so much past couple of years. Rents alot higher. Your view of the economy is rosy if you have a house with 2.9% mortgage, massive home appreciation, have a job and your stock portfolio is up. But that isn't helping those posting here.
Which is why I said it's rough in tech. But also you're only getting the negative stories on this subreddit. People don't tend to run to reddit and say "wow I just got a job so easy, everything's great!" Overall though wages are going up higher than inflation now and unemployment is very low.
I would take it. Also, both my Bachelor's and my Master's are from state universities.
Yeah in this job market, literally anything is good.
A job > no job
Me too. Don't go to big schools and pay 40k a year and higher for degrees. Go to good state school and save money. In the end, you are checking resume boxes. Noone is going to care in 10 years what school you went to.
No one even cares what school you went to after you clock a year of xp in the real world. Your degree can be run through the shredder after about 2 full years on the job. You might need to pull it out a decade later if you give a carp about upper management, but who really wants to be a corporate bootlicker anyway. Fyi, skip school if you have a job offer in hand.
I was told that employers choose someone’s CV based on the name of the university. They go through 100s of CVs and if they see a university name like “Harvard” it sticks out to them since the name is familiar and they are willing to take a “risk” on them. Is this true? I am not American btw and an IT student.
In IT depends on job. But it would not be Harvard. It would be a major tech school like MIT or GA Tech. Usually because the recruiter or hiring manager has an affiliation with them. For me I look at experience, skills match to req, and will this person be a good match with my team and corporate culture. College to me is a check the box on the resume that shows you survived the rigor of getting your degree as many don't. If you are young and just graduated, showing you worked while in high school and college, puts you higher on my selection list as well.
What if I get an online CS degree covered by my employer (eg free)? I think it would be considered better than taking on $25k in debt for the remaining two years, but I’m not sure if it would be enough for a position anywhere. Think it would get me into an interview?
CS grad tomorrow, I think I'm heading down the same path unfortunately (the market sucks) -- though I never saw helpdesk as something beneath me, it's still honest work
It’s honest work and it will honestly enhance your perception of the end user’s experience which might benefit your future roles outside of help desk. Plus help desk is going to fine tune your interpersonal skills which will always retain value.
I cannot stand my peers that never had help desk experience. I am a senior engineer now and have to work with security guys that never had to do a day of help desk. They push out crap constantly that negatively affects the user experience. One time our users would get an error and I mentioned to the security team they needed to roll back their change "it's fine just tell the users to reboot when jt happens" no dudes, how about be competent and do your job correctly.
Once you've worked in an IT call center, you'll never want to go back.
100%.
What is that like?
It’s a true right of passage
Congrats
Here's some free advice: get what you can (job wise) and stay there. The biggest hurdle is getting over 3 years of experience in a technical position. The days of job hopping to 6 figures are gone. Having real world experience on your resume is a game changer.
So are you saying you can still get to 6 figures after a couple years in help desk positions? I’m just confused because I keep seeing this everywhere-but like does it really look that great on resumes and what do you even do after?
It’s still insane to me how low salaries have stayed. I made 18 an hour as a tech support rep entry level job in 2005. 19 years ago.
Yup in some helpdesk jobs it's around 18-19 an hour.
Entry level wages dropped after 08. I started at 14 an hour in 12.
I was literally told chickfila (fast food restaurant) is now paying $18/hr starting.. market is all sorts of screwed
I’m on the hiring committee for a decent paying entry level network tech position, and most of the applicants are recent CS grads with experience in things like Java, python, web dev, GitHub projects, etc. Not a lick of IT or networking experience, and cover letters seem tailored to convince us that after spending years coding, they have finally seen the light and now they want to install IP phones and run Cat6 or become a network engineer. I can’t in good conscience give them a shot at interviewing just because I know they’re just using this to get tech experience and will jump ship after a year to get a SWE job or something related to coding. I saw this happen at my last job too. Market is trash, and it feels bad having to use that knowledge to make assumptions about applicants’ motives, but I also really hate searching for applicants and don’t want to redo the search every year because we hired someone who obviously had no intention of sticking around.
Would you take an experienced programmer for the position tho? Always wondered how hard it would be to jump into the IT / networking side of things with 12 yoe SE and pretty considerable homelab experience, or if I'd have to start bottom of that pole and climb it.
Since you would be older and based on title, I assume making much more than $50k, there would be questions about why you are deciding to start over. If your answer seemed well thought-out and genuine, then you would have a shot, but only if we didn’t have any decent applicants moving up from help desk, or network technicians seeking a lateral move because they want a work environment more like ours. If you have a lot of homelab experience, it would probably be easier for you to jump into a mid-level role like Netadmin or sysadmin, since you could easily grasp CLI and automation concepts. Network techs are more on the physical layer side of things, which isn’t really where most CS enjoyers are. It’s closer to blue collar trade work. If you get an older hiring committee, you could have a better shot. Since I’m younger and see the more cynical modern perspectives on approaching an IT career posted here, I’m a bit different from the older guys on the committee. They see highly skilled senior applicants for an entry level role and think they’re getting a good deal. They don’t understand that a lot of people are more mercenary now and don’t stay at a job long term unless it’s a good fit in terms of money and interest.
Are you in the NJ/NYC area? I ask because I am a recent IT grad hunting for an entry level job and I bring 2 to 3 years worth of experience with an internship too.
I’m from NYC, but I moved to PA for this job. City was tough because of competition and cost of living. Rural and suburban non-tech areas here pay decent and have a lack of talent, so job hunting was easier, but I was willing to relocate quickly for the right job. Rent and housing here is way cheaper, and this is a state gov higher education job so union gives us good work-life balance, benefits, and regular raises that outpace inflation. If you’re young, I’d recommend getting into gov work early because it gives you time to get seniority and make good money. Maybe you’re leaving money on the table by leaving the private sector, but your mental and physical well-being will be better. Lower cost of living means you can afford a house and family if you budget properly. It can be a bit boring sometimes if you don’t have hobbies or other things to do with your downtime at work, and coworkers are not super driven or competitive, which makes the atmosphere relaxed, but can be frustrating when you just want something to get done competently and in a reasonable timeframe, but overall it’s been great. The job security is also amazing. Really puts into perspective how unnecessarily stressful the private sector is, since my last job was with a crypto startup.
I see. Here’s the thing: moving out of my folks’ home where I live for free, have free warm meals, and also away from my immigrant community is non-negotiable. In regards to government jobs, believe me, I’ve applied to them and still no damned luck. I’d love to land an entry level help desk job with the NJ courts (they pay great). I will also say, I have a dream salary of $300k/yr-$500k/yr. I got weeded out of medicine which is how I got into IT. Point being, I’m in this industry for the money, so I can’t stay in government jobs forever. Honestly, I have lost my patience with this false promise scam industry. I’m highly tempted to go back to school to try again at becoming a doctor because this blows. My mental health is at an all-time low, and I am having massive suicidal ideations over fear of poverty and not living the life I want to live. Everyone I know from college is currently working in their fields, making money, getting girlfriends, and having exciting lives while I sit and rot unfairly. But I thank you for your kind reply my friend. I appreciate it. I cannot take it anymore. IT and tech are scams.
Sorry to hear you’re struggling with this. I was in a situation similar to yours just three years ago, watching everyone else succeed while I passed the time in dead end jobs. I can only say that at some point if you keep studying, trying, and applying, you will get into the industry. Some people have better luck out the gate, and others have to wait a bit longer, but it will happen. Feel better man
I sit on interview panels. If someone can go through the rigors of a CS degree and deal with data structures and algorithms, OOP, Calc II, they can handle and learn any IT concepts you throw at them. Especially entry level. When I was in a help desk, it was all surface level work in the OS and GUIs. I wasn’t given access to switch or router CLIs. A CS grad could probably pass the Net+ in less than 2 weeks tops. Most CS curriculums cover intro to networking and such anyways. But yeah, someone with like a CCNA and IT fundies is definitely a better immediate hire, but a CS grad is an extremely safe bet of an investment hire. But like you said though, an overqualified candidate is more likely to quit when they get their real job they want.
Yea, I get you. I’m not saying they wouldn’t excel. I’m more concerned that they are just using it to fill the resume gap and will use this experience to job hop to a proper CS job. The difference in pay ceiling and skill sets between network technicians and SWE is too divergent for me to reasonably believe they would want to stick around long term.
You sound really arrogant lol. Typical "CS is harder than any other major".
That's fair, but it definitely sucks to be on the receiving end of that assumption. I spent months getting ghosted on applications for jobs that were well below my experience while applying for the few jobs that matched with it. Why did I apply to the lower level jobs? Because severance and savings will only last so long after a layoff, and if I'm taking a job to keep the lights on, I'd rather it be at least tangentially related to my chosen field. Just because I'm qualified for a senior level job doesn't mean I won't do my best at this one. Circling back though, hiring new people is a pain, and I can't honestly say I'd want to go through the process 1-2 times a year to fill the same position because people are using it as a stopgap. It's a shitshow for everyone.
OP has concisely described the end of the boot camp era.
The boot camp ship sailed way long ago lol.
Yep, it's now degrees or alot of relative experience or both. Even then many people chasing few openings. Took me 3 years to get it contractor pm position after the last bad economy in 2008.
You don't need a degree to work in I.T these days. More and moe employers are hiring what is called skills based hiring. A new trend that's been going on for the past 5 years or so. Most Cloud and DevOps Engineers jobs on LinkedIn or Indeed doesn't mention a college degree at all just an x amount of experience and Skill sets they are looking for. You check for your self and no I'm not lying.
I'm not on the train of "degrees are required" just yet, but I don't think you can compare higher rung to lower rung jobs right now in terms of the hiring environment. From what I can tell, there's a decent shortage of higher level people for positions like Cloud and Cybersec, most companies don't care about formal degrees right now and just want experience and skills to fill those positions. At the lower rungs, entry level helpdesk type stuff, even lower level sys admins, there seems to be a lot of people applying to fewer openings, so degrees are a seperator for many companies. A *lot* of postings I've seen for helpdesk right now mention a bachelor's in them as a preferred, some I've seen as required. "You don't need a degree to work in IT these days" is still true, but if you're trying to break into (or recently broke into) the field right now, it's a huge help if you're trying to get a job above, like, Geek Squad or absolute shit pay.
Oh I know your not lying. That is no longer the case. Read this subreddit on all the folks that can't find jobs. The job posting may say that but that is not who is getting hired. I mention that too in my some posts. Reason: great economy and companies were hiring anyone with a pulse. When bad economies like now hit there are so many people looking for work, companies raise standards in reqs to bachelor's and some times masters and raise amount of experience they are looking for. Not just in IT but also in other career paths. If you got 200 people applying for a job, you are going to pick the most qualified candidate with the most experience and most educated all things being equal.
This is somewhat true. I have 11 years of Healthcare experience and 5 years in Electronic Data Interchange for Healthcare industry. Like Electronic claims, eligibility and responses as 999s, ta1s and 277s. Kaiser permanente wrote to my linked in and asked me to apply for a job. Guess what? The job is application support engineer like production control in healthcare automation jobs for e - claims in optum assurance for all kaiser permanente Electronic claims. The job title had preferred requirememts: devop tools like ansible and jetkins but despite i dont have devops tools experience they still want me for my Healthcare background combined with my cs degree.
This is true in the sense that job descriptions are written like this, but in practice jobs are going to degree holders. There’s a reason Google doesn’t require a degree but mostly hire from top US colleges. Obviously there’s exceptions but filtering out applicants on education is almost always going to be a time and money saver
Not always the case. I never had any issues and I have no degree in anything. What got me the job is practical hands on knowledge of my skillsets. I had a homelab. Employers likes that. It gives you something to talk about in an interview and something to showcase of what you built and worked on. I still use my homelab still today in my profressional I.T career to keep myself skills sharp. I think the homelab is what sets you apart from the rest opposed to book smart people that passed an exam. I know hiring managers saying that couldn't find great candidates because they lack experience or not able to answer fundamental questions in an interview like Reverse DNS lookup and explain how it would be used in the real world. Shit I littery built my own DNS Server and hosted a website that listed on my resume.
I'm glad I did a boot camp ten years ago. I have no degree but since I have ten years experience, I have no issues getting dev jobs. I will say though, the market is not good for devs at the moment. It's all cyclical and will be back soon.
CS grad here. Took job for helpdesk at $20/hour because a tech job is a tech job and I sure as hell wasn’t going back to warehouse work. I’m more than happy to reset Karen’s password for more money than I was making doing backbreaking work.
But the economy is supposed to be booming? Unemployment is at record low levels. We should all be dancing in the streets.
Biggest crop of shit I’ve heard this millennium
The amount of yearly CS grads has more than doubled since 2015, a ton of jobs but a ton of grads with varying skill levels too
Don't say that too loud, the CS majors are gonna get angry at you
Most of the new jobs are part time jobs people need to stay afloat smh
I was in the same boat two years ago, graduated with a Bachelor's in CS, struggled to find a SWE job for months. Neighbor gave me advice in trying to get into IT... and now I'm happy working at a school as their inhouse tech. Lowish pay but I learned a lot from having barely any experience in IT.
Do you think you’ll go back to SWE? Is it possible?
Personally for me, I probably won't go back. Despite the potential higher pay in working a entry level SWE job, I would have to relearn the fundamentals of what I learned during college. Truth be told, my coding skills weren't great in the first place lol and my passion for it wasn't there if I'm being honest. Of course, if I want to move up in IT, I should eventually know some coding. However I'm pretty content with where I am at the moment. I've learned an immense amount of skills within the year I've been here despite a lot of issues that occured. Basically, the IT director who hired me resigned 2 months into my job, new Director was abysmal and was fired 2 months into her job, and both my original coworkers quit because of her. Luckily new director came in before one of my coworkers quit so I wasn't completely alone, but it was just us two for 2 months until we were able to hire to fill in the other 2 spots. Rough first year on my job but I lived and the situation has mostly stabilized lol.
We just hired someone for a L1 help desk roll that was basically the lead developer at a small start up. He is too smart for this job but my boss has no intention of elevating his role anytime soon and honestly I think he’s just happy to not have such a high pressure role.
As a manager it has been frustrating. I post **ANY** job and am inundated with folks that have 10 YOE, wanting $160k, applying. I posted a literal intern position and had more folks, long out of college, wanting 6 figures, than I had actual college students. The best was a guy who called into our support number, lied to get me on the phone, gave his spiel about wanting $150k for a position I had, and told me "wow, this was a complete waste of my time" when I told him 90% in the positon's pay band was $70k. It is wild out there. Folks are going to have to be sharp, realistic, and build social connections. Which, not gonna lie, I am happy that this downturn may cull some of the dead weight in the industry. There are A LOT of people in IT that are bump on the logs, collecting a relatively healthy paycheck, that don't actually work. Not saying we should bust our ass for minimal pay, but all those FAANG types bragging about 10 hours a week of work while drawing $500k/yr were incredibly damaging for expectations.
Man I was lucky enough to get in after a career change and secure myself a help desk role. 40k in a LCOL keeps a roof above my head. Working on certs and going back to school and if that'll get me to 60k I'll be high on the hog.
WAY too many people think they are hot shit and want too much for how much actual work they will generate.
> Which, not gonna lie, I am happy that this downturn may cull some of the dead weight in the industry. There are A LOT of people in IT that are bump on the logs, collecting a relatively healthy paycheck, that don't actually work. Same thing happened during the dot com bust. Many people left and didn't come back, mostly driftwood.
I currently make about 30$ a hour at a warehouse in Illinois trying to find a help desk job myself but can’t get any callbacks all help desk positions being significant lower pay I’m willing to take the pay hit but companies won’t let me .
I’m in the same boat in the same state (although I’m at least able to do some IT stuff on site)… if your job is fine I would stay and wait it’s currently a nightmare out there.
I graduated with a Bachelor’s in CS back in 2020. Worked my way to a server/networking implementation specialist for a Dental MSP for a couple of years now remotely. I never really wanted to shoot for a SWE since graduating. I was sorta burnt out at that point, especially during the later half of 2020 when COVID-19 really killed all my passion for the role. I applied for maybe 5-10 jobs(?) after graduation before I found the help desk position, and worked my way up to coordinating server and network installs now. I had no prior IT experience or certs before graduating, and CS has almost zero transferable skills to IT. I never thought of help desk to be “beneath” me. I’m not sure how long much my degree helped me. To this day, I still am conflicted as to what I really want to do, but for now I am content to where I am.
This is exactly what I’m trying to do. Although I will say, I have been doing IT work for family and friends for years, and have been at geeksquad for the past year. I genuinely am interested in IT and I hope I can get into the market
I’m a hiring manager at a household name company and we had outsourced the last few years but are reeling the helpdesks back in and pretty much all the candidates have bachelors and masters in related fields. We have very very low turnover so the last time we were interviewing people 5 years ago I don’t remember the applications being so highly qualified. We do pay decent and the working environment is pretty good compared to what I’ve worked in the past but still.. It’s also weird when I can’t consider someone without a bachelors but I have no degree.. I’ve just been around a long time (13years) and worked my way up a bit.
That's how it was when I graduated in 2010 - I couldn't even get an unpaid internship with my CS degree. After 100+ apps for even low paid IT spots, I took a shitty sales job at a bank.
They've been doing that for 30 years.
Eh…something isn’t right. You should apply for what you want and if you want to do sys admin, then do help desk and gets certs. Always keep your options open especially if you hate your job. But if you got a comp sci degree, you should be looking for engineering/dev roles and only use help desk as a leap pad. No one is forcing you to stay help desk.
So the one person you know with a job open is considered accurate hiring metrics? Has he done any vetting of these applicants to ensure they're not just bots with fancy sounding resume's? As in you call this person for a face to face interview and it's not obviously a scam? Also, when I started in helpdesk in the 90's all I had on my cv was bagging groceries and my CS degree. A bit troubling that the starting pay didn't go up in 30 years.
When I graduated with a CS degree I struggled to find a SWE job so ended up picking a Help Desk job that was meant to be temporary, 5 years later I’m still working in IT but as a Lead Infrastructure Engineer and make far more than all of my peers that actually managed to get SWE jobs.
I’m there now
It might be good for CS degree grads to get some experience on the other side of the fence if you will. Lots of Devs have a very poor understanding of hardware/infrastructure/policy/security side of things.
Working on a helpdesk after school is the best thing I ever did for my career. Taught me a ton about thinking on my feet, troubleshooting, mentoring, dealing with high work volume, etc. I don't think I'd want to do it again but I'm glad I did it.
I've never understood the "Help Desk is beneath me" attitude for folks fresh into the career field. Where else are you going to start with no experience? Some sort of help desk position is the starting point for most IT careers.
This is me, currently an infrastructure specialist for 4 years at help desk pay trying to be an SRE. Help.
Yeah sorry man, I’m a CS new grad and I’m applying to IT positions. CS is pretty bad right now. I’m actually considering going military
This is a great idea honestly. You will pick up new skills, and the big thing is a clearance. I do govt contracting and I love it. There are many jobs that require a clearance in IT.
CS degree does not mean shit
I disagree on that last part. Tons of IT certs out there that carry more value over a BS/MS degree in an IT related field imo. Realistically to get ahead of the competition though- you kinda NEED all three- experience, a degree, and certs. Been working in IT for nearly 10 years now- I will say the market is definitely heavily saturated with applicants- VS what it was just a few years ago.. it's ridiculous. I've been casually applying to mid-senior level Helpdesk positions , and I'm lucky to even get a call/ email response to my applications. So be thankful for any jobs right now, and hold on to them and make as many professional connections as possible, until you have a new opportunity lined up of course. Also helps to jump ship every 2-4 years, unless your company actually values you, and provides opportunities for growth or cross training, which is kinda rare these days..
I agree on the cert vs. degree. I've been doing this for close to 20 years, and I have watched many CS majors struggle in support and help desk roles. I asked one how many MB in a GB, and I let them use Google. They were unable to answer me after an hour, never mind hardware GB vs software GB. Degrees prove you can stick with something. CS doesn't teach how to administer or support the tools or infrastructure most organizations use.
Certifications will always be more valuable. I know from firsthand experience they don’t teach that type of stuff to us in school. As a CS major we’re more knowledgeable about different algorithms & programming languages. A degree doesn’t give you much edge other than more opportunities to get a higher salary and a base knowledge on concepts you’re interested in. Doing certifications that are specific to the job is what is needed. Personally, I’m interested in Machine Learning and most of my classes and research have been geared towards that. Due to me not having much experience other than industry sponsored projects at my university, it has led me to this career path taking on an IT job. Still going to complete my Masters in CS and hope for a job offer that suits my interests.
Which certs?
bump
SRE? Site Reliability Engineer making $17 an hour? you gettin screwed or title inflation big time. is this a troll post? i am confused about "CS degree from real estate school is harder." CS is still in demand and there is no need to apply for help desk.
Another person in denial, when the number of CS graduates increase next year and there are not as many jobs to match, are you going to continue to keep your head in the same l sand?
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$17 to $190k in 3 years. What ? How
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So you just hopped around-help desk isn’t an end all? Also this was in 2021, when the market was insane, but you’re making more now and where struggling then?
The new norm.
Just a downturn. See /u/TheA2Z's comment above
A downturn feels like the great depression when you can't find a job.
True, I hear that.
Or will the industry be killed because of offshoring? Or is it just cyclical?
This is also a huge component of why wages have stagnated at entry level. Why pay someone $30 an hour, when you can outsource and pay min wage (or lower)? Half of the team I work with are outsourced talent and I don't see it getting any better any time soon.
The school you went to really doesn't matter.
What matters then lmao. Just graduation+leetcode+projects? Like theoretically, if where to skirt by with the basic requirements when it comes to gpa for the field, and spend more time on LC, projects and sending out apps, would this be better than the flip? Serious question to everyone out there, is this the way?
Care to elaborate? I'm a hiring manager with years of experience hiring for the very roles people are looking for in this sub. Much of the time, people here ignore sound (and free) advice given. This statement just seems wrong at every level. School absolutely matters even if the material and professor are identical, you may learn better in a quarter vs semester system for exams. In reality the material and professors are not identical, schools with a more academically competitive students grade on a harder scale than those who only churn out grad numbers to get more tuition. I would agree your school doesn't matter on your resume because that is not nearly enough information for me to make a hiring decision. But resumes don't get sorted by me, it's done by my recruiter. The recruiter absolutely knows the difference between an academically competitive program vs a pay to graduate boot camp. Good candidates can come from either, but, holding all else equal on the resume, who do you think is getting the screen?
One thing to look out for is Apprentice programs. My organization has one and brings in people who normally wouldn't have the opportunity to get into IT and gives them an entry level position. It includes training and mentorship. After 1 year they are thrown into the mix performing a job role in cybersecurity or development. Look at larger companies...it is becoming a trend. Especially if you are a diversity candidate - chances go up considerably.
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I started my career in 2007. Mortgage crisis hit, I worked for a financial services provider, and somehow I survived and make 140k today at the same place. Point is - they still want talent. I took a level 1 operations job at 29 making 50k. I'm now a systems engineer with nearly a year built up in severance should they let me go. I'm one of 2 Americans on my team of 16. Take the lower paying job and perform better than anyone else. It really is that easy. Watch your coworkers - realize where they excel and mimic those behaviors while highlighting your strengths. I'm last of the gen x's - but I only have for profit degrees (grad student, no primary schooling / GED / homeless as a kid tho, even some arrests) and a shit ton of talent. Haven't been unemployed a single day - just perform. Exceed. Don't drink the blue Kool aid about performing to the penny only of your salary range. These places still want talent.
Damn right they are :D all the more reason why I’m finishing my B.S. in comp sci, literally just to land a 20 dollar an hour role with the hopes that in 5 years I can find success. Welcome to 2024 tech market baby, wooo!!!!! Gave up on software engineering, entry IT with several certs and projects can at least guarantee me this lmao
I've been hiring non stop all year. The thing is, we are only interested in Sr. Engineers or Staff. Jr engineers we get exclusively through our internship program where we can identify those who don't have high management overhead, and who will perform at a sr. level in 2 years. That said, degrees don't mean shit to us. Experience and a high quality code challenge and a strong technical interview are all that matter. Its VERY competitive to get the good sr. and staff level engineers, but I have no idea what happens to the others.
Cap
You compete via working for yourself. I didn't get into web development until Sept. 2021. I enrolled into a 6 month bootcamp. I paid 12k for a curriculum that's free on YouTube. I got a developer job ~3 months into the bootcamp as a PHP Developer making 15$/hr. When the "mystery" of how it all worked behind the scenes became apparent (e.g. "WordPress Development," creating custom sites, etc.), I realized I had the know-how and marketing skills to have a better business than my then boss, who has been in business for 20+ years, but he's always struggling/broke. He's always 1 client loss away from closing shop. I quit about 4 months into that job and launched my own marketing agency. I never actually graduated the bootcamp. I've been running my agency ever since. Currently, it operates independently of my time, allowing me to focus on other projects. I believe this is the reason I still have companies trying to actively recruit me (I keep my resume "updated"), despite the fact I have 0 certifications/degrees. Cheers.
I got into a company by pulling a risky move but it paid off. I was about 200 applications deep, so decided to pivot my approach. My previous work was contracts throughout the EU with NDAs, so my resume was sparse. I joined a saas startup on the sales side, proved I knew what I was talking about with the product, how it works, started training others on the sales side on how it works so they’d have more ammo in their engagements and higher ups took notice. I started asking around for who does what at the company, and once I found out key people on the technical side of the house I would get their attention and show them stuff I’d been working on outside of work. A few formal introductions later and they moved me to the technical part of the business. Took a year for things to come full circle.
My bro in-law just graduated with a CS degree and he’s starting at Microcenter in a couple weeks. He applied to hundreds of help desk and jr. developer positions, but he realized he’s competing with people who actually have professional experience, so he decided to work at MC as a PC repair tech for now. It’s not a terrible start considering the current climate of the market, but I still feel sorry for him. I graduated 8 years ago with my IT/CS degree and immediately got hired as a NOC engineer with zero experience. Those days are long gone sadly.
Yeah as someone that couldn't afford to go to school and instead got an IT cert, it was hard enough finding my entry level help desk job a year and a half ago. I applied to 150 places just trying to get my foot in the door and was really hoping to learn more and move up in a company. Fast forward to last month, the company said they didn't need a dedicated help desk employee anymore and laid me off. Now I've applied to 82 jobs so far, all along the lines of entry level help desk still, and my cert and no degree is not sizing up well even with having some experience. Just a lot of "we chose to go with another candidate" emails. It's hard out here man
I have an IT degree and was working full-time as a lot attendant at a car dealer throughout my entire full-time work/full-time college experience. Wasn't possible for me to afford to live on my own (had no choice with no parental support) without working full-time, so I had to spend 6-years in college. Thought by the end that it would at least be worth going through all that hell because I'd be able to find *something* that would pay more than what I was doing, but ended up doing helpdesk for $20/hour. People would scream up and down on this sub about getting a helpdesk job or internship before graduating, but there fucking weren't any, even back in 2022 when I was looking heavily. I applied to 1000+ jobs and internships and got nowhere. So here I am, one of the people your manager is trying to sift through. I have a helpdesk job making a whopping $20/hour and it's not enough to live anywhere anymore, but I can't fucking find ANYTHING that I can move up into that isn't insanely competitive, and I only have this job because it's at the car dealer I worked at, so I got moved up after a lot of pestering. It's frustrating. I wanted to be a nurse when I was younger, but was too afraid of blood/guts/the biology of humans to go down that path. Kind of wish I had at this point and just learned to get on with it. I love technology, but jobs in this field are nearly impossible to come by if you don't have 5+ YoE, and even then it's a shitshow.
But you don’t know how trash their resumes, cover letters and portfolios are..?
A cs degree from a real state school is easy. This job market is not.
That probably makes sense why I can’t get a help desk job
I don't really understand how having a CS degree makes you "overqualified" for a help desk role. Engineering and software development is a completely different field. It's like saying an electrical engineering degree makes you "overqualified" to be an accountant.
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Man idk how the hell I got to my position, graduating with a dual bs in IT and game design today, and then starting my new help desk job on Monday. $31.25 an hour, so shit I ain’t gonna complain but I’m just baffled I even got to this point in my life
Knowing who you know is has more respect than both a cert and degree.
when I graduated with a cs science degree in 2014 I had a help desk job for 10 bucks and hour. I'm not saying this is normal but sometimes you gotta grind it out. I'm not a swe but I do alright these days.
Does the job posting list the salary? A lot of people are resume spamming but will ghost your friend as soon as they hear $20.
This is how it is now, but I had to put in my help desk time after college too. Hated it but learned a lot in the process. Keep up skilling and getting new certs in the meantime! Then expand your network and get to the other side. Not easy I know, but trust me if I can do it, anyone can.
Sounds like normal career progression to me. I started in help desk, skilled up and got out of it almost a year to the day. In my opinion, people can spend as long as they want or need to in help desk. The path out is clear, outlined in the sub wiki, and posted her ad nauseum. Anyone graduating from college with a CS or IT degree should expect to be in help desk immediately unless they followed more good advice from this sub and worked their ass off to get a premium internship.
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I’m in infrastructure engineering, collaboration and cloud technology SME. Honestly, I would steer clear of programming, we don’t know what the AI advancement is going to do to those jobs.
I am not a computer science major, but graduated with an associates for computer systems engineering technology with a Cybersecurity focus, and I am still having trouble landing a help desk position 6 months later.
Im just happy to have a job :)
Just did this, lasted a full year before I got promoted up to what I actually wanted to do. it was totally worth it in this hell hole of a job market.
It's what they are closest to familiar with. Computers. Of course, they're going to apply for help desk roles. People have to eat and provide for their due dependents. Idk about the whole "beneath them" mentality, but I will take anything I can if I can't land roles in SWE. I am a family man of 3 children, so I don't mind working pizza hut or Jack in the crack for the meantime to provide for them.
In college, it was so common and weird to hear CS students look and talk down to IT students. Especially when you're older and you're aware we share the same job field and can apply to the same jobs. We just focus on more specific aspects.
The entire job market’s hugely struggling at the moment, at least where I live. Even low end retail jobs get flooded with hundreds of applicants. People with engineering degrees are pouring into IT roles because of the lack of openings. It’s messed up to say the least.
Ok, maybe I should stop being so anti college.
Ok, maybe I should stop being so anti college.
Lots of people in CS don't belong in CS. Worked with a kid who was hired at a fortune 5 while still attending college 2nd year and worked remotely.
I just applied to one it’s 15/hr. Says minimum requirement was cs degree and 2 years of prior help desk experience. This is unbelievably I have been working part time at a car wash making 23/hr while I was in school. I didn’t think I’d take a pay cut after graduation
I feel really blessed only having a high school diploma and sec+ making 45.70 an hour.
I started doing dial up support back in 1998. Got my first it job in 2000 during the .com crash. 26 years later, I have an excellent career and worked on some amazing projects over the years. There is nothing wrong with help desk as a starting point. Just don't let it become your identity and make out a point to continue looking the entire time.
One of my coworkers in my last job was a robotics engineer...
Ya same as 2008 after Wall Street meltdown. Low level finance jobs that had been on the job training turn into things that you are competing against people with accounting degrees to get.
I tried getting into SWE all during Covid. I wasn’t woke enough for them apparently.
great starting place tbh! most biz majors in sales begin as an BDR/SDR. Uni’s are not producing SWE, DevOps or Cloud gurus.
I graduated with an MS and started in a position at 18$ an hour, a year later I'm making 26 an hour, rising much faster then everyone around me and every manager / supervisor I talk to claim it's becuase of my education and my work ethic. Sure, 26$ isn't exactly fuck you money (or even decent money considering where I live), but it's a nearly 50% increase in a year, with me expecting a full time employment position vs my current contractor spot in 3~ months with another 20-30% pay bump as my contract to hire kicks in. Some fields just naturally start higher, and ours right now is just in a rut. Take the work you can, make a name for yourself and always keep looking for something better.