800 boxes at NASA is small fraction of a fraction of all of the end users nation wide not to mention world wide. That sounds like a niche market to me. No company in their right mind is going to push out Linux to the vast majority of end users because their is no support for it. On top of that, most companies are not going to re-engineer the majority of their applications to run on linux. Most places have a hard enough time getting developers to upgrade apps to work with a different version of Oracle, much less a new operating system. Hell, a ton of developers had problems rewriting crap for XP, I'd love to see the dumb look on their faces if told they have to reengineer their app for Linux! LMAO! I still come across clients that run 16 bit apps because they don't want to have to migrate data or teach their end users a new app. Most people are just lazy and stupid and are resistant to change. That's why Microsoft is going to make billions for a long, long, long time.
It is a niche certification. For these type of jobs, you'll need MAJOR experience to back up that cert. There is no way you'd ever get a job as a security expert without having previously held a job where security was your primary role regardless of the certification. Only thing CISSP does is otherwise set you apart from other qualified candidates. Yes, I'll agree that for management positions, they'll require MIS or even MBA's. But for a standard technical job, particularly infrastructure work, then a degree is definately not mandetory. If you need to use a headhunter, degrees and certifications help, because headhunters simply look for key words.
If one has strong experience with renowned coporations on your resume, you don't need any certifications, as long as you had at least a degree in technology related fields, not even necessarily CS. For instance, if you have solid experience in a large bank, you can easily get a job in any financial institute. If you have experience with big 4, you can work anywhere in the consulting world. However, if you are a new graduate, good school and good scores help you more than a cert. If you have a good internship with a repute company, it would be easy for you to find a job as well. In my opinion, since so many people without much experience went after all kinds of certifications in the past 5 years, those certs become sort of last resort now. Of course, it's just my 2 cents.
That's a little oversimplification. Headhunters get the requirements and 'wants' from the hiring managers.
I totally agree with that. I'm in the exact situation now. When I first started out I would get turned down by the likes of Arthur Anderson and what not because my lack of a degree. 10 years later and my experience is all that matters. And the last job I got through a recruiter was... well, 10 years ago. Every job since has been through contacts.
If he doesn't have any IT experience at all then just going through the motions of getting those certs might glean him some knowledge. Otherwise he should get a CCNA and MCSE and get an entry level job. After a year or so he'll be able to start moving up. If he's moving from a decent paying job now that first year will hurt. Don't expect much more than 30-40k.
I just passed the CISSP a few weeks ago. I think it's a great certification if you have IT experience. Not to mention you can't get it unless you have 4 years of security-related experience. IMO, security is THE up and coming thing in IT, and I'd say that a CISSP would be a great capper to really boost your profile if you are committed to working in this field.
But you don't get paid supporting desktops. You get paid for supporting the back office. Back office is where it at unless you like supporting people who can barely use spell check.
All my friends who have IP Telephony experience are the hot item. Granted I don't think any of them are making more money than me (doing security work) but it seems like there is more demand out there for it.
I'd definitely agree with that too! At my previous job, we put in IP phones, and it was a huge job. At my new job, the firm put in IP phones here at the Chicago office. Lots of places are going to be doing the same thing. I think VOIP is definitely a great field to get into.
Actually, that's a hard argument to sell nowadays because LD has gone down in price so much and it is quite costly to implement one of these systems. The easiest sales are to people already having to buy a new PBX for their company. Or people who want advanced features like voicemail sent to email, email's getting read text-to-speech back to them over phone, personal call attendants, etc.
