IT Careers

[Klendathu]

School is fine, certs are fine. Try to avoid committing yourself to spending too much money, though. It's tough to start paying back student loans when you're making $12 an hour jocking a helpdesk (salary is figurative, don't know what HD jobs pay these days). Just bear in mind that the degree and certs help you out in the beginning. Once you've been in the field for 3+ years, it comes down to what you can put on your resume, to what you KNOW and what you can DO. If I'm choosing between hiring someone who's got some piece of paper saying they know Exchange, and someone who can tell me step by step how they built a new backend Exchange server for their company, I'm going with option B every single time.

Cisco owns Linksys now, but it's not like Linksys got better for it. IMO their products actually went downhill for some reason after they started getting stamped with the Cisco logo. All that was just a cash grab for Cisco. But honestly, comparing the two is like apples and oranges. It's not the same thing, it's not in the ball park, it's not even the same league. (it's barely even the same fucking sport, to finish the PF reference). Cisco=Enterprise, Linksys=SOHO, generally.