Are any of you IT guys?

[Highlandfire]

Esp from a developer standpoint? I am needing a career change and have been told SQL Administration then learn some dev work

[TarPanther9180]

I'm in IT, but on infrastructure support side of things. ASP and .NET developing would be good to get into. However, I would say IT is a hard field to get in right now, especially entry level.

[TheSaint]

*Moved to Nerdvana*

[Doyle]

*Moved to Nerdvana*

My thoughts excactly.

[djshinodalp]

I'm a developer and manage a dev team @ a bank in Charlotte.

If programming is a serious interest, then get into coding (Java, .NET, .ASP, etc). If not, you'll get frustrated pretty fast and have a very hard time getting an entry level job.

For breaking into IT, I will suggest one of the following -

• Learn SQL and get an Oracle certification. Buy a book on data warehousing and learn to use an ETL tool - Informatica, SSIS, etc... any. Many companies hire folks with entry level knowledge in this field and will not be as tough to break into.
  
• Networking. Certify and apply everywhere.
  
• Focus solely on databases - get multiple oracle certifications and work on free/part-time database jobs that you can show on your resume as work done.
  

[Sapper]

If you're talking web development, I always find people who are complete novices pickup Drupal in a few months. It is completely modular so there is little to no actual programming needed. Although, PHP is the base language it uses.

Again, if you are talking web dev - php is my language of choice. In fact, I would look into a LAMP style package that includes mySQL (as you mentioned in the OP) as the preferred database.

Anything .NET is a pretty easy learning curve, although I try to stay away from ASP.

Anything Java too is a good starting point - and I would recommend it over .NET any day.

There are tons of resources out there that will lay it all out for you - giving you an easy choice on what you might prefer.

Check out:

http://www.wrox.com/

It is basically a p2p site for all developers.

[cookinwithgas]

If you look like a decent human being that can dress themselves and talk to people about technical issues, IT Security is a pretty good way to go.

A good DBA is always hard to find to me. If you can get SQL and Oracle in equal amounts there are probably companies that could use you.