ssampier said:
No problem. As long as I enjoy what I do and I’m making 40-50k or less with excellent health benefits, I would be happy.
That's good to know, but just a little advice here - never settle on benefits. If you are good at what you do, expect to be compensated for that. There's nothing wrong about that. There's no need to be humble about what companies pay you.
Good point. I considered get certified as MCDBA. I think I should spend more time in trenches first.
Definitely nothing wrong with spending time in the trenches. It's necessary.
I have heard the same thing about network administrator. Being woke up at 3 am is never fun, but nothing is perfect. You have make sacrifices in everything in life. My father was home all the time, but he made about $30 k a year as a coal miner; a job he absolutely hated.
Well, yea coal mining is one of the worst jobs ever. Your dad would have hated that job if he made $60k a year. My only point was that there are options available working with databases that don't require carrying a pager. Don't rule them out.
Hmmm, never heard of that. If worst comes to worst, doing what I[ like in a “dead-end” job wouldn’t be so bad.
Perfectly legitimate. I know people who are perfectly happy being DBAs or programmers, with no desire to move upwards into management.
Systems Analysis I considered but I thought it was an “Enterprise Developer” profession where you need 10+ years experience. As for Data Analyst that sounds really interesting.
Systems Analysis is something that generally comes with 10+ years of experience. It's just not a feasible career choice until then. I'd also recommend a master's degree.
Just like everything else, like doctor and lawyer. What would you say the most common personality traits? I’m pretty introverted. Ideally, I would like working by myself or a small team half the day, and working with larger teams or putting out proverbially fires the other half.
Do a Google search for "Myers-Briggs" and take a personality test. Take several (there are several available online). A lot of IT professionals are INTJ or maybe INTP. Those are very common. The test itself might help assess what career choices are right for you. What you describe sounds good for DBA or some sort of operations support.
Second is my degree a detriment to my career choice? In about five years I would like to attend graduate school for either Master of Business Administration with emphasis in Information Systems or Master of Information Systems.
In IT, the degree seems largely irrelevant. Only occasionally do consulting firms ask me what my degree was in (computer information systems). Given that many colleges didn't even have IS programs until about 20 years ago, a lot of people in the industry who are more than 40 years old have degrees in other things. When mainframes started being a big deal, companies gave out aptitude tests to people to determine if they were good candidates for being trained in how to write code. Think about it - programming is a relatively new concept in our world. At one point, companies woke up and said, "we need programmers, where are we going to find them?" So, they trained people like accountants and statisticians who had an aptitude for programming. I used to work with a COBOL programmer who used to be a dentist. Yes, a dentist. And I worked with a systems analyst who had a degree in pharmaceuticals. In the long run, the degree choice matters very little, I think. What is most important is the skills and the experience.
