General Question

netxm's avatar

IT career: Network admin, Web programmer or App programmer?

Asked by netxm (288points) December 18th, 2008

Currently I’m working as a PC tech, but I want to get some education and, so what would be better (I mean regarding salary, demand, job) to choose. I know it is good to know all of these but I need to start…

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8 Answers

funkygal's avatar

If you want you earn much money, then dont choose IT career.
if you still want IT career, you should know what you are good at.

hypeserver's avatar

funkygal That statement is false on so many levels. It depends where you get an IT job that determines your salary. If you go to a big company looking for an IT job then the salary will be higher than if you get an IT job at a high school. The demand for IT jobs is high, but these demands are often filled very quickly by people with years in the business.

netxm Some tech jobs with high demands include Web Designers and Graphic Designers. It’s a popular field right now so it would be hard to get into the industry with one of those jobs at the moment unless you go to a good school for it and have good recommendations.

steven's avatar

Good question.You can always make money doing what you like doing.Decide for yourself what it is you can see yourself enjoy doing.Then again we are not millionaires with our first jobs! Of course we have execellent money these days.However, The money grows with your experince, and expertise. All jobs require hard work, especially initially.This is no compromise.
All the best.

jasongarrett's avatar

If you decide to be a programmer, don’t worry about “web” versus “app.” Just be a good programmer, and specialize when you have the experience and opportunity.

netxm's avatar

Thank you guys, I like all these fields (networks, web and app programing); I subscribe for some tutorials, read books (selfstudy), because I can’t go to a college – too expensive and I have a job. So, I hope learn everything and will start with network, because I have some hands on experience, and will pick up some Java, PHP, JavaScript;

dynamicduo's avatar

There’s still lots of demand for competent IT people, and they pay very well still. It’s just a bit harder to find them in today and tomorrow’s economy.

As for which one, I would say it depends on your skill. Network admins tend to know hardware and Linux/Unix/Windows server. Teamwork is less important here, if you know your stuff you can often run solo, sometimes in smaller companies you may BE solo anyway. Web and app programmers tend to know programming logic, at least one language inside and out though preferably more, know the principles of quality code, can work in a team if needed or at least communicate well with other people. The only difference between web and app programmers is the languages and data storage options, as we go on more apps are being a fusion or developed in a traditional code environment but are actually web apps too, the differences are blending together.

I often find that while someone can be strong in all areas of computing, one tends lean in the direction of hardware and mucking with cables and many computers, or software and mucking with code on one computer.

Don’t worry about schooling now, while I am formally educated in these fields, I was very competent before than because of mucking around on my own. There are lots of tutorials for every language, and you can even host a server on your own computer for local testing so as to learn PHP/MySQL. Good luck :)

cwilbur's avatar

The kind of work you do in all three of those jobs is very different, and the skillsets are different too, although there’s a lot of overlap between web and application programmers. Odds are that you will like one more than the others, but it’s a subjective thing, not an objective thing. See if there’s a way you can shadow someone already working in those fields to get a better idea of which one you like.

wenbert's avatar

i have no regrets going for the web. everything is online and when you have plans, reaching your users(customers) is very easy. see http://ycombinator.com and http://news.ycombinator.com -- lots of web startups there...

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