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Google IT Support Professional Certificate

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Re: Google IT Support Professional Certificate

#121

Post by AskewEgret »

freehunter wrote: post #50
leesalminen wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a fair point. I guess I didn't realize how bad it was in the Midwest. That's quite unfortunate.

It's not like that everywhere. Yeah if your city is imploding, you're going to struggle to find any job, which is of course one reason why the city is declining and wages are stagnating. But $50k in Boulder isn't $50k in Flint or Gary, so comparing salaries like that is kind of ridiculous. More than half a decade ago I was hired out of an internship at a fairly average company doing fairly average work in a mid-sized…

I understand the sentiment you're going for, but Gary has a commuter train that goes to downtown Chicago in less than an hour. With free (working) wifi. I've known some guys that have worked in high paying IT jobs in Chicago while renting a house on the beach in the part of Gary that is surrounded by National Park Service land (Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore). Rent and a monthly train pass was around $500 per person. They rarely locked their doors and one of the guys got his car broken into once in the 3 years they did it, which would probably be considered decent in SF. Their typical weekend involved dragging a cooler full of beer and a volleyball net onto the sand.

Re: Google IT Support Professional Certificate

#122

Post by user5994461 »

jstewartmobile wrote: post #46

Between very-very large scale integration, walled-garden consumer devices, and the everyday nature of distributed computing, IT is a dead man walking. When each compute node becomes essentially a disposable quantity, what does that do to the value of the people who service them? People will say "What about networking?", as though locality makes a difference here. I've seen so many local network deployments where a gu…

I've seen that at big brand name. The network was dead multiple times every week for entire hours. It's so terrible.

There would be a dozen contractors in the room. They discuss who works on what in the morning, then the network is down and noone can do anything for half the day.

Re: Google IT Support Professional Certificate

#123

Post by datguacdoh »

aesthetics1 wrote: post #109
danans wrote: post #92

I got started at Google years ago in the IT support department. I was an atypical case because I have a CS degree from an prestigious university, but at the time, I was caught in the fallout of the dot-com bust, so I needed any job I could get. I eventually interviewed successfully to become a SWE, but my experiences working with the broader swath of people (not just CS/CE grads from elite programs) in IT really open…

It's hard to find anything about working at Google that isn't geared towards SWE. What job title(s) would someone working for Google in IT support hold? Is the interview process as grueling as the SWE positions, or is Google looking for generalists?

In IT, it depends on the level, but early on we look for generalists, and then expect people to specialize over time. The interview process is similar to SWE, but for new grads the technical bar is lower. The title is Corporate Operations Engineer, unless you're in our IT Residency Program, in which case it's IT Resident.

Re: Google IT Support Professional Certificate

#124

Post by ClassyJacket »

kbwt wrote: post #111
w8rbt wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IT is not CS. Not even similar.

It seems to be a common confusion in the EU. A lot of people refer to CS as IT where I live.

Here in Australia, most people just think "literally anything to do with computers = IT". So when I talked to course counselors they said if I wanted to be a programmer, I had to do an IT degree. Not even close.

Software engineering, or maybe CS, is what I wanted. I hadn't even heard the phrase "computer science" when I started university. The total incompetence of the course counselors at the core function of their job contributed to putting me on a path that eventually lead to the ruin of my life.

I did a degree that claimed to contain software development, but was in the IT category - I never learned of the concept of version control (at all), how to use makefiles, exception blocks, performance profiling, or a bunch of other practical stuff.

Now I'm wasting away in an IT support job. I can't blame everything on that, and most of the responsibility for where I am today is on me - especially for not turning it around better after I realised my mistakes, but I feel like the confusion between "IT", "CS", and "Software engineering" definitely kickstarted a path that wasted alot of my most valuable learning time.

Don't trust course counselors - or other people in general.

Re: Google IT Support Professional Certificate

#125

Post by datguacdoh »

user5994461 wrote: post #115
datguacdoh wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We actually expect our support team (at least portions of them) to build internal apps that automate workflows for ops work or for users. It's not always as complex as a full soft eng role, but some of our IT staff do move on to those positions internally based on the work they do in IT. I think it really depends on the company you do IT for, and what they expect for the role. At Google, our IT staff are full time en…

Are you talking about SRE? They're full time engineers with CS degrees, they have nothing to do with IT.

SRE are different, I'm talking about IT staff. The job title is corporate operations engineer.

Re: Google IT Support Professional Certificate

#126

Post by JauntyHatAngle »

ClassyJacket wrote: post #124
kbwt wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to be a common confusion in the EU. A lot of people refer to CS as IT where I live.

Here in Australia, most people just think "literally anything to do with computers = IT". So when I talked to course counselors they said if I wanted to be a programmer, I had to do an IT degree. Not even close. Software engineering, or maybe CS, is what I wanted. I hadn't even heard the phrase "computer science" when I started university. The total incompetence of the course counselors at the core function of their…

Also Australian, I did an IT degree, chose electives to do with Software Development, and now work as a Software Developer.

Not sure why your experience was so different? Sounds like you got a raw deal though.

Re: Google IT Support Professional Certificate

#127

Post by shiftpgdn »

user5994461 wrote: post #116
shiftpgdn wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At 2-10x the cost of on prem systems, sure. There are plenty of things AWS doesn't work for.

At 1/10th or 1/20th of the on premises costs you mean. AWS works better and cheaper for almost everything that involve more than a rack of hardware.

The other way around. The cost to use Amazon never works out once hit more than a handful of high workload systems. I write out the proposal for our C levels every quarter and the increased cost of going to Amazon is enough to hire 2 full time level 1 sysadmins.

Edit: This obviously is super variable. If you have a low load worldwide need AWS will win. Or rapid bursts of traffic. Or hundreds of other scenarios where it makes sense. It is not a one size fits all solution though.

Re: Google IT Support Professional Certificate

#128

Post by fenwick67 »

rb808 wrote: post #31
dexwiz wrote: post #9

IT Support will replace factories in Middle America. These are jobs that are 1)Trained quickly 2) Geographically distributed 3) Cheap. IT Support needs to be onsite for hardware, but any Software can be distributed in smaller cities or work from home. Maybe Google will have a real help line one day? It is also a great path into technology for those who did get CS degrees from a top school. Side note: In the video, al…

Especially as I think many dev jobs will disappear. More free, open source platforms that are powerful and free but just need some configuration, customization and support. Developing getting simpler to becoming just config anyway. We're already seeing this, you dont need to know anything about pointers any more, just hooking up libraries.

I was amazed to find out last year that both my mom and dad both have a solid understanding of SQL queries - one is a nurse and the other is an insurance adjuster.

Re: Google IT Support Professional Certificate

#129

Post by datguacdoh »

tvanantwerp wrote: post #105

I'm not convinced of the quality of this course material. I thought I could try it out, see if I could fill some gaps in my knowledge. I tried out some of the quizzes and they were just bad. Course 1, week 2, for example, asks you to match items to where they go on a motherboard. This quiz is flatly wrong. It asks you to match a PSU to the rear Ethernet port, and a SATA cable to an IDE port. Being so obviously wrong…

I sent this on to the right people. We audited the course and had a private external beta, so it's surprising to see obvious errors like this. I imagine there might be something else going on with the labs.

Re: Google IT Support Professional Certificate

#130

Post by jstarfish »

ClassyJacket wrote: post #124
kbwt wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to be a common confusion in the EU. A lot of people refer to CS as IT where I live.

Here in Australia, most people just think "literally anything to do with computers = IT". So when I talked to course counselors they said if I wanted to be a programmer, I had to do an IT degree. Not even close. Software engineering, or maybe CS, is what I wanted. I hadn't even heard the phrase "computer science" when I started university. The total incompetence of the course counselors at the core function of their…

The school could have done you better, but don't externalize your problems. Most schools' CS degrees won't teach you version control, makefiles or any of that practical stuff. You learn it for fun, incidentally, or on the job.

I was once in your shoes. Same background, same regrettable life choices, same potential future.

If you want to develop, do it. Start by looking at the crap software your company likely pays hundreds of thousands of dollars for and think about how you could do it better. Start by actually trying to supplant it with something of your own creation.

I have a generic degree. All those "practical" things you lament missing out on, I learned by just doing it. But I never had cause to learn what big-o notation was or how to navigate a b-tree...you know, that non-practical knowledge a CS degree would have endowed me with. The lack of such has only stopped me from working at Google. Plenty of other shops are not in the business of recruiting only those who can write the freshest sorting algorithms.

Just don't spend the rest of your life in a job you hate, condemning yourself for being put upon. It takes little effort to invoke large changes.

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