I.T. jobs? Requirements?

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Okay currently I'm in one of my weird jobs just to pay bills driving a Cargo Van..... everywhere. I actually sleep in the van unless I want to spend money on a room.

So.... where I'm going with this is I just expedited parts on a long night drive from Ohio to Toronto, Ontario. While up this way I'm curious about the local Canadian economy and pick up a Help Wanted newsletter.

It had some job postings and articles and also a comment about the job market foreseeing a shortage of I.T. workers in Ontario. Now myself I live in Michigan and would consider training up and even moving to Canada.

Now with all that I'm curious to get a little more feedback on the I.T. or I.C.T. fields from anyone who might know more then I do about the work and opportunites and potential income.

Now for one thing I'd always thought, maybe wrongly, that this field was over saturated with applicants so this article surprises me. For example I've often heard the stories of the Useless Computer degree so and so has. I wondered if anyone could clarify what the demand actually is.

Also to me I.T. just means "working with computers". I don't honestly know specifically what the jobs in this field are about. Is it setting up databases or doing Tech Support? Cleaning out Viruses?

Yes... and more. One of the reasons a shortage is predicted in many areas is that there are a lot of different facets to IT work and sometimes a broad definition of IT. You can program, do infrastructure work, databases, support, repair, troubleshoot, systems analysis, quality assurance, design, etc.

Support is usually the easiest to start with but the initial jobs can be horrible for people on the spectrum as it means being on the phone supporting people who are often rude or ignorant about computers or in a panic and want you to panic too so that they can feel like you share their burdens. For the few months I did tech support I noticed NT people could shrug off a bad call fairly easily. I could not.

Programming is easy to get into if you know the language involved. Interviews often revolve around "Can you do it? Show me..." and once your bona fides are proven the rest is easy. And the more niche the language the easier it gets & more lucrative the money. The downside is if the niche burns out then you have to move on. Initial training can often be found on the web by going to Google and typing in "<programming language> tutorial" with Java and .Net being the most popular. PHP and Ruby are used a lot in Web development and of course HTML & Javascript are big for websites. If you do go this route and use on-line resources it is best to have some examples of your work to provide employers so tat even if you do not know all of the terminology they can look at the code and then both sides can talk about the same thing.

Database administration is a huge need and Oracle is the big money item; high demand with serious money for pay... and probably the hardest to learn. MS-SQL and MySQL are other databases used constantly and there is now a big push for cloud based data storage which is typified by noSQL.

Some things that are also big are SAP, Routers (e.g. Cisco), testing software and network security. I could go on for pages but this kind of gives a breakdown of things to look into. Even during the post dot com bubble collapse jobs were still out there... just a bunch of structural unemployment as companies collapsed and people had to find new places to work.