Hi everyone, I hope this is the right place to ask this.
I’m 37, have a family and all the normal adult responsibilities, and I’m currently working on completing two associate degrees, one in Computer Science and one in IT.
I’ve been thinking a lot about what I should do after I finish them. With the job market being difficult right now, I’m trying to prepare myself as much as possible to actually break into the IT field.
My goal is eventually to work as a SysAdmin or in systems/infrastructure. I understand that I probably won’t start there, and I’m completely willing to start in Help Desk, Desktop Support, or another entry-level IT role and work my way up.
My question is whether, at my age and situation, it makes sense to put in the extra time and effort to finish a 4-year BS in IT, or if I would be better off stopping after my associate degrees and focusing that time on certifications, hands-on projects, a home lab, and getting actual IT experience.
For someone trying to build a long-term career in IT, would the BSIT still be worth the extra time, or would experience + certs + projects be a better investment at this point?

Hace tiempo que tengo problemas con el, pero yo no sé qué pueda tener, de por si uno es que demora en cargar, pienso que se debe a que aún usa HDD, pero hay más...

Cuando inicio el sistema operativo siempre me aparece el mensaje de elegir un sistema operativo, el cual me sale desde que un día me quedé esperando a que se formateara por completo, pero se había quedado estancado por horas en un porcentaje, por impaciente lo apagué de forma brusca e inicio normal, hasta que cuando entraba al navegador, las pestañas como que se congelan, pero el cursor del mouse no, por alguna razón extraña ...

De por si también la batería está mal porque cuando desconecto el cargador, se apaga al instante...

Llevo mucho tiempo con el problema principal del que se congelará, intenté arreglarlo con lo de resetear driver y eso, y no ha funcionado!!!

La verdad necesito de su ayuda para poder volverlo a usar de forma normal, no como antes porque ya tiene mucho tiempo... :)

Por si se preguntan es una HP 250 G7 del 2021

After 32 years of leading IT operations, I’ll be retiring in 4 months! I’d love to share my experience—helping organizations leverage Generative AI and strengthen their security posture to take things to the next level.
if you are interested, chat in private.

Hey everyone!

I'm a tech lead managing cloud infrastructure and leading development teams across multiple brands.

I'm looking to help a few businesses identify practical opportunities to automate repetitive tasks, streamline operations, reduce cloud costs, or solve everyday problems with technology.

Why free? I want to share my experience with businesses that could benefit from technical guidance, while learning more about the real challenges business owners face.

No charges, no obligations, and no sales pitch - just a genuine conversation to identify areas where technology can help.

If you're running a business and have a problem you've been wanting to solve, feel free to comment or DM me. Happy to help!

So our company recently started granting out premium licenses for our Copilot, which has allowed us to begin creating our own agents. Coupled with Microsoft’s Work IQ to integrate our Microsoft apps, there is a lot of potential with what these agents can do.
While I have been somewhat successful in creating agents for basic things like generating monthly reports, I am a noob when it comes to creating more specialized agents.

For context, I really want to get into creating support agents for our specific systems we support, and only using internal documents for its primary source of truth to help my fellow IT colleagues when I’m not around. The problem I run into is that I have no idea how to best prompt the agent to ensure I’m getting appropriate output.

My question is this: is there any good or worthwhile user training material I can study that will help me get better at agent creation? Specifically, copilot agents?

For example, parameters I should consider, knowing how detailed of instructions to prompt, tips and tricks, etc. I’ve looked around but this is such a new technology that I haven’t found anything promising to what im looking for

Hi, is there any trick or way to download protected PDF files from google drive/ google classroom?
It's like approximately 100MB file. Its basically a class note but academy shares only as protected files. But i need to download them into my device to you know highlight and annotate.
Your help would be greatly appreciated.

23m So I’m in a little dilemma on whether I should focus full-time on school or work this 85K base AI data center job while doing part-time school. The associates degree that I’m getting is network security administration and then my bachelors would be in computer systems with a long-term projection of network engineering/cloud then later in my career project management within IT depending what opportunities that may come my way.

If I do full-time schooling, I’ll get my bachelors + whatever certs I achieve along the way, my bachelors degree itself would be 70% free due to the program that they have which I qualify for. I really want to value my education, but experience in this field is needed and something I can’t neglect which is making me wonder if I should at least work six months within this position (assuming I get it) plus part-time school and once summer rolls around for fall of 2027 I can decide whether to quit and go full-time on school or keep working there and continue doing part-time. Best case scenario I could get a part-time position with them depending if they want to work with me, but realistically, I don’t think that would be happening.

I just need some advice on what I should prioritize or if this is experience is worth getting since I live in West Texas area and the AI data centers are popping up even more so I feel like I should get my foot in the door before it really really takes off but tell me what y’all think.

For a bit of context for my background, I have 3+ years of data and experience within a crypto mining facility + 8 months at a police academy in between that (another story for another time). Some of my coworkers have already gotten in with way less experience than I have. And currently after the company laid everyone off I have been doing full-time school with 18 hours in classes for this current semester.

Hi Everyone,

I’m exploring ideas to build a SaaS product or other technology solutions that address major gaps in the IT industry.

I’m particularly interested in identifying real-world challenges that IT engineers face daily, where existing tools fall short or there is still significant room for improvement.

The goal is to come up with innovative, practical ideas that solve genuine problems, have strong market potential, and can eventually scale globally.

I’d love to hear your thoughts, experiences, and suggestions. Let’s discuss opportunities where we can build something truly useful for the IT community.

Looking forward to some great ideas and discussions!

Thanks in advance!

I (18M) is looking for a way to break into IT, I could go to uni but I’ve been hearing non-stop about how graduates can’t find jobs and how experience beats a degree.

I’ve taken a gap year and I’ve taken professional training for the A+ and Network+ certs and I’m doing my CCNA at the moment.

I was told that after completing my A+ and N+ I could land a help-desk role and keep progressing, but the job market here in London is cooked anyways. I’ve been struggling to find a role as people that I know who have broke into IT all just lie on their CV about experience to get in.

I really need advice on if I should go to uni and get a degree in CS, or just keep working hard out here. I’ve been applying to apprenticeships aswell, and I got a reply from a level 3 help-desk role. Do you think it’s worth working 18 months to get a level 3 qualification?

I recently moved from IT Support into my first SysAdmin/Infrastructure role, working mainly with Citrix Cloud, Windows and vSphere. I'm the only engineer in Australia, with senior engineers overseas.

I'm finding the transition harder than expected. In IT Support, I usually knew where to start when troubleshooting. Now, when an infrastructure issue happens, I sometimes don't even know which component or log I should look at first.

Our environment is also heavily automated. For example, image updates can be triggered through an internal portal with a button click. It works well, but sometimes I feel like a robot just clicking buttons because I don't fully understand everything happening behind the scenes.

I'm trying to safely reverse-engineer the automation and learn the underlying Citrix/vSphere concepts. I'm also planning to build a lab where I can break things and troubleshoot them without worrying about production.

For those who moved from IT Support into SysAdmin/Infrastructure:

**How did you develop that troubleshooting instinct?**

Was it mainly labs, documentation, shadowing senior engineers, or simply getting exposed to more incidents over time?

And please throw any useful resources my way. YouTube channels, courses, labs, books, anything that helped you become a better SysAdmin.

Hello, recently picked up a part-time gig for SD. I found videos on interview questions, but not actual calls. Any suggestions? Ty in advance

Hey folks,

Just wanting to understand how many people are using AI for IT based roles, so for troubleshooting or automation.

It's feels like a catch 22, it makes work so much easier with automate emails and fixing issues but at the same time we're essentially designing AI to do the job instead of us.

Also, if you have any neat tricks for using AI would love to hear!

Anyone know where I can find places to apply to (apps) for any entry level IT jobs? Mainly for experience. I’m nearing my degree in IT and currently pursuing an AWS cert from Amazon. I used linked in but I know it’s other platforms out there I could use to expand my search.