A little career advice?

[Draconysius]

I'm at a crossroads now, trying to decide whether to go into school with audio engineering or computer repair.

On one hand, I've written, recorded and produced my own material for a few years. Also, I seem to have a natural drive; when I hear music on the radio I think "God, this would sound so much better if I had my way with it". However, things have changed. I used to churn out music week after week, one song in one day, but last year I managed two singles and two End of Flowers songs, not counting the countless times I started working on something but it never went anywhere. But the six month program I have in my sights includes one year of job assistance/placement, the chance for relocation and requires no prior education.

Computer repair requires both standard classes, general field and occupational courses, which with an associates would go for about two-and-a-half years. However, there's a job market for it EVERYWHERE and the average pay is pretty damn good. Also, I've always been fascinated with computers, still am after being around them every day, and have actually been getting quite interested in the hardware side as of late. Also, it's a community college about 10-15 minutes away and I can work out a plan, whereas the audio studio is an hour's drive, two days a week but will vary depending on the studio's activity.

Of course I'm weighing the options and talking to my friends and family about all of this, but I thought some of you might have some advice to give or experience to share, seeing as a few of the long-term members are all old and crusty. ;D

[Fruitbat]

Let me just say this: Do the job that makes you want to get out of bed in the morning - because 10 years down the track, you'll still be leaping out of bed to get to work.

When you get old and crusty, you'll wish you had chosen the job that filled your heart with joy and light.

[Draconysius]

Originally Posted by Fruitbat

Let me just say this: Do the job that makes you want to get out of bed in the morning - because 10 years down the track, you'll still be leaping out of bed to get to work.

When you get old and crusty, you'll wish you had chosen the job that filled your heart with joy and light.

Definitely good advice. I suppose I should figure that out before anything else.

[Saya]

Absolutely what Fruitbat said! I think you could probably get a good job either way, you just need to figure out which you would absolutely love.

My dad does computer repair but hates it now. With him the problem was I think that when he went to school, DOS was all the rage, now computers are far more complicated than they were when he was entering the field. You'll probably need retraining every so often in the years ahead, so thats something to keep in mind too, you're going to need to keep the drive to keep learning and adapt when things change dramatically.

[HumanePain]

What Fruitbat AND what Saya said:

a) Do something you love, and

b) a computer career will require continuous training.

Now I am fortunate in that I love computers and love training and love learning new things, but also listen to this:

I LOVE music. My computer career pays the way for me to buy instruments, concert tickets, clothes, books and everything I like related to music, pays for travel (I have seen the B-52's in Dallas Texas!) and for many other hobbies I love.

So if you LOVE music and just LIKE computers, it is still worthwhile to get the good paying computer job you like, to do something you LOVE.

Now, if like Saya's dad, you not only not like computers, but hate them, well then you will have to find another way to put food on the table.

One of my best friends is a professor of music at Chico, and has jammed with Maria Muldaur and plays keyboards with the ex-bassist of the Grateful Dead, Phil Lesh, but it took him until now to make just half what I earn. But he does what he likes, and teaches music to young people.

[Draconysius]

Hmm... Just what is your computer career, Humane? Not asking for a name or anything, just what kind of stuff you do.

[Catch]

I vote audio engineering....

[KontanKarite]

I don't see how this is a hard choice. First off, a bachelor's degree is going to take you 4 years and this is now the minimum standard when it comes to education.

You're looking at 2.5 years of computer science training and then you're trying to make a choice between that and 6 months of music production?

I think the choice is crystal clear, Drac. You do BOTH of them. It doesn't really matter which one you start with.

[HumanePain]

Originally Posted by Draconysius

Hmm... Just what is your computer career, Humane? Not asking for a name or anything, just what kind of stuff you do.

Because of my experience (I have been in computers since the 1970's), I wear many hats covering hardware and software support. I am third level technical support. I help fix networks, storage, operating system misconfiguration and identify driver bugs, procedural problems (read: operator error), etc. and discuss the problems with Customers and make recommendations, compose failure reports, help tune system performance and many other wide ranging troubleshooting activities for banks, government agencies, multinational corporations, charity organizations, and any other entity that buys our data replication, disaster recovery oriented hardware and software.

Let me give you some specific examples:

a) Today I worked all day on one case (usually I work between 5 and 10 cases a day). I was on a conference call for four and a half hours, troubleshooting the cause of a severe performance problem for the webservers of a travel reservation company.

It turns out that our hardware was working as designed. The operating system was working as designed. The problem was not in the individual components making up the entire application platform, but the way the components were (haphazardly) put together without planning or consulting.

The storage hardware has multiple ports, in order to provide alternate paths (for fail-over and I/O load balancing purposes) but the Customer had connected the servers and configured the Storage network layer in the operating system to put everything down one path on one port only. A dozen servers, with 31 disks each all fighting over one port. Naturally the I/O was bottle-necked by the one port trying to service I/O.

The immediate "stop the bleeding" solution was to tune an operating parameter that throttles I/O at the server side on all servers connected to the problem port. The long term solution is to evaluate the loading, the number of disks, the dozen servers and spread the servers out across multiple storage ports instead of using just one port.

As we implemented my recommendation I must stay on the conference call with this multimillion dollar Customer to make sure the performance did improve and they were able to recover their applications.

This was a tuning and configuration performance case.

Then there are:

b) "break-fix" cases. Another case yesterday had an I/O path intermittently failing, resulting in many errors, many automated alerts being sent to the Customer's pagers and cell phones at all hours of day and night, and impacting performance and reliability.

We installed a "sniffer", but not the usual network sniffer but a storage I/O related sniffer. I instructed the field engineer how to configure the analyzer trigger, made sure we captured a good trace, and then they uploaded the trace to me. I analyzed the trace and found that when the server card host bus adapter was sending I/O, it was not making it through the fabric and on the other side where the storage was connected, it never received the I/O.

We now have the switch vendor (switches make up the fabric) to evaluate the switch error statistics and replace the switch as needed.

Then there are corrupted databases. I love troubleshooting those!

I could write pages and pages of the many cases I go through in a typical week or month, but I am sure this post is already TL/DR.

[Draconysius]

Originally Posted by KontanKarite

I don't see how this is a hard choice. First off, a bachelor's degree is going to take you 4 years and this is now the minimum standard when it comes to education.

You're looking at 2.5 years of computer science training and then you're trying to make a choice between that and 6 months of music production?

I think the choice is crystal clear, Drac. You do BOTH of them. It doesn't really matter which one you start with.

Hmm... true. If it's just a six month thing, there's no reason to cut off my other options.

[Saya]

Originally Posted by HumanePain

Now, if like Saya's dad, you not only not like computers, but hate them, well then you will have to find another way to put food on the table.

Just to clarify, he used to love computers, just didn't think he realized how radically things would change, and he's sick of trying to catch up all the time.

[HumanePain]

I attend roughly a half dozen classes a year. One has to or becomes obsolete.
Cluster technology, virtualization, dynamic provisioning and storage tiering, knowledgebases, replication and de-duplication are all constantly being enhanced in the competition for Customers. Personally I like it, but so do many others in my field. Because there is little manual labor involved and all the "heavy lifting" is done with our minds, there are a lot of white haired guys, some in the 70's and 80's still working in Information Technology. We get older and wiser. And richer.

[Saya]

No doubt! Does your employer cover the classes, or is it something you do on your own? I remember when we were kids we had a lot of road trips so dad could get to classes arranged for him, which for some reason they would decide to host eight hours away.

I was thinking for a long time of doing computer science, dad was supportive but had that very pained look in his eye XD when I decided on Religious Studies I think he was kinda relieved.

[HumanePain]

Almost all my classes are employer paid or employer reimbursed using my expense account.

There are some classes I take on my own every year that I pay for because they are unrelated to my employer's business; they are for my personal growth:
laser technology, applied polarization, TeraHertz imaging and spectroscopy, and other nonlinear optics related classes. I also pay my own way for memberships in various professional organizations, so I can network at conferences every year with others in my field and in the optics field, which is handy should I ever need another job. Ditto for books, CDROM based training and videos and lab kits. These are all tax deductible.

[Fruitbat]

I have worked with quite a few guys who are working with computers for the money, and found themselves regretting the decision, because it wasn't what they loved.

Whatever you decide, give it 100%, pour everything of yourself into it and that's what will make the difference between ordinary and extra-ordinary.

Good luck. All the best.

*enough profound fruity. Flaps off to cause havoc somewhere else*

[Timeless Rebellion]

HumanePain is probably the one who knows most about a computer profession here, so he is probably the one you could get the most information from.
However, I have experienced when I started to have an interrest for hardware that it started out awesome, and I learned to tell the North Bridge from the South Bridge, the CPU cooler from the chipset cooler and the video card from the Lan card, but then I read my first actual book on it.
Now the fact that our school gave us books from 8 years ago where top tech advice was to not drop your monitor on the floor did not fill me with joy, but it was bearable. However, I quickly learned that it would eventually drain my soul slowly.

If you are gonna commit to an education in computer repair and anything it comes with, you will have to be absolutely SURE that you are not gonna sit halfway through the duration and think "Why did I go for this...?"
I ended up that way, not due to a bad choice on my end, but it sucks nonetheless.
I was 1½ years into an education that I didn't really want.
By the time just before I dropped out, I felt like jumping in front of the train instead of jumping on it. (I wasn't suicidal, just felt like crap)

However, if you really know you WANT computer repair, it can be a fantastic thing to do.
I know this guy that brought his knowledge about computer hardware to the point where he could outdo a lot of tech guys even though he never took any classes on it.
Whenever he is working actively on a network or building a computer, he is smiling and happy. So it really depends.
Can you see yourself fixing computers in 10 years? Can you see yourself as a sound tech in 10 years? That's probably the most important question to ask.

Ah, but I have rambled. I wish you the best of luck in whichever of the two you end up doing

[HumanePain]

Based on the previous posts, I want to clarify a thing or two:

I work on enterprise based servers (no Star Trek puns please, I am already nerdy enough!), I do NOT fix "PCs".

The machines I maintain and the software that runs on them are used by international banks, military, huge consumer based companies like cell phone and cable companies etc. These are servers that are up and running 24/7/365 and lose a million dollars for every minute they are down.

I should be clear that this kind of tech support comes with very high profile, high stress demands, and so it is more than just a technical challenge; one must be able to think as a lawyer when divulging bad news to a Customer, think like a politician when on a conference call together with competitors and Customers, and of course have a quick mind to analyze symptoms and data and arrive at accurate conclusions, then discuss them in a way that will not reflect poorly on my company.

THAT's why they "pay me the bucks". Make sure you can handle stress well before you go for this kind of career.

[Draconysius]

Thanks for the suggestions, everyone; I really appreciate the advice. You've all made very good points that I need to consider with this, so again thanks!