That's a tricky one. No doubt, as you classify, I'm the active type. But, if I ever had a boss-or at least a direct lead-who actually did their job (kept techs insulated from the non-techs, had the guts to say "no" to management or client), I'd never leave. I imagine babysitting the passive types gets old fast. Are they at least self-aware enough to appreciate the work, or do you get the worst of both worlds: helpless and entitled? How much time do you need to teach MS Access? If you walk in without understanding Venn diagrams, three hours won't help. If you do, that's plenty of time to cover syntax, templating, and data types. And if you followed that conditional, congrats-you're basically a database engineer already. For entry-level certs, I usually recommend CompTIA's. They're industry-recognized, fairly platform-independent, and if you can go from a pile of parts to a working SOHO setup, you'll pass ez-pz. Given your Zork-a-thon, I'm guessing you already know this, but hey-someone else might need the tip. I'm so sorry.we only have them until they find something better to do
MS Access at Egghead Software one Sunday afternoon
3CX
The boss that plucked my wife's resume off the accountant pile holds as her mantra that all employees should leave her employ better people than they came in. More education, more skills, more attractive to other employers. It's a contract - they give you their time, you give them your money and that contract is open-ended. If your employee has grown beyond your needs its in both your interests for them to leave and find something more suitable, singing your praises to everyone they encounter. We're still friends. My wife married her boss to her current husband 20-odd years ago. We watched the Superbowl at their house. It's a winning strategy - recognize that everyone is people but work is just a bunch of tasks. My IT experience is autodidactic AF. I took comp sci so long ago that they taught us Turbo Pascal and Fortran and I sucked bawlz at both. "Man who hack at root soon kill tree" is tattooed on the inside of my forehead. But I needed what turns out to be some seriously complex performance out of a phone system and back in 2016 you could still reasonably roll your own on 3CX. We've just completed a 3-day semiannual audit for our professional certification and apparently we blew the auditor away with our phone system. "If you sold this, midwives would line up outside your door to buy it," she said. Yeah, but then I have to deal with 3CX on behalf of other people.
Seems a bit too humane for most, though I'd prefer to work at a smaller, more specialized place after graduation. My former boss only confirmed what my resume already said: that yes, I worked there between the listed dates. I started clueless about tech, was expected to figure things out on the fly despite lacking any training. I had to get my skills up to using websites like freecodecamp.com, and ended up as one of the go-to troubleshooters. If you can turn it into a design document with an implementation procedure, it might just become another product that some entry-level losers get stuck dealing with. Shit. That'd probably be me.The boss [...] recognize that everyone is people but work is just a bunch of tasks.
My IT experience is autodidactic AF.
but then I have to deal with 3CX on behalf of other people.