I grew up in a town 15 miles from Pella. Pella is an incredibly nice little place. Really nice. I'd live there in a heartbeat if I could find something to sustain my family. I don't think my line of work would easily break through there. Plus the dutch are notoriously cheap.

Pella is a nice town. Been there MANY times for sporting events
and several Tulip Festivals. Central College coeds do tan outside when it warms up :)

I used to live like 10 minutes from Pella.

Ugh, memories of cornfed dutch women are surfacing *shiver*

Where?

Both my brother and sister attended Central.

Question for IT folks:

Are IT degrees required for most IT jobs? What kind of experience is needed? What kind of pay can one expect? :hmmm:

No.

Depends on the job.

Depends on the job and your experience. I used to pull $200k a year consulting on high end corporate networks. The glut of IT workers caused my removal from that industry.

Experience and certifications are the key for IT jobs. IMO the IT market is saturated now, especially network admin and engineers.

The real deal is in programming IMO. I always see programming jobs available.

What's a typical "programmers" day like?

Interesting. They are still feeding students "lots of job growth and jobs in I.T." line.... :hmmm:

Ask a programmer. I'm interested in that field as well. Not sure where to start.

Programmers? What do you do, on a day-to-day basis? :shrug:

That's because training them is big business.

To be fair, I was in Houston at the time. My case was extreme because simultaneously (within a year) the following impacted the Houston IT market:
1. Enron put over 1000 IT workers on the street.
2. Worldcomm put several hundred IT workers out there.
3. HP/Compaq merged.
4. Dozens of dotcom busts.

I was unemployed for a long time before I fell back on my construction skills.

Forget it. You're a little ADD like myself. You'd never have the aptitude/focus required to be a decent programmer.

I think you should tell your students to be plumbers. $75 an hour and like a 1000 percent markup on "materials".

Heh. Kinda what I thought....damn.

How about people who "train" IT or customer support people? Anyone have any inside info on those kinds of jobs?

Talk to Braincase about that.