Hi,

I'm thinking of taking a year out of work and doing an Msc at one of the unis in Sheffield in a computing releated subject. There seems to be a couple of routes to go down - either sysadmin/networking or programming/development.

Do any of you guys have any ideas on what sort of subject to study in terms of me getting a good job at the end of it. My preference would be to get into the java development side of things but are there many jobs around here in that area?

I could just do with some advice as I don't want to waste a year of my life and 4k of my own money to end up down a blind alley.

Cheers.

If you want some kind of Java development job then a computing course that offers J2EE ( Java 2 Enterprise Edition ) would be the best route personally. It'd help if you know Java before doing J2EE so if there are any courses that do both of these i'd go that route.

Last time i checked there were loads of J2EE job's and it seemed to be where all the money was.

Aaron

Jobs are out there, but IT is no longer a case of get a qualification = get a good well paid job that it was 5 years ago.

If you have a genuine interest then go for it, you enthusiam will help you explore more than just the technology used in the course. I

If thinking of training into IT just for a good/well paid job - think very carefully. A good qualification will not always mean a good job!

JAVA is currently flavour of the month and being pushed as the answer to all IT ills - however Iwould say there are a few of things to think about before getting into it.

1. JAVA isn't the answer to all problems and there will always be spaces for more niche programmers (e.g. when I was doing my PhD not too many years ago much of the software was still written on FORTAN because it is far faster and more efficient than e.g. JAVA).

2. There may be lots of JAVA jobs at the moment, but if the universities are churning out JAVA programmers then the law of supply and demands says the wages for them will go down.

3. Programming may not be the best area to get into for a long term career - its as easy, if not easier, to outsource than call centres.

4. Check what the MSc will try and teach - I did a 1 year computer science conversion MSc which tried to teach around 6 languages plus other stuff in a year - needless to say it didn't go into too much depth in any area!

If your thinking of networking, you can't really go wrong with Cisco qualifications. Start of with CCNA and progress to CCNP level. I've recently seen BT advertising for CCNA engineers @ £30k but obviously that's with experience as well.

I left the University of Sheffield about 8 years ago with an engineering degree and worked in a technical role for a few years, my job has evolved and changed so much that I do virtually no technical work anymore, I just feel that I'm in the wrong job and would like to get back into the techy stuff.

The Cisco path looks good but there seems to be a lot of people doing CCNA courses so that area may be getting a over crowded as well.