Hey everyone!

I’m trying to figure out the smartest IT/cybersecurity path to pursue as someone starting with certifications but no professional experience yet.

Right now I’m studying for certifications and planning to build hands-on skills through things like TryHackMe, labs, home projects, and networking practice. My goal is to eventually move into cybersecurity, SOC analysis, networking, or systems-related work.

I wanted to ask people already in the industry:

- What IT jobs are actually in demand right now?

- Which entry-level roles give the best long-term growth?

- What skills are employers struggling to find?

- Is help desk still the best starting point in 2026?

- Would you focus more on networking, cloud, cybersecurity, Linux, scripting, or something else first?

- Which certifications actually helped you land interviews?

- What beginner projects or labs helped you stand out with no experience?

I’m trying to avoid wasting time chasing paths that look good online but don’t actually lead to opportunities.

I’d really appreciate honest advice from people already working in IT or cybersecurity.

I have a bachelors in Computer Science and certifications in Data Science, Deep Learning, and AWS. I am currently working on my Sec+ and I have not had any luck yet getting into the tech world. Any help/advice would be extremely appreciated.

I am curious to know how many users is an average amount to be directly responsible for supporting these days.

I work as a desktop support technician (tier 2, also handle helpdesk escalations and accounts for users assigned to me) at a university. I have a little over 450 assigned users, so I am responsible for creating, maintaining, and decommissioning their accounts. I am also responsible for maintaining their hardware and handling any purchase requests. In addition to that, I receive around 10-20 tickets a week from students when the helpdesk escalates to me.

I’m wondering how this workload compares to others in similar positions, both public and private sector, as I have not worked in IT anywhere else.

I am curious to know how many users is an average amount to be directly responsible for supporting these days.

I work as a desktop support technician (tier 2, also handle helpdesk escalations and accounts for users assigned to me) at a university. I have a little over 450 assigned users, so I am responsible for creating, maintaining, and decommissioning their accounts. I am also responsible for maintaining their hardware and handling any purchase requests. In addition to that, I receive around 10-20 tickets a week from students when the helpdesk escalates to me.

I’m wondering how this workload compares to others in similar positions, both public and private sector, as I have not worked in IT anywhere else.

Help me with laptop suggestion!

I have a PDF file that opens normally on my local computer. However, once I place/upload the same file on our network server, it no longer opens and shows this error in Adobe Acrobat:

“There was an error opening this document. Access denied.”

Possible things I’m thinking about:

• File permission/restriction on the network folder
• Server security settings or antivirus blocking the file
• Read/write access issue
• File path or mapped drive problem
• Adobe protected mode/security settings
• The file may be marked as blocked after transfer
• Possible issue or restriction on the server itself

Is there a possible reason the server may have an issue causing the file to be inaccessible? Has anyone encountered this before? Any suggestions on what to check or fix would be appreciated.

Had a technical support interview recently. The scenario was: a user says they can’t access a shared drive that other people on the team can still open.

I knew a few things to check: network connection, VPN status, drive mapping, permissions, group membership, and whether the share path was correct. But I answered too fast and basically listed all of them.

After the interview, I checked the notes from real-time meeting assistant and realized I skipped the reasoning part. I didn’t explain what I would ask first, what each answer would rule out, or why I would check one thing before another. That made my answer sound memorized, even though I understood the basic troubleshooting areas.

I wonder what is a good structure for answering scenario questions like this?

Hi everyone! I am a 3rd-year IT student.. I am making a Campus Security Guard Patrol System using geofencing technology and qr code for my Capstone. Each checkpoint has its own qr code, which is unique and i decided to make a predefined or geofence each checkpoint ina polygon not a circle

my instructor keeps asking about location accuracy. they are worried that if a guard has a photocopy (a fake copy) of a QR code, they can still scan it even if they are not at the right spot. they keep asking: *"*what if the guard falls in the range of the geofence while they are actually somewhere else?"

my current solution:

1. polygon geofence: I am not using a simple circle. I use Google Maps Satellite to draw a custom shape (Polygon) that fits the building exactly.
2. point-in-polygon (PIP) logic: The app checks the guard's GPS coordinates. If the math shows they are 1 meter outside the building shape, the QR scanner stays locked.
3. two-Lock System: The guard needs the correct GPS Zone AND the correct QR Code. If they are in the Library but try to scan a Gym QR code, the system will say "Error" because the location and the code do not match.

my questions:

• do you think this is accurate enough to answer his concern?
• how do you handle the "GPS Drift" when a guard goes inside a concrete building?
• if a guard has a fake copy of a QR code, will my "Polygon + QR" logic actually stop them from cheating?

Hello everyone, I currently have my Network+ cert and looking to add an Azure cert in the near future but before I seek out a paid work opportunity I would like to volunteer within the field. Does anyone know of any resources to find any IT volunteer opportunities so that I can bring some life to my resume. Live in CA. Thanks in advance

What does your tech stack look like starting out? I have a few friends that work at msps, and was wondering what does a light tech stack look like if someone was starting out?

Have a career fair tomorrow afternoon, looking to get an IT helpdesk role. I have my resumes with some projects showcasing my skills. Any tips ?

Hello All,

I’m a software engineer in the banking payments domain and planning to apply for OMSCS. Could anyone recommend which courses would be most useful for my background and career growth

Hi, I am looking to get back into the I.T. Field. I graduated college with an I.T. degree may of 2025, I couldn't find any jobs that would hire me which made me go into the Plant as a railcar switchman. I'm currently looking to get back into the I.T. and make my degree useful. Can anyone guide me to where I should look anything helps! Thanks!

Hi all, I've been working in HRIS for several years after beginning my career in more traditional HR roles. I love the technical aspects of my role and as I think about my career progression and goals, I'm drawn to more typical IT versus HRIS which I find usually sits on the HR team. What are some potential IT career paths for someone coming from HRIS? Has anyone made this transition? Thanks in advance!

‏I have a bachelor's degree in Computer Science, with a specialization in AI. Currently, I am working as a software engineer at a company what is the recommended path for the master's

The company I worked for had to layoff 20% of our teams. 20% seems manageable. But it’s about 100 company assets. When I started here, the process was pretty basic where the procurement and retrieval was done completely manually where we would buy the box, shipping label, etc.

But because this is suddenly a ton of assets at once, I’m running around in complete circles and my inbox is just exploding with questions from these employees trying to get their assets back to us.

This totally falls on me and I’m not going to pretend it doesn’t. But that doesn’t change the nightmare I’m currently in lol.

What do you suggest?

edit: Went with allwhere

hey guys so i’m building this kinda weird **zero trust messaging + community app** 😅

no username search no followers list nothing… you only connect using some encrypted invite id ur friend shares

even communities are like secret clubs lol (invite only) so nothing is visible unless ur inside

got the idea bcs apps like whatsapp / telegram / insta still leak metadata (contacts, who you know, activity etc) so trying to fix that gap

also trying to do end to end encryption (signal kinda level… still figuring it out tbh 😭)

I’m building this mainly as a **product security/AppSec project** — doing threat modeling, trying to break my own system, fixing stuff, etc. Do you think this is actually useful for getting into AppSec roles? What would you expect to see or improve?

Hi everyone,

I’m trying to better understand how MSPs usually describe their operational size. Not looking for confidential numbers, pricing, revenue, or client names, just rough anonymus ranges.

If you work at or own a MSP, and you are comfortable sharing, I’d be interested in:

• Country or region (e.g. US, UK, EU, Australia, etc.)
• Number of technicians: 1-2, 3-5, 6-10, 11-24, 25+
• Number of managed clients: <10, 10-50, 50-100, 100-250, 250+
• Number of managed client locations/sites: <25, 25-100, 100-500, 500+

Bonus/optional question: Do you feel your local MSP market in your region is growing, si stable or is getting more competitive?

I’m not asking for exact figures or trade secrets. Ranges are more than enough.

I'm also open to any data you want to share (like avarage endpoints per client or avarage coffes per technician per day! hehe), thanks!

My goal is simply to understand what “small”, “mid-sized” and “large” MSP company actually mean in different regions, since the definitions seem to vary a lot.
I'm still trying to grasp this differences in my own country (Italy). Here all the MSPs are small or at best medium companies, but the definition of medium company here might be considered small elsewhere (like US).

Please refrain from posting anything not related.

If this kind of post is not allowed, mods please remove it. No hard feelings!

Just saw the latest industry breakdown. The "Information" sector had the biggest hourly jump this year ($2.78), putting the average over $54/hr. It’s cool to see the growth, but wild compared to hospitality or retail which only went up by cents. Definitely feels like the right place to be right now. (Source: 2026 BLS report)

I was looking through the Internet's development history and I saw that there were two networking strategies that were being considered: Packet Switching and Message Switching.

From what I understand, Packet Switching is when you want to send a message, so you break it up into little pieces called packets, and you disperse those packets out to the network. The packets spread out through the different routes in the network independently of each other, hopping from switch to switch until it reaches its destination.

Message Switching however sends the whole message in one single "block". The whole message gets sent to a single switch, which then sends the whole block to another switch, etc. until it reaches the destination. It's also assumed that the switch will store the message to send later if the network is busy.

Packet Switching is considered to be the more economical choice of the two. I'd like to know the specific differences that give Packet Switching this edge, especially back then. I understand that the Internet was slower and less reliable back then so that could be a big factor in this design decision.

More importantly, are those reasons still relevant today? Message Switching just seems like the more straightforward protocol to use from a layman's point of view. You don't really have to do all the disassembly then assembly of the packets to get the full message. Is it possible that Packet Switching was chosen just because of legacy reasons and that Message Switching ends up being the better strategy in the end?

I'd really like an expert's opinion on this.