Hey everyone! I've got a thousand bucks to spend on career development in the next two weeks, thanks to my awesome boss who's getting ready to move. I'm pretty lucky that my company values personal growth. A bit about me: I've spent my life tinkering with tech as a hobby, but I've only been in the professional field for about a year. I support around 350 internal users and manage about 400 corporate devices, mostly handling T1 break/fix tasks and account management. Recently, I've taken on bigger responsibilities with our systems, particularly Intune, and I enjoy working on infrastructure and device management more than user troubleshooting. However, I'm still figuring out my exact career path and I'm looking for suggestions on how to use this stipend wisely. I'm already using CBTNuggets for my MD-102 cert and I bought Andrew Taylor's Intune Cookbook, but I'm open to other resources like books, online courses, or even hardware that could help with my career. Any ideas?
4 Answers
How about investing in a data management certification? The CDMP certification from DAMA could be a good fit. You could buy a study guide and maybe pre-pay for the exam, which might have package deals available.
If you're looking for hardware, check out servers on eBay that you can use as lab machines. It'll be a hands-on way to learn and experiment.
You might want to consider building up a home lab with any spare components you have, then use the stipend to buy the missing parts or new hardware that could help you learn more about server management and virtualization.
Thanks for the suggestion! I think building a lab sounds fun. Any specific components or setups you'd recommend?
Consider getting yourself an ergonomic chair for your workspace while you continue to develop your skills. It’ll help keep you comfortable as you dive into your studies!
Haha, that's true! But I think I'll wait on the chair and focus my budget on courses and tools for now.
That sounds interesting! I hadn't thought about data management before. I'll definitely look into it.