That is a broad question for IT.  Here is one back - what interests you most within the tech industry?  That may help for some suggestions as there is such a wide array of paths.  

First, I think you should decide what ‘verticals’ you’re interested in. 

• Are you into Infrastructure?
• Are you into Business Continuity/Disaster Recovery?
• Are you into Networking
• Is virtualization your thing?
• Automation?
• Cloud?
• Containers?

..etc. Now obviously, a lot of those things have overlap as you should (not necessarily ‘need’) to have a decent grasp of many areas to be highly profiicient in your main focus. 

Once you decide what main focus you’re interested in, my recommendation is to start with learning videos on Pluralsight. I’ve used them for over 10yrs. I started with Trainsignal before PS, but PS bought them over 10yrs ago. Start with ‘beginners’ courses, then go from there.

Build a lab and begin installing, playing, testing, configuring, breaking, reinstalling, etc. everything. 

One last thing I’ll recommend is, be consistent in your learning progress, but also be aware of when you may be facing burnout. Take a break from your learning to recharge yourself. Then, come back to it all with a fresh mind.

Hope that helps!

BTW..I *LOVE* when this question comes up because I enjoy hearing about each person’s journey, how they got to where they’re at...even if they’re not “there” yet, and what they may have done differently in the beginning. 

I love hearing this as well.  I know for me what I took at college was never used again even in my first job and I learned everything I know on my own from reading, study and playing around.  

I’m not sure I learned anything ‘tech-related’ at college, but it helped foster interpersonal skills, along with my time in the Air Force. 

I learned the most at my 2nd & 3rd jobs (1st was a joke). Currently, at my 4th job (post Air Force, that is).

I use a fair amount of college learning, but I took classes specifically that I liked as well.  I learned AD administration in Windows 2000 (useful), right after I took Novell Netware courses focusing NDS Administration (not super useful, except AD was a pretty blatant ripoff of NDS).  I took some computer hadware focused classes that prepped for the A+ cert, but that’s a pretty basic cert and wasn’t a lot of use to me.  I took some programming courses such as Visual Basic and C++.  That wasn’t specifically useful, but programming/scripting in general was useful.  I took a couple basic Linux courses that were very useful, and a AS/400 course that I hated and wasn’t usefull, but I-Series still exists for IBM and and you go into that field, you’re immensely valuable because most of those guys have retired and have to stay on in a contracting capacity because they can’t find these people (I’ve been told there are two colleges in the nation that teach this, and most of those guys go straight to IBM.  I’m guessing mainframe Z-Series is probably the same.  I took some basic web programming/HTML classes which are just okay for usefulness, but the SQL classes for the back-end are still helpful even though I don’t like databasing.  Finally, I took a lot of Cisco classes (CCNA program and some CCNP) and loved it.  I was going to do networking but ultimately took a turn and ended up a systems guy, but knowing the CLI is still very useful considering how many different networking platforms use a CLI matching or similar to IOS.

For me, it’s all about the foundations.  You don’t obviously learn everything you need to know...IT is mostly on the job training.  But for employers, it can show that you can learn, and it teaches some of the basic skills you need.

Hi @April M 

I would say, since you are asking this question here. You are more interested in system administration etc. Therefore, kindly take a look at Windows Server Administration Course, and Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA). With these, you can quickly acquire the required knowledge needed for related roles!Complete Windows Server Administration Course

@April M  If you ask me for learning more on Veeam you can definitely start from Veeam University, a series of free content on our technology. When you became a partner you can advance your knowledge following the courses for sales and presales, they are also free for partners. 

Last, when you will be familiar, you can became an expert attending our paid content with our VMCE and VMCA (engineer or architect) in one of our Training Centers. 

Good luck!

What areas have you looked into so far? It’s good to have a solid base with knowledge in PC/desktops, Servers, Networking as everything has to be stored somewhere and accessed by another device. Following that I think there are many good areas to gain knowledge in, then specialize in the one that you are most interested in. 

-Servers

-Storage

-Networking

-Security

-Backups

-Disaster Recovery

-Programming

-Web Development

-Applications/software administration

-Database Administration

-Virtualization

-Mobile Device Management

These are some of the areas off the top of my head that can really help land jobs. If you specialize in one of them, or have a solid knowledge of all of them you can be a valuable employee.

Personally, the storage, server, virtualization, backup and DR route is what my job role contains, that being said, it still involves networking and security and touches many of the others. 

Hi April,

My advice is to make sure you like what you are going to learn. So maybe do a quick overview of what has been noted here and then take advantage of all the free learning materials out there. Also, there are a lot of fairly cheap online learning courses as well for most subjects.

Now there is also the question of what to learn from the longevity point of view. Example I spent a huge amount of time learning IBM Fastback then 5 years later IBM simply sunk it. Luckily Veeam came along or I would be flipping burgers or making Big Macs. Knowing what the future holds is not an easy task but if you approach the issue carefully you get make educated guesses. Look out for competent and respected sources of information. Then keeping in mind that everyone makes mistakes in predictions add their deductions into your equation. 

Good Luck!! It is never too late to learn!

I’ll echo what others have also said: it depends on what area you want to focus on.

What fascinates you? If you had to spend the next week focusing solely on one subject area and doing nothing but reading about it, what would you choose? Infrastructure? Software? Networking? Security? Find the answer to that question and then jump headfirst into that subject and learn everything you possibly can about it. Then you start developing your passion and career.

If you need some ideas, check out some of the broader certifications that are out there. Comptia is a good source for vendor neutral subject matter. A+ is a great one because it covers a whole breadth of subjects across two exams. You may find what you’re looking for somewhere in that exam prep!

Keep us updated on your journey and all of the cool stuff you’re learning!