borismkv

No. Studying IT in college is rarely worth it. You're better off learning some skills that are missing from most IT people, like technical writing. I switched from an IT major to English with an emphasis in business writing. I still work IT, but every manager I've had has loved me to death just because I can write up customer facing documents better than most of our marketing guys. Plus I make the company money by being a skilled consultant.

It depends. If you have DoD clearance and some IT experience or certs, you can get in with just about any government IT contractor. I don't know if Google does any of that, though. Generally with them you're going to be working with Linux, so the Red Hat certs are a good idea. If you want to get a masters in IT, go for either a security discipline or MBA. A straight masters in IT isn't worth the cost or effort, since there's a pretty solid cap on the income for general IT workers that will keep you below 6 figures unless you have heavy certifications like CISSP or CCIE.

I did government contracting myself for a while, but couldn't stand it. Dealing with Federal government in the US is a drinking man's game. And I am not a drinking man.

Get IT certifications, first off. Those are generally the key to moving up in the IT world. If you have no certs, you can't get past HR managers that don't know what the job actually requires beyond what they are told, and they are always told to look for specific certs like MCSE, CCNA, CISSP, etc.

Health Industry is Bureaucracytastic. Be prepared to spend long hours waiting for change orders to go through, and be aware that you are under a strong obligation to protect data. You're also going to be dealing with a lot of poorly designed software. Troubleshooting skills are a must.

They probably had some inaccurate information. Might be that their software will only work up to Windows 7.

Get a degree, but avoid majoring in IT. Take IT classes for your Minor, and major in disciplines that will teach you skills that IT people hate. Like communication or writing.

One of the problems I see constantly is people who have majored in IT but don't have any knowledge of how to work with the systems they need to. One coworker I had got a bachelors in CIS, but he had no troubleshooting skills, and could not grasp technical details. He was a great guy, but no way was he meant to do Infrastructure work. He ended up moving into Sharepoint Development, which is a good field if you're, you know, into that.

I majored in English, but spent my entire college career working for mom and pop computer repair shops around town and seamlessly (well, almost seamlessly) transitioned into small business consulting. Right now I do enterprise consulting for some pretty big companies you've heard of but I will not name :D

If you want to learn fast, get into consulting. If you want to spend a year working and turn into a freaking IT rock star, get into Managed Services. If you just want to get a paycheck and be bored all day, get into Internal IT.