What else could you do with that time? Maybe if you're made redundant there's more to be gained from extending your accounting skills towards liquidations? Or something else to help you pick up a new job? (No idea if that's practical, just an example.)

To take the M$ side as an example, while I did learn 3 or 4 useful tricks about small systems, the main area you learn thing you couldn't learn on your own from an MCSE is various points about Active Directory and IIS and Exchange. So unless they fall into your client base, I'm not convinced the MCP/MCSE is worth the time/money. Although the official course books are a useful read - they give you a sense of how things were meant to work in WIndowsland.

Practical network security isn't really in the MCSE... some say A+ is better for that, but I don't know.

Websites is best covered on a different course, one suspects.

(Some depends on how much you already know, of course.)

Of course, if having piece of paper helps and MCSE is your thing, T*stk!ng is your friend.

IT support bad. Especially in the MS arena, it is a young man's game.

If I were you, and currently an accountant, I would get specialized training in order to ensure you can survive offering independant accounting consultancy to medium and large business. Perhaps also international tax stuff? (I know someone who's made a fortune by knowing about 2 tax jurisdictions and working out how to juggle between them.) I don't know exactly what it is you do. But I definitely think that you should not enter IT, especially IT support, when most of the people I know who are there are trying to get out of it.


--
<ni> komet: You are functionally illiterate as regards trashy erotica.

Home user IT support is a mugs game. To make ends meet yourself you'd need to charge at least £40 per hour. Very few people would want to pay anything like that, when the computer cost £300.

Small business support might be a goer. If you can go in and sort out their books and their IT, I can see a market for that. Then again, many small businesses hire a few young guys to do stuff, who are good with computers as well as their proper job, and rely on them for their IT support.

So there might not be much money there either.

I've been looking around as well (just in case) and there doesn't appear to be a lot of money in anything much anymore.
--
Cheese is not a hat. - clock

Have you considered embezzlement?

From what I gather, people employing an MCSE expect an incompetent youngster and the salary matches that. Support is also a nasty game because often you're only visible when you fail. Nobody ever calls IT and says "The WAN has been running without a hitch for 6 months. Well done."

Saying that, I do know a guy who makes a living doing support for local small companies. Not a brilliant living though.

I've had a look at it and it's more trouble than it's worth. 

Home users resent having to pay someone call out fees as it's "just a computer".  And they pay you once and then think they own you forever, and will not countenance a monthly support payment.  And want 24 hour support.

Small businesses are your way forward if you really want to go for it.  But as times get harder, they'll want to reduce their operating costs and probably won't have too much spare cash for a whizzy new website and it'll be cheaper (in their eyes) to buy a new computer than fix a broken one.

What I do see as an opportunity is cheap tax returns for contractors.  As layoffs increase into Q1 2009, I would think that by Q3-Q4 2009 big businesses will have realised they can't run their departments with no staff, but have headcount restrictions so want only contractors.  Offer a comprehensive accountancy service to these people and you should be picking up some work.

IMHO, anyway.

Also, learn Hindi and perhaps Urdu, and moonvine would suggest Tamil as well.

That's what I'm doing.

I agree with whoever it was that said stay with accounting.

My experience in trying to find someone willing to do small bits of accounting and tax advice is really hard. Everyone wants to be on some retainer. Small businesses with a few employees (one  in my case) sometimes need someone to do things like fill out a confusing tax form or generate a payroll. I took accounting classes at school, so I'm not completely out to sea, but most other people like me that I talk to have no clue what a debit or credit is, let alone understand the language tax forms are written in. The only thing I need an accountant for is to fill in my year-end form, for which I pay about $250. I have accounting software that I don't like, but at least understand, so day-to-day stuff isn't required, but it is for many people. (I just send the year-end printouts to the accountant and he puts the numbers where they're supposed to be on the forms - I think he has a software package that helps do it.)

I don't know the Britlander rules for setting up businesses, but with the economy the way it is, there will be a lot of people trying to go into business for themselves and will be in need of accounting and tax services to get that started.

• "How do I set up a sole proprietorship?" 
• "How do I set up an LLC?" 
• "What is an S corp?"
• "Which one works best for me?"
• "Can my company pay my mortgage/car?"

Seems to me you could get a nice accounting software package (like the one I have, although I hesitate to recommend it) that will let you keep track of multiple companies/businesses/people easily.

And if you really want to get into webish stuff, write your own website that will help you snag business from around the entire country.

--
The three things that make a diamond also make a waffle.

There are zero barriers to entry to the IT field, and the quality of work and wages paid often reflect that, especially on the low end.

If you've jumped thru the hoops and earned a piece of paper proving yourself fit to be an accountant I say stick with it, at least you won't get underbid by some high school kid.

getting into data recovery. The idea is that it isn't filled with every laid-off tech worker competing with every "A+ certified" pimply-faced-youth. It presumably requires that you at least grok that the files really are just a bunch of "ones and zeros" on the hard drive.

The thing that scares me off are places like this that appear to charge $279 to resurrect the data off a dead hard drive. While I am pretty sure there is a scam in there somehow (just how fast can a clean room "engineer" work and still make that profit), I'd hate to have to prove it to each customer. (It looks like most of the issue is that it is hard to find how much they will charge you for the drive that your data will be on, and that you aren't getting the original drive back if you don't want to pay that fee).

Anyway, that is my idea for a promising niche in the IT field.

Wumpus