Career advancement
I currently work as a Network Technician making what I thought was decent pay, but I know I can always do better. I haven’t graduated college nor do I have any certifications. I want to move on career wise. I need to know what larger tech companies are looking for as far as education/certification so I can advance into an engineering or management position with better pay. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Your best bet is to either ask for more responsibility, to gain more experience, then move to another company, using that experience in your resume. Or, know someone at a company willing to vouch for your work ethic.
as always there is no short cut, you need to work your way up. get a ccnp, maybe even a ccie, that opens up doors for bigger opportunities. then get quality experience, maybe even learn some coding, that's how you move up
Alternately, you can focus on security since you are already doing network stuff. Can focus on GCIA cert and stand up a home lab and learn on your own, maybe with security onion. Or can start with open source networking based security apps like snort, bro, and silk and forward your logs to an elk stack. I think at this time, it may be a little bit easier to get into security due to supply/demand.
There is high demand in security, but one cannot gain experience in this field from studying or boot camp training. It's a craft that requires self interest to probe everything, and curiosity to explore what's not intended.
Entry level positions require two years of experience in entry level positions that require two years of experience in entry level.... You see where I'm going?