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Docjowles posted:I'd strongly recommend reading Time Management for System Administrators. It's short, you can knock it out over a weekend but it's packed with some really good strategies for handling "I'm coming into a new environment, everything is hosed, and I have minimal help". Canemacar posted:Any IT-specific resources out there than can help people break into the field? I'm in the Nashville area and looking for something entry-level like help desk.
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Jul 8, 2014 16:50
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CloFan posted:I was offered a job today. Starts 25k (80% raise to $55k)higher than I'm making now, insurance benefits are better/cheaper, PTO and retirement plans are larger. Certifications are paid for as well as any schooling I may want or need. I'm going to find out more about this job today. I definitely don't know enough right now to say yes or no, but hopefully I'll learn more today. I'm meeting with the manager to see the current infrastructure/facilities and learn as much as I can to help me make this decision. What are some good questions to ask? I plan to ask about the IT budget, what my day-to-day would look like, what my responsibilities would be and what they would NOT be. Anything I'm not thinking about? CloFan fucked around with this message at 17:31 on Jul 8, 2014 |
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Jul 8, 2014 17:26
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CloFan posted:I'm going to find out more about this job today. I definitely don't know enough right now to say yes or no, but hopefully I'll learn more today. I'm meeting with the manager to see the current infrastructure/facilities and learn as much as I can to help me make this decision. Learn more about the rest of the team and maybe what sorts of systems/equipment you'll be working with.
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Jul 8, 2014 17:34
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CloFan posted:I'm going to find out more about this job today. I definitely don't know enough right now to say yes or no, but hopefully I'll learn more today. I'm meeting with the manager to see the current infrastructure/facilities and learn as much as I can to help me make this decision. Given that I think I remember you liking the environment of your current job, a question or two about work-life balance would probably be a good idea (if you don't already know)? Cause it sounds like that might be a concern, given that it'll be something of a one man show for a bit.
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Jul 8, 2014 17:40
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CloFan posted:I'm going to find out more about this job today. I definitely don't know enough right now to say yes or no, but hopefully I'll learn more today. I'm meeting with the manager to see the current infrastructure/facilities and learn as much as I can to help me make this decision. People hire people they could be friends with and people love talking about themselves and their job, so at least for a small part of the interview ask him questions like "What do you like about working here?" Be careful with the work/life balance questions not to phrase them too much like "what can you do for me"? "Tell me about the environment/work day/etc" should get you most of the answers you need.
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Jul 8, 2014 18:14
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So I have brushed up my resume and am starting to apply for Jr. DBA positions. Anyone have any idea for what salary range to ask for? I am currently living in Southern California but am very open to relocating. I was thinking anywhere between 60-70k a year but wasn't sure if that may be too aggressive or too low.
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Jul 8, 2014 19:10
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A surprising number of DBAs have almost no IT skills outside their DBA box - I speak with hundreds of DBAs every year from one-man-bands to serious enterprises and routinely find DBAs who have minimal knowledge of basic OS commands (e.g. how to set an environment variable), or simple OS logs (messages file on Linux or Windows Event Viewer). I think its worth ensuring you have some entry level system admin skills to go with the DBA knowledge as it could make you a lot more attractive candidate.
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Jul 8, 2014 20:38
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Went to meet the recruiter who contacted me. First thing he says, "Mark, right?" Mark is not my name. We spend 15 minutes talking about the position he's gonna submit me for and then says "We're pretty late in the process but hopefully something will happen." Ok, so strike two. Then he asks me to tell him if I get an offer from another prospective employer. I'm pretty sure I'm not going to do that, pal. At another position I applied for a couple days ago, I get an email stating that they decided not to create that position in town after all, but thanks for wasting your time putting in all of your info. Bravo, company, bravo.
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Jul 8, 2014 21:47
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Baconroll posted:A surprising number of DBAs have almost no IT skills outside their DBA box - I speak with hundreds of DBAs every year from one-man-bands to serious enterprises and routinely find DBAs who have minimal knowledge of basic OS commands (e.g. how to set an environment variable), or simple OS logs (messages file on Linux or Windows Event Viewer). I think its worth ensuring you have some entry level system admin skills to go with the DBA knowledge as it could make you a lot more attractive candidate. Databases are a very deep, dark hole to descend into. It requires an enormous amount of specialization, especially when you're talking Oracle EE. If you're going to be a great DBA you don't really have time or the need for being a jack of all trades - people specialize because it's more efficient and more profitable. Also, anecdotally, DBAs are really weird, so that may contribute to their lack of tangential knowledge.
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Jul 8, 2014 21:50
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Glass of Milk posted:Went to meet the recruiter who contacted me. First thing he says, "Mark, right?" Mark is not my name. We spend 15 minutes talking about the position he's gonna submit me for and then says "We're pretty late in the process but hopefully something will happen." Ok, so strike two. Then he asks me to tell him if I get an offer from another prospective employer. I'm pretty sure I'm not going to do that, pal. I had one guy call me half an hour before the phone interview was supposed to start with what I assumed would be a pep talk and some trivia to make me sound good and instead was pretty much "your experience is thin, try to have some canned responses."
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Jul 8, 2014 22:00
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Glass of Milk posted:At another position I applied for a couple days ago, I get an email stating that they decided not to create that position in town after all, but thanks for wasting your time putting in all of your info. Bravo, company, bravo. One of my favorite experiences was applying for a job and then hearing absolutely nothing for a good 6 months. It was long enough that I completely forgot that I had even applied. Then out of the blue someone from their HR calls me and is all excited to set up an interview, thinks I am a great candidate. He calls back again the next day. They've instituted a hiring freeze and can't interview anyone for the position. 
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Jul 8, 2014 22:12
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Fiendish Dr. Wu posted:Sup fellow Nashgoon Glad there's more than one of us in the city. I just started branching into Monster, but it wouldn't hurt to try the smaller sites too. I have made up a resume, but it's mostly a summary of previous work experience. I think I definitely need to do some editing since most of it isn't relevant to the position I'm seeking. I did some customer interaction as a courier, so I'd keep that, but my time as a dock worker I'll probably drop in favor of mentioning how I've helped friends build computers from scratch and played around with modding a couple games. I'm on the fence about keeping the part where I loaded and unloaded aircraft since it required thorough background checks and I was responsible for very expensive and sensitive equipment. Yaos posted:Good news! The job I'm leaving is a help desk position for Williamson County Government in Franklin, TN. We're about 17 miles south of Nashville. My current boss is working on the job description as type. It will show up here: http://williamsoncounty-tn.gov/jobs.aspx . It will be an entry level position so your A+ will help you out. The work environment is great and we do not hire through agencies. If you would like to know more you can PM me or email me at yaosio@gmail.com. Bookmarked the page, and e-mail has been sent.
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Jul 8, 2014 22:21
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Not via a recruiter, but my favorite phone interview story happened when I was trying to get a job to start out in IT about a year ago. I submitted my resume to a few local MSPs and one of them called emailed me back about setting up a phone interview. Great! I schedule it to be during my lunch and took an hour of vacation so I'd have a wide-open two hour window to talk to them and still be able to eat (I was being paranoid and was new to phone interviews in general). Long story short, she called about 45 minutes late, which was too late for us to talk (I'd eaten beforehand), and she apologized and asked if we could reschedule. I say sure, no problem. We reschedule for two days later. I should specify that my email was titled something to the effect of "A+/Network+ certified, seeking tier 1 support position." I included a cover letter which covered my experience and what I felt I'd be capable of - tier one stuff - pretty clearly. She called on time the next time, and asked me to talk about my experience a little. When I was done, she says "Well, we're looking to hire to fill a network administrator position, and unfortunately I'm not sure if you have the experience for that yet." She condescendingly mentioned the possibility of an internship - I was working full-time in a job I liked okay and told her no thank you - and she ended with "Well, you got an IT firm to talk to you, so you should count that as a plus!" I said "yeah, thanks" in about the driest tone I could do, as opposed to just hanging up on her. ... and then when I did get a job, my new employer fired their current MSP and hired the same MSP I had "interviewed" with. 
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Jul 8, 2014 22:24
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I had a phone interview once with a temp agency and they asked me if I had a degree. When I mentioned that I did they asked in what discipline. I said "History" and they said "What's that good for? Answering Jeopardy questions?" Fuckers. But it is good for answering Jeopardy questions. 
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Jul 8, 2014 22:26
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I have a history degree, too. What's worse is they probably think they were being charming and endearing. Yeah no actually it means I can synthesize information from disparate sources, and communicate better than the rest of the people you're going to speak to today. But yeah no, if I'd majored in biology I'd be suuuuch a better sys admin. My recruiter story: I've met with Robert Half. Oh, I did once go to an interview for a like a senior Active Directory engineer which was going to be solely focused on Active Directory and GPO, only to find out after the interview, literally as he walked me out, that I was never interviewing for that position, rather a more generalized but more junior, sys admin position. That strikes me as one of the cardinal sins, you're not even interviewing for the job you think you are. MC Fruit Stripe fucked around with this message at 22:33 on Jul 8, 2014 |
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Jul 8, 2014 22:31
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Umbreon posted:As a single dude making 28k a year in a NOC, what's the minimum kind of salary would be worth moving to another state for? I've never actually know the costs and requirements to actually move out of state for a job. 40-45k in tampa, florida, so youre really underpaid. No state income tax here either.
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Jul 8, 2014 22:34
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MC Fruit Stripe posted:
I was interviewing for systems/sales engineer gig where they wanted me to log in to the environment for prospective customers and determine what technology they were using and write up a plan for us to automate it for them. After the interview, they ended up hiring somebody because of skills completely unrelated to this, and then told me that I "interviewed the best out of everybody", so the subtext was basically that I was the best candidate for the job that I was interviewing for, but not the best candidate for the job they decided to actually hire for. Cool.
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Jul 8, 2014 23:00
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Anyone in IT get an MBA? I'd really like to get one within the next few years - currently working as a systems analyst but as I start to take on tech director responsibilities I realize that I wouldn't mind being a CIO in another life or maybe build something of my own  Is there a clear career track to financial management in IT? Do schools like an IT background? Anyone do it and totally switch fields?
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Jul 8, 2014 23:08
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Roargasm posted:Anyone in IT get an MBA? I'd really like to get one within the next few years - currently working as a systems analyst but as I start to take on tech director responsibilities I realize that I wouldn't mind being a CIO in another life or maybe build something of my own I did an alternative MBA type of program in communication, and I really feel like it has complemented my engineering background. I am not far enough along in my career for leadership, but the a graduate degree in some type of management is never a bad thing. However, I feel that everyone is getting MBA degrees now, and I decided to do something a bit different.
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Jul 8, 2014 23:17
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MC Fruit Stripe posted:My recruiter story: I've met with Robert Half… you're not even interviewing for the job you think you are. That sums those idiots up quite nicely. They got me on a phone interview and mislead me about the nature of the job and the interviewer about my skills and interests. I did not appreciate being yelled at for wasting the dudes time.
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Jul 8, 2014 23:26
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Comradephate posted:Databases are a very deep, dark hole to descend into. It requires an enormous amount of specialization, especially when you're talking Oracle EE. If you're going to be a great DBA you don't really have time or the need for being a jack of all trades - people specialize because it's more efficient and more profitable. I know IBM software devs that didn't know the difference between megabits and megabytes but when you specialize other technologies just don't matter. You're probably busy as-is and if you need help with something it's better just to pass it off to another team. It's weird that smart people have "knowledge-holes" but don't be that guy who makes a fuss whenever someone isn't aware of a basic concept/feature/etc.
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Jul 8, 2014 23:46
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Has anyone here ever been in a near-100% travel job? If you're the type who doesn't seem to mind the idea of moving around the country all the time, how bad/stressful is it?
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Jul 8, 2014 23:59
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bad boys for life posted:40-45k in tampa, florida, so youre really underpaid. No state income tax here either. Well poo poo. My Uncle lives in Florida and works at Verizon, and that didn't even cross my mind until you mentioned Tampa. I may have to give him a call soon!
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Jul 9, 2014 00:01
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Tab8715 posted:I know IBM software devs that didn't know the difference between megabits and megabytes Imho that's just inexcusable, what the gently caress. That's not a knowledge gap, that's being generally ignorant about their area of work.
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Jul 9, 2014 00:01
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Docjowles posted:One of my favorite experiences was applying for a job and then hearing absolutely nothing for a good 6 months. It was long enough that I completely forgot that I had even applied. Then out of the blue someone from their HR calls me and is all excited to set up an interview, thinks I am a great candidate. Last summer when I first started job searching I interviewed for a Desktop Support position at a place, the interview went for the better part of an hour and everybody seemed happy. I am yet to hear back from them. What makes it even more bizarre is that one of the interviewers was the IT Director of the company, who my father spoke to on a very regular basis prior to the interview, and hasn't been able to get in touch with at all since.
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Jul 9, 2014 00:08
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Docjowles posted:One of my favorite experiences was applying for a job and then hearing absolutely nothing for a good 6 months. It was long enough that I completely forgot that I had even applied. Then out of the blue someone from their HR calls me and is all excited to set up an interview, thinks I am a great candidate. I've known of people at my last job who would have the req for their job revoked while they were on the plane down to interview, and flights were typically booked the day before, so it's not as if a lot had changed. HR at basically every organization is a complete joke with no concept of how unacceptable behaviour like that is.
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Jul 9, 2014 00:12
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Fag Boy Jim posted:Has anyone here ever been in a near-100% travel job? If you're the type who doesn't seem to mind the idea of moving around the country all the time, how bad/stressful is it? Depends, is it driving or flying? Makes a huge difference. orange sky posted:Imho that's just inexcusable, what the gently caress. That's not a knowledge gap, that's being generally ignorant about their area of work. Eh, I guess that was a bad example but in my brief programming 101 classes nobody ever went over the difference.
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Jul 9, 2014 00:21
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Baconroll posted:A surprising number of DBAs have almost no IT skills outside their DBA box - I speak with hundreds of DBAs every year from one-man-bands to serious enterprises and routinely find DBAs who have minimal knowledge of basic OS commands (e.g. how to set an environment variable), or simple OS logs (messages file on Linux or Windows Event Viewer). I think its worth ensuring you have some entry level system admin skills to go with the DBA knowledge as it could make you a lot more attractive candidate. I know some people like that but I have spent the last 3 years doing a lot of helpdesk/desktop support and the last 12 months doing nothing but database tuning and maintenance so I feel I know the os/hardware portions well enough to handle that. As other people have mentioned because being a DBA requires a vast amount of knowledge in one area eventually my hardware skills will fall behind but I plan on at least staying relevant by being as involved as possible in the hardware the databases are on instead of just focusing on the instance. I am aiming for Jr. DBA positions so I will probably be doing a lot more of the remedial monitoring and tuning that Sr. DBA's don't have time to deal with. So that means a lot of log reviewing and making sure everything is configured as it should be. Its what I do all day now except I don't want to deal with clients anymore.
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Jul 9, 2014 03:49
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orange sky posted:Imho that's just inexcusable, what the gently caress. That's not a knowledge gap, that's being generally ignorant about their area of work. Honestly, it doesn't really surprise me. You really don't have to know the difference to do a lot of software development, especially with higher level languages like C#. And I'm sure there are a LOT of self-taught but otherwise uneducated programmers out there that learned exactly what they needed to make this website or app or whatever, and no more. Why do they need to know the difference? They're not computer scientists, they don't need to know all the theory, they just make poo poo with the very high level languages that are available today.
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Jul 9, 2014 04:48
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orange sky posted:Imho that's just inexcusable, what the gently caress. That's not a knowledge gap, that's being generally ignorant about their area of work.
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Jul 9, 2014 05:20
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Indecision1991 posted:Its what I do all day now except I don't want to deal with clients anymore. Getting yelled at all day for someone else's mistake is just the worst.
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Jul 9, 2014 06:16
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Tab8715 posted:Getting yelled at all day for someone else's mistake is just the worst. Exactly, I love the work but hate the people. After doing client facing work the last 4 years I am done with it and need to get away from that.
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Jul 9, 2014 06:52
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Fag Boy Jim posted:Has anyone here ever been in a near-100% travel job? If you're the type who doesn't seem to mind the idea of moving around the country all the time, how bad/stressful is it? It's quite OK if circumstances and people cooperate with you. Just sometimes it can be a lovely day if things just do NOT cooperate. But oh well, it's one of those days that happen to us all. As long as you get the job done in a relative amount of time and you report to your superior, you should almost feel no stress, depending on circumstances of course. Other than that you pretty much manage your whole list of tasks by yourself, you go take a piss or eat whenever you want and well ... You meet interesting people and a lot of idiots during the day. The better part is if your company provides the car and the financials to cover fuel. The only thing on your mind is delivering quality support and getting it done right. So if you're good at what you do, you can be confident that you won't feel any stress... but like I said it depends on circumstances. If you're dealing with a company that has a fixed amount of jobs you need to complete a day or they lack personnel then that's the last place you wanna be working for.
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Jul 9, 2014 11:56
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Misogynist posted:I once had to explain to a leading bioinformaticist how much space a FASTA sequence takes up, measured in MP3s. How many MegaMP3s was it?
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Jul 9, 2014 14:50
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HatfulOfHollow posted:How many MegaMP3s was it? (Yes, anal-retentives, I know those are not MP3s.)
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Jul 9, 2014 15:47
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MC Fruit Stripe posted:I have a history degree, too. History degree tech crew represent. It's never actually been a problem; I imagine if it were going to be an issue, it would only be in my first job, and I was fortunate enough to graduate in the 1999 tech boom 
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Jul 9, 2014 19:09
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feedmegin posted:History degree tech crew represent. It's never actually been a problem; I imagine if it were going to be an issue, it would only be in my first job, and I was fortunate enough to graduate in the 1999 tech boom Social Studies (Political Science and History) with additional concentration in Sociology and Psychology. I actually tried to make my degree work for a couple years, then I realized that I didn't have as much of an urge to strangle the user of a computer as I did the parents of a student. Got offered a helpdesk job in 2006 after a few years driving a truck for a lumber company and the rest is history.
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Jul 9, 2014 19:20
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MC Fruit Stripe posted:I have a history degree, too. Hey, I will have you know that the programming courses someone took a decade ago are more important than the overall college education. I would guess that a history major can't understand that.
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Jul 9, 2014 19:21
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feedmegin posted:History degree tech crew represent. It's never actually been a problem; I imagine if it were going to be an issue, it would only be in my first job, and I was fortunate enough to graduate in the 1999 tech boom I always get a little sad when people ask me "So with a History degree, why are you in IT?" Asking somebody why they aren't doing what they really want to be doing is mean 
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Jul 9, 2014 19:24
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Inspector_666 posted:I always get a little sad when people ask me "So with a History degree, why are you in IT?" Asking somebody why they aren't doing what they really want to be doing is mean I have a combined BSc degree where the strange/stand-out half of it is completely unrelated to IT and I often get asked "well why are you working in that field?" and absolutely loving hate that question.
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