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I'm with evol, I spend most of my day in routers, firewalls and Linux servers and I'm quite fine with putty. Everything else windows suits my workflow (Outlook, Visio, etc). I am one of those douches that runs windows on their MacBook Air though (boot camp only, no OSX installation).
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Dec 15, 2014 11:11
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spankmeister posted:I'm sorry you've only ever tried cheap swill. Students will just nick it, so why bother?
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Dec 15, 2014 13:06
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nexxai posted:If you're running Exchange, simply creating the address put it in the Global Address List, so if he/she forgot the correct address and was just looking through the GAL, I'd say they followed the correct process and you dun goofed for leaving it in there when it wasn't "live". We're using notes (I don't know if notes has an option to hide addresses? I still don't have domino admin despite being here 5 months) and we literally don't have a process or correct address to email to. He just guessed that this would go somewhere helpful. Edit: thinking on it, I can understand the guys thought process now. It surprised be initially as there was no way he would know this was an address to email without hunting through the NAB. Working in IT makes me grumpy and snarky. IllusionistTrixie fucked around with this message at 13:47 on Dec 15, 2014 |
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Dec 15, 2014 13:19
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BurgerQuest posted:I am one of those douches that runs windows on their MacBook Air though (boot camp only, no OSX installation). Me too! I wish Windows got the same battery life that OSX does though. Otherwise I love it.
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Dec 15, 2014 13:29
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BurgerQuest posted:I am one of those douches that runs windows on their MacBook Air though (boot camp only, no OSX installation).  Same here but MBP. Going from an Apple touchpad back to a Lenovo is a goddamn nightmare. Plus I have a mid-2011 so it has an optical drive and lightup battery indicator  I use the OSX installation as a portable MDM server exclusively
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Dec 15, 2014 13:56
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LordVorbis posted:Working in IT makes me grumpy and snarky. Not being an rear end in a top hat to dumb users is a daily struggle 
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Dec 15, 2014 15:04
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Not being an rear end in a top hat to dumb techs in my department is my daily struggle.
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Dec 15, 2014 15:06
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Nerdrock posted:Not being an rear end in a top hat to dumb techs in my department is my daily struggle. As a junior tech in a small department, is there a good way to supplant someone who's been around longer than you but knows absolutely gently caress all? Or at least escape having to answer to their authority?
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Dec 15, 2014 15:11
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ElGroucho posted:You could buy some Walmart brand freeze dried coffee and get the same quality as a Keurig cup Never did for a minute. I only bought the reusable cups and happily use Pilon as my day-to-day coffee. It's just a convenience thing. I leave the Chemexes and other such apparatus to people who not only know the difference between a fedora and a trilby but have coordinated wardrobes to both. Side topic. My boss wants both me and the helpdesk guy to go to a Salesforce thing tomorrow. It's at 3 PM. It's about "how you can close more deals and grow your business." Our sales guy doesn't have anything specific. He's looking for us to "get a feel for how others are using the system to see if there are some best practices that we can leverage. Also, see if there is a user group that we might participate in going forward." Does anyone that speaks sales know what this means? He doesn't have anything specific he dislikes or wants to see, or any questions on how to do it, but I don't want to go into a thing like this without enough to hurl at Salesforce to bring something back lest we get "why didn't you ask about X or Y"
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Dec 15, 2014 15:16
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Chickenwalker posted:As a junior tech in a small department, is there a good way to supplant someone who's been around longer than you but knows absolutely gently caress all? Or at least escape having to answer to their authority? I just continue to demonstrate my clear higher value, but for it's fruitless where I work (schools). As an example : I'm the one who cooked up a new deployment system for both Macs and Windows machines, while the questionable tech can't even follow my extremely simple directions to image a machine. I'm a prick and point it out constantly. All I have to look forward to is that the 2 (well, 3) biggest problems in the department are all within a few years or less of retiring. This includes the old lady that believes that multiple physical blows to a spinning disk drive will help her recover data from it, a retired air force electronics tech from texas who calls most female callers "dear" and says poo poo like "you know what's crazy these days? the amount of rights they're giving to gays!!" , and our boss who knows literally nothing about computers OR management, as he was my physics teacher in high school.
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Dec 15, 2014 15:29
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Nerdrock posted:Not being an rear end in a top hat to dumb techs in my department is my daily struggle. Things I had to explain; Yes, you need a SFP on each end of the fiber. Yes, the SFPs need to be on matching wavelengths. No, having a SFP on each end does not double your bandwidth. I'm not sure how people like that make it senior positions.
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Dec 15, 2014 15:39
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Mattavist posted:Me too! I wish Windows got the same battery life that OSX does though. Otherwise I love it. I tell you, Windows 10 DP gets closer to matching the OSX battery life than win 8.1. Still, I get more than a work days use out of one charge anyway, which is ample for worst case out on the road all day events.
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Dec 15, 2014 15:46
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Filthy Lucre posted:I recently had to help a senior network technician at an affiliated company hook a router up to a switch. The first and last time I worked with SFP was when we were trying to setup an AWS connection through Level 3. I spent a tremendous amount of time second guessing myself and feeling like I was a total moron because we went weeks without it working. It all changed when I finally got the idea to instead of asking a tech to check the SFP a 3rd time, I actually asked him to take it out and read it to me. After 6 tickets, 4 converence calls, and 3 in house visits by Level3 it seems that they didn't have the SFP wavelength they believed they did. Tremendously dumb considering that is basically all these techs do.
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Dec 15, 2014 15:46
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MJP posted:Side topic. My boss wants both me and the helpdesk guy to go to a Salesforce thing tomorrow. It's at 3 PM. It's about "how you can close more deals and grow your business." I can only make a guess, since I've never dealt with this situation before. Also I don't know if you already use Salesforce at your company. If you do, my guess is that nobody using it knows poo poo about what it can do and you're being sent to learn something that you can then teach to everyone else (have fun). If your company doesn't use it already, then the event you're attending is a sales pitch (have fun).
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Dec 15, 2014 15:47
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Chickenwalker posted:As a junior tech in a small department, is there a good way to supplant someone who's been around longer than you but knows absolutely gently caress all? Or at least escape having to answer to their authority? Yes, YotJ. I was a desktop/helpdesk guy at an apparel company and a year in, decided I'd like to move off of the end user crap - or at least make life faster and easier. I started studying for my 2k3 MCSA. I passed the 70-270 and Security+. Not even a "congratulations" or an offer to cover the costs of the successfully passed exams. Anything that could have been done easily - as in installing SAP on 80 desktops via GPO - was shot down instantly by the network admin/sysadmin. "I don't want to make any changes," being the rationale. Any kind of bulk deployment option - for free - was shot down. I ended up venting about it in detail in this thread's precursor - I think it was back in 2009ish. Got written up for it, had to apologize. Don't do SA at work, kids. I figured I had no future there and YotJed into an MSP, using my basic certs as a leverage, and jumped up a decent amount in salary increase even after transit costs came into play. However, network admin/sysadmin from back then, if you're a goon and reading this, you should know that the way you treated me inspired me to never, EVER treat someone that way. Our current helpdesk dude may not have the killer instinct, but he's under me and if he wants to learn Powershell of his own volition by reading the book, damned if I'm not going to answer his questions about using it in his day-to-day and help him improve if I can. Che Delilas posted:I can only make a guess, since I've never dealt with this situation before. Also I don't know if you already use Salesforce at your company. If you do, my guess is that nobody using it knows poo poo about what it can do and you're being sent to learn something that you can then teach to everyone else (have fun). If your company doesn't use it already, then the event you're attending is a sales pitch (have fun). I intend to go in with vague information and return with vague answers, detailing the CYA emails as proof that me no speakey Sales-ese and the lack of useful info I went in with. It's very much a sales pitch. Booze and food will be provided by Salesforce. That doesn't happen at training seminars. Too bad I gotta drive to/from. We use Salesforce as a glorified address book. The stuff he gave me is basically "how can we use computar in our work" in comparison. But hey, it's during working hours, at least.
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Dec 15, 2014 15:58
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MJP posted:Yes, YotJ. You know why you didn't get a pat on the back? Because helpdesk/desktop work is a poo poo job and when the helpdesk/desktop guy gets ambitious it simply means that they will have to find someone else to do that poo poo job and people get annoyed. Nothing is going to put the average helpdesk/desktop manager in a bad mood like their employees getting bright ideas. The situation with the sysadmin was probably not any more complicated than someone snooping on your web browsing.
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Dec 15, 2014 17:10
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That seems like a great rationale for treating people like poo poo
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Dec 15, 2014 17:26
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ElGroucho posted:That seems like a great rationale for treating people like poo poo Its just the way it is and sucks on every level. The best you can do is try not to treat people that way when its your turn in the drivers seat and hope for the best.
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Dec 15, 2014 17:33
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With helpdesk, you are either good at it or you're not, and they either like you, or they don't. If you are good at your job, no matter if they like you or not, you stay helpdesk. If you are good and well liked, they might make you a 'level 2' or mentor or whatever, but you are still taking calls. If you're bad at it, but they like you, they might find a supervisor or documentation type job for you. If you're bad at it and they don't like you, you're gone as soon as they can replace you. Bad in this case means not hitting metrics and/or getting too many complaints. The only way to win at helpdesk is to use the time to pad your resume with experience and get certs.
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Dec 15, 2014 18:18
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Yeah, I started my helpdesk job in October and while the people I work with are nice, there's absolutely no room for advancement and I'll be starting up some certs in a week or two with my ultimate plan to be getting out of there by the time I graduate school in may. I just really, really don't wanna deal with customers anymore. 7 years of retail was more than enough of that poo poo.
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Dec 15, 2014 18:27
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ElGroucho posted:That seems like a great rationale for treating people like poo poo Yeah, hence YotJ. The only real vertical advancement I ever got - that includes one promotion at my MSP, which was really just a nice raise and "great, now you can have an unpredictable schedule going onsite to clients with little notice" - was getting certs, making my resume look nice (free ad for the resume goon at Resumetointerviews.com - worth every penny), and getting out. Once you have an MCSA and a padded enough resume, along with the prep work and knowledge behind the MCSA, you get the hell up and out. Sickening posted:You know why you didn't get a pat on the back? Because helpdesk/desktop work is a poo poo job and when the helpdesk/desktop guy gets ambitious it simply means that they will have to find someone else to do that poo poo job and people get annoyed. Nothing is going to put the average helpdesk/desktop manager in a bad mood like their employees getting bright ideas. Probably not. Although I wish our current helpdesk guy showed some ambition - he's fantastic on soft skills but doesn't quite have the gut troubleshooting instinct or the drive to get things done. This is probably as goony of a goony statement I'll ever make but he spends too much time talking to the users about their technical problems and how much they suck, not enough time resolving them and moving on. An imbalance between the social and the disgruntled coffee-swilling IT professional. SubjectVerbObject posted:The only way to win at helpdesk is to use the time to pad your resume with experience and get certs. Or as a great philosopher put it: Joshua posted:The only winning move is not to play. MJP fucked around with this message at 19:45 on Dec 15, 2014 |
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Dec 15, 2014 19:39
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Disregard
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Dec 15, 2014 19:45
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I don't like finding this crap on the desktop of a refurbished PC we bought, but I do appreciate them naming one of the BAT files "Run DMC"
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Dec 15, 2014 21:39
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So my previous assistant is moving on to a different job which means I get to sift through resumes! 75% of which use the same template. They range from no qualifications to a 9 page resume of a Cyber Security engineer who's been in the field longer than I've been alive. The position is IT Assistant, pretty sure that makes you a little overqualified there buddy. pr0digal fucked around with this message at 22:07 on Dec 15, 2014 |
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Dec 15, 2014 21:55
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Is the last 6 months on his resume "Renovating his house"?
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Dec 15, 2014 22:35
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DrAlexanderTobacco posted:Is the last 6 months on his resume "Renovating his house"? Information System Security Officer/Cyber Security Architect Team Lead according to the resume. Part of me wants to have him come in for an interview but I don't think HR will let me.
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Dec 15, 2014 23:33
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pr0digal posted:Information System Security Officer/Cyber Security Architect Team Lead according to the resume. Ask him how much of his day was waiting for reports to finish in whatever product he was using.
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Dec 15, 2014 23:34
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Sickening posted:Its just the way it is and sucks on every level. The best you can do is try not to treat people that way when its your turn in the drivers seat and hope for the best. And there you'll see that it actually helps a shitload. If you've got an ambitious underling then there's two possibilities - either they can step up a level or they can't, so let them try. If they fail then you've got someone (hopefully) who'll be happy where they are for a while. If they succeed you almost certainly get to keep them longer plus you get a good few months of paying helpdesk drone money for someone who can do better-than-drone work. If you don't let them try then they'll just bail and you don't even get a smooth transition to the new drone. (Just to boast about what an awesome boss I am, I've put my junior guy through PRINCE2 (paid for by the company) and a bunch of on-the-job project management training elsewhere in the company this year. Of course my reasons for this are entirely selfish - he was really unhappy with his flat career trajectory (fucker's only been out of University for 2 years) and I knew that a) he could do PM work easily because frankly a shaved chimp can, b) there's enough turnover in PMs in my company that there was likely to be a job for him sooner rather than later (and getting him a job inside the company guarantees me a smooth transition as he trains up his replacement, and c) having someone who I think is going to get pretty high up in the company thinking the sun shines out of my arse can't hurt - in fact that latter thing has resulted in a lot of interesting job offers for me because there's people all over the industry I've supervised/trained, but I'm way too lazy to leave my fat corporate gig to go back to working in a shed somewhere)
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Dec 15, 2014 23:55
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pr0digal posted:So my previous assistant is moving on to a different job which means I get to sift through resumes! 75% of which use the same template. That beats the 8 CVs I had to 'sift' through for my new assistant... HR are making me interview the 2 internal candidates (neither have any experience) and there is only 1 other applicant that looks likely One guy was telling me about his dreams to own a vineyard which was curious and 2 mentioned nothing in relation to IT I'm really hoping the 1 guy is good or Xmas is just a bad time of year for this
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Dec 15, 2014 23:58
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pr0digal posted:Information System Security Officer/Cyber Security Architect Team Lead according to the resume. Probably just wants to find a low key job for his salty years. I think I'm going to be a PC tech(or whatever the equivalent is 20 years from now) when I retire. Not out of any desire to keep my hand in, but just so I can have something to do that keeps me busy and I don't give a poo poo if I get fired or not.
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Dec 16, 2014 00:05
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I'd rather be the old dude working retail or fast food than loving around with personal computers and printers come that day.
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Dec 16, 2014 00:18
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Rhymenoserous posted:Probably just wants to find a low key job for his salty years. There probably won't *be* an equivalent field in a couple of decades, I'd guess. The home desktop PC is already a dying industry except for hard-core nerds (who don't need a tech), and most offices by then will probably be using disposable thin clients connecting to networked SaaS applications, or at best, some sort of laptop-tablet hybrid with limited local storage and no user-serviceable parts. Servers will probably be the only field with hardware similar to what they are today, so DC guy or a provisioning admin might be the closest you'd get.
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Dec 16, 2014 00:39
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myron cope posted:No actually one nice thing about where I work is that there's fairly little that actually results in punishment or even blame. They don't really care (and it shows) Welcome to the world of supporting a retail environment. My MSP covers a LARGE retail chain 2000+ locations and seriously the lack of fucks being given by most people is astounding, and I mean from the company we support not us. We do A LOT of work and care about our quality (at least the team I'm on now) but the people we work for it's pretty loving egregious the kind of poo poo that happens.
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Dec 16, 2014 00:52
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Sickening posted:Ask him how much of his day was waiting for reports to finish in whatever product he was using. Yeah, those sound like "what sounds more impressive than reacting to dashboard lights" than someone that actually does the kinds of jobs people normally associate with info sec. The real jobs tend to have fairly bland titles.
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Dec 16, 2014 02:51
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Rhymenoserous posted:Probably just wants to find a low key job for his salty years. Or there's a reason nobody wants him. I don't know if I bitched about this before, but my manager's current strategy for hiring is to find highly qualified candidates, hire them as a temp for temp pay, and take them on as full time once the budget allows and if they're any good. This strategy worked great under our old manager who didn't give two fucks about certifications and looked for bright young people who were new to the working world with little to no experience, not so much when you're looking for experienced people in a tangentially related field. Of course, what winds up happening is that to find the highly qualified people, they have to scrape the bottom of the barrel, so most of our temps are great on paper but are terrible for a multitude of reasons. If they aren't terrible, they're dissatisfied with their lovely pay as a temp and find a new job that treats them right before the full time offer comes in. Our most recent temp is fresh out of school and shows a lot of potential, but his personality is not a good match for the department and he was really upset to discover that he's not going to actually use any of the skills his certifications says he has. The worst part of all this is that management has the great idea to have them train during the days, then move to the shift they're needed on once they're trained up. Too bad that means I'm the one stuck training them, so I'm stuck in this horrible loop of dealing with a lovely temp and bearing with them until they get fired, or getting a temp to a point where I don't need to hold his hand anymore and have him taken away from me, to be replaced with another new guy. Each new temp is getting even more shafted on training than the last one because it's mentally exhausting to keep up with the flow of new guys who are all starting on square one. I have less and less patience for them, and they're not getting the attention they deserve. It's not fair to the new guys and my complaints to management are falling on deaf ears. Renegret fucked around with this message at 03:27 on Dec 16, 2014 |
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Dec 16, 2014 03:24
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pr0digal posted:So my previous assistant is moving on to a different job which means I get to sift through resumes! 75% of which use the same template. I was way overqualified for my foot-in-the-door position at my next-to-last job. I just worked my way up. Maybe he's trying to pull the same thing.
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Dec 16, 2014 05:36
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dennyk posted:There probably won't *be* an equivalent field in a couple of decades, I'd guess. Because no one in this very thread ever talks about having to work on 15-20 year old hardware or software even though there are newer and better options.
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Dec 16, 2014 14:43
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Technology may advance, but the inability/refusal of people to learn is constant.
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Dec 16, 2014 15:46
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n3rdal3rt posted:Because no one in this very thread ever talks about having to work on 15-20 year old hardware or software even though there are newer and better options. Yeah I was going to say "I don't buy that for a second". The Home PC has merely been superceded by the laptop. Judging from the number of employees that wander by my desk asking if xyz is a good laptop to buy their kids/themselves I don't see it going away quite as fast as everyone seems to think. Until a college kid can reliably write a report/do research on a tablet without it being a giant pain in the rear end the general PC skillset isn't going anywhere.
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Dec 16, 2014 16:11
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Also why do people think desktops are ever going to disappear without a similar replacement for a "fixed workstation" user. Yes I sure do love tapping on a screen to do stuff instead of a giant 20-50 inch TV/Monitor with a keyboard. Even if you used a tiny tablet and plugged in those two things, then it's basically just a smaller desktop with a useless screen, so obviously a normal desktop would still be sold (even if far smaller than today' standards). Edit: I mean yes laptops also exist but they're hot and they still have to sit on a desk anyway if you were using it all day every day, and have absolutely garbage keyboards and are way more expensive. They're still not "an upgrade" to a desktop, they're a sidegrade, sacrificing size and keyboard; and adding cost for the benefit of portability. Jewel fucked around with this message at 16:22 on Dec 16, 2014 |
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