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3 weeks/yr, but it's capped at 3 weeks (so you can't stockpile more than 1 year's worth of vacation at any given time). Begins accruing immediately. 8 floating holidays per year, which is kind of bad numbers wise, but the fact that they're floating is cool. I need to work for one of those European companies that gives like 8 weeks of vacation and 4 weeks of sick leave each year.
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Dec 17, 2014 20:45
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Xenoletum posted:gently caress HSAs, but that's a topic for B/F/C and not SH/SC. 12 days per year but we get 3 optional days? PTO doesn't carry over to the following year. I'll get 15 days at 5 years 
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Dec 17, 2014 20:46
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AreWeDrunkYet posted:Use MDT, or if you're already licensed for it, SCCM. It's more of a transferable skill than a third party solution. You'd still need to boot off of a USB with MDT unless you're pushing commands via PsExec, right? http://www.deployvista.com/Blog/JohanArwidmark/tabid/78/EntryID/121/Default.aspx
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Dec 17, 2014 20:55
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0-5 years with company, 10 days 5-10 years with company, 12 days 10+ years with company, 14 days That and 3 sick days. That's pretty much it. Official policy is no rollover, but people are allowed to do it unless it's abused.
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Dec 17, 2014 20:56
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Tab8715 posted:Umm, Confidence is a hard thing to build as a systems administrator. You need confidence not just in yourself and your ability to do the job well, but in the systems you support, because especially in small environments there's often nobody else setting up the contingency policies. You need to know that there's a Plan B if you gently caress something up really seriously. This is probably the most daunting thing about having this responsibility. Two good first projects for a new junior systems administrator are backups and documentation. Everyone knows they're important, you can often do them cheaply, you don't run much chance of breaking something by doing them, everyone on the team benefits, and making sure that these things are in order gives you the ability to quickly back out some other change that you've completely hosed up somewhere down the road.
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Dec 17, 2014 20:57
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psydude posted:3 weeks/yr, but it's capped at 3 weeks (so you can't stockpile more than 1 year's worth of vacation at any given time). Begins accruing immediately. 8 floating holidays per year, which is kind of bad numbers wise, but the fact that they're floating is cool. Working on mission critical servers never stopped scaring the poo poo out of me. I think that time I crashed an Exchange server my 2nd day on the job and met most of the user base while unfucking their PST files scarred me permanently. That's not bad at all, Psydude. Obviously my industry is a little different but to give you an idea of how good you have it I got 15 PTO days (sick/vacation rolled together) for the first 3 yrs, this year I get 18, and at 5 yrs it bumps to 24. And the 6 major holidays Dark Helmut fucked around with this message at 21:01 on Dec 17, 2014 |
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Dec 17, 2014 20:58
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quote =! edit
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Dec 17, 2014 21:00
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I get 3 weeks sick, 3 weeks vacation, and 15 paid holidays, 10 of which start next week.  I also get paid significantly less than most of you. 
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Dec 17, 2014 21:02
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My company does 2 weeks per year you've been there - up to 8 weeks total and you can rollover 4 weeks of that to the next year - anything more than that you lose. So I could have up to 3 months worth of vacation/sick time in a year. Griffith86 fucked around with this message at 21:12 on Dec 17, 2014 |
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Dec 17, 2014 21:10
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Drunk Orc posted:So when they reimage PCs at the school I guess they have been going around with a USB bootdisk to every single machine... one by one. Back when I worked in ~education~ around 10 years ago we had pxe boot on all managed PCs and could through zenworks just select open access rooms or departments at a time to set a flag on the network card for the machine to be reimaged either timed, forced or on reboot, which was done via ghost using multicast. The application deployment aspect of zenworks was something a long time was spent on, the msi integration was .. problematic at best. We ended up making zenworks packages for everything but that did work well. edit:clarity Ataraxia fucked around with this message at 21:57 on Dec 17, 2014 |
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Dec 17, 2014 21:27
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I remember using Norton Ghost in high school when I was taking a help desk assistant class and it let us remotely image machines from the tech office. Ghost is probably ancient as poo poo by now but there are probably some comparable programs for this task, right? For the record, we are currently using Novell ZENworks but I'm not sure what all it is capable of.
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Misogynist posted:No, but your boss might, or her boss might. While the OPs question is a little vague it is accurate to say document everything, backup and make sure the backups work before you touch anything. I don't mean to sound like a cowboy and I might be coming from a different perspective. When I first started in IT some of my co-workers refused to take tickets out of ques that had vague descriptions or issues they weren't familiar with. I'd work them, call the customer, remote in, try to figure it out and if I couldn't I'd be honest tell them and say I haven't seen this issue before, I'd have to do some research and get back to them later. No problems. Same thing with servers or applications. It's down? Well, I'd log in and start reading through logs or run selects on the database. This isn't going to break anything.
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Dec 17, 2014 21:28
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Misogynist posted:No, but your boss might, or her boss might. This. Also, "log onto a server" could also be "log onto a server and get me a report of local users and their permissions to folders X, Y and Z" as easily as it could be "log onto a server and kick John Doe off, he's disconnected but can't RDP back in." It comes down to prioritization. Do what you can, learn to shift priorities as best as possible, try not to knee-jerk say "I can't do this, I have too much on my plate" to your boss or senior-ranking person if they give you a task. It's OK to take the task, realize it's bigger in scope, and circle back around asking for direction/clarification/dividing tasks if you can justify it. Learn Powershell, or at least how to understand Powershell well enough to work with other people's scripts (if you're in the Windows business).
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Dec 17, 2014 21:29
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MJP posted:It comes down to prioritization. Do what you can, learn to shift priorities as best as possible, try not to knee-jerk say "I can't do this, I have too much on my plate" to your boss or senior-ranking person if they give you a task. It's OK to take the task, realize it's bigger in scope, and circle back around asking for direction/clarification/dividing tasks if you can justify it. People will want things from you. You will need to prioritize some and outright deny others. Even if you have time in your day for the requests you get, many of them will be stupid, terrible ideas. No, I will not open the firewall ports so you can run an Internet-facing FTP server from your desktop. But let me understand what workflow you're trying to make happen here, and let's figure out another way to let you get your job done just as easily.
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Dec 17, 2014 21:42
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Misogynist posted:The most valuable piece of interpersonal communication you can ever master in systems administration is how to say "no" to people. You're going to be doing it a lot. Truth. That + leading questions, which any competent helpdesk/desktop professional learns at some point. Learn to ask "what is it that you're trying to accomplish?" and "can you detail the steps that you're taking? Treat me as if I'm someone you're training in your role with no experience" and get them to at least give you information. That yields droves, way more than "can you please open up port 401 TCP/UDP for a line of business application" when they're trying to get into a Webex vs. trying to install Skype.
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Dec 17, 2014 21:49
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Misogynist posted:The most valuable piece of interpersonal communication you can ever master in systems administration is how to say "no" to people. You're going to be doing it a lot. I like to think of this as the difference between being a problem solver and a human root password. In this example someone has come to you with a solution they'd like you to implement, but it may not even solve the actual problem they're having. If you can get people to bring you problems to solve rather than solutions to implement you'll be providing a lot more value.
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Dec 17, 2014 21:51
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What tasks/responsibilities are typically handled by a junior linux sysadmin? Just from this last page I've added running/verifying backups to the list of things I need to learn. Also how do you go about verifying backups for a production server? Just boot a vm up? I imagine at some point you would want to test it on actual hardware as part of a disaster recovery test.
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Dec 17, 2014 22:09
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Sickening posted:Former. The level of luck I had when I was placed would make you vomit and I still learned without a doubt that the answer is never to join the military. I'm a contractor on a Army base and, yeah, to the other poster, do something else. I'm waiting for my poo poo to adjudicate and it's on to greener pastures. EDIT: Don't enlist to get into IT, plzthx. Go man a cash register for Gamestop or something.
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Dec 18, 2014 00:10
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Misogynist posted:The most valuable piece of interpersonal communication you can ever master in systems administration is how to say "no" to people. You're going to be doing it a lot. Not if you pattern yourself on half the people who have come through these threads, you're not. Japanese Dating Sim posted:I get 3 weeks sick, 3 weeks vacation, and 15 paid holidays, 10 of which start next week. I hate these discussions because the Europeans always drop in to brag and make everyone in the U.S. feel lovely about our bullshit libertarian erosion of worker protections as if living it wasn't lovely enough already (Would gladly be taxed more if it meant I got guaranteed healthcare and any loving law that made employers have to think twice before just shitcanning someone they didn't like).
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Dec 18, 2014 00:11
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Che Delilas posted:I hate these discussions because the Europeans always drop in to brag and make everyone in the U.S. feel lovely about our bullshit libertarian erosion of worker protections as if living it wasn't lovely enough already (Would gladly be taxed more if it meant I got guaranteed healthcare and any loving law that made employers have to think twice before just shitcanning someone they didn't like).
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Dec 18, 2014 00:23
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bull3964 posted:The real perk of my employment is I pay zero for healthcare. Zip, zilch, nada. It's awesome coverage too. No deductibles (except $100 for emergency room visits). Just copays. I used to work at a place that paid everything including the copays! My current place, I'm gonna put in enough 401k to be matched, then withdraw it the moment it vests, pay the penalties, and put it towards buying more rental property. I can make way more ROI being a slumlord in this area than having the 401k sit there until retirement age, which will probably be like 90 by the time I get old enough and I'll be dead.
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Dec 18, 2014 01:29
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Can't you do the same only better by using a credit line or second mortgage secured against your current property to make a down-payment on the other property? The penalty is pretty harsh... Are you SURE about the ROI? I looked into renting my place out and I decided that it really just wasn't worth the hassle. I can't imagine you making more than the financial hit is worth. Edit: Wait, this isn't BFC.
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Dec 18, 2014 02:11
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MJP posted:I'd actually really like to hear about those situations. Frustrated end users: The problem is obvious, they didn't get what they wanted or thought they deserved. I would say that it is only occasionally actually something that the team should have helped them with but didn't. Most of the time the helpdesk just didn't explain the technical aspects of the problem to them in a way they can understand. For instance, our marketing director moved away from our headquarters area and started working from a rural branch. She was accustomed to a 1gbps link but the branch she began working from was connected via a single MPLS T1. Despite ample warning, she was unhappy with the performance of one note, specifically, the 5GB one note file that the marketing department used. The helpdesk offered to set her up with a VDI session but did a poor job of explaining the caveats of that, and all in all it was just a bad experience for everyone involved. It was a situation where the technical limitations are a completely foreign concept to the end user, and tech guys being who they are, spent more time sounding smart in explaining the problem rather than working with her to find a real solution. Ultimately, I think in this case she was simply happy to have someone with a title tell her that the technical limitations were not insurmountable, and that with some trade offs we thought we could make her happy. That's pretty common honestly, people think that because someone is of lower rank they are not capable of providing a good answer. It's especially bad in the banking industry, where half the organization seems to have VP in their title. On the flip side, my helpdesk is sometimes too cost conscious. They forget that salary is our number one expense, and don't always think the benefits of paying for software through. If I can invest in 20 copies of Acrobat Pro and help the loan department to defer a new hire for even one year, the company is money ahead. It's often a balancing act between being frugal and being stingy. As for kicking these things back to the teams, I never send it to someone new just because the first person pissed off the customer. We're all grown ups and the teams are very empowered, so if a followup is needed I make sure the original tech follows up, unless it is beyond their skill level. I don't want the others to feel like they got poo poo on because Joe was lazy. As for upward technical escalations, we all sit in the same area and have an open floor plan. Like I said the teams are very empowered so the admins teach the helpdesk how to do a lot of stuff. Due to our team composition, public shaming for dumb questions and pointless ticket reassignment is allowed, which probably wouldn't work everywhere, but does fit the personalities of our team pretty well. On the review side, people are not as beholden to metrics on our team as they might be elsewhere. First, our company has a strong email culture and well over 75% of our end user support is initiated via email based tickets. Most of those tickets have an initial response asking for more information from the end user. A big part of my helpdesk reviews depends on the customer reviews. We send out a survey link on every ticket, and we get some pretty honest feedback, both good and bad. I'm careful in my reviews and make sure that if I am unhappy with something, I explain why and how I think they can correct it. My biggest struggle here is that we have grown by acquisition in the past, and some of our acquired people are obviously people who landed in IT for one reason or another, but they aren't really IT people. They do a good enough job, but have career expectations that aren't reasonable without a lot of personal development. Feelings get hurt pretty easily when someone slams into a ceiling. My biggest struggle with all of this is that I got into IT for a reason, computers are a lot easier to deal with than people. My management saw that I had vision and was seen as a leader, so they promoted me into a job that I am not necessarily well trained for, because I'm an IT guy by trade. That doesn't mean I'm not suited to the position, it just comes with a whole different set of challenges, that are piled on top of the old set of challenges, because at the end of the day I am still responsible for the technical side of the job as well and I have to keep my hands dirty for the time being. AreWeDrunkYet posted:Use MDT, or if you're already licensed for it, SCCM. It's more of a transferable skill than a third party solution.
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Dec 18, 2014 02:19
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Japanese Dating Sim posted:You'd still need to boot off of a USB with MDT unless you're pushing commands via PsExec, right? http://www.deployvista.com/Blog/JohanArwidmark/tabid/78/EntryID/121/Default.aspx No, MDT doesn't require using a USB drive. The ideal method is PXE (network) booting to the MDT image using WDS. adorai posted:I would use WDS. It doesn't get any simpler. Make an image, sysprep, capture, then just pxe boot your clients. WDS isn't a deployment solution- MDT is the deployment solution that you use with WDS. You're only able to use static images with WDS- MDT gives you so many more options that you should definitely look into. Deploymentresearch and Deploymentbunny (yeah) are two really good resources by some MDT/SCCM MVPs. The TechEd videos are what really got me started. If you're deploying Windows workstations or servers this is what you want to be using... it's free. If your entire organization is OEM Windows installs all you need to purchase is one volume license copy of the matching OEM edition and you are granted re-imaging rights and compliant with licensing. dox fucked around with this message at 02:37 on Dec 18, 2014 |
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Dec 18, 2014 02:35
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adorai posted:Despite ample warning, she was unhappy with the performance of one note, specifically, the 5GB one note file that the marketing department used. Holy poo poo, I didn't even think this was possible. How do you even use this monstrosity?
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Dec 18, 2014 02:41
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Tab8715 posted:Holy poo poo, I didn't even think this was possible. How do you even use this monstrosity? Using it as a document repository, would be one way to do it. Say you are tracking 4 or 5 projects and have all the product documentation and marketing materials in various stages of revision. It doesn't take long, especially for image laden work to fill that up. I'm not saying that's the right way to use OneNote, but I can see it happening that way in a non-malicious or even non-idiot manner. If they use OneDrive I would imagine the sync process is going non-stop while it's open.
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Dec 18, 2014 03:06
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flosofl posted:Using it as a document repository, would be one way to do it. Say you are tracking 4 or 5 projects and have all the product documentation and marketing materials in various stages of revision. It doesn't take long, especially for image laden work to fill that up. Can you hold document revisions in OneNote? The more I think about it, the more you could but not sure if it's the best idea.
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Dec 18, 2014 03:13
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flosofl posted:Using it as a document repository, would be one way to do it. Say you are tracking 4 or 5 projects and have all the product documentation and marketing materials in various stages of revision. It doesn't take long, especially for image laden work to fill that up.
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Dec 18, 2014 03:30
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Japanese Dating Sim posted:Not European, just work in academia. You did remind me though that my healthcare is fully paid by my employer. I have to go in Monday, then I'm off until Jan 5th. All paid holiday. Hell yeah!
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Dec 18, 2014 03:55
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dox posted:No, MDT doesn't require using a USB drive. The ideal method is PXE (network) booting to the MDT image using WDS. But yes, MDT is awesome as far as model-based driver injection and such.
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Dec 18, 2014 04:06
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So from what I've been reading MDT 2013 should work with imaging our Win7 machines, but for the ones still running XP I should use MDT 2012 Updated 1 right? Or throw them in the trash?
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Dec 18, 2014 04:13
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dogstile posted:I've been given a massive level of responsibility in regards to my new role. I'm kind of making GBS threads myself a little. How do people deal with so much responsibility? I've never really had to much of it before. You eventually get used to it. My first two sysadmin jobs, I was nervous as hell all the time. But you'll live and learn. They hired you for a reason, you're up to the challenge. A lot of it also comes down to company culture. At my last job, if I made even a minor mistake, my boss would get visibly angry. Made me absolutely dread touching production or even the staging/dev environments. When I started at my current company, literally on the first day I was given root access to everything and told to get busy. I have the power to take down a web site that gets tens of millions of page views per day, but I'm rarely nervous to push a change. Which isn't to say I'm cavalier about it, I take the responsibility seriously. But I'm not afraid. We try to promote a blameless culture of improvement rather than looking for heads to chop off. You're not going to get fired or written up unless you're actively being malicious. Having a legit testing environment and workflow does wonders, too. (Something I REALLY need to help improve). Related, The Infinite Hows (or, the Dangers Of The Five Whys) by John Allspaw is a great (if very long) blog post on the topic of building a healthy culture around outages and mistakes.
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Dec 18, 2014 05:52
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psydude posted:3 weeks/yr, but it's capped at 3 weeks (so you can't stockpile more than 1 year's worth of vacation at any given time). Begins accruing immediately. 8 floating holidays per year, which is kind of bad numbers wise, but the fact that they're floating is cool. Basically identical here, but if memory serves you're also DMV IT Contracting right? I think? we have full tuition reimbursement but very well could be wrong. At 5-6k as long as you're going to one of the ton of in-state colleges that shouldn't be a problem though.
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Dec 18, 2014 06:00
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Tab8715 posted:Can you hold document revisions in OneNote? The more I think about it, the more you could but not sure if it's the best idea. Worse than that. "I have a tab for "Project Widget". Each page I have attached the latest revision of the documentation so I always have the latest greatest at my fingertips. Delete the old ones? What if I decide it's not going in the direction I want? I can just go back to an earlier note and work off that one... What the hell is a Sharepoint?"
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Dec 18, 2014 06:48
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I work in healthcare IT as a desktop support and I have an opportunity to jump over to the applications side and supporting a particular department especially. While I've been dying to get a pay bump so I can move out, I'm wary of it. The last guy left because the facility is getting bought out and he didn't want to end up without a chair when the music stopped. At least when I'm desktop, which I actually enjoy, I'm fungible and can just park and ride. Why bother spending the money to fire me and hire someone else? They however can decide to change applications (and we already know they are going to change the main one) at any time, and then I'm out of a job. That department also has a reputation for being very ornery and nutty. The last guy handled them on his own, so we never had to deal with them and the rest of the facility is super chill. I'm also hesitant to jump out of desktop and into the more specialized roles because poo poo actually matters there. If they lose a printer for a couple hours, oh well, if they lose an application or the network for a couple hours, I'm personally responsible for it until it gets fixed. I also don't like the idea of being on call permanently, even though realistically calls will probably be less frequent than desktop overall if only with higher stakes. As far as career path, I think applications is more flexible than network and has a lot more room to maneuver. Network seems more sexy, but I sit next to one of them and he's mostly on conference calls all day and there is very little room for advancement since people tend to dig in and stay put. At least in applications, I can learn a programming language and fork some other stuff on my plate if I felt like it. Part of me wants to stay in the comfortable womb of desktop, while the other part thinks I'm being a fool and could piss away a good chance. I like desktop and I love this client, so I'm hesitant to start pigeonholing myself and leaving myself open to being checkmated and forced to leave if they eliminate my niche in the future. If I didn't give a poo poo about the facility or actively loathed it, I'd absolutely take the higher pay and get ready to do the jumping around thing, but that isn't the case. I can't believe I'm about to hit 2 years in desktop already though.
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Dec 18, 2014 08:34
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MJBuddy posted:Basically identical here, but if memory serves you're also DMV IT Contracting right? I think? we have full tuition reimbursement but very well could be wrong. At 5-6k as long as you're going to one of the ton of in-state colleges that shouldn't be a problem though. Yeah. Ours tops out at $6250. I'm going to Hopkins, so between that and an obscure VA benefit that's not actually the GI bill I shouldn't have to come out of pocket for more than 1-2k per year, assuming I take 3 courses per year.
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Dec 18, 2014 13:46
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Drunk Orc posted:So from what I've been reading MDT 2013 should work with imaging our Win7 machines, but for the ones still running XP I should use MDT 2012 Updated 1 right? Or throw them in the trash? XP is no longer supported by MS so the best option is to get rid of them unless there's some super important legacy software running on them. Even then, see if there's a way to run it on a Win7 machine using compatibility mode. I just picked up the new book from the https://www.deploymentresearch.com guy, "Stealing with Pride Vol. 1" about optimizing deployments with MDT and SCCM 2012R2. Its a pretty good book (or any of his "Deployment Fundamentals" books) if you're looking to get serious with deployments. $10 for the Kindle edition.
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Dec 18, 2014 13:57
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skooma512 posted:I work in healthcare IT as a desktop support and I have an opportunity to jump over to the applications side and supporting a particular department especially. Do it. Plenty more opportunities for growth on this side (pay is better too, generally). Plus, generally if you specialize in a few applications you can always do contract/consulting work. I made this jump about 6 years ago and haven't looked back at all.
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Dec 18, 2014 14:35
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skooma512 posted:As far as career path, I think applications is more flexible than network and has a lot more room to maneuver. Network seems more sexy, but I sit next to one of them and he's mostly on conference calls all day and there is very little room for advancement since people tend to dig in and stay put. What. People will dig in and stay put in every job in every industry. I have no idea about application development because my experience with developers is limited to yelling at them for making their applications insecure as gently caress, but moving up rapidly in the networking world is insanely easy because there's such a huge demand for the skillset relative to the labor supply. In the end, it comes down to what you want to do: if you're interested in development, then obviously pursuing a development position makes sense. If you like networking, then pick up the CCNA book and start cranking. But get it out of your head that there's "little room for advancement" anywhere in this industry. It just takes you getting out of your comfort zone and being open to moving between companies and even geographic locations.
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Dec 18, 2014 14:52
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skooma512 posted:While I've been dying to get a pay bump so I can move out, I'm wary of it. The last guy left because the facility is getting bought out and he didn't want to end up without a chair when the music stopped. At least when I'm desktop, which I actually enjoy, I'm fungible and can just park and ride. Why bother spending the money to fire me and hire someone else? They however can decide to change applications (and we already know they are going to change the main one) at any time, and then I'm out of a job. Huh? Currently, you don't have the application expertise and it sounds like they're going to train you. If they do switch applications, what makes you think they'll lay you off as opposed to just re-training you onto something different? Granted, lets say they do lay you off. If it's some specialized application it's not like you can't apply at another hospital that does use it.
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Dec 18, 2014 15:23
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Sacred Cow posted:XP is no longer supported by MS so the best option is to get rid of them unless there's some super important legacy software running on them. Even then, see if there's a way to run it on a Win7 machine using compatibility mode. I think the XP machines aren't being upgraded because of hardware requirements in some cases, but I'll ask the director about it when I'm back. I'm unsure what all I'm allowed to do as I just started and I don't wanna overstep my boundaries or whatever.
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Dec 18, 2014 15:23
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