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psydude posted:You're correct, but SH/SC and the IT world in general is replete with Goons in wells. If you live in a major metropolitan area, chances are there's an escape route for you. This is especially true for someone who is single with no kids, because that means they can pick up and move almost instantly. I may be spoiled by the NY/NJ market but I've found that after 24 hours of having a resume up on Dice, I'm getting tons of contacts from recruiters. Granted, the signal:noise ratio is pretty bad, but a plurality if not a majority of the recruiters are pitching a role that I wouldn't mind applying towards. This has been true at all levels of my career - helpdesk, desktop support, junior sysadmin, normal sysadmin. Put it in the region where you want to work. You might have some explaining to do about relocation but a lot of recruiters are OK with Skype interviews, and if you work out well with them, they might be able to convince their clients into one.
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Mar 18, 2015 14:04
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Daylen Drazzi posted:Well, word just came down that in August our contract is coming to an end and our responsibilities moving to Peterson AFB and Langley AFB. During this entire time the leadership has been stating that it was an unrealistic expectation that the AF could easily be rid of us because of how the email infrastructure is set up for the AF. Guess the military disagrees. It will, however, be interesting to see how the military manages to cobble up a complete Exchange staff and bring them up to speed in the month or two they'll have between us shutting down and the new locations coming online. Whereabouts in Florida? If the Orlando area I can recommend some places, hell I'd recommend the place I work at right away. Bosses that actually care about a work/life balance, normal 40 hour work weeks, no after hour/weekend/days off calls unless you're on call, good benefits/vacation days and excellent pay.
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Mar 18, 2015 14:24
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When re-location is discussed what does this generally include? Airfare? Hotel? Mileage?
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Mar 18, 2015 14:33
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Tab8715 posted:When re-location is discussed what does this generally include? Airfare? Hotel? Mileage? For senior positions where you can expect relocation, it's moving (U-haul or a company to do it for you), hotel, and a little money towards breaking a lease, maybe. For roles where you're not local and not swanky enough for relocation, flying you out (airfare+hotel for the interviews). For roles where you're not local and you have a skillset they can find locally, nothing.
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Mar 18, 2015 14:41
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Depending on what you do, realize that relocation (in particular PAID relo), is normally not that easy unless you have a specific skill set. And if you're targeting a specific market as opposed to "I'll move anywhere", you may run into challenges. Be prepared for the IT market in FL to be underwhelming in pay as well, at least it is from my vantage point. For example, I more or less don't look at anyone out of my market on the infrastructure side because there are enough people locally. When I have someone in town, I know I can get good references and I will know the environments where they came from. It's a crap shoot if they come from another state. With devs and other highly sought after "resources", it's a little more common. YMMV, just prepping you for worst case scenario. If you're ready to leap, I would change your address on LinkedIn and set the address on your resume to your target city and state so guys like me don't rule you out right away... If you still aren't getting traction, jump in with both feet and just move there. Everything's easier with your boots on the ground. I've done it twice (when I was an IT guy prior to recruiting) and I'm still afloat!
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Mar 18, 2015 14:48
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MJP posted:Put it in the region where you want to work. You might have some explaining to do about relocation but a lot of recruiters are OK with Skype interviews, and if you work out well with them, they might be able to convince their clients into one. I was actually going to ask about this. Things seem to be going well in my job search (5 recruiters now, 2 ongoing interviews) so I'm hoping to have some good news soon. However, the wife and I really want to leave this state by the next year or so. Is it that simple?
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Mar 18, 2015 14:49
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The bigger companies seem more likely to offer it, as well. I know Google, Facebook, and MS all offer it for mid level and higher positions.
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Mar 18, 2015 15:03
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MJP posted:I may be spoiled by the NY/NJ market but I've found that after 24 hours of having a resume up on Dice, I'm getting tons of contacts from recruiters. Granted, the signal:noise ratio is pretty bad, but a plurality if not a majority of the recruiters are pitching a role that I wouldn't mind applying towards. Seriously, I spent 7 years at a terrible job, just killing myself. Eventually I got setup with a good recruiter, and I realized how much that helps. Within two weeks of meeting him, I had several interviews. In two weeks+one day I had an offer making 35% more, at a better job. I took that job for one year, the company had some financial problems so I called him again, and now I'm at a job making twice what I made at the first crappy job. Recruiters are the best (I'm also in NJ/NYC).
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Mar 18, 2015 15:06
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Dark Helmut posted:If you're ready to leap, I would change your address on LinkedIn and set the address on your resume to your target city and state so guys like me don't rule you out right away... If you still aren't getting traction, jump in with both feet and just move there. Everything's easier with your boots on the ground. I've done it twice (when I was an IT guy prior to recruiting) and I'm still afloat! I've seen this recommended before but what happens when all your past positions aren't in the city and neither are any of your references?
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Mar 18, 2015 15:32
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22 Eargesplitten posted:I start Monday the 6th, and don't get a day off until Saturday the 25th. Yes, it's insane. Are you actually pointing to other's "lovely situations" when you're working 19 days in a row?
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Mar 18, 2015 16:10
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meanieface posted:If you like writing tiny programs over and over because oh my god it's like I'm solving wee little puzzles and this is the FASTEST way to solve the tiny puzzle and that's the simplest way and hey let's compare the speeds of the two.. We're broken in the same way. Learn SQL and stare at data all day. And all night. Yes, this sounds extremely entertaining  @cell phones: Do you mean self-employed? If you happen to be you can never ever have a day off or vacations. I know quite a few companies gift their employee smartphones and it's not supposed to be off due to it be some emergency at 3AM or something. Sure, you're not a ER doctor but who knows 
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Mar 18, 2015 16:12
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I hadn't counted out the days until I made that post. And yes, I am. I know I'm in a lovely situation, I started looking for a new job as soon as I realized I was going to be working twelve day weeks. I'm trying to get out of my lovely situation, instead of just bitching (although I'm still bitching too, can you blame me?) And I get how some job markets are worse than others. I'm living somewhere with 10% of the job market of someplace 1-1.5 hours away, at least at my experience level. But I'm stuck here for at least another year. But there's a reason we talk about YOTJing so much in this thread. And I did send out that email to my boss with an alternate idea for how we can cover the on-call rotation.
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Mar 18, 2015 16:19
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22 Eargesplitten posted:I hadn't counted out the days until I made that post. And yes, I am. I know I'm in a lovely situation, I started looking for a new job as soon as I realized I was going to be working twelve day weeks. I'm trying to get out of my lovely situation, instead of just bitching (although I'm still bitching too, can you blame me?) And I get how some job markets are worse than others. I'm living somewhere with 10% of the job market of someplace 1-1.5 hours away, at least at my experience level. But I'm stuck here for at least another year. But there's a reason we talk about YOTJing so much in this thread. I'm glad you recognize it at least. And I sure hope you're living somewhere where you're getting overtime pay for that many days in a row.
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Mar 18, 2015 16:22
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Yeah, I get overtime pay, a bit more than time and a half. Still not worth taking all of my time, especially when I'm trying to finish my degree at the same time.
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Mar 18, 2015 16:25
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Alder posted:Yes, this sounds extremely entertaining My company pays for both my phonebill and a bi-annual upgrade and has no such stipulation. If a certain period of 24 hour post-deployment support is built in, I'd be required to answer it, but those are predefined and I'd also be paid overtime.
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Mar 18, 2015 16:36
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psydude posted:My company pays for both my phonebill and a bi-annual upgrade and has no such stipulation. If a certain period of 24 hour post-deployment support is built in, I'd be required to answer it, but those are predefined and I'd also be paid overtime. That sounds quite reasonable. FWIW, I'm located in the downstate NY/NYC area and I may have seen too many tired
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Mar 18, 2015 17:06
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Fiendish Dr. Wu posted:I was actually going to ask about this. I started looking for new positions about 6 months into my first job when I had a stellar performance review and a pay bump from $13 to $14 dollars an hour, despite scripting almost all of our (the jr admins) duties and freeing up tons of time to help the mid/seniors with projects. I would say that its harder to land an interview in general, but the ones that respond are generally seriously considering you as a candidate. I applied to probably 15-20 jobs per month and had 6 interviews in 4 months before I accepted a position. Generally it went Screening -> Phone Call -> Skype -> In-person. Out of companies that wanted an in-person, all of them except for one offered to pay for my hotel and flight. In my experience most Skype interviewers expect you to have a webcam (I did). I didn't change my address on LinkedIn or anything, but asking why I was looking to relocate was probably the first question at each (and every) stage of all the interviews, so get ready to answer that a lot. W/r/t Cellphones, I've been offered either a monthly bonus on my paycheck or a company issued phone. The understanding is that I am available 24/7 during an on-call period and available 24/7 as a subject matter expert at all times in the event of a serious outage. The second thing never happens, the first thing happens once a month. Really, it's up to you to decide what is acceptable, but I would definitely never use my personal cell phone for business after hours. In my opinion, anyway, it's actually better for the corporation to issue you a phone and laptop because the phone can function as a hotspot so you are never unable to access things without being personally responsible for it. 12 rats tied together fucked around with this message at 17:12 on Mar 18, 2015 |
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Mar 18, 2015 17:09
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It's one of those things that's hard to look at in absolute terms. Being a small company and the head of my department, It's pretty much understood that if poo poo hits the fan in any super serious way, I'm likely to be called for it because of the whole "expert subject matter thing." At the same time, I go out of my way to architect things in a way that this can in no way shape or form happen or if it does happen it can be resolved by me providing minimal guidance for someone else to resolve. So, in a lot of ways I'm master of my own fate in that regard. If I come up with a lovely plan for something, don't disseminate knowledge well enough, or it have poor automation and redundancy, then it serves me right for having my free time interrupted when something goes bump. Where it falls down a bit is where things intersect with issues I don't have complete control over. So, that's where the challenge is.
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Mar 18, 2015 17:28
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Alder posted:That sounds quite reasonable. FWIW, I'm located in the downstate NY/NYC area and I may have seen too many tired Remember that most sales people telework 75-100% of the time, so there's a tradeoff there.
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Mar 18, 2015 18:04
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For this job, I interviewed with someone over Skype. We did a phone call and I helped him reinstall his webcam drivers over the phone. We did the Skype call, and he asked me one networking question (it wasn't even for a networking job, it was for a Linux SA job). The question was what is a /29 subnet mask? I actually got it wrong, think I said 255.255.252.0, but he was like "whatever, I don't even know the answer to that. You seem like you are intelligent. The job is yours." EDIT: salesman For a while I supported five remote salesmen. They were terrible to work with. Their work laptops were always full or garbage. One installed some Network Monitor software that like managed his wifi connections and did like bandwidth throttling and analysis on his network interfaces. It broke our VPN software and something else. He came to the office and I uninstalled it, and everything worked fine. Then I noticed his HD was 99.9% full because he had WoW and all kids of other games on it. I reminded him it was a work laptop, and he needs to uninstall all that stuff. He told me no, that his home PC was fine with all that stuff, and if I wasn't a good enough SA to keep it working I should find a new job. Then he told his boss that I was screwing up his PC. I knew he was set to be fired in a couple weeks anyways, so I straight up laughed at him, and revoked his local admin permissions and uninstalled everything. I said "this is my network, and my laptop, and if you cross me again I'll turn your computer into an electric typewriter". That was the best feeling I ever had as an SA. Well, except when I'd go around and collect all the space heaters and lock them in closets. "but it's cold" WEAR A SWEATER "wait, that's my space heater" NO IT'S MINE NOW. Super-NintendoUser fucked around with this message at 18:30 on Mar 18, 2015 |
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Mar 18, 2015 18:25
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I figured I might as well ask here too. Do I need to have a photo in my LinkedIn profile? It's not like it's impossible to get one but you know I don't want random photos of me online Call me paranoid but that's just me. I know the megathread for LinkedIn said to fill in everything but I did except for this part. @SIR FAT JONY IVES: People are allowed to install random software on their company/business tech? I've spoken to a few IT support people had they had the barebones on their laptops and a separate laptop/tablet for their personal use.
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Mar 18, 2015 18:31
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Having a LI photo boosts your profile score, which makes you more likely to appear in search results. So if you care about LinkedIn as a networking tool (and why else do you have an account?) yes, you should add one. e: typo Docjowles fucked around with this message at 18:43 on Mar 18, 2015 |
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Mar 18, 2015 18:35
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I've decided that brushing up on the business side of IT can only help me whether I stay at this place or not. Luckily the IT director here is completely willing to help, but is there any books or materials that are required reading for an aspiring director?
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Mar 18, 2015 18:35
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Alder posted:I figured I might as well ask here too. Do I need to have a photo in my LinkedIn profile? It's not like it's impossible to get one but you know I don't want random photos of me online Drighton posted:I've decided that brushing up on the business side of IT can only help me whether I stay at this place or not. Luckily the IT director here is completely willing to help, but is there any books or materials that are required reading for an aspiring director? Anything you can find on project management is a must. Lean methodology is getting a lot of attention, and planning approaches that emphasize limiting work-in-progress can be a huge boost to productivity. User Story Mapping is an excellent book. Though it's oriented towards Agile software projects, you can apply a lot of the principles to any kind of project where you have to understand user motivations and turn them into a great product. Understanding conflicting business priorities with tons of different stakeholders definitely fits that model. I really liked Wiley's From Business Strategy to IT Action for a framework for understanding and aligning with business priorities, but it now costs twice what it cost when I bought it. Grab it if you can find a copy for a reasonable price. Vulture Culture fucked around with this message at 18:50 on Mar 18, 2015 |
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Mar 18, 2015 18:36
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Alder posted:I figured I might as well ask here too. Do I need to have a photo in my LinkedIn profile? It's not like it's impossible to get one but you know I don't want random photos of me online This was a very small company. Three engineers, five salesmen, one office worker, two co-owners. There was no policy at all. I inherited the mess. For so few people its hardly worth worrying about it too much. However since we sold pretty much whatever IT service or solution of the month if they didn't have local admin the salesmen would be constantly bothered having to install all sorts of what ever. It was a mess and the company had no direction.
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Mar 18, 2015 19:07
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@Misogynist: Alright, but it's already in advanced completion stage. Sorry, if I seem to be weird about this one factor but I'd had IRL problems w/people stalking me in the past  Also, it's this awkward point where I want online visibility but at the same time there's the constant problem of creepy folks trying to find my home address too. What can I do. I promise it's not because I'm internet famous or w/e.
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Mar 18, 2015 19:13
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Alder posted:@Misogynist: Alright, but it's already in advanced completion stage. Sorry, if I seem to be weird about this one factor but I'd had IRL problems w/people stalking me in the past Use the quote buttons, dude.
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Mar 18, 2015 19:18
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Alder posted:What can I do. Don't put your home address on your profile. 
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Mar 18, 2015 19:23
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Alder posted:@Misogynist: Alright, but it's already in advanced completion stage. Sorry, if I seem to be weird about this one factor but I'd had IRL problems w/people stalking me in the past As a publicly identifiable member of a public company which has a lot of angry Linux people writing mean things to other angry Linux people on the internet all day, I don't worry about this at all. Nor have I heard of anyone else worrying about it (with rare exceptions like Lennart Poettering and our most senior release engineering guy, who refuses to even release his public GPG key just in case somebody ever finds a way to reverse the private from it). You could probably connect my SA username to my real name in less than 60 seconds if you cared. You're fine. E: it's first page of Google.
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Mar 18, 2015 19:31
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Fiendish Dr. Wu posted:Don't put your home address on your profile. I don't but some people can be very determined if they have enough time + effort on their hands. I would quote more but then it starts looking awkward into a giant quote blocks on forums.
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Mar 18, 2015 19:45
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Alder posted:I don't but some people can be very determined if they have enough time + effort on their hands. I would quote more but then it starts looking awkward into a giant quote blocks on forums. If anyone really wanted to find you, they could find you. Don't worry about it. You could figure out my exact address (and pretty much everything else about me) just sifting through my post history on SA.
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Mar 18, 2015 19:47
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Alder posted:I don't but some people can be very determined if they have enough time + effort on their hands. I would quote more but then it starts looking awkward into a giant quote blocks on forums. You probably shouldn't get on the internet then 
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Mar 18, 2015 19:49
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Alder posted:I would quote more but then it starts looking awkward into a giant quote blocks on forums. The button is there for a reason, and it makes it much easier to know what you're talking about.
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Mar 18, 2015 19:54
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Misogynist posted:I'd recommend reading at least one good ITIL implementation book. ITIL itself, implemented on the whole, is an overbearing trainwreck of governance-oriented management. However, as a high-level director you're likely to work in an industry where you have to deal with at least one set of regulatory compliance laws (SOX, HIPAA, etc.). It's valuable to have the tools in your toolbox even if you never take them out. Foundations of IT Service Management was very good. It reads like a textbook, but it's slim and very dense, doesn't waste any words, and you can get through the whole book in a day or two. drat dude. Even cool enough to give links. You're alright. 
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Mar 18, 2015 20:13
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Well, I turned that 19 day week back into a 12 day week by proposing a way to keep the work even and rotations on schedule while not making anyone do 19 days. So that made my day considerably better. Although I realize how hosed up it is to be happy about a twelve day week.
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Mar 18, 2015 20:15
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22 Eargesplitten posted:Well, I turned that 19 day week back into a 12 day week by proposing a way to keep the work even and rotations on schedule while not making anyone do 19 days. So that made my day considerably better. Although I realize how hosed up it is to be happy about a twelve day week. I am pretty positive you could go right back to the person you talked to and say "You know, I am finally realizing that this isn't healthy. I am going to work a normal work week instead. I am sorry if this puts you in a bind but I am sure you can understand that this has gone on for long enough and I have gone above and beyond."
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Mar 18, 2015 20:18
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Also wait, are you actually at work for 19 days in a row, or are you just on-call for that time period?
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Mar 18, 2015 20:25
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I probably can't, because it's technically a 5-day work week. It's just that we're so understaffed that we almost always have enough tickets to fill out the weekend for whoever's on call. I'm trying to YOTJ anyway, I hear back either tomorrow or Friday on whether I got an offer at a desk job helpdesk place, rather than a drive around to all over three states job. Even if it was a five day week, I'd be out of here ASAP.
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Mar 18, 2015 20:27
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evol262 posted:As a publicly identifiable member of a public company which has a lot of angry Linux people writing mean things to other angry Linux people on the internet all day, I don't worry about this at all. Nor have I heard of anyone else worrying about it (with rare exceptions like Lennart Poettering and our most senior release engineering guy, who refuses to even release his public GPG key just in case somebody ever finds a way to reverse the private from it). You could probably connect my SA username to my real name in less than 60 seconds if you cared. This is less true if you're not male or work for an employer who isn't as inured to Internet Drama as Red Hat. On the other hand, if they have your LinkedIn information, a photo attached isn't going to substantially change your exposure.
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Mar 18, 2015 20:33
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Your linkedin should be a public persona and you should have a picture. Best to google yourself and do things like lockdown your facebook page if you don't want future employers to see that tagged photo of you at a strip club or whatever. Best not to put your SA username on there, too!
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