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bull3964 posted:That's a way to get performance on the cheap, but it's completely backwards from where you want to be from a data perspective. And if you're smart enough to write the automation to make this work, you're probably already working for one of the public cloud vendors who are doing it.
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# ? May 25, 2016 02:02 |
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# ? Jun 6, 2024 13:12 |
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22 Eargesplitten posted:After being unemployed since early January, I finally have a job . It's slightly less than I was making previously, but I get to work with VMWare, networking, and Windows Server, which means this could be my bridge out of helldesk. Congratulations
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# ? May 25, 2016 02:37 |
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Sepist posted:Accepted a job offer working at a VAR 5 minutes from my house Gonna be fun going from working on service provider equipment and just telling Cisco AS to fix all our poo poo to a pure enterprise project engineer, no support whatsoever and only working with fortune 500 clients. Should be exciting! Be prepared to be amazed at the sheer level of incompetence of both the technical and managerial personnel in many organizations. Although at least you won't be working with the government. E: Also never trust that your customers will know what they're doing. For example, be prepared to explain to the network architect why a /30 subnet won't work for an outside interface on an ASA configured to run as a layer 3 HA pair. Then be prepared for him to be angry that this wasn't explicitly called out in the design document even though it clearly lists 2 IP addresses in a /29 subnet and also you've been asking for the addresses for 6 months but he waited until the day of the cutover to actually give them to you. psydude fucked around with this message at 02:51 on May 25, 2016 |
# ? May 25, 2016 02:46 |
im getting a promotion and my job is also allowing me to use their development server to learn linux and maybe one day transition into a jr admin role
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# ? May 25, 2016 03:24 |
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Neddy Seagoon posted:What up, fellow Melbourne IT Goon I am an oregoon, I visit our offices there once a year in Brisbane. I just use the Melbourne weather number whenever I need to test the phones :p
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# ? May 25, 2016 03:48 |
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psydude posted:Be prepared to be amazed at the sheer level of incompetence of both the technical and managerial personnel in many organizations. Although at least you won't be working with the government. I've worked at a VAR in the past so I'm used to it, but I was in a network support role and this is a mix of pre and post sales role. Hopefully I can save myself some of those common frustrations by being so involved in the process.
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# ? May 25, 2016 04:02 |
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DigitalMocking posted:I am an oregoon, I visit our offices there once a year in Brisbane. For what it's worth I can indeed confirm that it is loving cold here at the moment.
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# ? May 25, 2016 04:37 |
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Sepist posted:I've worked at a VAR in the past so I'm used to it, but I was in a network support role and this is a mix of pre and post sales role. Hopefully I can save myself some of those common frustrations by being so involved in the process. Yeah, plus if you end up working with the same group of customers, you'll become familiar with their various strengths and weaknesses so you can be prepared for it. On a similar thread, I've got two interviews coming up - one with another VAR who's basically already offered me a ~30% raise (they just want me to meet with a member of their executive team for some reason), and the other with a fortune 500 in one of their tiny, semi-independent research teams. TBH, although the new VAR's compensation structure is much better than my current company, I'm not sure the extra money is worth jumping ship just to do the same thing with a different company in the same sector. The second job is one that I'd take almost no pay increase to work in, so here's hoping that one works out.
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# ? May 25, 2016 04:52 |
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psydude posted:Be prepared to be amazed at the sheer level of incompetence of both the technical and managerial personnel in many organizations. Although at least you won't be working with the government.
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# ? May 25, 2016 05:05 |
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adorai posted:It's funny, we have the same opinion of most of our VARs. It seems like no matter the VAR, and no matter the project, they just pick someone at random who reads the documentation and learns the product as they go. We can do that ourselves for a lot less than $180/hr, so we don't use many VAR consultants these days. A lot of the time this is just due to bad practice on the part of the VAR, but sometimes it's unavoidable. For newer products someone has to be the first and its impractical to send multiple people to training on every new product and product version that comes down the pipe. If you're lucky they at least read the documentation beforehand and try to lab it out.
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# ? May 25, 2016 05:28 |
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psydude posted:Yeah, plus if you end up working with the same group of customers, you'll become familiar with their various strengths and weaknesses so you can be prepared for it. What's the research team job doing that's so cool? 30% seems like a lot to give up to work for one enterprise.
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# ? May 25, 2016 12:52 |
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adorai posted:It's funny, we have the same opinion of most of our VARs. It seems like no matter the VAR, and no matter the project, they just pick someone at random who reads the documentation and learns the product as they go. We can do that ourselves for a lot less than $180/hr, so we don't use many VAR consultants these days. There's only really 3 reasons to hire a VAR: you lack the manpower to deploy something, you lack the expertise on hand, or it's a new product. It's also common that there's a weird skill imbalance with both parties: operations personnel who work in mostly static environments end up with intimate knowledge of the inner works of things like WCCP, but have no idea how to bootstrap and stand up a new environment. Consultants have a lot of greenfield/upgrade knowledge, but typically don't know much about environment-specific configurations unless they've worked with that customer before. But everyone should read documentation if they have questions. It keeps people from making dumb assumptions. Sepist posted:What's the research team job doing that's so cool? 30% seems like a lot to give up to work for one enterprise. Security vulnerability research and testing.
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# ? May 25, 2016 13:42 |
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Ah, security is so hot right now I'm surprised there isn't a pay bump in there.
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# ? May 25, 2016 14:12 |
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Oh, I'm sure there is. We haven't spoken about compensation yet; I was just illustrating that it's a job I'd be willing to jump for even without a 30% pay raise.
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# ? May 25, 2016 14:15 |
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Vulture Culture posted:Very interesting; maybe things are changing. Do you get a lot of direct applicants or do most of your coworkers come in through recruitment channels? I think it's about 60/40 direct/recruitment from what I've seen so far, but I have only been here for a few months.
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# ? May 25, 2016 15:49 |
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So my workload has been light and there is no end in site. Life is good. The only thing that could happen is that my boss gets fired or the company gets sold. I have been toying with the thought of having a second remote only job. It would be super unethical, but I could literally be doing a second job from my deck and just putting that paycheck into paying off my home, retirement, or boats.
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# ? May 25, 2016 19:03 |
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Sickening posted:So my workload has been light and there is no end in site. Life is good. The only thing that could happen is that my boss gets fired or the company gets sold. do it
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# ? May 25, 2016 19:14 |
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Sickening posted:boats. never not buy boats. Also, invest in bike parts.
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# ? May 25, 2016 19:20 |
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Sickening posted:So my workload has been light and there is no end in site. Life is good. The only thing that could happen is that my boss gets fired or the company gets sold. Do it, start hiring people to make sure you have adequate coverage for all your jobs, and before you know it you're an MSP.
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# ? May 25, 2016 19:23 |
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Sickening posted:So my workload has been light and there is no end in site. Life is good. The only thing that could happen is that my boss gets fired or the company gets sold. You had me at "unethical"
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# ? May 25, 2016 19:25 |
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So good news/bad news. I didn't get the System Specialist position that I didn't know I applied for. I turned it down twice but, he wrote me a fake resume, filled out the application on my behalf (with a fake name) and then gave me an "assessment" test and put the fake name on it. He forwarded it to the team to get their opinion, and I "did well but there's another candidate that's slightly better" who applied as a Sr. Sys Specialist. I don't even know where to begin. I didn't want the position for 2 reasons: 1) because I was strongly trying to avoid being on his radar and becoming his scapegoat. He's been on every Sysadmin's case about this, that, or the other thing, because he's made some pretty bad decisions and needs "everything done right now." I'm not taking a $3000 raise to deal with that level of bullshit. 2) If I were to apply, I wanted to apply as myself, and see if the team thought I was ready for a promotion. He wanted me to be an anonymous candidate to see if I stacked up against other candidates, without influencing anyone's opinion. I disagreed, because I think one of the strongest things I have going for me is that I have a year's experience. 3) My position has a pretty lowly title, so I'm pretty sure anyone that would apply to fill my shoes, should I have gotten the job, would not have the experience necessary to do what I've been tasked with. I'd rather not have to train someone with little to no experience to do my job while simultaneously ...so thank god for that. The bad news is that I'm getting a new title anyway, and they're updating my job description. The new title comes with a raise though... 1% which is half of the 2% "annual performance adjustment" I should have gotten for just holding my job for a year.
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# ? May 25, 2016 19:36 |
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Sickening posted:So my workload has been light and there is no end in site. Life is good. The only thing that could happen is that my boss gets fired or the company gets sold. This seems like a very good way to put the end in sight. (Do it.)
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# ? May 25, 2016 19:51 |
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GnarlyCharlie4u posted:So good news/bad news. Who's "He" in this post? Also, is it really a thing to change somebodies title and give them a smaller raise instead of waiting out the larger yearly raise? Because gently caress that. You work for a circus of clowns.
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# ? May 25, 2016 20:43 |
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Judge Schnoopy posted:Who's "He" in this post? He is my boss. Apparently... it is a thing? I haven't heard of this from anyone else, but we don't really talk about salaries. I'd already been here a year and they sprung the assessment test on my at my annual review, so naturally I half-assed it because I was supposed to go home in 30 mins and the test would have taken 2.5-3 hours if I'd answered poo poo like I should have. Debating on going to HR and innocently bringing it up to them as a "payroll mistake" (and hoping for 3%) or just putting my boss on blast for every gently caress up he's made this past year. The guy before me tried that, and it didn't work out so well.
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# ? May 25, 2016 20:53 |
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GnarlyCharlie4u posted:
Don't ever go to HR unless it's sexual harrasment. Because HR does whatever is in the best interest for the company, and that's usually not what's in your best interest. Unless you want to
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# ? May 25, 2016 22:39 |
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LochNessMonster posted:Because HR does whatever is in the best interest for the company, and that's usually not what's in your best interest. LochNessMonster posted:Because HR does whatever is in the best interest for the company, and that's usually not what's in your best interest. LochNessMonster posted:Because HR does whatever is in the best interest for the company, and that's usually not what's in your best interest.
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# ? May 25, 2016 22:46 |
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adorai posted:It's funny, we have the same opinion of most of our VARs. It seems like no matter the VAR, and no matter the project, they just pick someone at random who reads the documentation and learns the product as they go. We can do that ourselves for a lot less than $180/hr, so we don't use many VAR consultants these days. Replace VAR with any large vendor - Microsoft, IBM, Cisco, etc and to a degree this overwhelmingly rings true.
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# ? May 25, 2016 23:45 |
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Had my annual review today. Got called a "high achiever" and was told they couldn't really find anything to put on needs improvement so keep doing what I'm doing. They want me to help train up some of interns to be badasses like me. I didn't get a promotion, but the raise was above what is their typical 3-5%. Pretty stoked. Now I have a week off to move into my nice big house that I just bought.
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# ? May 25, 2016 23:53 |
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So is it normal for T1 helpdesk people to do 35 tickets a day? Im feeling that the expected workload here may be a tad excessive.
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# ? May 26, 2016 02:14 |
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readingatwork posted:So is it normal for T1 helpdesk people to do 35 tickets a day? Im feeling that the expected workload here may be a tad excessive. 1 every 15 minutes? If you have well defined processes and clear KBs, the problem should be solved or escalated by then. More likely, ~lol~.
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# ? May 26, 2016 02:20 |
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If it's resetting passwords and escalating to T2, it's probably not that crazy.
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# ? May 26, 2016 02:23 |
Yeah, you're really going to have to provide some details if you want a realistic answer.
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# ? May 26, 2016 02:35 |
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It really depends. At my last job we dealt with about 20-30 per day each. There was a lot of downtime, but most of our problems were common enough that we could shoot back an email with less than a minute's work. If you're doing everything by phone, that slows it down a lot. That actually makes me really curious about what my next job will be like. I'm going from over 150 retail sites being supported to less than a dozen. I know there will be some field work because they're actually within driving range, but I'm not sure what else will take up my time. Maybe there will be projects for me to get in on. That would be cool. 22 Eargesplitten fucked around with this message at 02:41 on May 26, 2016 |
# ? May 26, 2016 02:38 |
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readingatwork posted:So is it normal for T1 helpdesk people to do 35 tickets a day? Im feeling that the expected workload here may be a tad excessive. Yes.
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# ? May 26, 2016 02:41 |
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When I worked T1 at my job, I took anywhere from 60-100 calls a day and closed 80-90% of those tickets during the call, plus another 10-20 from general queues etc. It all depends on what you do, our HD is a main point of contact and resolution HD, greater than 75% of calls are resolved on the spot. Total PW reset calls were in the 200ish a day, so the rest is other stuff, printer tsing, application assitance/tsing, remote server tsing, internal network tsing, basic internet stuff (reboot equipment, escalate to ISP otherwise), and phone stuff (gathering data on dropped calls/call quality etc issues to escalate to ISP). Having said that, I was definitely one of the better techs and could blow through stuff fast, most other people were in the 50ish range a day, and I generally would take calls from other people if they were struggling/taking too long and calls stacked up. readingatwork posted:So is it normal for T1 helpdesk people to do 35 tickets a day? Im feeling that the expected workload here may be a tad excessive. But, to actually answer your question, generally I would not consider that excessive and actually fairly average, but same caveat as others, it depends on what you are supporting. How long have you been working there? If you just started, it's going to feel like a lot because you are slow and dumb.
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# ? May 26, 2016 03:30 |
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^^^ Just over a year now. This is my first IT job so I have no prior experiences to compare the workload too. This is an internal-facing position servicing corporate and several call centers. Dr. Arbitrary posted:If it's resetting passwords and escalating to T2, it's probably not that crazy. No, our T2s bailed so now we all (T1 and T3, 4 people total) kind of work on everything together. We only escalate beyond to sysadmins if it's particularly challenging or we don't have access to fix the problem. Back when I just did T1 type stuff I was closing closer to 60 tickets a day. I'd heard that one of the T2s that left now does around 15 tickets a day so I was wondering if that was a more typical workload or if he just got lucky. rafikki posted:Yeah, you're really going to have to provide some details if you want a realistic answer. My bad, let me elaborate. I should also have mentioned that I'd need to do another 5-10 non-trivial tickets a day to make progress on our collective queue, which when I left for the night had around 110 tickets in it (my personal queue has around 40). Every single one of these will likely take >15 mins to complete. We can make headway on this by working Saturdays and a bunch of overtime, and we do, but even that seems futile because eventually someone will get sick or an exec will require a large project be done yesterday and the queue will rocket back up past 100. Oh, and none of this includes cleaning, organizing, documenting processes (hah!), emailing people, forwarding tickets to other departments, trainings, meetings, giant random audits, or doing side projects to actually improve the efficiency of the department (lol). But no, management is certain 4 people for a company of over 400 people is plenty. readingatwork fucked around with this message at 04:07 on May 26, 2016 |
# ? May 26, 2016 04:02 |
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readingatwork posted:But no, management is certain 4 people for a company of over 400 people is plenty. We have 3 people for 270. I do about 2 tickets a day most of the year, and just slowly plug away at nonessential projects in the meantime. If 4 people can't keep 400 people running without major ticket overload, you have a problem somewhere.
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# ? May 26, 2016 04:27 |
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We have 6 helpdesk for 750ish people. Two of the helpdesk are more of a level 2, the rest are like 1.5. They have easy escalation to the higher level techs, and take on average 30 tickets each per day.
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# ? May 26, 2016 04:30 |
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Kind or reminds me of the stuff from The Phoenix Project. You guys are like a conveyor belt that's running at 95% capacity. Any unexpected work throws it above 100% which creates backlog, which creates compounding problems as you work to keep up with the conveyor belt AND manage the backlog. A simple example is the time you spend managing old tickets. If you have to call someone to give them an update on their ticket that's been sitting in the queue for a week, that's time that you should have been able to spend on tickets. A good rule of thumb would be that your normal workload should be 70% of your capacity. That gives you all time to get work done, handle unexpected tasks, and work on stuff like training or documentation.
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# ? May 26, 2016 04:37 |
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# ? Jun 6, 2024 13:12 |
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Dr. Arbitrary posted:Kind or reminds me of the stuff from The Phoenix Project. This is true but the world is now full of MBAs and efficiency experts who think that 30% spare is fat that needs to be trimmed.
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# ? May 26, 2016 04:45 |