Working in IT 3.0: xp_cmdshell

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > Working in IT 3.0: xp_cmdshell

Kylra: Dec 1, 2006; Not a cute boy, just a boring girl.

DigitalMocking posted:

The bigger you go the less you get to control or own.

Yeah, I understand this in a general sense, which is why I've been hesitant to take a leap and maybe wind up somewhere I don't enjoy, with a road of unknown difficulty to get back to my current kind of job if I want to. I probably wouldn't mind giving up a lot of the areas to focus more on networking specifically, but I don't know if I could place myself out of all the cool troubleshooting and project deployment long term were I to try to get into a larger company with even cooler networking gear and topology.

I do know that my time here is very likely coming to an end one way or another though. I've kind of outgrown my paycheck which was started at young starry eyed hotshot with a blank resume level, I'm at about the company's budget limit for getting new stuff to have experience with, and they're kind of shuffling me away from IT work. I was one of the backup licensed people for a good chunk of the company's main business field work, I got drafted when the last one quit, and they've been reading their feet at best about hiring someone else to do it. It's been fun while it's novel, and I don't really hate it per see, but it is definitely not what I want to do long term.

# ? Nov 23, 2016 18:21

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# ? May 25, 2024 23:01

Kylra: Dec 1, 2006; Not a cute boy, just a boring girl.

ChubbyThePhat posted:

But one can dream

Gonna Kickstart my own isp.

# ? Nov 23, 2016 18:21

anthonypants: May 6, 2007; by Nyc_Tattoo; Dinosaur Gum

Kylra posted:

Gonna Kickstart my own isp.

Probably include a time machine while you're at it

# ? Nov 23, 2016 18:32

Judge Schnoopy: Nov 2, 2005; dont even TRY it, pal

Kylra posted:

I was one of the backup licensed people for a good chunk of the company's main business field work, I got drafted

Ugh gross. If any company asked me (or anybody in IT) to start selling things instead of providing better infrastructure for salespeople to sell things, I'd be out before they could finish saying "This is only temporary".

Go out and interview. You like the position you're in so there's no pressure. Instead of letting the company interview you, turn the tables and interview the company to make sure they're a good fit for your autonomous style. It should be pretty easy to figure out if the IT department is wrapped up in red tape, if the senior levels and admins are naysayers who handcuff progress, or if the delegation is so molecular you won't be able to work on total solutions without a team of 6 guys. If you see any signs of that just go back to the job you like, no big deal.

The best case scenario is you find an awesome manager who wants you on their team, they pay you loads of money, take away the downsides to your current job and give you tons of room to grow.

# ? Nov 23, 2016 18:34

Maneki Neko: Oct 27, 2000

anthonypants posted:

Probably include a time machine while you're at it

Still possible in weirdo rural areas where your options are satellite or dial up!

# ? Nov 23, 2016 18:44

MC Fruit Stripe: Nov 26, 2002; around and around we go

Maneki Neko posted:

Still possible in weirdo rural areas where your options are satellite or dial up!

You can lose money right up until the moment AT&T or Verizon decides to take your customers.

vvv

"You should buy this new, exciting product. Or not. I don't care what you do."

MC Fruit Stripe fucked around with this message at 19:20 on Nov 23, 2016

# ? Nov 23, 2016 19:17

Inspector_666: Oct 7, 2003; _{benny with the good hair}

Judge Schnoopy posted:

Ugh gross. If any company asked me (or anybody in IT) to start selling things instead of providing better infrastructure for salespeople to sell things, I'd be out before they could finish saying "This is only temporary".

Same. I'm not a salesman, if I was, I would be working in sales. You don't want me doing sales because I am not good at it.

# ? Nov 23, 2016 19:18

psydude: Apr 1, 2008

Took the week off. Feels good.

# ? Nov 23, 2016 19:24

Judge Schnoopy: Nov 2, 2005; dont even TRY it, pal

MC Fruit Stripe posted:

"You should buy this new, exciting product. Or not. I don't care what you do."

"If you buy this cool new thing, I will have increased budget for my projects next year which would make me super happy. Oh, and the thing is cool I guess, it's got some issues here and there and we skimped on a bit of manufacturing to increase margins. But again, those margins will sponsor a sweet SAN upgrade for me, so buy it!"

# ? Nov 23, 2016 20:03

Sepist: Dec 26, 2005; FUCK BITCHES, ROUTE PACKETS; Gravy Boat 2k

Update to previous post about COO killing our company - 80% of our staff were in a meeting with the owner specifically for complaining about him killing the company and now his position has been eliminated. I guess I get to keep this amazon job in my back pocket a little longer.

# ? Nov 23, 2016 20:08

air-: Sep 24, 2007; Who will win the greatest battle of them all?

Except I don't wanna come off like an rear end in a top hat... so how do you respond when the written offer comes in -10k below what was verbally agreed upon?

And either way, I may have a second offer to juggle, so we'll see.

# ? Nov 23, 2016 20:38

Kylra: Dec 1, 2006; Not a cute boy, just a boring girl.

Judge Schnoopy posted:

Ugh gross. If any company asked me (or anybody in IT) to start selling things instead of providing better infrastructure for salespeople to sell things, I'd be out before they could finish saying "This is only temporary".

If they tried to force me to do straight sales, I'd heavily consider just soaking up the money and then be out as soon as I found a new job. But no, it's a field tech thing. I get to inspect, service and install some safety critical electronics, device networks, piping systems and such. There's not a whole lot of direct crossover between it and computer networks, but it's not entirely dissimilar work. The licensure is difficult for even many of the people that do the field work for a few years because it's a pretty intellectual task. It's also on the way to being licensed to do the engineering type work for the field which was on of the things I was hired on to assist with in addition to my IT role, so that's one of the main reasons I had the license. It's ok in itself, and it's generally fun for me to learn or do new things so I don't mind it on an occasional or temporary basis, but my heart's definitely not in it like it is in tech.

Like, I could probably in theory do sales too though and be ok at it with some guidance? I guess? But it's not one of my major talent areas, and I'd probably get tired of it really quickly if it didn't involve some serious server or network equipment/applications.

quote:

Go out and interview. You like the position you're in so there's no pressure. Instead of letting the company interview you, turn the tables and interview the company to make sure they're a good fit for your autonomous style. It should be pretty easy to figure out if the IT department is wrapped up in red tape, if the senior levels and admins are naysayers who handcuff progress, or if the delegation is so molecular you won't be able to work on total solutions without a team of 6 guys. If you see any signs of that just go back to the job you like, no big deal.

The best case scenario is you find an awesome manager who wants you on their team, they pay you loads of money, take away the downsides to your current job and give you tons of room to grow.

There's some pressure, but it's not really dire since I have a lot of savings, no debts, and am not particularly lavish. Due to some economy shifts the business is in kind of a weird spot at best. The company owner is also ailing, and there's no one in the company that can fill those shoes and is willing to step up to it that I'd be sure I'd want to work for. I don't think it will entirely fold up or anything too soon, but it might not be a place I really feel like working at for too much longer. I also don't care so much for where exactly I am living now, and want to move somewhere else.

That sounds like it might be a good plan either way though. What might be the best way to go about that in an interview? Anything in particular I might want to be sure to ask in that vein? Anything in particular I should avoid so I don't come off like I don't work well with others?

# ? Nov 23, 2016 20:46

Super Slash: Feb 20, 2006; You rang ?

Farking Bastage posted:

code:

Our technical support service has detected unauthorized access to your account.

Due to that, we had to block your account until you confirm your personal information.
To do so, please follow the instructions in the attachment.

Best Regards,
Iva Ruiz
Technical Support

and it has a .c attachment. They're not even trying anymore.

And it still loving works!

Today I had something like this and the phish was stating that our company is mail spamming the sender, and to look at the attached logs which held a ZIP containing a .JS garbage file.

It hit two people, one came and asked me about it and the other opened the ZIP but stopped and asked me about the JS file as AVG sprung into action. Goddamnit it got past the AVG mail gateway but was only picked up when it was almost opened, I also found out the GPO I made ages ago as a last chance resort which sets the default program for JS files to notepad doesn't actually work... I made a dummy one on my desktop and the default isn't there, even when the GPO is already applied.

# ? Nov 23, 2016 20:47

psydude: Apr 1, 2008

The consumer wireless thread is buried. Anyone messed around with AmpliFi yet?

# ? Nov 23, 2016 20:49

pixaal: Jan 8, 2004; All ice cream is now for all beings, no matter how many legs.

air- posted:

Except I don't wanna come off like an rear end in a top hat... so how do you respond when the written offer comes in -10k below what was verbally agreed upon?

And either way, I may have a second offer to juggle, so we'll see.

"I thought the offer was $60,000 not $50,000 what happened?"

They might say that's all they could get approval for. If that's the case tell them you can't possibly accept that without additional benefits and list what you would need. More work from home days, another 2-3 weeks of vacation, 401k matching whatever you value around that 10k mark. Maybe they'll just bump it up to what they promised you.

It's a game payroll plays,

currently playing a similar but opposite game with purchasing where I got a quote and the offer was crazy good went to 2 other vendors they've both come down but nowhere near the first quote. Both have basically said they are calling my bluff and refuse to match it. First vendor wont go down they say it's the rock bottom and I'm going to believe them. Purchasing has some standing procedure to never accept the first offer. It's loving bullshit and I'm trying really hard to work with the vendor to get the price even slightly lower.

I told him next time just quote me 15% higher I'll put it to purchasing and come back to him take the 15% off and it will go through.

I hate games that companies play they don't end up helping them you end up with lovely vendor and employee relationships.

# ? Nov 23, 2016 20:51

Walked: Apr 14, 2003

air- posted:

Except I don't wanna come off like an rear end in a top hat... so how do you respond when the written offer comes in -10k below what was verbally agreed upon?

And either way, I may have a second offer to juggle, so we'll see.

Just say your understanding based on the verbal offer was $x + 10k, and ask for a revised offer letter.

Most likely won't be an issue in any way.

# ? Nov 23, 2016 20:52

Antioch: Apr 18, 2003

ChubbyThePhat posted:

maybe?

Interview scheduled for Thursday morning with the good old song and dance of "bring contact info for three references". Either way hopefully I can do a bit of a jump in salary soon here.

If I recall, you're in my neck of the woods. Are you also interviewing at the U of A? I have an interview there also Thursday, also 3 references.

Antioch fucked around with this message at 23:14 on Nov 23, 2016

# ? Nov 23, 2016 23:07

Judge Schnoopy: Nov 2, 2005; dont even TRY it, pal

General office procurement talk:

I need a projector that gets checked out and passed around the office. Don't care about support or anything, it won't even belong to the IT department. They don't need to be high-end business class poo poo.

Between the two I'm looking at, both Amazon and CDW have them in stock. Amazon is $50 cheaper on the lower model and $200 cheaper on the upper model. Both are being sold by the manufacturer.

Do I buy this poo poo from Amazon and save a bunch of money, or is it better to stick to verified purchasing channels like CDW?

# ? Nov 23, 2016 23:08

Dr. Arbitrary: Mar 15, 2006; Bleak Gremlin

Get one of those new tablets with a built in projector.

# ? Nov 23, 2016 23:15

Thanks Ants: May 21, 2004; #essereFerrari

Get it from CDW, it's not your money.

# ? Nov 23, 2016 23:58

Aunt Beth: Feb 24, 2006; Baby, you're ready!; Grimey Drawer

psydude posted:

The consumer wireless thread is buried. Anyone messed around with AmpliFi yet?

I have one at home. It's absolutely perfect for my old house with plaster walls that had consistent coverage issues with a single central router/access point. The machine looks nice and is well built, and the management app is very sensible too. I love being able to turn on a guest SSID on a timer for a few hours if I'm having people over or something. It's been very reliable, no uptime issues, no noticeable throughput issues.

My only gripe is that it's all or none with respect to using the built-in services or being in "bridge" mode. I'd like to use my own DHCP and DNS servers, but rely on the router to do NAT, port forwarding, that sort of thing, and the software doesn't allow me to split individual services out like that.

Ask away!

# ? Nov 24, 2016 00:28

psydude: Apr 1, 2008

Aunt Beth posted:

I have one at home. It's absolutely perfect for my old house with plaster walls that had consistent coverage issues with a single central router/access point. The machine looks nice and is well built, and the management app is very sensible too. I love being able to turn on a guest SSID on a timer for a few hours if I'm having people over or something. It's been very reliable, no uptime issues, no noticeable throughput issues.

My only gripe is that it's all or none with respect to using the built-in services or being in "bridge" mode. I'd like to use my own DHCP and DNS servers, but rely on the router to do NAT, port forwarding, that sort of thing, and the software doesn't allow me to split individual services out like that.

Ask away!

Does it auto NAT, or can you just use it like a wireless LAN controller as the gateway and use static routing to get to other networks?

# ? Nov 24, 2016 00:58

Judge Schnoopy: Nov 2, 2005; dont even TRY it, pal

Thanks Ants posted:

Get it from CDW, it's not your money.

It's coming out of the building's A/V budget of $1000, so if I can save $200 we can potentially buy upgrades for other equipment like aging DVD players or a new portable screen or a sweet HDMI wireless bridge so I don't need to worry about cables strung across rooms. It's not money coming out of my pocket but that doesn't mean I want to waste $200 that I could otherwise spend on something cool.

# ? Nov 24, 2016 04:58

YOLOsubmarine: Oct 19, 2004; When asked which Pokemon he evolved into, Kamara pauses.

"Motherfucking, what's that big dragon shit? That orange motherfucker. Charizard."

Purchasing departments like CDW because CDW literally gives them kickbacks for buying from them.

# ? Nov 24, 2016 05:00

adorai: Nov 2, 2002; 10/27/04 Never forget; Grimey Drawer

Judge Schnoopy posted:

Do I buy this poo poo from Amazon and save a bunch of money, or is it better to stick to verified purchasing channels like CDW?

I would buy it off of amazon, but i am a cheap rear end. Also, I am a manager in my company and it's a lot easier for me to buy poo poo from wherever and expense it, whereas some of my staff would just order from CDW because that's who we order from.

# ? Nov 24, 2016 05:17

Cthulhuite: Mar 22, 2007; Shwmae!

I'd talk to a CDW rep and tell them you found it for a better price and how much they could lower theirs by.

Best of both worlds, it may not be $200 cheaper but $100 isn't unreasonable.

# ? Nov 24, 2016 05:31

3 Action Economist: May 22, 2002; Educate. Agitate. Liberate.

Farking Bastage posted:

I'm starting to regret going back to MSP right about now. Obviously, were terribly slow today, and the bosses called a meeting to not only suggest we go through customers setups looking for things to bill on, but also to say " We lose out on $30000 of revenue because of thanksgiving and christmas holidays, so keep that in mind.

Really?

The last 3 weeks have been the busiest weeks of my life.

After next week, I'll basically be in reactive mode, though, and should be able to cruise along until Spring.

# ? Nov 24, 2016 13:32

22 Eargesplitten: Oct 10, 2010

Has anyone heard about working at Stack Overflow? There's a posting for a job here and the benefits seem awesome.

# ? Nov 25, 2016 04:11

Docjowles: Apr 9, 2009

Supposedly it is a great place to work. Tom Limoncelli came through the Denver DevOps meetup a couple years back promoting his new book and had good things to say about it.

Are they putting technical staff in Denver these days? When I was out there it was all sales and marketing. But I think they also offer full time remote depending on the position. Their HQ is in NYC.

An interesting feature of SO is their tech stack is mostly Windows / .NET.

# ? Nov 25, 2016 04:17

Vulture Culture: Jul 14, 2003; I was never enjoying it. I only eat it for the nutrients.

Secondhand from another goon, a good friend of mine for the past fifteen or so years: study Linux anyway, because even if you're applying for a job doing primarily Windows work, if you're unlucky enough to land the interview with Tom instead of your regularly-scheduled interviewer he's going to drill you on a bunch of irrelevant Linux poo poo for no reason.

# ? Nov 25, 2016 04:37

Gucci Loafers: May 20, 2006; Ask yourself, do you really want to talk to pair of really nice gaudy shoes?

What does Stack Overflow even sell?

# ? Nov 25, 2016 04:40

Docjowles: Apr 9, 2009

Tab8715 posted:

What does Stack Overflow even sell?

Presumably the same thing any free site is selling, ads and data about their users. I think they also have a job posting feature, although I've never looked at it.

SO and all their related sites get a shitload of visits. From a very specific audience. Combined, that probably lets them command pretty nice advertising rates.

Docjowles fucked around with this message at 05:14 on Nov 25, 2016

# ? Nov 25, 2016 05:09

DACK FAYDEN: Feb 25, 2013; Bear Witness

Docjowles posted:

Presumably the same thing any free site is selling, ads and data about their users. I think they also have a job posting feature, although I've never looked at it.

SO and all their related sites get a shitload of visits. From a very specific audience. Combined, that probably lets them command pretty nice advertising rates.

They take some cut from recruiters/companies who find employees via this, I know that much. Joel talked about it in his blog at some point.

# ? Nov 25, 2016 16:33

22 Eargesplitten: Oct 10, 2010

Docjowles posted:

Supposedly it is a great place to work. Tom Limoncelli came through the Denver DevOps meetup a couple years back promoting his new book and had good things to say about it.

Are they putting technical staff in Denver these days? When I was out there it was all sales and marketing. But I think they also offer full time remote depending on the position. Their HQ is in NYC.

An interesting feature of SO is their tech stack is mostly Windows / .NET.

It's a desktop support job in Denver. I saw a posting for an application support role at Fog Creek, but my SQL is way too weak for that.

I hope they don't ask a ton about Linux. All I know is dnf and jar. The posting didn't say anything about it though.

Of course if I do get it, it will be even easier to doxx me.

# ? Nov 25, 2016 18:40

RFC2324: Jun 7, 2012; http 418

22 Eargesplitten posted:

It's a desktop support job in Denver. I saw a posting for an application support role at Fog Creek, but my SQL is way too weak for that.

I hope they don't ask a ton about Linux. All I know is dnf and jar. The posting didn't say anything about it though.

Of course if I do get it, it will be even easier to doxx me.

just fyi, dnf is only used in Fedora, which should be used in any enterprise setting. RHEL and CentOS both still use yum(I can't tell any functional difference between the 2 yet, the commands are all the same, just with yum in front of the command instead of dnf).

Most of the interview questions I get about linux end up being quick checks to see how comfortable you are on the cli anyway, so it should be fairly easy.

# ? Nov 25, 2016 19:07

ChubbyThePhat: Dec 22, 2006; Who nico nico needs anyone else

Antioch posted:

If I recall, you're in my neck of the woods. Are you also interviewing at the U of A? I have an interview there also Thursday, also 3 references.

Ayyy. Good luck friend.

# ? Nov 25, 2016 19:10

22 Eargesplitten: Oct 10, 2010

Yeah, that's fair. I guess I should have specified that I've always used Fedora. Are there other distros that don't use yum?

# ? Nov 25, 2016 19:17

anthonypants: May 6, 2007; by Nyc_Tattoo; Dinosaur Gum

22 Eargesplitten posted:

Yeah, that's fair. I guess I should have specified that I've always used Fedora. Are there other distros that don't use yum?

Pretty much just CentOS/RedHat and Fedora uses dnf/yum/rpm. I think dnf is in epel for CentOS7, so you could use it on CentOS if you needed to. Debian/Ubuntu uses apt/dpkg, OpenSUSE uses YaST, Gentoo uses portage, Arch uses pacman...

# ? Nov 25, 2016 19:25

RFC2324: Jun 7, 2012; http 418

anthonypants posted:

Pretty much just CentOS/RedHat and Fedora uses dnf/yum/rpm. I think dnf is in epel for CentOS7, so you could use it on CentOS if you needed to. Debian/Ubuntu uses apt/dpkg, OpenSUSE uses YaST, Gentoo uses portage, Arch uses pacman...

If your interview wants to know if you know anything but CentOS/RHEL/Fedora or Ubuntu variants, run for the hills.

SLES may actually be tied with Ubuntu server there, but anything else is not really suitable for an enterprise OS, and the RHEL family is on top of that pack for good reason.

# ? Nov 25, 2016 19:45

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# ? May 25, 2024 23:01

Docjowles: Apr 9, 2009

I always recommend learning more Linux, but I kinda doubt it would come up in a desktop support interview. I think VC and I were both talking about more of a senior production ops type job.

# ? Nov 25, 2016 20:50

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