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Nobody else posted a new thread yet so I did the needful. Content to follow. What is this thread? This thread is for day-to-day discussion about working in IT - career questions and advice, how to get started, how to get ahead  , how to not gently caress yourself over, etc. are all welcome here in addition to the daily chit-chat. There are other threads in SH/SC covering specific IT topics like More poo poo that pisses you off and The IT Certification Megathread. It's fine to talk about those things here, but workplace-induced rage or specific questions about how to get your certs may be better answered elsewhere.What is IT? IT in its most generic sense refers to the field of Information Technology. Information Technology: (1) The study or use of systems (especially computers and telecommunications) for storing, retrieving, and sending information; (2) the technology involving the development, maintenance, and use of computer systems, software, and networks for the processing and distribution of data. The IT field encompasses a wide array of roles and responsibilities, from help desk technicians to database administrators to cloud engineers, and everything in between. Popular job titles in IT include:
What do IT people do? Everything. An IT professional can be a generalist or jack-of-all-trades, meaning they learn a little about a lot of topics and solutions, and do pretty well for themselves. Others find success in specializing in a given product or solution, mastering the ins and outs and dedicating their entire career (or a portion thereof) to it. I know how to computer. How do I get a job in IT? This is a tough question to answer, hence we must generalize. IT isn't a very structured or well-organized field like Engineering or medicine where job titles and qualifications are overseen by a regulatory body. For 90% of you reading this thread, everything I'm about to say could be dead wrong.  Some people in IT start out at a help desk or some other user-facing support team. These teams handle and resolve technology issues for users in an organization. They are typically the first line of support for end users, sometimes called "Tier 1". The prerequisite for a help desk role is usually a decent understanding of computer hardware and software components, and the ability to learn quickly and think critically. From my own experience, working at a help desk gave me the opportunity to touch many different parts of the organization's IT infrastructure and get a feel for what interested me most. All organizations are different, however, and some help desks are more scripted or process-driven than others, so there may be less room for growth or professional development. Your mileage may vary. In any event, showing an interest in more advanced topics and demonstrating your ability to learn and master new things is a reasonably effective way of breaking out of the shitstorm that is the tier 1 help desk. Others with existing knowledge or certifications in a particular technology can jump straight into an Administrator role. Whereas the help desk focuses more on user support, an Administrator role typically supports the systems themselves - applying patches, setting up or restoring backups, resolving issues escalated from the help desk, etc. More advanced roles include Engineers, Architects, and a whole slew of other possible titles. Engineers, Architects, and the like typically are more focused on implementing changes into existing systems or designing new systems altogether. Landing one of these positions usually requires a few years of experience. An Architect role tends to require 5 to 10+ years of specific experience with a given vendor solution and, in some fields, may also include some kind of certification. Certifications BaseballPCHiker posted:You're new to IT and you want to take some first steps towards advancing your career. Great, we have a certification megathread here that can answer most of your questions and give you some idea of what they cover and where they can lead to. But what I want to mention is that talk is cheap! I think a lot of new people make the mistake of planning out their entire career and what certs they will get in what order and spend all of their time on this instead of hitting the books and just working on what's in front of you. Decide on a cert and work on it! Don't let up until you're done and then take the time to plan your next step. The perfect plan is useless if you never put it in motion. Resumes and Interviewing I'll keep this short and IT-specific since BFC has an entire megathread dedicated to this. Resumes make the first impression on your prospective employer. Take your time and do it right. When writing your resume for a job in IT, keep in mind that most companies are different. For the sake of the reader, keep organizational lingo out of it where possible. Also stick to highlighting things that you excelled at vs. just did. I don't care that you answered the phone when someone called. Use that bullet point and tell me briefly about an uncommon problem that you solved, or a process that you improved. Use hard numbers. Resist the urge to get artsy. If you're not in a creative field like graphics or web design, stick with conservative typefaces. Tailor your resume to the job you're applying for. Pull keywords from the listing and use them in your resume where appropriate - don't just smatter them all over the page like alphabet soup. Don't puff up your resume thinking that it will help your chances. If you're not comfortable answering questions about some technology on the spot, don't put it on your resume. I would feel more comfortable hiring the guy who didn't know anything about Active Directory but was willing to learn than I would the guy who claimed to know but couldn't tell me the difference between a forest, tree, and domain. Guidelines for interviews are fairly universal, but one of the main differences in IT is the dress code. For relaxed or casual companies, overdressing for an interview is possible. At some  STARTUP CULTURE companies, it could put you out of the running entirely. At larger companies, you'll be safe in a suit and tie. Smaller companies are a toss-up. Do your research on the organization, its geographic location, and their overall culture/public image. If you have friends or acquaintances on the inside, ask them.Resources Many thanks to the countless goons who have contributed to the following threads for the benefit of all:
That's all I have time to write for now. If you'd like to add something to the OP, feel free to discuss it below. Cenodoxus fucked around with this message at 20:11 on Jan 12, 2024 |
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Jul 28, 2014 17:04
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This thread should try to stay focused on working in IT environments, how to get a job in IT, how to move up in IT, and be more career focused. We already have bitching thread, ticket thread, certification thread, and specific discipline threads (Enterprise Windows, Storage, VMware, Exchange, etc).quote:Information Technology IT is an extremely broad field, and covers a lot of people.
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Jul 28, 2014 17:14
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Might as well start this off with some bragging! Got a new job. £5k raise, mostly the same sort of stuff I'm doing now. Not exactly the upward movement I was looking for, but my old company was acquired recently and they're shifting direction a tad. I was asked in the interview if I had any experience with Linux servers. I said no, but I at least know not to run rm -rf * - which got a few laughs, and I got to feel all 
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Jul 28, 2014 17:31
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skipdogg posted:This thread should try to stay focused on working in IT environments, how to get a job in IT, how to move up in IT, and be more career focused. I disagree, this is a technical subforum about hardware and software, not about job interviews or social tips. I feel this thread should be focused on the technical aspect of IT, there are specific subforums like this one for career and salary related things.
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Jul 28, 2014 18:54
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Alternatively, this thread could just be a continuation of the last one, which went swimmingly. I kind of thought this was assumed...
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Jul 28, 2014 19:00
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It'll disintegrate into it sooner or later, so it's pretty pointless.
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Jul 28, 2014 19:05
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Edit: nvm
Fiendish Dr. Wu fucked around with this message at 23:08 on Jul 28, 2014 |
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Jul 28, 2014 19:08
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Seems like a fairly chaotic place to work, I would really be looking in the background regardless. I will say that with what I understand about your background I would be careful about titling myself "Enterprise Architect". So with that said, as long as you are keeping your eyes open, soak up as much experience as you can and hope for the best. Get your boss and whoever else you can on your side. Find discreet ways to let the right people know you're kicking rear end. Play the game! I also like the way the thread was going, minus the occasional alcohol-fueled dips into E/N territory.
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Jul 28, 2014 19:18
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Japanese Dating Sim posted:Alternatively, this thread could just be a continuation of the last one, which went swimmingly. I kind of thought this was assumed... skipdogg posted:It'll disintegrate into it sooner or later, so it's pretty pointless. I take most new threads to be a continuation of the old, so  And nobody reads the OP anyway  DrAlexanderTobacco posted:Might as well start this off with some bragging!  Nicely done! Was Linux part of the job listing or did they throw that question in for their own curiosity?
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Jul 28, 2014 19:28
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Dark Helmut posted:Seems like a fairly chaotic place to work, I would really be looking in the background regardless. Yeah it really is. It's been very chaotic. And I agree about the title, I really don't go throwing out around, however it is the title. I was just putting it out there because that's how it hit me. 3 months left on this contract, we'll see how it goes.
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Jul 28, 2014 19:39
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DrAlexanderTobacco posted:Might as well start this off with some bragging! rm -rf * won't do anything on a modern system.  You have to run rm -rf * --no-preserve-root or rm -rf /* if you want to wipe out the system for some reason. (congrats on the new job!)
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Jul 28, 2014 19:41
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I have one suggestion for the OP as this comes up constantly. Certifications. You're new to IT and you want to take some first steps towards advancing your career. Great, we have a certification megathread here that can answer most of your questions and give you some idea of what they cover and where they can lead to. But what I want to mention is that talk is cheap! I think a lot of new people make the mistake of planning out their entire career and what certs they will get in what order and spend all of their time on this instead of hitting the books and just working on what's in front of you. Decide on a cert and work on it! Don't let up until you're done and then take the time to plan your next step. The perfect plan is useless if you never put it in motion.
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Jul 28, 2014 19:49
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BaseballPCHiker posted:I have one suggestion for the OP as this comes up constantly. Well put, I've added that to the OP.
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Jul 28, 2014 20:05
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Salary negotiations is another recurring one that pops up every 2-3 pages. This is the one I've recommended in the last two Working in IT threads, the LI thread, and the Stairmasters LI group: http://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/
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Jul 28, 2014 20:18
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while keeping the same job - director told me he wanted to put me through a VMWare course and would be paying for it. I agreed, I don't turn down free legitimate learning chances. Told my manager about it, he said that was probably in response to his recommending me for a server admin job they've had open here for a few months. I'm drastically under-qualified/experienced for it, but they like what I've done so far, and this class is part of them preparing me for it (potentially). Manager also said he wanted to bump my salary up like 7k. Whether this will happen remains to be seen (I'm still on probation for about 2 more months), but still. This is basically all due entirely to me coming in and being like "Why are we not using USMT/ImageX/MDT here?" and deciding to use them to make my job easier. So... thanks, Microsoft, for making me look good I guess!
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Jul 28, 2014 20:28
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Comradephate posted:rm -rf * won't do anything on a modern system. In a previous job, one of the regular maintenance tasks was manually deleting old deleted email from the email servers. You had to go into the directory and do 'rm -rf *' to clear it out and make space when the servers started to get full. the path was something like /taurus/home/users/trash. I accidently did this from one directory above, when I had already been up all night on call. Luckily my genius boss used DRBD to mirror the servers, and figured out how to restore the data from the shadow copy/cache, but it still took more than a day to restore. I was told the method for doing this maintenance, but was told after the fact there was also a script I could run. This was even on CentOS, but not with SELinux features turned on. I had a similar slip-up doing manual SQL database updates in MySQL something like 'update users=suspended where a equals'. Basically I didn't complete the statement and accidently hit enter, so it affected a poo poo-ton of users and froze up the MySQL server for a while. This was when I thought maybe I had ADHD... (and I did.) rocket fucked around with this message at 20:41 on Jul 28, 2014 |
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Jul 28, 2014 20:33
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rocket posted:In a previous job, one of the regular maintenance tasks was manually deleting old deleted email from the email servers. You had to go into the directory and do 'rm -rf *' to clear it out and make space when the servers started to get full. the path was something like /taurus/home/users/trash. I accidently did this from one directory above, when I had already been up all night on call. Luckily my genius boss used DRBD to mirror the servers, and figured out how to restore the data from the shadow copy/cache, but it still took more than a day to restore. It's okay, what I read the thing I replied to as was rm -rf /, not rm -rf * Me dumb, no read. rm -rf * will work anywhere, and it's appropriate at times, but yeah, you have to be careful.
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Jul 28, 2014 20:40
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Ok, I guess SELinux is mostly for protecting system memory from malicious programs.
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Jul 28, 2014 20:56
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Sarcasmatron posted:Salary negotiations is another recurring one that pops up every 2-3 pages. This is the one I've recommended in the last two Working in IT threads, the LI thread, and the Stairmasters LI group:
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Jul 28, 2014 21:08
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rocket posted:Ok, I guess SELinux is mostly for protecting system memory from malicious programs. SELinux is does a lot more than that, but it's way beyond the scope of this discussion. It doesn't protect you from yourself, though (it can, but not in default config, and Linux facls can also protect the system from root doing this, but also beyond the scope). Always check (especially in scripts that blindly "cd /somedir; rm -rf *"), never "rm -rf .*", etc.
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Jul 28, 2014 21:09
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Thinking of going to Office 365. I'm worried about moving our exchange, sharepoint, and lync hosting off site. Anyone have any experience migrating? Any annoying day to day outages?
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Jul 28, 2014 21:09
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evol262 posted:SELinux is does a lot more than that, but it's way beyond the scope of this discussion. It doesn't protect you from yourself, though (it can, but not in default config, and Linux facls can also protect the system from root doing this, but also beyond the scope). It's just nice to know that it can be done. Thanks!
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Jul 28, 2014 21:13
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BaseballPCHiker posted:Thinking of going to Office 365. I'm worried about moving our exchange, sharepoint, and lync hosting off site. Anyone have any experience migrating? Any annoying day to day outages? O365 has it's outages, but overall I have no regrets moving to the service. Exchange migration isn't too bad, I highly suggest using Migrationwiz to do it. The native tools are there, but Migrationwiz is worth it. Lync is great, we don't use Sharepoint just yet, it does have some limitations. O365 has had a few well publicized outages, overall though it's been nice.
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Jul 28, 2014 21:15
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Sarcasmatron posted:Salary negotiations is another recurring one that pops up every 2-3 pages. This is the one I've recommended in the last two Working in IT threads, the LI thread, and the Stairmasters LI group: I've been responding to the "What was your previous compensation?" or "Well what are you looking for?" questions with stuff from that article and it's like talking to a wall. I really want to just take a "radical honesty" approach to job interviewing and just respond with "I'm not going to answer that, because it will only serve to poison the well for both of us: I'll either price myself out of the position or you'll underpay me and I'll leave in 6 months anyway."
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Jul 28, 2014 21:22
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rocket posted:It's just nice to know that it can be done. Thanks! If you're really curious about it, there are a bunch of docs I could link you. But setting contexts is going to be a PITA unless you really love SElinux. facls are dated, but "man setfacl" will get you started on protecting things from root without the rigamarole of selinux.
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Jul 28, 2014 21:27
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BaseballPCHiker posted:Thinking of going to Office 365. I'm worried about moving our exchange, sharepoint, and lync hosting off site. Anyone have any experience migrating? Any annoying day to day outages? If you are comparing O365 to rackspace/apptix/appriver hosting it is better than most at a similar cost. Compared to an on premises server you are making a lot of trade offs. For a small organization the fixed costs like licensing and hardware combined with the ongoing infrastructure needed to support it make hosted a more cost effective solution. Then you have to consider the ongoing costs like the power bill and potential for expansion. The benefit is that you can save bandwidth for internal mail, you have more flexibility with exchange add ons like CodeTwo, and when something breaks you don't have to wait on a third party to fix it. O365 has good integration with Microsofts other offerings like EOP for spam, archiving, encryption, sharepoint, lync. The Lync hosting is great compared to what is required to do it yourself.
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Jul 28, 2014 22:18
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lampey posted:If you are comparing O365 to rackspace/apptix/appriver hosting it is better than most at a similar cost. Compared to an on premises server you are making a lot of trade offs. For a small organization the fixed costs like licensing and hardware combined with the ongoing infrastructure needed to support it make hosted a more cost effective solution. Then you have to consider the ongoing costs like the power bill and potential for expansion. The benefit is that you can save bandwidth for internal mail, you have more flexibility with exchange add ons like CodeTwo, and when something breaks you don't have to wait on a third party to fix it. O365 has good integration with Microsofts other offerings like EOP for spam, archiving, encryption, sharepoint, lync. The Lync hosting is great compared to what is required to do it yourself. Thanks, the exchange hosting doesn't seem like to big of a deal for us and I've worked with Exchange for so long now I don't even really think all that much more about it. Still one less thing for us to have to worry about and we could easily ramp up our storage. Lync would be huge for us. I hate dealing with the million little problems that seem to point up with our Lync server or the user client. Mostly I was just worried about outages. I've heard of the national outages of course but hear horror stories about some small businesses having monthly 4 hour outages.
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Jul 28, 2014 22:43
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Out of the 30 or so of out clients with 0365 email 20 of them were not affected at all by the recent largest outage. The others have not had any "major issues" just a couple hours of time when email was degraded but all messages were eventually delivered. Also all of them use EOP or FOPE for spam filtering. You could go with a non microsoft spam filter to keep your mail stored somewhere in case of a microsoft outage, or a hybrid deployment. Anecdotally we have had better uptime percentage and fewer issues with Microsoft for email hosting than with other exchange hosting providers, but worse than most of the email only hosting companies like Google. It's hard to compare availability to an on prem exchange server because it depends a lot on what kind of internet access and how many remote users you have. It's pretty nice to have everyone on 25/50gb mailboxes with all of their email searchable and available on mobile devices.
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Jul 28, 2014 22:56
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I look after probably 800 mailboxes spread across a bunch of different O365 tenants (I work at an MSP), some are tiny 5-person companies, some have 150 people across the world. I haven't got a bad word to say about the availability of the service.
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Jul 28, 2014 23:26
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Inspector_666 posted:I've been responding to the "What was your previous compensation?" or "Well what are you looking for?" questions with stuff from that article and it's like talking to a wall. I really want to just take a "radical honesty" approach to job interviewing and just respond with "I'm not going to answer that, because it will only serve to poison the well for both of us: I'll either price myself out of the position or you'll underpay me and I'll leave in 6 months anyway." I was speaking with a recruiter last week and after a couple minutes of playing that game I finally told her that each time she asked me to name a figure I was mentally adding $10k to the amount I thought the position was worth. She asked me quietly what the total was up to and started laughing when I told her $280k (she had been really pushy about the salary amount and just wouldn't take "no comment" for an answer). She thanked me for my time and told me she would make a note in their system to call me when there's something that interests me, and to not push on the dollar amount.
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Jul 29, 2014 00:22
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MC Fruit Stripe posted:It's a great article, but yelling "SIX FIGGA BEEYOTCH" is a lot more effective than you might imagine, so just remember there are a few approaches here. The part about the article I think is the most effective and has served me well is the notion that while salary is an emotionally charged topic for me, it's a cell in a spreadsheet for them - it's helped me negotiate an extra 40K in *additional* salary over the last 3 years. Obviously YMMV. I don't discuss salary with recruiters until it's offer time. If they insist, then they can provide a range. If they won't give a range then that's a flare in the road for me.
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Jul 29, 2014 03:20
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I bitched about the network situation at my job and how everything is about to go off of our network. Well, a few days ago we found out that we are expanding and adding another office to our growing company.(It's a staffing agency, after all). I proposed one more time that we go with a VPN link from that office to our corporation and use this chance to test out some future ideas. It got approved and I spent the day working on our Watchguard XTM getting the devices to talk to each other. When the ping -t finally went from Request Timed Out to a proper reply, I almost shouted in joy. Some devices at the moment aren't replying, mostly ones on a different gateway, and everything on the other side of the VPN is not begin blocked by our web filter, but I'm told that I have to add static routes to the right devices. My boss is going to add them to the devices that I do not have access to at some point during the week, whenever he gets a chance, as he's currently hard at work all this week putting around on his boat. Hopefully tomorrow goes just as good for me with progress on this and I don't run into any more brick walls. Been told that I'm only holding myself back there by not taking initiative and proving myself and that they can't pay me what they want to pay me because I'm not doing the level of work for what they want to pay me. Hopefully this shows them that I am worth what they want and I get bumped up.
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Jul 29, 2014 04:29
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Sarcasmatron posted:The part about the article I think is the most effective and has served me well is the notion that while salary is an emotionally charged topic for me, it's a cell in a spreadsheet for them - it's helped me negotiate an extra 40K in *additional* salary over the last 3 years. Obviously YMMV. I've found internal recruiters are a lot easier to work with salary wise. Whenever they ask me about salary I usually ask them what the range is they were given by the hiring manager, and they're very upfront about it.
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Jul 29, 2014 07:12
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In my experience they always try and push for me to talk about Salary first. I just say "more" and laugh until they give me a range. I hope they get that i'm being jokey.
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Jul 29, 2014 09:03
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In general, agency recruiters get paid a percentage of your first year's salary, so it's in our best interest to get you as much as we can. If I am talking you down, it's because I know other candidates are more qualified at that level or something along those lines.
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Jul 29, 2014 14:48
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Dark Helmut posted:In general, agency recruiters get paid a percentage of your first year's salary, so it's in our best interest to get you as much as we can. If I am talking you down, it's because I know other candidates are more qualified at that level or something along those lines. Isn't it more like a realtor, where they'd rather sell the house and get the commission instead of risking it for an extra thousand bucks or two?
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Jul 29, 2014 15:04
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Bob Morales posted:Isn't it more like a realtor, where they'd rather sell the house and get the commission instead of risking it for an extra thousand bucks or two? My job is to represent you and get you the best chance to get the job, using my knowledge of the market conditions and other candidates (like a realtor). So sometimes it boils down to having that honest conversation - Look Bob, I can submit you at 90K, but you're going against Joe who is also at 90K and has 3 more years exp and a CCNP whereas you only have a CCNA, so why don't we go in at $85K? If I'm talking you down in salary, it's for a reason and I'm going to be clear about it. But in our first face to face interview we have already talked about your salary target/range. Which is again why I've harped on building relationships with a local recruiter or two that you trust. The good ones care about their reputation in the market and building business via referrals. It's in my best interest to get what you want, so you stay with my client - who in turn gives me more work and because you're happy you send me more of your friends/coworkers.
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Jul 29, 2014 15:20
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I find recruiters to be much more like used car salesmen than realtors. I mean, in NYS at least realtors have to take a licensing exam. Recruiters just call and leave voicemails of them talking really fast and breathlessly about a great job opportunity with an anonymous company doing something vague and the compensation is always magically tied to my previous salary!
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Jul 29, 2014 15:25
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I know that good recruiters exist, or want to believe they do, but I've never actually met one first hand. The last one I had was OK, got me my current gig but I never met them face to face, had all of 3 phone calls with them and that was it. Not bad at all but I felt that all they brought to the table was the job opening that was it. On the other hand a single recruiter in my office has placed roughly 6-7 people in high up spots because HR and management trust her judgement so much. She's the first person they look towards when they get a hard to fill spot. This recruiter has probably made a fortune off from us by being honest and producing good candidates.
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Jul 29, 2014 15:39
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A good tip-off is that they actually WANT to meet you first hand. I typically don't submit anyone to a client without meeting them in person first.
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Jul 29, 2014 16:03
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