Slashdot Mirror
What Do You Do at Work?
mabhatter654 asks: "With all the talk of 'inefficent' and 'uncooperative' American workers, what do most Slashdot readers actually DO at work? Currently, I'm one of those 'IT' workers at a small manufacturer. Yes, I'm called the 'SysAdmin' but that changes monthly. I'm responsible for the companies network, AS/400, website, PC troubleshooting, phones, etc. But...I also get pushed into other things like ISO compliance, Quality issues, as well as babysitting the shop floor/nite QC on 'off' shifts on a regular basis. Of course, the 'SysAdmin' work suffers...when you spend more than half of your day on other tasks. But that does make me part of the inefficent IT problem that bosses like to talk so much about now days. I'm curious how many other Slashdot readers 'multitask' in non-IT rolls while officially still in that capacity. I'm looking for your 'title', company size, and both IT/non-IT tasks you perform. Also, Does 'multitasking' add more or less value to your position at the company. i.e. the IT tasks that don't ever happen versus helping management in another department? Oh yeah, how about those hours too! How much overtime do you put in and how much of that is due to the other work?"
You insensitive clod!
You're asking slashdot, during the middle of the work day, what we do at work?
I can't say that I don't give a fuck. I've just run out of fuck to give.
You're about to be out of job yourself and need to know about a new line of work.
C:\>
I do my one page-a-day (or more ;O)) at Distributed Proofreaders.
Oh, wait, did you mean what I'm supposed to do at work?
"The evil of the world is made possible by nothing but the sanction you give it." -- Ayn Rand
My primary tasks include stomping out the various fires that crop up, and making sure our systems are up and available (in spite of the Children in Redmond).
I do a lot of one-on-one support, and fix anything that's broken. I get drafted to fill in the gaps whenever something comes up that we don't have enough resources for. (I just spent a day doing forms data entry, for example).
In my spare time (which varies from 40 to -20 hours/week), I've been spending quite a bit of time trying to plan out a migration to Linux. I'm free to pursue whatever projects I think will help the company. I also hope to eventually move our in-house database from Access 97 to MySql/Apache.
I read slashdot, k5, and a few other sites, to keep a watch out for the newest holes from the kiddies in Redmond. Yes, it counts as work, if I didn't do it, we'd have gotten crushed by things at least 3 times in the past 2 years.
--Mike--
"Yeah, I just stare at my desk, but it looks like Im working. I do that for probably another hour after lunch too.. I'd say in a given week I probably only do about fifteen minutes of real, actual, work."
and that 15 minutes is patching openssh
I spend most of my time filling out TPS reports and looking for the new cover sheet so I can get submitted correctly.
1. Bad signature
2. ?????
3. Profit
read slashdot
No overtime, and the non-IT things that I'm stuck doing are usually sort-of related, like being on the HIPAA taskforce or helping a specific department migrate to an external system, or building a "strategic plan" for our company.
In addition to being a network, phone and system admin, I do custom developing for them too. I enjoy that better than the rest, and it makes me more valuable, I think. So it really depends on what things you're stuck with, how much you like it, and how good you are.
It's all going according to
I read /. at work, natch.
"I'll say it again for the logic-impaired." -- Larry Wall.
I maintain a database of half a billion dollars worth of excess aircraft parts using dBase IV for DOS. I also maintain the superfast network of Pentium 133s running Windows 98se.
Yes, I am quite happy when I get home to bask in the warm glow of my eMac running Mac OS X.
Interestingly, I'm having a discussion with my boss's boss who wants to know why we don't get more work done on projects. I've tracked our time and it comes out to about:
His response, predictably, was "Only 50% of time on projects? I can't believe you are only 50% efficient."
So, as a simple solution, we've started using RequestTracker It's a simple ticketing system, and everything in the "Interrupts" list goes into the system (otherwise we don't work on it.) And then each week I give a nice list of all the "other things" we worked on. It's been very useful defending my "efficiency."
...as long as it's not illegal or immoral and he's willing to pay my price. And I'm not trying to be funny.
In the last year, that has included IT security auditing, training on various office apps, database development, needs assessment, small network administration, technical writing, etc.
Title- owner. Company size - one. Being self-employed means plenty of non-IT tasks like bookkeeping and janitorial and marketing and purchasing. Hours? Depends. When business is good, I put in 80 hour weeks. When business is not so good, 40-60 hour weeks. But then I pretty much take off all of November and December and a couple of weeks in the summer.
I love my job. My boss is a bitch, but her profit-sharing plan is awesome -- I get 100% of the profits.
computerlady - a brand new Slash-daughter - alone, but no longer invisible, in the
Read slashdot, answer help desk tickets, answer phones, read slashdot.
That's about it.
I don't have a job you insensitive clod!!!
__________
Love conquers all... except CANCER
We are slashdot readers. We read slashdot at work.
Then I am a programmer / analyst / business analyst, who has to work with the systems group as well as development group. I trouble shoot hardware, release management, installations, and have to work on other projects and give advice to people who generally don't take it, and then they get upset if I don't take their advice.
Only 'flamers' flame!
Does slashdot hate my posts?
...i just browse /. all day, posting witty comments.
I'm the "sysadmin" for a small ISP (about 11k customers), and my day mostly consists of 3 basic categories...
Maintaining existing systems - this means applying patches as necessary, performing maintenance on servers, and keeping everything we use running...
Upgrading/Adding new systems - this means deploying new systems/services for our customers and/or staff to use. Usually they're feature requests our help desk asks for, and every so often we roll out new services to our customers. Most of them are home-grown solutions, or custom installed public domain software (our implementation of SpamAssassin for our mail servers, for instance)
Waiting - Literally, waiting for things to break. When both other areas are up to date, or pending something I can not do myself, I mostly spend my time chatting on IRC, surfing the web, or working on projects of my own.
-PhaseBurn Welcome to Linux country. On quiet nights, you can hear windows reboot.
I work in aerospace at a big US firm. We still have developers onshore: many of the US government contracts disallow foreign workers for security reasons.
Amazingly, most of my day is not spent working on software, but, on software process. There is all of the overhead involved in keeping our work instructions up to date and our software processes documented so that were are compliant with ISO 9000/1, and CMMI level 5. All of our specs and testing must be formally documented to keep up with DO-178B and contractual obligations.
Because the govt is the customer, there are bi-monthly presentations of our progress, with all the PowerPoint that that entails. The government has their own separate safety team that monitors our team, so a lot of time is spent interfacing with them.
As a consequence we are rather inefficient. To deal with that inefficiency we spend a lot of time in Six Sigma meetings tryings to come up with ways of automating work and creating reusable frameworks. These meetings are truly valuable (see, I'm not totally cynical) but they do take time and require their own documentation.
(The sad thing is that once all this process is up and running, the ISO/CMM documentation makes is so much easier for the company to treat coders like cogs in the machine or to move their jobs offsite. I am so thankful for the government security rules that make my job US citizen only. Whether or not we can keep our California site from moving to Nebraska or some such is another question...)
20% user support (it isn't my job, but I don't mind - I go BOFH all over them)
:)
20% Adding new anti-pr0n rules to our filtering proxy.
20% Working on new projects
40% Slashdot and Fark
I'd say 100% Slashdot and Fark but my boss read Slashdot occasionaly...
Ash nazg durbatuluk, ash nazg gimbatul Ash nazg thrakatuluk agh burzum-ishi krimpatul
1300 users, 300 desktops, 8 servers, mixture of windows and linux. maintain website and internal portal.
;)
sometimes i eat lunch too
Where I've worked, IT wasn't regarded as inefficient but I think it's regarded as too expensive everywhere.
I'm used to management hating IT because it's a cost center. Here's what I wish I could tell management:
IT is hard.
You get what you pay for.
I'd like to see some of these managers try taking their car to a cheap mechanic.
IT requires acting almost compulsively, lots of obscure knowledge, and troubleshooting. Then there are the hours.
Troubleshooting is helped tremendously by natural ability, and is not easy to teach. The obscure knowledge requires being enough of a geek to keep up, and the more background you have in how stuff works, the better off you are. Compulsive behavior is a pain for most of us.
I know that the reason I got pulled onto other tasks was that they knew that I'd just Make It Work. I watched a former CIO pulling on cat5e with all his might when he was helping out on a cable run. If you pull on it too hard, it'll probably work, but you sure won't full bandwidth out of it. I often worked on nights and weekends to minimize impact on my office. Backups have to work and be tested. If you don't have backups, you might as well not have IT. I know places like that too, but what do you think of a software shop where nobody is specifically responsible for things like the FTP server, or there are no real backups?
Unfortunately, it's difficult to sell most of this on a resume. I guess that's where years of experience are suppposed to come in, but I know that in many cases that doesn't do it.
Where did you hear that American IT is inefficient? Is this some sort of specific story or rumor? Traditionally, American workers are very productive, and my experience in IT is similar. I know the network architect at one company where I worked saved them hundreds of thousands of dollars on their phone bills by redesigning their telephone system. IT has made a lot of other support staff unneccessary.
I like the mechanic analogy a lot. You can delay maintenance for a long time, and put up with little problems, but ultimately your car will require professional attention. Even for people who buy a new car every two years, maintenance is cheaper than doing none. With a few years experience, a mechanic at a dealership can make 80k.
Almost all of my coworkers in IT have worked their asses off too, even the mediocre ones.
Assembly is the reverse of disassembly.
this is clearly a question for lawmeme.
I am a one-man IT department at a Los Angeles-based company with about 150 employees. I do pretty much everything that's even vaguely related to IT.
:-( ), and I'm coordinating the contractors doing this.
Recently, in only vaguely IT-related stuff, I have worked on the renewal of our phone system support contract, figuring out if an upgrade to our phone system is really necessary, and fighting with the phone system people over incredibly bad terms in a contract. (For example, when they upgrade the system from Windows NT 4 to Windows 2000, they deliver the upgraded system unpatched (!). I told them to patch it as part of their agreement and they said NO NO NO and I said YES YES YES and they finally bent, sort of[*]).
My main job is to develop and maintain my Linux-based CRM+web ordering system that I developed myself. I want to move it to MacOS X to make security administration easier, and that's been taking a lot of my time. But so has developing new software to communicate with a new distribution partner.
We're also replacing our Exchange server (required because of the Windows-based phone system
Finally, when someone's workstation fails or gets a virus or whatever, I have to help him, her or it out. I am incredibly irritated at all the Windows problems that come up, because they distract me from productive work. If I ran the company, nobody, and I mean nobody, would be using Windows. Ugh.
When I feel overstressed, I calm down by reading and writing on a whole bunch of sites, including Slashdot. Slashdot is also work-related because it alerts me to the worst security holes, new directions in computing I should be aware of, and the like.
Recently, I'd say fully 50% of my time has been spent on supervising contractors of various types, but that's extremely unusual. Most of the time I am working on projects on our CRM system and helping users with problems. But recently there has been a lot of supervision. For the most part, I consider it an interesting change of pace, especially since management is understanding about it delaying the other projects I'm supposed to do.
Except for now, when our Exchange server is being replaced next weekend, there's relatively little overtime except during emergencies. But then again, our business is a 8-3 business, more or less.
Hope that helps.
D
[*] (Yes, our phone system runs under Windows. It's called Interactive Intelligence, and I'll give you a free clue: Don't buy it. Don't argue that it's bad because it runs Windows, even though that, too, is true. Instead, argue that it's bad because maintenance is incredibly expensive, non-responsive and our VAR maintaining it is desperate for revenues. It also appears to require a complete hardware replacement every five years or so, which is not long for something costing as much as a house in a crummy area of Southern California. Because many of the support problems, including quasi-compulsory upgrades, are thanks to the software developer and not the VAR, I cannot recommend buying this software even if you find a better VAR than we did).
When at work and not working (various good reasons, to be sure) I'm working as the infamous DeathKitten, keeping the old marsh clear of trolls and hags!
But seriously, keeping the marsh orderly is hard work at times. *nod-slash-smile*
Everything in the Universe sucks: It's the law!
I'm supposed to read /.!
One of my co-workers maintains his jobs security(at not a very high level obviously), by being the official fish tank cleaner - refiller - maintainer. It is a crap job, but someone has to do it, and it apparently falls to those most in fear of losing their jobs.
(A little bit beyond 'IT', but I do a lot of IT type stuff) :-) :-)
QA Manager
Company Size: 130
Tasks: In addition to setting policy and managing 11 people, I
*frequently set up new systems to support ongoing development and testing
*Eval, procure, configure and maintain various types of groupware tools to support the company's internal organizations (from bug tracking to customer requirements to design docs, etc)
*Eval, procure, configure new hardware for my group
*Write new tools
*Installer development
*ClearCase administration
*Core technology debugging
*Rapid Implementation of new product features
*Run the occasional expert contractor
*Do everything IT for the lab _except_ repetitive processes (backups, for instance)
*Consult on all aspects of the company's business (although sometimes I'm ignored, I see the results of my influence enough to keep on truckin' in spite of that, and I _love_ saying "I told you so" at my overall hit rate of about 80%
*Do whatever else needs to be done in-the-moment. Rock hard in code, be sweet to customers, kick around a few vendors, write docs, dispatch tasks that aren't being done by those who are most efficient to do them.
*Oh, and when I get a chance, I occasionally test the products.
*Basically, on any given day, I kick ass, takes names, put them into a database for future reference.
I multitask constantly, and I do have todo items that are over two years old that keep getting preempted. Multitasking adds more value to my position in the 'task' oriented thing (if I do it, it's generally right), but subtracts from my tactical and strategic capabilities (although I do spend about 15% of my time on 'futures'). But, the 'getting things done' is what the company needs at the moment.
My schedule is extremely flexible- I regularly get in about noon, leave around 9-10 (later if I'm in development mode), work occasional weekends (80% to do something 'proactive', 20% to get 'caught up'). On the flip side, I take off whenever I need to, certain days I only work 6 hours, which balances the other time, and there is a whole ebb and flow of work that follows its own courses, but it's really rare that I ever have to be here when I want to be doing something else (call it 2-3 incidents a year).
I don't "love" my job. I do enjoy it. I "love" other things about my life and try hard to put around 50% of my total 'effort' into those. Needless to say, that list is almost as extensive as my work list.
I'm also paid a bucket of money and stock options (for a presently non-public company hopefully heading to IPO when the market takes off next).
Before you ask, I am an American IT professional. And I happen to agree that most IT professionals don't 'do enough': partly, that they haven't learned how to really focus all that well, only about 50% are self-motivated (which is the only real motivation you can count on in a clutch), that too many work 'for their paycheck' instead of working 'for the company' - the sense of ownership is important, which is why I like the options concept (but feel the way they are run is just a little too slanted towards the company - I'd rather see a dual vesting schedule of - here's the stock that you are entitled to if you stay, here's the stock that you are entitled to if you leave before we go IPO, sort of thing, with the latter being maybe 25% of the former).
Programming, web-dev, sys admin, tech support, hardware support, long-range IT planning, board member....
*including reading slashdot
As a result, I am responsible for the following jobs:
What's my job title, you ask? "Analyst". I don't know what an analyst is or what I'm supposed to be analyzing, but that's apparently my job title. Apparently analysts don't get paid much, either.
I like the company and the people, but the job is stressful and my todo list is always overflowing. I've brought up the question of hiring more people on several occasions, but I always just get a nod and a, "Yeah, that would be nice."
Hours-wise, I try my best not to work over 40 a week, since I'm on salary and I value my own free time a lot more than I value the company (this might have something to do with how much the company values me, as reflected in my, ahem, paycheck). I pulled an all-nighter just once, and a few late nights to meet a deadline, but that's rare.
Let's see...
. I write delphi code, user interface design and database design for hospital project;
. I write php/javascript/html code, user interface design and database sesign for the web project;
. Server management is up to me;
. I do the network management as well;
. MS-DOS memory optimization (!!!) for the old software (e.g. new machines on client side). I do this because I'm the only person on the company that played games on MS-DOS back in 1994...
. Internal hardware support;
I'm doing some research in colege too... All of that consumes my brain to the last drop and I end up working 60+ hours/week.
It IS insane, but if you take off presure, I like doing all this stuff... don't YOU?
sorry if I can't write good...
\m/
Well actually even worse I do VB maintenance!!! It's a big system and it's interesting sometimes but I've been here 3 years now and I pretty much know everything there is to know about the system.
...I sat in a meeting for nearly an hour an a half discussing the following topic:
The marketing department has a track record of making bad ideas into "Tier 1" campaigns. Much of being called a "Tier 1" campaign involves getting anything you want on the website, regardless of how short the deadline is. Most of these projects fail and we end up adding more cruft to our web site. How can we build a system and process that easily allows us to throw away bad marketing projects after they bomb?
I am doing some java suff too hehehehe...
Programing and training the Java team to use Eclipse w/ CVS.
\m/
Job title is "IT Specialist" but it should be "Bitch"
Since it's slowed down, I've had to take on other tasks
Running all the outgoing mail through the postage meter.
Checking UPS shipments
Ordering/stocking office supplies
etc etc
Yuck.
when i arrived 3 years ago, it was as a temp. i was given a phonebook-sized list of banks, spent a couple weeks doing nothing but confirming their fax numbers.
in the years since, i've helped out with database administration, research, data entry, mass mailing, installation of OSs and software on new PCs, and other miscellaneous networking tasks.
these days i spend most of my time helping our luser customers work around bugs in our softare, which is based on access runtimes (i know i know and i'm sorry).
keeping up with the changing demands, having a job description that's full of loose ends, has been a real pain in the ass. on the other hand, it's let me start from scratch at this company, and get my hands on many different aspects of IT, that are distinct departments in larger businesses. everything i know about computers has been self-taught, and i've gotten raises commensurate with my increasing knowledge.
by the way, i'm the only geek i know who's at the same place 3 years in a row, without even the threat of mass layoffs. not too shabby.
disponibile
I work for a smallish Engineering firm (~100 people).
Systems Administration: 10 Linux Servers, 3 Solaris and 1 Windows (Proprietary project accounting software).
Database Administrator: Oracle, Informix (for an external project), MySQL and PostgreSQL. I'm dumping Oracle and Informix and moving everything to MySQL and PostgreSQL eventually.
Developer: Mostly custom Java WebApps. Some C++. Fair amount of SAS Procedures & macros.
Network Admin: 3 T1's and about 30 Domains with associated mail and web servers. 2 of the T1's and about half of the domains are dedicated to external projects (billable=good).
Desktop Admin: Patching up windoze desktops. I'm trolling around for victims to start a pilot OpenOffice/Linux conversion.
General Help Desk: blurg. 'nuff said.
I was talked into becoming our department's Data Protection officer. This means writing policy documents about how data (paper data as well as electronic data) should be stored, who should have access to it and who should decide who has access to it.
It's a bit of a nightmare, really, but I'm not sure I'd trust anyone else in our department to do it!
"If you think the problem is bad now, just wait until we've solved it." --- Arthur Kasspe
I work as the solitary face of IT in a 50 person charity that runs courses to train people employment techniques (interviews, CVs, finding jobs etc.), and runs a UK Online centre (where people can go use the internet for free). This involves tech support across 4 different sites around the city.
I'd say things are spread out like this:
40% online centre IT: installing software, fixing machines, unjamming printers
20% OLC support: showing people how to use mice (literally), software, and logging people out when they forget.
20% Off-site support: you know, strolling out to one of the other sites, installing software, fixing problems (most of which I don't know about until I get there)
20% Other Stuff: Meetings, e-mail, phone calls, and keeping up with the world of IT.
Usually I do a 20 hour week, although this week I did a couple of all nighters removing some management software from the machines in the online centre, and replacing them with Win2k group policies.
Unchallenged Master of None. And I love it that way. I can always hire or outsource when we do need an unchallenged Master. I get to be the one and only IT person at a small subsidiary to a large financial company. I lay out the budget, make all the decisions on purchasing, outsourcing, business recovery, etc. I do a lot of paperwork for compliance purposes which I kind of hate. I spend the rest of my time training users, acting as help desk, evaluating new products and tech, and trying to keep up with all the security alerts I get from the parent corp. It has been a wonderful position. I love being the "CIO" of a tiny company.
That was the way it used to be. Recently the parent company has taken it on themselves to pull ALL IT functions under one roof. Somebody thought it would be a Great Idea to have one group of people be all things to all business units and subsidiaries. Consolidate to save costs. What a novel idea. It has truly been a nightmare. What used to take literally 5 minutes now takes 2 weeks and requires 800 signatures. It's the most inefficient set up I can imagine. My users are forced to call a centralized help desk that is staffed by inexpensive entry-level folks that have no idea what we do, what apps we have installed, what our business model is, what constitutes a risk, etc. These people are fine, but imagine your company's help desk if they got calls from other companies in different industries. When calls get escalated we get a visit from an upper level Corporate IT person who either
A: doesn't get it anywhere close to right because they've never seen half of the software we use to do business, have not been made aware of the security model, and have never been told what functionality we need.
OR B: They swallow their pride and ask me, so then get it right but resent me for being king of my little pond.
This is true for most departments - their business systems needs are very different from each other.
So where we used to be a fast nimble outfit that took every advantage of current and emerging technologies to gain efficiencies and stay on top of the competition, now we are a slow, backward, bureaucracy driven, lawyer ridden, hack shop that can't load an MS Office template without 2 forms, a signature, a phone call, a ticket number, and a 5 day turnaround time.. And that's JUST for an Office template to print out mailing labels. You don't want to hear about adding forms to our web site or patching a SQL server, or (OMG!) upgrading apps on a desktop PC!
It's a total nightmare. We aren't saving any money. We're much less efficient. The entire dept. is beyond pulling their hair out. The parent corp's Holier-than-thou attitude leaves us with no hope. And just about anything I could do to rectify the situation is a violation of corporate policy.
I went from loving my job to hating it to the point where I'm sick to my stomach in less than 3 months. And it has nothing to do with the efficiency of workers and everything to do with incompetent power-hungry management whose main concerns are buzzword compliance, covering their asses, and of course short term stock prices over long term profitability.
I'm not used to being a bitter person so I'm putting my energies toward getting the heck out of Dodge.
Operator, give me the number for 911!
I the only IT guy at a small company. If things are working well everyone leaves me alone. That gives me time to expand my knowledge on things (tech related which are sometimes work related) so that I can make better decisions or just be more aware of what is out there and can be done. Otherwise I do the generic sysadmin sorts of things, fix people's PCs, patch servers, occasionally suggest improvements to the infrastructure to the people that have hold of the purse strings. I read slashdot. I am also the only non-management male employee so if there is any handywork that has to be done I've kind of become the defacto handyman. I also have the luxury of being called in for "heavy-lifting" duty, i.e. boxes full of paper, moving furniture, etc. It wouldn't be so bad if these women were attractive. *grin* I'd probably fall all over myself trying to help them out. But alas, they're not. *frown* A lot of these things they could easily do themselves i.e. hang a picture. I'm amazed at how useless people can become in a work environment. It also doesn't help that I'm the comoplete opposite from the BOFH.
Seriously I can understand your feelings. Although from perhaps the reverse direction.
I became so frustrated at one of my past jobs when I spent a large portion of my day doing IT stuff when my main capacity was as a programmer. I begged and pleaded for a new IT person to assist me, but budget problems made that impossible.
Needless to say the IT stuff AND the programming stuff got behind schedule.
It wouldnt have been that bad having to watch over the IT stuff if I didnt spend 90% of that time fixing "Wierd Microsoft Office XP crash #5910333..." while trying to open "randomdocument53.doc" I really hate MS software. Bill, if you are listening, ADD SOME INTELLIGENCE TO YOUR DEBUG MESSAGES, the end user may not get it, but the IT guy trying to figure out what the hell went wrong can sure use it.
My hopeful rant: Maybe one day i'll be happy and everyone will use linux. At least when things go wrong on linux you can be sure of finding out WHY they went wrong.
The Ro Factor - Jeep/Linux Weblog
== 15 minutes doing real work, and 39 hours and 45 minutes abusing internet privleges.
I work as a QA analyst. That is ostensibly my full-time job. I also sysadmin most of our testing hosts--Linux, Solaris, HPUX, AIX, VMS, UnixWare, NetBSD, Reliant UNIX, Windows, I guess about a dozen machines all told. I also write automated tests.
The sysadmin stuff usually falls by the wayside because we just have to have them up and running and I've got enough other things to do, what with testing interfaces and writing automated tests and proofreading documentation.
As far as a breakdown, I actually do spend most of my day working, although obviously I screw around a bit as well--reading Slashdot and some comics.
Believe it or not, they do take that into account when they're doing schedules around here. If we've got, say, 40 hours to test something, they schedule that as 6 2/3 days of six hours each. Ostensibly it's because we've all got far too many meetings to attend, but also so that we can deal with email and do "other things".
I write code, but not all the time (I don't think I could write code all the time). A lot of the rest of the time I talk to other people about the code they're writing, or the code we're going to write together. I have just a little bit of seniority, so I get to enjoy sharing what I know and being listened to respectfully by the very smart people who work with me. Sometimes there's troubleshooting work to be done, and sometimes I end up in meetings talking about business processes and requirements. It's pretty much all good, except on the rare occasions where the person chairing the meeting is one of a small number of total dorks we sometimes have to deal with.
My only real gripe is that sometimes it's hard to get things done. If you go entirely by the book, and someone doesn't want to help you, it can take forever. People who understand what you want and are interested in helping you to make it happen will often come out from behind the wall of paperwork separating you from them and help you to sort it all out. But we're still at the mercy of pen-pushing time-servers when it comes to things like getting a replacement battery for a laptop. *shrug* - that's corporate IT, I guess.
Experience is a hard school, but fools will learn no other.
What are those, like marketing biscuits?
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
-show up 45 minutes late, spend 30 minutes making coffee and eating breakfast.
-check mail
-check for latest virus patches for windows machines
-if patches found, spend time till lunch upgrading and rebooting (yeah, windows, it's like a constant struggle); else check mrtg graphs and trouble tickets
-lunch, 1 hour at least, out of the office
-work on special projects that usually change at the drop of a hat
-fart around cleaning up stuff on the servers, like unused mail accounts, queued up junk mail, spam
-write scripts so i can do less manual work
-usually get pulled into a meeting or two
-sometimes drive to reboot crashed windows server
-leave at 5
-check servers no more than twice while at home
The core work I do in a day lasts about 2 hours at the most. The rest of the time is spent haggling with co-workers, reading e-mail, and doing other random tasks.
Why read the article when I can just make up a snap judgement?
I work for a small software development firm with roughly 75 employees. We make password syncronization software
Systems Administration: 25 Linux Servers, 7 Solaris,2 HP-UX,1 IRIX,1 VMS, 2 True64,1 OS/390,1 Unisys, 1 NCR, 2 SCO (unixware and openserver), 3 AIX, 9 Windows, and 1 OS/2.
Database Administrator: Oracle, Informix, DB2, MySQL, SQL server, dbase, and about 8 LDAP servers.
Oddball application support: We have about 35 vmware machines running all sorts of different software packages that need support. Everything from OTG Lite to obelix
Network Admin: Mail services, switching, firewalling, making cables, testing cables, cussing at cables.
Desktop Admin: Patching up windose desktops, updating virus signatures, deployment of new desktops and laptops.
Help Desk: wiping noses of new users, fixing problems with the accursed Goldmine contact manager.
Policy and Admin: I create and remove user accounts, restict naughty users, use the wooden spoon on really bad users.
Um, yea.. I check this site to make sure no one from work is browsing and posting. Yea, thats it.... And I have to do it often, too. You know, so nothing slips through the cracks.
What, me Tweet?
I deliver pizza now that I've gotten my BS.
A planet where apes evolved from men? Long live the apes.
I work at one, with about 100 employees and 70 workstations. We've got Windows 2000 servers and windows 2000 workstations, and the ERP system with all the reports, backups, research etc that goes into it all.
Therefore theres a lot of stomping on problems as they flare up while I'm trying to push back the projects into the priority list. For extensions to the reports, We installed postgresql on linux and are trying to move the VPN server from windows2000 to linux or cisco pix.
Sadly, I also take care of engineering drawing stuff and the phone lines among other things. I think I would spend about 40% of my time on the formal projects. Take today for example. One critical computer on the factory floor crashed and replacing it took half the day, and phone line problems took another half. I'm only getting back to the project now... 30 minutes left to the end of the day and I'm wasting that on slashdot.
In any company with more than 1 IT employee, its always good to divide them among errand boys/troubleshooters and project people. Those minor interruptions usually cost you the whole day
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
come on...it's $300, legal, and all the same software.
I work for a largish ASP helping to maintain a large number (~1300+ Solaris ~50 Linux) of internet servers. Mostly, I monitor our internal ticketing system, watching for alerts such as web services / application server / Oracle down, high CPU / memory utilization and disks filling up and attempt to remedy problems and provide solutions. Its actually a lot more interesting than it sounds, and can be exciting at times. Trying to determine why a server will not bind to an open port while examining truss output or strace is not out of the ordinary. We have such a diverse number of clients utilizing such diverse technologies, that there's never a dull moment.
/. faster than you.
That, and due to our nice pipe to the internet (multi-homed OC-96's) I can refresh
Isn't that amazing? You post something on Slashdot about one of the world's most (deservedly) obscure products, and you run into someone who's actually heard of it.
Please do drop me an email - my address is as listed in Slashdot. I doubt there are many people here who are interested.
D
This reminds me of a big argument I had over compensation, when worked at a big computer retailer back in the late 1980s. I complained that as the only technically-oriented sales rep, I did an inordinate amount of work for the other sales reps, configuring their systems and troubleshooting, etc. and of course they made the sales commissions and I got nothing. I had a small base salary plus commissions, I told the boss I wanted to be compensated for the work I was doing for everyone else, by an increase to my base salary. The boss refused to believe I spent that much time helping everyone else, so I worked out a plan. For a full week, every 5 minutes, I would write down everything I was doing. I had a little timer that went off every 5 min, I took it everywhere except on sales calls. It took a huge amount of effort to record things constantly, but I was out to prove a point. After the week, I compiled the report, and it turned out that I spent more than half my time doing uncompensated work for other sales reps. I was the only rep doing work for other reps, all the other reps solely did their own work. I had proven my point, but do you think I got a raise? No, of course not.
I work at a large manufacturing company and officially am the system administrator of over one hundred sun workstations (most attached to mainframe testers), a nice server cluster (ha, disk storage), and a handful of linux workstations in our semiconductor test operations.
Along w/ normal system administration duties, I am on call 24x7 as I have no backup... am the webmaster for our department as well as the engineering group... manage software development at our site... spend a ton of time doing web development in php/mysql/javascript... handhold tons of people w/ unix questions/perl questions/exceed connections... manage and maintain a pretty well used mysql database. At least if they come to me w/ windows questions I can refer them to the IS department helpline. "I don't do windows... sorry!"
I usually spend about 45-50 hours per week at work... I go home because I want to - there is always stuff I can work on... I do keep anything critical taken care of on a priority basis. And luckily suns tend to be remarkably stable... if these were windows I would be running around frantically. The majority of my servers have been up over a year. Plus, we share the load w/ the admins at the other locations - definitely helps!
I think your typical system administrator ends up doing all this stuff because he is more geek than the average programmer/engineer/etc. The guy with all the skillz... the Chief Geek.
No pay rise for 3 years+ = no work increase for 3 years+ (in fact work cut as inflation means no pay rise effectively = pay cut so I reduce work performed to balance).
Sometimes it freaks me out how much slacking I do, then my boss praises me for being one of the best performers! It frightens me what I could do if I were motivated.
Have thought about moving but I wouldn't be able to do do half as much slacking somewhere else, even if I got the same cash that'd be, like, another pay cut.
Still, at least we're getting loads of regular emails "Manager X has been promoted", "We've made a killing this quarter", and of course the old favorite "but we're short of cash so NO FSCKING PAY RISE." Not even inflationary. Bastards.
In Soviet Russia, work does *you*!
(sorry.... had to.)
I'm a sysadmin for a Rather Large Company (~40k employees).
Actually, scratch that, I'm a Solaris sysadmin. I'm on a team of 10 people responsible for ~300 servers. I have a team of counterparts that do AIX, and another team that does OpenVMS.
*all* I do is Solaris. I'm not a network admin, I'm not a PC weenie, I'm not The Guy Who Makes The Coffee.
Solaris.
I architect & implement new systems. I build SANs. I maintain existing systems. I recommend upgrades. I implement SF15k's and E10k's.
I've got a *great* job.
The pay isn't that great (~65k/year in the NY metro area), the politics are awful, the on-call rotation is a pain in the ass, but damnit, I'm employed and enjoy what I do.
How great is that?
I run a Virtual Private Server hosting company. I'd say my most of my time was spent dealing with people.
That includes answering simple questions for potential customers. And every now and then answering 'hard' support questions which might have me googling around trying to find answers.
I spend a bit of time setting up new servers. That used to take hours per server. Now I've got a personal best of 30 minutes (and that included a fully featured kernel recompile).
Since my server setups are pretty standard and the management of them is pretty much scripted, the day to day management of a lot of servers isn't that much of a handful.
Other than the support and hardware side of things, its a bit of everything: Billing; updating the default software installs; working on the website; adding HOWTOs; finding cheaper/faster/better host servers and network connections; reading the wht forums; new customer setups; answering 4AM in the morning pages; ...
- I fight the company IT department to get the permissions I require to run the software I need to do my job.
- I fight again to gain ownership of the files containing the source code I have to edit to produce the company's products. (It doesn't do anyone much good if the files are set read-only and owned by some administrative function other than me as they're checked out of the revision management system, but that's what IT's default settings did.)
- I fight the undocumented and idiotic conflicts between pieces of Windoze software. For instance, today I discovered that a certain serial port chip-programmer application is completely locked out of the use of a port if I use XP's Hyperterminal on that same port, and I can only use that port with the programmer app again if I reboot Windoze. (Bill Gates, you suck dead rotting donkey cock.)
- I fight the absurd and ridiculous limitations of test software, such as a hard limit of ten messages I can pre-define to be sent on the test bus when I have come to need a minimum of 11. (Even more ironic, the test hardware I'm driving is based on Linux and ought to be way more capable than the crippled Windoze interface I must use to talk to it.)
Talk to me next month and I'll probably have a new litany of complaints. I do thank ghu that I only have to deal with the reboot monkeys of IT rather than generic Windoze lusers, though.Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
I work for a service company, where one of our primary sources of income is from secondary student organizations. Basically, this means that when FBLA, DECA, TSA, and all of those other clubs you joined in high school want to outsources some of their workload at the state or national level, we get the call. It might vary anywhere from providing some training or conference coordination to, in some cases, running the day-to-day operations in its entirety.
"IT Manager" doesn't mean a lot around here. It just means that I keep our servers from getting hacked (too often), help out on website launches and educating clients on using backend software, occasionally do multimedia for conferences when we're stretched thin, and sometimes conduct workshops and seminars on technology. It's part time for now while I complete by degrees.
I'm basically the guy who has to explain to the boss why it's a good idea to have server-side spam filtering, so that the 16-year-old student representatives of our clients don't get penis enlargement soliciatations in their morning inboxes. (The boss now loves me for it -- the 16-year-olds are a bit sullen)
"You're never ready, just less unprepared."
"My job requires mostly masking my contempt for the assholes in charge, and, at least once a day, retiring to the men's room so I can jerk off while I fantasize about a life that less closely resembles Hell..."
I play cards.. every day from midnight until about 8am. Various games and variations, because otherwise it becomes awfully monotonous.
because IT tends to over-promise and under-deliver. In addition, of course, IT teams tend to be better paid than most, and the stuff we do is hard to quantify - what's the value to the company of an email system ? a billing system ? a website ?
In "Dancing with bears", Tom Demarco and Tim Lister make the point that on an IT project, we're tracking costs to an ever-increasing degree - time, expenses, over-runs down to the cent - but almost never track the benefits. The feature that gets added to the project because the VP read about it in a magazine, the little switch that lets your favourite customer bypass the security system, the 87th report - they may well be hugely valuable, but we just don't know.
Efficiency is not just determined by cost, it's the ratio of cost to benefit. On the IT side, we can controll (some of) the costs, but surely it's up to the business to make sure that the benefit is managed equally professionally.
The lure of off-shore outsourcing is twofold - there's the promise of cheaper stuff, but also the reduced requirement of the business to justify the benefits of their projects and features. Instead of a partnership between the "business" and the IT team, the relationship becomes "customer/vendor", which for many business folk is a lot more comfortable.
In the long run, I believe that - unless you manage the benefits - there is no price point at which you can afford to ignore the benefit part of the equation.
It's all very well in practice, but it will never work in theory.
In six months, it is expected that all of our engineering will have been moved to India, and all the US engineers will have been laid off.
More than all, actually. We had 38 engineers here, and we expect to have 80 in India. All the developers who put in the 90 hour weeks to get the first release of our product shipped have already been fired. (My job function will make me one of the last Americans to be let go.)
So what do I really do at work? I get paid to look for my next job.
I'm a teacher, and everything that works with or related to computers is my problem... As NOBODY really understand WHAT a computer is, and don't care about what they don't get payd for, I'm responsible for most of the trouble (600 users, e-mail list, webpage, internet links, IT classes, laboratory, printers maintenance, etc). The recognition for a 14 thin client linux lab perfecly designed is zero, just because nobody knows what a remote client can or cannot do. The good part? I work just 4 hours a day, and use the rest of free time doing geek stuff and reading /.
- Arranged for electrical and phone contractor visits to wire up a room in our office.
- Called local telcoms to price T1s.
- Patched W2K (2x), Office 2K, SSH (2x), and Sendmail.
- Purchased new computers and set them up with FreeBSD (2x) and W2K (2x).
- Split our NIS netgroup to get around the verdammt 1024-character limit.
- Set Nagios and MRTG to watch our stuff.
- Purchased office supplies and a new hard drive to replace one that took a walk.
- Taught one of the new managers how to use CVS (which truly was a case of the blind leading the blind).
- Fixed a bug in the build process (one particular environment variable wasn't getting set during build, but had been statically coded by Yours Truly).
- Attempted to get a handle on what software licenses we need to get, and how much that might cost us.
- Discovered that "Print to PDF" in the version of OpenOffice we have means "Print to PostScript"; made vague plans for upgrade to latest version.
- Tested OpenVPN, found it Good.
- Set up new rackmount switches to replace the zip-tied ones we had previously; half-cleaned up the rat's nest of wiring.
- Moved one guy's home directory to another computer so he wouldn't fill up the partition he was on; made vague plans to replace the old server.
And I love it all. In all honesty, I'm having the time of my life doing all this. Beats the living fuck out of helpdesk.Carousel is a lie!
don't you just get mad when you are lied to repeatedly about how india offshoring is just a tiny part of maintenace work,,,,, and then it becomes offshoring the entire development staff except for a few remaining people whose job it is to train their replacements.
I work for a small software company ( 30 people). I was hired as a QA Engineer, and that is still my 'official' title. I actually play the role of Programmer/Analyst, Build Guy, Release Manager, Development Hardware Guy, DBA, Technical Writer, etc. For a company this size, having multitaskers is much more valuable. We tend to lay off the people with narrower skill sets. To me the experience has been very valuable, but I never get the recognition I deserve. This has not been too much of a factor in the past, but is now starting to bother me. Since I was hired, I have earned my Bachelor's degree, and racked up almost 3 yrs experience. Not so much as even a title change. 'They' (the suit guys) equate title change with salary change. They are basically milking me for everything they can. It is starting to wear thin. Maybe this is why all of the senior developers quit on us :-P
Granted, a couple years ago we were a startup, and we still kind of are, but I still wear a lot of hats.
My official role in IT is 'Linux Administrator', but I admin Windows, Linux, and Solaris boxes, as well as making sure anything that plugs in is working (has included the coffee machine at times =P).
At one point I was also working for marketing as an 'Application Analyst', which basically meant researching and deploying software on our wireless network (as well as just being marketing's bitch).
Then I was just IT again. And now I also work for our engineering department doing systems integration. Our product is a wireless networking product, so my knowledge of IP and networking in general is quite useful.
We're about 75 employees, nothin huge, so I guess it is to be expected that we all do work outside our job description. Our IT needs are fairly low, and limited mostly to putting out fires, due in no small part to the software and general network design we have in place. Everything pretty much just works. So while my other jobs affect my IT work, it isn't too big a deal.
Staple these together and file them properly. Design new covers and forms. It's a demanding job.
I spent the better part of my 13 years in IT flitting from one place to the next, as they alternately downsized, upsized, sold out, got bought up, outsourced, lost their outsourced clients, and everything else you can imagine. Finally, I made it to SysAdmin for a Fortune 100 company. So what do I do?
:\
Helpdesk for 200 or so users, with 75 of those off-site.
Making reports, and then reports on my reports.
Electronic billing.
Custom programming (VB, but it still counts)
Phone maintenance.
Fax machine maintenance.
Toaster and microwave maintenance (hey, it beeps and hums, doesn't it?)
Training... not that they ever listen or learn.
E-Commerce
Travelling to our branch offices when Joe Schmoe kicks the plug out of the hub and then wonders why he doesn't have a network...
Anything and everything else that could possibly be done or moved to a computer.
As for the fun stuff, like NetOps? Outsourced before I arrived... now, if I want to make a folder on the server, I have to call someone.
And what does that earn me? Well, when I went full-time, I went in with a dozen salary surveys and reports, all showing average salary for what (they said) my position would be... and they maxxed out at 20% lower, because "That's what the other people in our IT departments get." I almost told em to go screw themselves, but took it because IT in Alberta is hard to come by... less money than I could have made if I'd held out and waited for another place, but nice place, good experience, solid job... what's not to like?
And now? I went a little BOFH after seeing a memo that someone left on the printer, checked it out (thank you, secret Exchange back-door!), and sure enough, we're getting majorly downsized and centralized right away here, and once again, I may be job-hunting (If my BOFH job-retainment tactics don't work... what's that? The new piece of custom software I put in that only I know how to work has a glitch? Hmm, I'll get right on that...)
The moral of the story?
Don't go into computers. By the time you get a good job that doesn't disappear in a year, you'll be too jaded to be any good to anyone..
And I'll add a "bah humbug" in here too. I should have stayed out of IT when I left the first time.
(Speaking of which... irony... my other career was Call Centre Manager... and I spent more time in that job doing true IT than I do as a SysAdmin)
If I knew the wedgies I gave you back in 6th grade would have resulted in this . . . I might have taken a moments pause.
Looking at some of the posts on here, it looks like most of you do similar jobs to me.
:)
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:)
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I was originally hired, fresh out of college (not university as Americans would understand it) on a short term basis because the Linux techie there had just got the sack, and word had gotten to the college that a student knew about Linux. So learning a bit about Linux got me an easy break into IT
I then became a part time worker in the short time before I was due to start university.. I did about 4 months at university whilst still working part time at the college. I quickly realised that I hated university and my studies were already suffering so I dropped out and went to work at the college full time as a technician. I often wonder if that was a bad idea, but despite the grief of the job I still wouldn't want to do anything else.
Anyway.. where was I.
So basically to bring us up to date - I am now a 'Senior Computer Technician' - my original technician duties still include the usual stuff
* Installation of software
* PC troubleshooting
* Helpdesk stuff
* Installation of ink cartridges, etc.
Bolted onto that is my Linux and internet related stuff which I do
* Admin and maintain two Linux based caching proxy servers, two DHCP servers, and our two DNS servers.
* I also assist when general internet related queries and problems arise which (amusingly) our 'internet & securities manager' cannot manage.
* I configure Cisco edge switches, and very occasionally do some light configuration on a Cisco 6500 series core switch. But only very occasionally
Plus other server related work
* Configuration of some Windows servers, admin of some Novell NetWare servers.
* Patching, updating, installation and configuration of new services such as Microsoft RIS, etc etc.
And then the 'senior' part of my job
* Helping with basic team management, allocating jobs out to the other technicians
* Allowing techinicians time off, scheduling work accordingly, etc.
Its pretty crazy. We are split across two sites with around 30 servers and 1700 workstations - around 1000 staff and quite a lot of students. Yet we are a team of about 12 people (we are SERIOUSLY understaffed yet the college does nothing - and its rare we have a full compliment of people on any given day).
Its a tough job but we manage.
"Hey! Unless this is a nude love-in, get the hell off my property!!"
My first thought was, oh they spend most of their time cleaning up messes. The I read on and saw that he meant eXtreme Programming...
whew
...but when I was working in IT we spent most of our time locked in the basement playing Soldier of Fortune. Good times.
I'm unemployed you insensitive clod.
If the developer cannot do his job, the company has no product and pretty soon neither of you has a job.
If you can't find a way for the developer's tools to run correctly without administrator priviledges for "everything", then your OS is fucked up. Microsoft had an example of how to do it properly (Xenix) in-house before they released Windoze 1.0, and ignored it.
And if two Windoze utilities conflict on your server and fuck it up, you're still stuck sorting it out. Sometimes the tools have bugs. Unless the developer has the source to the tool (gonna get the source to the interface for an in-circuit emulator? how about Visual Studio?) the developer can't control what it does to the system. They still probably have to use it, if for no other reason than it's the company standard. I don't know which is more ridiculous: letting anyone touch the company webserver, or insisting that cross-development source code files on a desktop workstation are in any way equivalent. Making it impossible for someone to do their job will do that; if it's your policy, it's your fault. You really want to make brownie points? Hose someone's computer with some magic update that blows away some essential driver that was working just fine the day before, then make them wait five days to get around to letting them do their job again. (That happened to me too. I don't work there any more.)As for my current situation, I've now got permanent local admin rights on my own desktop. The revision control system works as it is supposed to, I can actually use the editor to edit files, and the various tools are installed and running. The truly sick thing is, everything was working fine for the guy who had the same computer before me... so IT had to know how to set it up properly, they just thought that was optional for me. Is that your attitude too?
It's probably mutual. Today I wish that I could take the Fortune-50 customer for the project I'm working on that's been delayed because of IT's screwups and point them at the people responsible for making me run in circles trying to figure out why my tools didn't work instead of getting product out the door. If there's any resemblance to you, I'm sure it's just coincidence.Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
I work as a stage techie for a large college. I'm the only employee in the "department", and constantly get into fights with IT support. The pay is pretty lousy, but overtime pays extremely well - especially if I end up doing an all night rehearsal.
If I split up my average day, it'd probably look like this:
50% - IT Work, of which 20% programming moving lights, cues etc., 20% sound / music design and 20% admin work.
10% - Tech meetings (talking to directors, touring companies coming to perform etc)
20% - General maintenance
I used to work on an Apple Mac system, until I returned from holiday to find that IT has ripped them out and sold them, replacing them with PCs, claiming that Windows was "less admin work, and cheaper"...hmmm. I'm now stuck on Win 2K machines, although occasionally smuggle in an iBook.
Administer a couple thousand servers.
Pretend we have backups.
Pretend our services and infrastructure even closely resemble our marketing material.
Turn ugly truth into "PR-friendly" client responses. ("Yes, we have backups! We uh, just seemed to have a problem recovering JUST THIS ONE")
Wait for building to collapse or be taken by natural disaster. . . Freedom. . .
I did a mix of maintenance coding and new development. As a member of an internal development team, I gathered information from (internal) customers, formulated requirements, prepared requirements and design specs, and wrote code.
As of Friday, I am unemployed. My full-time job is now looking for a job. I'm also trying to help other Slashdotters who need work. See the link in my sig.
Slashdot job networking at JobCenter
I'm still at school, you insensitive clod :)
/. ), chatting, and playing Elastomania.
And I dont do/learn much in there, I already know some/most of the stuff they teach.. so 70% of my time is spent on research (translation:
"...a generation of kids has grown up thinking Trance is the shittiest music since country and western." - Paul van Dyk
I'm a Sprint Relay operator and I read what the deaf type and type back what the hearing people say. ALL DAY LONG.
Oddly my job title has nothing to do with IT. (Design Studio Management Intern) I work for a Theater Company who had a department head (resident scenic designer) go on sabbatical and I got an Internship to do what he did. However I don't know the first thing about theatrical design, but it pays. I cant draft and hate the artsy fartsy stuff and was suprised as hell when I got the position, but find that that's why I got the job as they were really just looking for a resent high school graduate who could program a VCR. I'm the youngest person in our company and have yet to do anything involving design but instead have had a non-stop stream of people who come to me to ask how to use there Mac's. The most amusing thing has been that they spent $1100 to have an HP tech come out and look at a plotter that they told me was broken and that the guy from HP was coming to fix it so not to touch it. The tech plugged it back in and the display was solid black, he used the manual to go threw the menus blind to change the contrast. That was all that was wrong with it. So all in all I spend 1% of my time doing what my job description is and 90% of my time fixing the 30 Mac's and 45 PC's they have as there is no IT department and oddly noting works real well. They got a grant back in the early 90's to wire their theater with network capability and did a wonderful job 450 ports all over the place. One problem it's all Cat 3. Oh yea, there is that last 9% of the time spent "Fixing shots" ports and cables in the dance hall and choirs girl dressing rooms.
That's it. I used to play that all day at work where I was a network analyst, when they tried to make me actually work I quit. There technically was no real reason to work, as my network was simply flawless and I refuse to perform any task not associated with network infrastructure, ie I will not help someone use Outlook or PowerPoint. Now I have all the time I need to play, but money is quite lacking.
I took a IT sabbatical. I work for a walmart now, as inventory control specalist. Though, I wear countless number of hats. I also unload trucks, stock, pull department manager duites, drive and maintain various heavy lift equipment with great ease requiring operating lisences and a mechanic's wrench to keep things in order. The unloading trucks part of the job does me better than a gym. I am one of the managers' "Ill give it all I got" people and train everyone in my department to be the same. (Now I just have to teach them to think ahead of management without relying on me to do so for them)
I haul around about 20 to 30 1/2 ton to 2 ton pallets for 2 hours with a manual pallet jack and stock for 2 to 3 hours and unload trucks for 2 to 3 hours (depending on other activities). I swear after Q1 of 2004 when I go back to IT work, I will be one of the strongest IT guys with the ability to handle anything thrown at me. I have learned to enjoy the odd jobs as they break up the monotony of things, and told management that fact. Just so long as they realize odd jobs are to break up the regular duties, not the other way around.
DRACO-
Consider yourself blessed if you are sneezed on by a dragon and only get wet, it could have been a fireball.
I'm sorry you work in such a lame environment. Here's an idea, get a job somewhere that has the tools you need.
I've got a system that has had about an hour of downtime (excluding the obnoxious reboot cycles of patches/routine maintenance) in almost 2 years. The engineers and developers are completely able to use their systems, and are willing to accept certain limitations of the software/hardware in order to do their jobs. Shucks, that sounds like compromise, it must be hard for you.
I don't make it impossible for people to do their job...and it's never been my policy. If you didn't have the IT monkeys to complain about, you'd still wind up bitching about your project manager changing the schedule, or the sales guy adding "features," or maybe the engineering manager not knowing what he/she's talking about. It has nothing to do with the policy, take a look in the mirror sometime...
The Fortune-50 customer you're talking about probably would be happy to know that the IT screwups prevented the sales and bizdev folks (the ones who generate revenue, you know, the ones that neither the IT guys or the Developers have a job without) from spreading some worm that brought down your entire system and caused them to have some DOS as a result. There is no resemblance to me, my systems run great, and I don't have any complaints from the developers here. In fact, the developers are actually cool people who don't act like you do in any way. We share the frustrations of it being 2003 and our standardized OS is completely lacking (you work with what you have, complaining about it does what, exactly?). I don't get flame/hatemail, nor do they use terms like "screwups" or "monkeys" when talking about any of their coworkers. You have a bad attitude, the IT guys probably hate dealing with you...and you wind up suffering. Vicious cycle, but it isn't ALL IT's fault.
man rtfm
math. school level, 12-16 year olds and i really like this job. das all,