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?"

Comments

My role in the office

[ka9dgx]

I work for a small marketing company, with some home-office and contractors to support. We're currently a Microsoft Dependent shop, but I hope to change that by December 2004.

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--

Re:I'm unemployed...

[trompete]

I'm working retail because I can't find an entry-level job in IT. Retail is fun, but it's not what I wanted to be doing at 22 years old :P

well..

[REBloomfield]

1300 users, 300 desktops, 8 servers, mixture of windows and linux. maintain website and internal portal.

sometimes i eat lunch too ;)

I do the jobs of five men

[Wonko42]

I work for a very small economic consulting company that, in the last year, has started branching out into software. Of the five people in the office, I'm the only programmer, and I'm also the only one with any system administration expertise (everyone else does SAS stuff, which I suppose is technically programming, but aside from SAS they don't tend to be terribly computer literate).

As a result, I am responsible for the following jobs:

• Design, development, testing, documentation, and customer support for a big expensive software product (currently nearing 100,000 lines of VB and SQL -- yes, I said VB). This even includes occasionally meeting with customers for marketing/demonstration purposes, which I can't stand.
• Design and development of the company website as well as a community support website for the aforementioned software product, complete with full-text searchable knowledge base, FAQ, and web-based support and feedback mechanisms.
• Administration of two business-critical Windows servers and five desktops (for which I am apparently on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week, although that's been news to me every time I've been called).

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.

I actually work most of the time.

[Jellybob]

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.

As little as possible

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Up to Friday morning...

[JobCenter]

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.