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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?"
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
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.
I was in exactly the same situation as you in the last place I worked. The only trouble was that when I pointed to all the things I had worked on as the reason why I was behind on my main project, I was told by my boss (the owner of the company) that I was "stupid" for working on those things instead of my main project. When I pointed out that it was him that told me to work on them, and that he told me to *drop everything else* to do them, he only got angrier (and changed the subject). This was a weekly occurence. I no longer work there - some places you just can't fix.
(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).
Actually, I think I've been quite accurate about my information. I am spending " only 50% of your time devoted to stuff that can make them money."
The rest is frittered away in maintenance and the general bureaucracy of business.
Since we happen to be an XP shop, we can tell how much time we're spending on "stuff that can make them money." because it only happens when we're pairing (we do our planning, programming, scheduling, etc. in pairs. Admittedly,you also have to factor in meetings.) I personally think it's a great side-effect of XP (and pair programming in particular) that you become much more time-aware. Since we know how much time gets taken doing things other than projects, our project timelines become MUCH more accurate.
As far the PHB goes, he would prefer if I simply multiplied all times/estimates by a factor of 2 and then pretended that I was working on projects 100% of the time. Although the numbers work out the same, it gives the fiction that I'm working on projects 100%
Sounds like you are a very talented employee. I did what you did about five years ago for a large tax consulting firm. I couldn't do it anymore (I'm a DBA/sysadmin for a public TV station). It takes a real special brand of human to:
1) swallow his pride
2) nurture his users' tech savvy
3) do virtually anything, anytime
Tech support. Truly the foot soldier of technology. Keep up the good work, hoss. You have as big an impact or more on your company as anybody else can claim.
First, I justify reading /. as a means of keeping up with security issues and other could-be important tech news.
But in my capacity as "Vice President, Technology" at a really small trucking company, "technology" includes fixing the fence around the yard, installing air conditioners, running and maintaining the snow plow, and explaining why italic bold underlining is really just too much formating to make a point.
- 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!