Slashdot Mirror
Training - A Company or a Worker's Responsibility?
r0wan asks: "I'm currently working as a Microsoft Systems Administrator. Through a series of bungled management decisions, have found myself responsible for a Windows Server 2003 Active Directory network, that I know nothing about (the person who was sent for training was: not the Microsoft point person, as I was; and left the company, soon after the domain upgrade). It doesn't look as though training will be forthcoming, and I've just been moved from the lab, where I was training myself while simultaneously handling the domain. I've got the MCSA/MCSE Training Kit, but recently I've found
numerous errors, so many that I was sent a free Press Kit book, for submitting all of the errors I had found. Between management's reluctance to shell out for training, and being moved from the lab, I'm getting the distinct sense that training is something I'm expected to take care of, on my own time. Is this the de-facto standard within IT, and for all jobs within IT? If so, how do you Slashdot readers keep up with your continuing education, while still maintaining a personal life? Is it naive to try to leave my work at work?"
"I'm especially interested in hearing from the Slashdot readers of the female persuasion, as I have a husband, a dog, and a household to keep up with (no kids by choice, but I wouldn't have the time to take care of them, even if I wanted to). I also have the added responsibility of being the primary breadwinner. My free time is valuable in that it allows me to take care of that which I can't during the day (grocery shopping, dog responsibilities, cleaning, etc), and decompress/de-stress in order to prepare for the next day's work. I like tinkering with computers and learning new stuff, but I fear that if I'm expected train myself, outside of work, I may need to consider a different career.
Thanks in advance for the input."
Thanks in advance for the input."
I'm lucky if they tell me what day it is.
rely on seeing the rest the smelly thing in there with you sooner instead of later. Resist ALL attempts to cause you to spend your OWN time and money on things that benefit your bosses and/or the owners of the company instead of yourself.
Is it fascism yet?
Hey,
Get your company to front for some M$ premier support. When something comes up you are not sure of or are having a hell of a time resolving, call in the experts at M$.
Except for one or two "M$ Alliance partners" I have always had good luck with M$ premier support. And we have had some major fiascos to unscrew over the years.
And best of all you can consider it free on the job training, don't let the M$ Engineer hang up until you completely understand what was wrong and how to fix it in the future.
Also, document everything you do! Two years from now you will be fighting the same or similar fires you are fighting today. Have a reference to fall back on and help remember what steps you took before that fixed something.
Sounds like you are a lone gun, but a 800 Premier support help number and some documentation may help greatly.
Best of luck with the new responsibilities.
No.
I have eight guys in my specific dept (a section of security). As it stands right now, we are averaging about 10,000 USD per person for training this year. It will probably double before the end.
Every company I've worked for (small, large, huge) have either paid for or reimbursed employees for relevant training.
"This calls for a very special blend of psychology and extreme violence" - Vyvyan "The Young Ones"
In fact this Sunday I'll be off to Melbourne for another course of a week, the second admin course for HPOV Performance Insight. Without the training I can't imaigine being able to deploy and support this quite complex (and not overly intuitive) product, it would in fact be negligent to have me do so.
I'd reccommend taking your need for education to your managemnt quite firmly, and if they won't budge look elsewhere - not just because of this particular issue, but because such behaviour is indicative of a lack of management vision IMO. If they can't outlay some cash now to train for the future it doesn't sound like they'll have much of a future to worry about - at least not a very interesting high growth one.
// It had been Fat's delusion for years that he could help people. --Philip K. Dick, Valis
I suppose if the company's managers want its infrastructure maintained by amateurs, that's their business. (No pun intended!)
However, you'll probably get the blame if something goes wrong. You might consider looking for another job.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I moved from being an Excel junkie to being a network administrator with 5 servers. I had not used Active Directory or Windows Server 2003 before this point, so it was all new to me. My boss knows less than I do, and the people who installed the equipment basically showed us how to set up a new user when it was necessary.
Nobody told us how to map home folders, shared network drives, printers, set file permissions, or anything else. Everything I know was learned on my own, however, it was all researched on company time.
They've been pleased with the system so far. It's not too hard to learn.
At my company, we each get budgeted a certain amount of money (generous) for training. (We also get an allowance for professional organizations.) We also get paid for the time we are off site at traing events.
We have to get approval before taking a class we want to take, but they are very open to our ideas.
No matter what anyone says, a great strength of a company is its employees. The more we know, and the better we are, the better the company will do. It also has other benefits, as it makes us all feel better about our employer
And All I Ask is a Tall Ship And a Star to Steer Her By
But does it benefit the company more, or does it benefit the employee more? If she gets training, she'll be better able to demand a higher salary from the company he's working for now, or a higher salary in his next job.
I also think it should be the company's responsibility (in general, and in this case) to provide work-related training. However, I don't agree with your assertion that it only benefits the company involved.
Simpli - Your source for San Jose dedicated servers and colocation!
In a big company, the company will train you on their time and their dime. In a small company, they may not train you, but they should allow you the time to train yourself and/or learn by doing. Do NOT front any money for technical training like this. Maybe for a Masters degree, but not for some Microsoft certificate.
You have to choose what kind of company to work for, essentially.
Having done both, I liked the small company when I was young and had no kids, and now I like the big company.
My amazing wife - Artist, Author, Philosopher - Laurie M
"I'm especially interested in hearing from the Slashdot readers of the female persuasion, as I have a husband, a dog, and a household to keep up with (no kids by choice, but I wouldn't have the time to take care of them, even if I wanted to). I also have the added responsibility of being the primary breadwinner. "
If you're the primary breadwinner, why are you also responsible for all the household chores?
I would try to get one or more assistants and convince the higher-ups that you'll be taking an hour or two per day on peer training. This will allow you to further your skills and also provide redundancy that benefits your employer.
How do you Slashdot readers keep up with your continuing education, while still maintaining a personal life?
Your question implies a misunderstanding.
xkcd.com - a webcomic of mathematics, love, and language.
If you're the primary breadwinner shouldn't your husband be keeping the house etc under control? I'm assuming he works part-time or less, if so and you are working full-time it seems that the majority of such tasks should fall to him...
// It had been Fat's delusion for years that he could help people. --Philip K. Dick, Valis
Well, if "Microsoft Domain Mgmt" was in your resume, you might be stuck.
I think what really needs to happen is you asking your management about this, and work something out. What shouldn't happen is you buying a Win2k3 CD and lots of books and burning your weekends playing with a test server without compensation. Do OJT training, get a library set up for IT and buy the books, etc. It sounds like you're a pretty big shop, so eventually some consultants (from MS or otherwise) might be useful to do some bootstrap training. There's an optimal solution, find it.
Returned Peace Corps IT Volunteer
I think many employers are leary of sending employees to training because they're afraid of people using it as a gateway to another job (which isn't totally unfounded). That said, don't EVER use your own time/money for training that is necessary for your job. You may have to work a bit harder to prove to whoever signs off that it's necessary, but it really is up to them to provide the necessary training for your job.
It sounds like you have a good opportunity to shine in the position you are in, and I'd stick it out if I were you... Good Luck!
I'm not fat, just big boned...
I manage a technical staff of about 35, mostly developers. When hiring I always try and determine what they have taught themselves recently, and within the company it is not hard for me to tell you who pushes themselves to keep their skill sets current. Such people do better in the market place, both when looking for a job, and then advancing once they get a job. End of story. It is a competitive world out there. Regardless of the training your employer gives you, you should make sure to invest regularly in your knowledge portfolio, as they say in the Pragmatic Programmer.
I have seen many sad situations where long time employees who have not kept their skill set up to date are laid off -- usually by forces beyond their control, like a merger or something -- and they wonder frantically how they are going to get another job. Don't let yourself be found in this position.
This may be similar where you live, in Canada if a company requires that you keep your skill-set up-to-date then they are required to provide funding.
But the easy way out for some companies is to state that it is not a job-requirement.
3 points I want to make.
a) get out of there. it sounds like a poison place to work if they pull that kind of shit on you.
b) When you do go for your training, make sure you do ALL studying, preparing on WORK time, do not bring it home with you.
c) To answer your question; No it is not part of the IT climate. Like I said; get out of there.
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
Got halfway through correcting it and got distracted. My bad :)
Simpli - Your source for San Jose dedicated servers and colocation!
I work in a small company supporting many clients, my employer values my abilities & wants me to grow with the company as it expands so they can give me more responsibilities.
They pay for my training books and my exams and I have worked out with them a number of hours a week where I can have study time, as well as putting in time out of hours too.
I'm currently completing my MCSE & then aim to move onto CISCO & Citrix.
Because we specialise in medicine, at the same time I am learing specialist software & how everything works in a Medical Practice, these skills are not easy to come by so my employer realises it is more cost effective to train me up through the business.
All this training I have had to negotiate myself with my employer, I have had to agree to conditions on pay and also have performance conditions on my exams, I have to be able to show my employer that what I am learning is a benefit to the company & good for the business.
For my job I think the negotiation process has been good, because it has helped me get what I want & also its good for my employer aswell.
Is it naive to try to leave my work at work?
Yes.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
It really, really depends. A good employer will try to people with a strong capacity to learn, and good problem solving skills. Once hired the employees generally just pick things up as they go. It's kind of expected at top tech companies that you'll stay on top of your field, and learn everything you can. IF however your job requirements change drastically, a good employer usually sees it as in their best interest you train you (or give you the time to train yourself).
What you have is really a company with bad management. First of all, giving a rats ass about any sort of certificate (i.e. MCSE, or whatever else) is usually a bad sign (means they are more concerned with beaurocracy than with reality). Then the fact that they trained the wrong person is a bad sign. The fact that their communications with you is so terrible is a really, really bad sign. Many other companies would handle this far better than yours has.
That being said, it looks like it is indeed your own problem to train yourself. My best advice would be to train yourself as well as you can (forgoing personal life for a while), and then jump ship for a company with better management. Look for a company where management cares more about how well people can problem solve than what certificates they have (sometimes hard interview questions and logic puzzles are a good guage of how seriously they take problem solving). If they place a strong emphasis on teamwork, and trying to retain good people, that's another good sign.
I've worked in several different environments (and companies) over the years, and I've worked with a lot of programmers. I've known college dropouts who were stellar programmers and could really deliver solid products on time. I've also known PhDs who couldn't be trusted to write (let alone maintain) good code at all. The one constant I've seen in good management is that they can recognise those programmers (and IT) people who are good, and those who are not. They try hard to support (and retain) those who are good, and nurture those who are not (and cut them loose if they refuse to be helped). Look for a manager like that if you can.
Impossible = A fun challenge
You know the other guy who set up AD and left the company? Perhaps he jumped on the clue train and left for a better place. You might consider doing the same.
First quarter of the year is a good time to be looking for work, and I know there are jobs out there. I'm looking for one myself. Two of my peers recently quit after finding better jobs. The IT department at the company I work for has awful management, and that's beyond my ability to fix -- you can't fix stupid. Best to just leave and work for someone who you can be productive for, instead of being fed self-induced problem after problem by witless, unsupportive, personnel managers.
And you leave work too? You're in the wrong business and you're definitely not a nerd.
but the employer should pay for it.
Why? For the same reason birth control is primarily a woman's responsibility. Which party has the most to lose if things don't go as planned?
The worst thing that can happen to the employee is losing a job; I'll leave the second half unsaid.
Your employer should pay for the training, but it is very much your responsibility to stay current on: news, trends, best practices, product developments/lifecycles, etc. The company has paid for your duty, but must earn your (scant?) loyalty.
I've been doing the MS/Cisco consulting thing for a while now and this is a big sticking point for a lot of people. I manage a group of about 40 IT people, all of whom are interested in different ways of furthering their careers. To be 100% honest, most of them have told me that actual training classes are usually a waste. Not _always_, but usually. The best way for them to learn/advance their skill has been just on-the-job training. (working with other knowledgable people is a close second).
It seems like the tech industry is a sink-or-swim kinda place. No one really starts out knowing what they are doing; they just plow ahead & figure stuff out. Only after spending a lot of time figuring things out (the best kind of experience you can get) do the IT training classes seem to help. Training seems to be a good way to get a little better at something that you are already good at. Learning IT stuff straight from a book or an instructor usually doesn't cut it.
Don't get me wrong - it's important for your company to help you get better at your job, but I just don't think the traditional "go to class" way is the best. My advice is to try and spend some time during the day with people that do know something about the technology you're working with. If you are the only one that has any semblance of a clue, then it seems like you've got nothing to lose by learning on the job.
And to address your point about after-hours learning: yeah, pretty much if you want to be good, you'll have to put in some at-home time. But the thing is... you should like the stuff enough to enjoy doing it at home. If you don't enjoy it enough to be doing some afterhours work, then maybe, like you said, you may not be in the right field. It's too dynamic & fast-moving an industry to not be willing to learn new things & a lot of the learning does tend to happen after work.
It can definitely put a strain on home/family life - it's just one of those careers.
I created this account just so I could comment on this story
Most employers believe it is a good investment to train their employees. If you work at one that doesn't agree, you might want to apply for some other jobs. Try to beg them to get you certified before you leave though :). Also, try to get into a company that uses *nix. I think you'll see that most companies that use *nix have more foresight than companies that use Microsoft. That has been my experience at least.
No Sigs!
I personally believe that it's the individual's responsibility to stay up to date with developments in her area of expertise. However, it is crucial that employees who will be using or managing a system be properly trained in that task *before the system goes live*, and the most reliable means of ensuring that someone is properly trained is to put them through a course on the subject. Judgements about your employer aside, you should be able to make a very strong case for training, as your knowledge of this topic has a very measurable impact on network operation and reliability.
I suggest opening an email dialogue with the powers that be explaining the situation and suggesting training as the most efficient means of giving you the skills to perform your job adequately. Then, if your are refused training you will have documented evidence that your lack of training was not a matter of your own negligence if something breaks and you have irate managers to deal with. And no matter what happens, I suggest reading up on the topic. On company time, if possible.
You should have never put that you were a woman in a Slashdot article.
If the company is large enough, you may luck out and get all the training you'd need. I've known people who have worked for large companies, and they spent about 25% of the year out at one training or another. As for the rest of us, ya, we train ourselves.
After years of working with Cisco equipment, I finally talked a boss-type person into paying my way to a Cisco class. Now I have my CCNA. As it turns out, I had self-taught myself 99% of it, and the rest I didn't need for what I do. Ya, ISDN is a biggie these days, isn't it?
You have to feel out your environment. If you can, tell them "This wasn't part of the job requrement when I started, and I need additional training to properly accomplish what you are requesting." Of course, that may be an open invitation for them to replace you, which may be the intention in the first place.
I find that most people are underqualified and overpaid, especially bosses.
You sound like the rest of us though. overqualified, overworked, and underpaid. Unfortunately, you recognize that you need additional training, and they don't understand that we can't know everything. We can only come damned close.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
Training and on-going education are considered part and parcel as part of the job, and where I work, part of the requirements for continued employment. They are provided for, and if job related, paid for by the company.
The next time something happens, let it sit, and say, gee, wish I'd gotten that training. Or better yet fix it, but take a long time doing it. Then, say it would have taken a lot less time, had I received the training I needed. Find local, or at least close, classes, possibly boot-camp style - where they go 12 hours a day for a week, instead of 2 weeks.
Tell them this is where you are going, and submit the requisition for travel and education budget.
Inform them that you cannot do your job without the proper tools and training.
I spent the first 14 years of my career teaching myself as I went. I ended up making a lot of mistakes that could have been avoided with training. When I left that company behind, I made up my mind that I would request training for any new services or systems that I would be responsible for. My new (well, 6 years now) position has provided the training that I have requested and we have both reaped the benefits of that training.
Who is general failure, and why is he reading my hard drive?
personal lives are for amatures. ;-)
There are a few factors which have influenced whether or not my employers have sought to provide training.
;)
1) Contractual obligations -- working for a service provider can lead to training because of contracts requiring a certain level of certification. HP hired me for a services position and trained me to the level required. They hired me because they knew I was good, and attaining the certification wouldn't be a problem.
2) Managers vs. Bosses mentality -- managers look to enable you to get things done, bosses think it's their job to tell you what to do. After the contractually-required training and certification were done, I found little support beyond my immediate manager to make funds available for training. There were some online courses, but I'm a very aural person, and need to resolve inconsistencies in my understanding quickly, by asking questions. Contrasting that with my current employer, my manager sees me as something closer to a peer. I help him to get done what he needs to have done, and he helps me to do my job. I've earned his respect. Both of us know we're unlikely to still be working for the same company in five years, and he's willing to help me get trained both for the fact that it'll help me get more done *and* because he knows that I have aspirations that he'd like to help me fulfill. Luckily, the line upwards from him to the CIO also value and respect me. I enrich myself in various ways, learning on my own, and they supplement in areas where it's going to be a lot easier to be in a class.
3) Subject area -- it also helps that the current training is for Oracle, considered by plenty of people to be a black box. Windows training/certification doesn't get respect. I've not done it, so I'll not comment upon its actual value.
4) Company economic health -- working for a heavily indebted company like a telecom I worked for, as well as when HP was sliding under Carly, makes companies look to cut expenses even where it's not sensible. It's cheaper to train someone who'll get value out of the training than to hire someone for the specific skill, particularly when you look at how people will fit into the corporate culture. It took my current employer quite a while to hire a Sr. Network Engineer because so many of the people just didn't seem like they'd fit into the company (high growth) because of personality, willingness to deal with the growing pains, and so on.
As much as I sometimes hate my job for its encroachments upon my own time, being respected by my peers and management has helped incredibly in my job satisfaction and my willingness to give of that time. In return, I'm rewarded by training. Which, of course, will increase the amounts of time I end up giving to the company, probably, which will increase the respect.
I'll let you know how I feel after bonuses are handed out next month, though.
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
A wise employer realizes that developing employees improves performance and retention, but your career is your responsibility. If your employer is too short sighted to help, then it is up to you to do the training on your own. The lack of employer support is an indication of a company that is probably not worth staying with. Get your training and use it along with your experience to find a better job at a company with better long-term prospects.
Some companies are terrific at sending their people to training. I used to work for one of those (IT outsourcer here). When we met with the end-users, they loved us, because we knew what the heck we were doing, and it showed in our work. Alas, due to a tragedy at the highest level, the company founders decided to dismantle the company and sell out.
My new employer is significantly more stingy with the training dollars.
Due to other factors we nearly lost the contract (could lose it still). But - the company has had to shell out a ton of money in an attempt to save the contract, and somewhere the light bulb went on: it isn't worth all this money, if the staff can't out-perform the competition.
So this year, they have paid for time and tuition for about eight people, where for the previous three years we got zilch. Heck - I got my CCNA, and two of us got their CCNP's. :-)
With all this training, and the professionalism that comes from knowing you are a subject-matter expert, morale is tremendously improved. And that is reflected in customer satisfaction.
If your employer won't train you, look for a place that doesn't run the joint like the Keystone Kops.
"The most sensible request of government we make is not, "Do something!" But "Quit it!"
If they really think you're responsible for getting training in your off time, even if you're doing self-study, then it's time to get a new job. The market is good now, and you don't have to put up with idiots like this -- especially if the PHBs expect you to develop some instant affinity to Active Directory management. Yuck.
I've worked for a lot of different companies. I've worked for small companies and I've worked for large companies. I've worked for owner operators and I've worked for multinational corporations (and currently do). When it comes to training I've seen a marked difference in approach taken by all these companies, when it comes to support staff. The guys who keep the servers running and maintain the network are always being sent on training courses and being taught new skills. Not once, in all the companies I have worked for, have I seen a programmer receive training at his or her job. I've seen some "mentoring" in one or two of the medium sized companies I've worked for but I've never seen any honest to god training. Now I know it happens somewhere. Occasionally you'll get a consultant onsite to tell the programmers how to use the revision control system or how to approach software development from a unit testing or model based design perspective. But in every company I've ever worked in it has been assumed that programmers just pick this stuff up without the need for any formal training. Sometimes one programmer will make a stink about other programmers not knowing anything about their favourite element of software design and you'll see a manager recruit that programmer to put on a "seminar" to teach the other programmers how to do things his way. Compare this to unskilled labour.. where a person will be hired off the street with no knowledge of how to do the job and receive intensive training, be it by consultants or on the job training like an apprenticeship, before they are expected to do anything productive. Can you imagine an apprenticeship for programmers? The fact that the vast majority of companies in our industry often demand that a "junior software engineer" have a 3 to 4 year degree in software engineering before they will even be considered for the position I think shows how terrible we are at training.
How we know is more important than what we know.
I'm interested to see what the good folks here write in response, mostly because it's fun to remember back to how it was when I was so new into the field. I've been in almost 20 years and the simple answer is yes, you will find that this is the case in most places. Some larger companies (like mine) pay for one class a year for continuing education, but we always expect the person to care about their field enough to make sure continuing education is part of their lifestyle.
Hairdressers, Doctors, Nurses, Teachers, all have to pay for classes themselves (in most cases) and IT is no different.
For a long time it was not uncommon for a company to go full bore and make CNE's and MCSE's but they (and I) soon realized that as soon as you trained someone, spending tens of thousands of dollars, they thought they were worth more money - and they were somewhere, else but if they just got trained they got the extra value from me, at least that year. After seeing many demand more money and then leave, I stopped training them. Training is the only compensation you give an employee that they continue to benefit from after they leave - that has to be balanced.
One thing to remember though is it's not about certifications or what classes you've taken - it's about how you act on the job. It's if you throw up your hands and call tech support, or if you actually do troubleshooting and planning. If you are in the latter group then you will be a valued employee wherever you go.
This is increasingly becoming the standard everywhere, as far as I can see.
As a journalist, I've seen training for reporters drop substantially. At my first job out of college, I worked for a paper that had large unidentified (thankfully) stains on the newsroom floor: In two years, we had a writing coach from a big-name paper come in and spend a week in one-on-one work, I was sent to weekend seminars in St. Louis and Chicago. The paper I work at now has nearly 4 times the readers, and because it's in a booming area is way more than 4 times as profitable. The company also historically has a reputation for being more concerned with quality than the bottom line. Yet in the six years I've been here, we've had, I think, two relatively low-quality day-long sessions in a town about 100 miles away (drive there, drive back, pay for your own lunch.)
And it's not just training. Several years ago, when this sort of thing was in its infancy, a co-worker and I went to management with a plan to patch cell phones into laptops so reporters could send stories back from remote locations. PHB said to let him know how it went -- but we'd have to buy our own stuff. When it worked, the company bought the equipment for EVERYONE ELSE but wouldn't even reimburse us !!! Then, of course, it suddenly became our responsibility to teach everyone else to use it and to fix it when it didn't!.
People I talk to at other papers -- and companies in many other industries -- all say the same kind of thing has happened in recent years.
I'm a woman who's been in this industry for a couple decades.
In my experience, large companies have been not only willing but EAGER to contribute to my ongoing training, and small companies have expected me to walk in the door knowing how to do the job they hired me for, and to maintain on my own time the knowledge to do whatever the job becomes in the future.
A couple small companies even expected me to use my annual leave time when I went to technical conferences. (It should be no wonder that I hung out my own freelance shingle after that... as long as I have to work as if I'm an independent who has to maintain her own skill set, I felt that I might as well be paid like one.)
Today, at a larger company, a set percentage of my time is reserved for attending training -- and that training is actually relevant to what I do.
"My free time is valuable in that it allows me to take care of that which I can't during the day (grocery shopping, dog responsibilities, cleaning, etc."
WHY are you doing all of this grunt work IN ADDITION TO being the primary breadwinner of your household?
What is your husband doing?
Now, if your husband is doing 50%+ of the household work (I say plus, since you're the primary income), that's one thing, and I would argue that a housekeeper/cleaning service would save a lot of your sanity. That's a given. I hire a cleaning service to clean my house. I need to keep myself focused on work that benefits my career instead of busywork.
However, if your husband is not doing at least 50% of the job, that's a whole other can of worms, but one that I'm willing to open because I think it's an important point of discussion.
I read a great article about this the other day. It's called My Radical Married Feminist Manifesto, and it's a must-read for most women who are primary breadwinners and who are or plan to be married. It's in response to America's Stay-At-Home Feminists, which is in itself an important article to read.
One of the most important points of the article is as follows:
Sounds like a trap that you might have fallen into, and even if you haven't, it's important to be aware of "the butter question" in case you get into this situation in the future.
In case you plan on having kids, I also want to quote this stunning piece (from the same article):
I sincerely hope you haven't fallen prey to the butter question. However, if you have, now is the time to reassess who does the work in your marriage. Do it like you would any other job -- figure out which parts you can outsource (grocery shopping? You can shop online and get groceries delivered. Cleaning the house? You can hire someone) for very lit
Simpli - Your source for San Jose dedicated servers and colocation!
Mostly fixed:
"I'm currently working as a Microsoft Systems Administrator. Through a series of bungled management decisions, have found myself responsible for a Windows Server 2003 Active Directory network, that I know nothing about. The person who was sent for training was not the Microsoft point person. I was. The person who received the training left the company soon after the domain upgrade.
It doesn't look as though training will be forthcoming, and I've just been moved from the lab, where I was training myself while handling the domain. I've got the MCSA/MCSE Training Kit, but I've found numerous errors, and submitted so many of them that I was sent a free Press Kit book.
Between management's reluctance to shell out for training, and being moved from the lab, I'm getting the distinct sense that training is something I'm expected to take care of on my own time. Is this the standard within IT?
How do you Slashdot readers keep up with your continuing education, while still maintaining a personal life? Is it naive to try to leave my work at work?"
All kings is mostly rapscallions. -Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
You could get the job done or not get the job done. You could study, use the books, browse endlessly, go to a papermill, do whatever it takes. I would suppose the company would foot the bill for training if your new responsibility *requires* a certification not previously required of you to do your job. It's cheaper to train you than to hire someone else. =)
This is not as rare as it should be. Many companies view their IT staff as interchangeable parts. I have been tasked with picking up the ball on many a dropped program over the years. Much of my promotions and job opportunities have come from the success that I have had in salvaging train wrecks that have been left behind.
Is it fair, no it is not. But the challenges can be interesting. If I wanted a career that involved filling in the boxes in the neat prescribed manner that I had been taught, I would switch over to processing forms for an insurance company.
There is experience that will follow you even though technologies change; what I learnt while using DOS is still relevant (creating directories is still something I do); a strong OOP formation in C++ makes Java/C# easier; knowing how pointers work makes a better coder in any language.
Even if experience is a great mistress, everything changes so quickly that continuous self-education I think is a must. Recall all the hot technologies of 1996 - only 10 years ago, a small fraction of your life in the workforce. Almost nobody wrote Java, C#/.NET didn't exist, most dynamic webpages were written in Perl, CSS wasn't there yet, XML was unborn, there were no "Seamless Open Integrated Solution Providers (!)", etc, etc, etc. Now think 1985. 1975. 1965. Somebody born in 1945 and who worked all his life on computers will retire in 2010.
Problem with courses is that they always lag a couple of years behind - they still teach table-based HTML tagsoup... and though you may have a 12-hour intensive session on a subject, you won't be ready to use it before you play on your own time with it.
You don't need to lose your life, I guess spending a couple of hours a week on new technologies is more than enough. You don't have to know everything, just focus on what is created in your field.
Stop being a such a cry baby. Take it on, live a little outside your comfort zone. Make it work for you...
... and go and see "Fight Club". :P
We don't believe in radical loony monotheistic religions from the middle east -- we're Christians.
The responsibility for training is shared between you and your employer. Most companies will cover the expenses.
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One of the things we are working on is developing a series of audiobooks for software developers. Although we do not have any MCSA/MCSE titles yet, I think there are a few other companies that do. Check on google.
We noticed often you could tell when a person had a major life altering event, say getting married or having children, just by looking at what technology they were the most familiar with. If someone is keen on RUP, but knows nothing about Agile methods, you could be pretty sure their children were about 10 years old. Of course, this isn't the case for everyone, but lack of time is THE major impediment for ongoing professional development. Often companies will refund training expenses, but less often they will give you enough time off to do the professional development. So even if expenses are paid, how does one, especially with a family like us, find the time?
In response to this conundrum, we are looking at methods which reduce the amount of time necessary for professional development. So far, the most promising method is audiotraining, i.e., audiobooks, since they allow for the possibility of multitasking. There are obvious disadvantages, especially lack of diagrams or detailed code samples, but an audiobook which is listened to is infinitely more effective than a book which sits unopened due to lack of time.
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Sounds pretty simple to me, if you enjoy learning enough to do it on your own without help from your employer then keep at it, but if you just find it to be an extra burden then you should find a new job.
Our lab relies heavily on contractors. This is how management tries to safe money. One day the lab found a cheaper cleaning company. Soon people noticed that their offices were not cleaned anymore. The janitors were still the same, mostly, except that they now had to work for the cheaper company. It turned out that the company would not provide enough clean mobs. It got so bad that the janitors had to bring their own mobs! Eventually the trained janitors started to quit and got replaced with even cheaper workers. Things got worse. Your company is treating you the same way. Are you a janitor? Well, at least our janitors did not have to ask /. for help. Wake up!
:-)
Ever seen a really mad janitor?
The companies I've worked for that valued training and experience were willing to pay for it - whether it was paying me to go to training or simply rewarding me for my own initiative in taking night courses.
The companies that weren't willing to pay for my training weren't likely to reward me for any coursework I did on my own.
Money talks...
I'm actually in a similar situation. I had the benefit of having some free time on my hands, so I learned what I needed to know and wrote software that makes the job infinately easier (I am the only one at the company with programming skills). Now enter intellectual property laws. I refuse to share my code, but offered to license it to the company. I get contract pay every time I use the software This worked for me because it is a very small company and someone else got fired. Plus, I have other options that I am willing to pursue. (posted anonymous because others at company read slashdot)
In my experience, it depends somewhat on the size of the company. A large organization may have the resources (money, other employees who can fill in with you while you're training, etc.) that a small or medium sized company lacks. This is a rule with plenty of exceptions, though.
Twenty-five years ago, my mother's company (a Big Pharma firm) paid to train her as an AS/400 systems analyst, promoting her from a position as an administrative assistant. She went from taking dictation in Pittman shorthand and typing to writing code, all on the company's dime. Systems analysts were in short supply at the time, and the company preferred to train an intelligent person already in the organization over hiring outside.
My company, which is tiny (5 employees), it an exception to the rule. In order to keep our MSFT Certified Partner status, we need personnel who hold MCSE or better, and are paying to have some of our technicians certified. But it's my understanding that companies of our size expect new hires to hold equivalent certs (MCSE, A+, Net+, etc.).
I'd say that you should gently urge your company to pay for your training, and try to make a case that the return on the investment will benefit the firm. But you're going to have to spend time studying for the exams, some of which will spill over into your "free time". Consider it an investment in yourself, one that will be repaid if you ever need to change employers.
Just my 2.
k.
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." - Anne Frank
This isn't the norm. Any company who understands that downtime = $$$ down the crapper knows that investing money in human resource training pays for itself down the road.
You didn't give any detail about how large of a domain is in your hands, and I don't know exactly how much you so far understand or don't understand about Win2K3 administration, but I'll leave that for someone else to post on.
Following this thread, there are three things that you must do in order to succeed in a precarious position such as this:
1) Take a crash course in Win2K3 server, because that's what you're responsible for. Someone might want to start up a thread with recommendations about where to begin.
2) Open up lines of communication between you and the managers. The computer network has become the modern spinal cord of the business workforce, and communication leads to familiarity leads to confidence. In times of storm (i.e. network downtime), your company will have to put their trust in you that they'll make it through.
3) Explain the situation to your managers in a language they understand: the almighty dollar. Tell them the truth. They threw their money in a garbage bin when they trained the wrong person. Failure to invest in proper training for IT staff leads to increased downtime leads to loss of commerce leads to loss of money. Tell them that they will lose money because their investments (e-commerce) right now are not proected (properly trained personnel). It's all about money.
And if nobody listens, I would be very cautious. Find another job that will better support you as you become a better admin, rather than be put in one where, when something serious goes down, you get all the blame. Better to be led away from the fire than to lead someone into it.
If you were hired on as a Network Administrator of a Microsoft network, that's one thing. If you hired on as support or something like that, they can't honestly expect you to handle that job without training. You may even want to bring that to their attention. Something like "I don't mind doing it, but I'm going to need the training or it could get all kinds of screwed up"
The other option is say, "Look, I don't have the time to teach myself all this stuff and I don't know it. Why not hire a consultant that knows what they're doing to handle the heavy work?" My company has retainers and whatnot where we can be hired on in several levels. Basically you buy the hours you need for a year and you can use them however you see fit. Regular appointments can be scheduled or call as needed and it's really not that expensive when you're talking about network health. Usually what we end up doing is coming in to fix a major snaffu and make sure things are good to go. We then maintain everything for awhile while giving some basic training to one person in the company on how to handle day to day tasks and reduce the hours we come in for awhile to see how things go. Not really meaning to plug my company, but we can do alot of work remotely as well. I'm sure others can so there's always an option available before things get outta hand.
Either rate, if you're not willing and/or able to handle it, you're not doing your employer or yourself any favors because it could be a bad spot on your record if you were let go or left under not-so-good terms. The key point is flat out tell them your concerns. If they don't go with them and still want only you to handle the work, then they have noone to blame if your lack of knowledge screws something up.
Is this the de-facto standard within IT, and for all jobs within IT? I work for an internal consulting group at a big state university, so I don't know how applicable this is to the real world, but I have a $3,000 training, travel, and equipment budget to "use or lose" each year. I can spend it on courses, books, certification exams, travel to conferences, or any equipment I can justify to my manager. I also get to spend 8 hours per week working on pet projects and training (though 2-4 hours of this time is usually spent in internal, non-client meetings). Certification is highly encouraged, and I am currently pursuing my MCSE. Our rule for MS exams state that the first attempt is paid for from my TTE budget, and if I don't pass, I have to pay for any subsequent attempts of that exam. I am pretty pleased with this situation because I think it encourages me to keep current skills and provides me the means to accomplish this. Twice a year I meet with a manager to set goals and check in on old goals. I personally don't think it is reasonable for your employer to expect you to educate yourself to perform your job. Would they expect the same thing from a non-technical professional such as an accountant or compliance officer?
I am Jack's sig. I reduce Jack's karma.
These are not IT people. You need to directly tell them "Things are not going as well as I know they should be. I need training if we want to get things back on track". If they aren't willing to pony up for course material, or at least start a discussion after this sort of statement, start looking.
In my previous job, we had a very complex performance appraisal system cooked up by HR and the executives. One of the items is objectives or goals to attain in the coming year which comes up in the next appraisal cycle. As assistant lab manager, it was listed in my appraisal objectives that I need training such as Cisco routers. I was told that I needed to be proficient as well wih them. My title is UNIX System Administrator Senior. Having a manager who is an asshole, I was set up for failure. When he and I were going over my objectives, he emphasized the training. I then brought up that I would like to go to a class on Cisco routers which included plenty of hands-on training. I was told there was no money in the budget and the request for training was denied. His favored subordinates got the training money. Several people were given money to take different classes and even go to conventions. He could not spare a dime for my training. When salray increases came out later in the year, I was given a 0% raise, that is, no raise. Since I couldn't get training, it was held against me.
The company had money for training but who got the money was decided if you were a red-headed step child or the golden haired child.
I have noticed this in companies I have worked for. In most companies I have worked for it was expected that I keep a level of competence but was not given any tools to do it, not even any books. At least I wasn't expected to maintain any certifications. In others though I was expected to keep a very high level of competence and keep up with the latest certifications in many areas. There is no formal paid training but they will pay for books. The hardest part is having to learn things about systems that I have never even touched and expected to be certified on it.
In my opinion, in the IT field, it's always your responsibility to learn new technologies and your employer's *option* to aid you. Most of the time, it makes financial sense to train an employee in new skills than to hire a whole new one (and train them for the job).
But I find it difficult to believe that a person can be in this industry and not constantly and actively learn new things on their own. I always believed self-induced training was part of the job description. If that is not what people reading this believe, I can only say you should be happy you haven't been replaced by someone who believes otherwise.
Every company is going to different in how IT is treated. I've worked for a pretty wide variety of organizations, dotcom startups to IBM/Unisys/etc. and have met many in my field through the years. Here's my theory and I'm sticking to it.
Corps that were around long before computing, I'm talking about energy, construction, banking - brick and mortar institutions that are just as comfy with paper and filing cabinets as anything - from my experience the tendency is to take IT for granted, a necessary evil that you only want around when things go wrong. In these environments budgets are often really restrictive, training is usually non-existent and yes, Virginia, if this is who you work for and you don't have the tools to quickly scan and analyze your network (btw - there are plenty of good tools out there that will do that for an AD network) then extra hours may be the only way to get things under control. In one situation I asked my manager if I could schedule 3 hours of my time a week for education - learning the systems and procedures. I didn't ask for money or class, just time - and he could hardly deny me. In about a month I had learned what I needed to, but no thanks to this particular company - I had to make my own time but I made sure it was during that 8 to 5. After 14 years playing with computers, I really value my "time away from tech"
I have to say that the best environments I have worked in are those whose primary value stems from technology. There are still brick and mortars (IBM's etc) but even those companies can offer more challenging and rewarding work environments for those in IT. Now I am working for a small internet security firm and there is lots of training-teaching-helping-innovating going on all the time. For my first year I was thrust into an entirely new environment, like you I was already pretty well versed in the technology - but there was tons to learn. In this situation time was made to help to understand any of the subsystems I had questions or needed to know about. I believe that has alot to do with the fact that this companies entire business depends on networking and the hardware and people that do it. RTFM has real value to these companies - the more you know about what you do, the better you do it. Rocket Science!
That my 2 cents - good luck whoever you might work for!
-- kortex "Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts"
This guy is lucky to have the chance to see how is the microsoft source code!!! I will give a lot of money to see how god is IE coded??? It always give me problem when I use it! Window 2003 is not ever better!!! Use Linux!!!
Thanks for visiting my Web site! Post your comments on my forum!
People that can't do telling people how to do, what's in some class that's not in a book you can smash through in a couple of days. Figure it out and do it, it's faster that way.
I think a lot of people see the the seperation of education systems and commercial industries as a natural part of a free market. I don't think that is the case at all. Because of things like copyright and patent monopolies - it causes the persiut of knowledge and R&D to be fenced off in the commercial sector, when in a normal environment that wouldn't be the case. In fact, you can see this in Linux. When the technology was non proprietary, the center of R&D for unix was in a corporate environment. Then UNIX became proprietary, the focus of R&D shifted to the university sector. Then when Linux came out, the focus of R&D is now shifting back to the private sector. In more broader terms, this is the case with all persuits of knowledge. Also, have you ever noticed how some of those techies that surf the net all the time, also tend to be the most productive. This is because they also tend to be learning things within all that surfing.
It's not normal for education, study, and the persuit of knowledge to be seperated from industry, in a healthy free market environment education and the persuit of knowledge is a normal part of day to day business. In a proprietary market, all you get is people trying to pawn off certificates on you to sucker you into centering your skillset and systems arround their product offerings.
I see a lot of problems here.
First, the whole Microsoft thing.
Second, the company you work for is being cheap and short sighted. Perhaps this is why your predicessor left?
Your rest and de-stressing is just as important as your SO's. Demand it as is your right. Either he loves you enough to see he's been insensitive, you need a new SO, or you need to work somewhere else.
He can do the shopping. If I can do it, he can do it. He can also help sweep, mop, dust, and all the rest, or hire a maid. First I helped, then said, "You know what? We have too little time together to spend it cleaning. Let's get a maid."
Start giving yourself permission to be kinder to yourself. If you don't take care of you, no one else will and the kid(s) will not have a mother.
I hate to sound so cold about it, but there just isn't any real reason you need to not have a little fun, a little bit of life, and a little bit of time to spend with just yourself, just your kid(s), just the hubby and time with all of them. Sounds impossible, but don't try for all of them in any one week, spread it out over a month.
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
My first IT job was running the mainframe at a chain of auto parts stores. The boss purchased several Windows 95 desktops and a Netware 4.1 server. He called me into the office and said, "I spent too much already on this, so I can't send you for training. Go to Borders, buy some books, and we'll reimburse you."
Best thing that ever happened to me.
Since then, I've been pushed off the turnip truck into new environments more times than I can recall. Each time, I have turned the hardship into an opportunity to become a Subject Matter Expert. Sure, I didn't get any extra money then for the off-hours time I devoted, but I made up for it later.
If you are the primary breadwinner and you as a couple are unwilling to consider economic downgrades which may come with changing either firms or jobs, then dear hubby needs to suck it up and do the things you don't have to the time to do. Sounds like you are responsible for fixing, um er uh ... errors of management one or two layers up. If you pull this all together and get things to work then make sure they know that you know the screwed fido. Also remember, if you think you are overmatched by the prospect of managing a network of crappy machines running kludgy OS's anyone who would walk in off the street and make things better would extortionately expensive.
George Bush is president. Training is the employee's responsibility. Get with the program.
It's the same in any job, you have to keep learning, keep up with changes, or be left behind. You'd be off your rocker to not be doing some self-learning/training in the IT field. It changes daily.
I hate sigs.
I am an IT manager at a university where I don't even get a budget. I have to beg for money to replace the hard drive of my server when it fails! There will be no money for training for me.
However, I will say that I believe the training should be a good division between your time and your company's time. While you can say that the training will benefit your company, it will also benefit you. Should you receive all this training and then leave the company, you will have on your resume some extra qualifications, especially if you received certification. Since it will benefit your employer AND you, I think it should be cost shared.
However, how that cost is to be shared is up for debate. I go through periods of time where I work like a horse and other periods where I am a couch potato. When I am working hard, I find that I usually have time on the clock that isn't being used for anything. Maybe 30 to 60 minutes a day. During that time, I usually do training. In that case, the training IS being paid for by the employer. However you share the cost, I do personally believe that if you pursue certification, your employer should never pay for it because it is your certification, not your employer's.
All that said, I also agree (in accord with the above example of cost sharing) that any good employer expects to hire an employee that can learn and adapt to the changing IT environment. So, if you can come to an agreement with your employer for a certain amount of time on the clock for training, I think it should be a given that your employer EXPECTS you to be able to train yourself. Most IT professionals should find this reasonably easy. Either through the use of books or online resources. Most tasks you need to learn how to do have some sort of posted information that can be googled. If you choose hard copy, then you will be faced with a dilemma of who should pay for that as well. This to me is simple. If you will be keeping the books when you leave the job, you pay for them. If the employer will be keeping them, the employer should pay for them. Books are cheap enough that even though I have to beg for system hard drives funds, I can usually convince my employer that a few books here and there are absolutely necessary to performing my job.
Money doesn't solve problems. Effort does.
If you like what you do, you'll train yourself without even trying too hard. It can be done on the job as easily as off the job. I trained myself by doing what needed doing and learning as I went with resources found on the web and with books I bought myself.
For example: The question "Can you set up a mail server?" was answered with "Yes I can. Give me a day or two to get it sorted out and I'll come back to you with a plan.". I figured it out with some books and online resources and came up with a plan. We now have a working mail server. There's NOTHING about being an admin that requires formal training. Sorry, but that's true. All you need is some gumption.
However, to be fair, I initially trained myself on Linux. You're working with a Microsoft OS, so it's going to be more difficult to obtain information without paying than if you were using proper server OS's like Unix, Linux, Solaris, etc.
You can do it though.
Four months ago, I set up a windows 2003 server system (domain controller) with info I found on the web. It's working as beautifully as can be expected from something that wasn't designed to be a full-time server, and I got all of the information on how to do it off the web.
If you go this route rather than asking your employer to foot the bill for your training, you'll become much more valued, more respected, and get more money as a result. Maybe not, but that's the experience I've had, and I'm pretty secure and making a lot more money now.
Good luck to you, and I wish you the best.
I've been a contractor to a .gov agency for a long time. Before there even was a .gov. The .gov does not want to pay for education, they want the contractor to provide educated personnel. Of course the contractor will not pay for education if they can't get .gov to pay for it (catch-22).
The smart contractor learns the shit on his own. The others are working somewhere else.
That you are responible for your own career. If that means that you need to pay for training to learn the things to do your job, then you pay for training.
On the flip side, you owe the company nothing, sans two weeks notice when you get a better job.
III.IIVIVIXIIVIVIIIVVIIIIXVIIIXIIIIIIIIVIIIIVVIII
In a perfect world, you and your employer are both responsible for training. You would need to find out what you needed to learn, show the initiative to plan it, and take the time out of Real Life to attend some classes and do the work necessary to advance your career.
In return, the employer would reimburse you for your training, and recognize your increased expertise with more money and respect as your skills grew.
The reality is that this sounds like a far-from ideal employer that also got burned last time they paid for someone's certification and then lost them. So you'd probably have to take most of the initiative to advance your skillset. It's worth it - and you can learn a lot of stuff pretty cheaply just with the combination of a couple of middling boxes with plenty of RAM, VMware, and a subscription to the MS Action Pack along with a few books. For a pretty small investment of time and probably a couple of thousand dollars, you can teach yourself enough to know, at the very least, whether you want to stay on the sysadmin side of the business, and at best you can get a great head start on an MCSE (If you want one). It also makes for a very low-pressure way to learn more off-hours when you want to.
Ultimately, if you want to stay in the field and you want to stay with this employer you'll have to show them the folly of their training-miserly ways. Picking up some good AD kung-fu is part of the puzzle - and if need be it'll be a good way to brush up for the job interview with your next employer!
In this business the unfortunate reality is that while you can have a life, it's tough to keep up if you do. I'm lucky now - working for myself I can designate some time for the "keeping up" during the workweek, but when the customers want me they get me, even if I've set up downtime (I do charge a lot more for any off-hours work, and as a result I don't have to deal with things too often outside of the workday at least). So you can have a life - but it helps if you really, really like IT work. In general, though, formal training is something that the employer should provide some time for, but you should be willing to pitch in as well. And the homework and studying is something you're on your own for. It's partly to help in your day-to-day work, but it's also career advancement as well. Both parties gain, so both parties (should) give.
One relevant example from my old career: when I was an IT manager (prior to my old company getting bought and shrunken - part of why I'm on my own now) I had a staff with three techs. I had the training budget to send them all to class if I wanted, but I would only do so if they were willing to spend some of their personal time in pursuit of the goal as well. Typically I'd allow up to a day out of the office per week over a period of a couple of months during that, pay for everything including materials, and pay for the testing. I wouldn't send folks out for things like a 2-week bootcamp or anything of that sort. Was that the most progressive training policy around? No, but it was a reasonable and fair one, balancing my interests (as manager and company representative) with the interests of my employees. Of six people who worked for me during the five years I was there, only one never took us up on the training offer (the person liked their limited function and wasn't really interested in advancing), one left after a year to transfer back to their old department, and the other four went to classes. Of them, I lost one a month after they got their MCSE - they went to a dot-com for over $25k more than I was paying. Neither that nor the dot-com lasted. Go figure.
-- Josh Turiel
"2. Do not eat iPod Shuffle."
Many good answers elsewhere, but if you DO pay for any training yourself, check to see if you can get tax concessions/rebates.
Sames applies to things like magazine subscriptions, club subscriptions, conferences, etc.
Hey, if you DO have to pay for it yourself, you may as well get something back if you are entitled to it!
Note: This will entirely depend on your tax laws, and I can't comment on your situation, as IANAA (I am not an American).
I would say that in general it makes sense for the employer to provide or reimburse for training. Many companies do this, but if resources are scarce such as at an academic institution, you're usually on your own. I tend to see myself as more of a craftsman, spending my own money for training and tools that I intend to take with me to the next job. I just see it as the cost of doing business and remaining marketable for future work.
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
Through a series of bungled management decisions, have found myself responsible for a Windows Server 2003 Active Directory network, that I know nothing about
And all this time I thought it was poorly-designed software that was the problem.
But seriously, it's okay, just think of it as your new baby...handle it with care, patch the holes, make sure you always know what it is doing, and never let it talk to strangers.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Based on what you wrote, you feel like you don't have enough time for any self-training or anything else you'd want to do. I suggest that you not worry so much about the cleaning and dogs and such, and self-train only if you please.
No data, no cry
...for your career, but it's not something your employer should be counting on.
If you've been assigned to do a job you were never originally hired for, your employer should be biting the bullet on training.
On the other hand, they could totally lay you off and hire someone else with the skills they need, but they'd spend much less money just sending you to a few classes.
Proceed with caution.
Remember that you probably understand management better than they understand your job. Although it's not at all fair or right, the burden will fall on you one way or the other: you either have to meet their expectations or change them. First, write up a list of your challenges from your own perspective. Next, think about those challenges from a management perspective (cost / benefit / risk) for the company. Then, find a friend who understands management-speak and have her/him help you fine-tune your message. In short, don't say why this is a problem for YOU; rather, explain why the lack of training/support is a problem for the COMPANY.
PS: Start reading the job postings.
I feel that you should seriously consider your dedication to Slashdot, if you're so easily distracted.
"I'm especially interested in hearing from the Slashdot readers of the female persuasion, as I have a husband, a dog, and a household to keep up with (no kids by choice, but I wouldn't have the time to take care of them, even if I wanted to). I also have the added responsibility of being the primary breadwinner. My free time is valuable in that it allows me to take care of that which I can't during the day (grocery shopping, dog responsibilities, cleaning, etc), and decompress/de-stress in order to prepare for the next day's work. I like tinkering with computers and learning new stuff, but I fear that if I'm expected train myself, outside of work, I may need to consider a different career."
What exactly does this have to do with being female?
As a contractor/consultant, I'd say self-training is quite definitely the norm. Although I'm regularly offered training by the customers I work for, it's almost always in niche areas that are probably only relevant to very few customers, or to meet some customer corporate mandate that "Everyone working here must complete these training courses". I'd say that you should expect to be paying for your own training if you're contracting.
As an employee, I think you've got every right to expect training, particularly in your situation where you've been dumped in a job that you didn't apply for. An organisation that doesn't value training doesn't value its employees; it's really that simple, and you should regard lack of training as a pretty sure sign that you're in a dead-end and/or undervalued role. That said, if you're working for a small company, funds for (expensive) IT courses might be tough to come by.
There may be a middle ground you could work within. Catching the train to work gives me an hour or so each day that's otherwise idle; I generally use that time to read books to keep my skills up to date. If you commute by public transport, you might suggest to your employer that they could buy you all the books you request that are relevant to your job, in lieu of classroom training; you'll then train yourself in your spare time. That strikes me as a potential win-win.
In general it's only normal for consultants to handle their own training. If you are not a consultant, make your company pay.
Seriously, I hear this from other IT people time and time again, "My managment doesn't treat me well, my boss doesn't appreciate me, my company won't pay for training" bleh bleh bleh. If you don't like what your company is doing you need to say so, to your boss or your bosses boss or your bosses bosses boss. And if after all that they do nothing. Then find another job.
I can speak to this issue from the other side of the desk.
1. Yes, you are supposed to teach yourself. When I hire, I look for folks who are always learning, all day, every day. "Training" means I have to pay good money to have you absent from work for a week every couple months so that you can come back and spout off about the way X-Corp says it should be done instead of the way that would actually integrate into the system I spent years building. No thanks!
If you need a reference book, I'll buy it for you. If you want to take some night courses in computer science so that you can get a better grounding in the fundamentals then I'll help out in whatever way I can. Just don't waste my time or yours with these so-called training courses.
2. I expect that you'll spend a certain amount of time at work experimenting and gathering knowledge about the software and hardware you use to make my systems run. That's part of the job. You don't have to know everything ahead of time, you just have to know how to figure it out.
If you were a consultant it would be different. I'll pay a consultant twice what I pay you because I expect him to already have the answers when he hits my door. If HE doesn't know, he won't be invited back and if its bad enough he won't be paid. You, as an employee, have more leeway.
3. I expect that you'll spend a certain amount of time at home using similar technologies in the pursuit of your own hobbies. I expect that you'll learn things there that you apply to work just as you learn things at work that you'll apply to your hobbies.
Its not about taking your work home with you; its about getting paid to do work that you enjoy. This work I do was my hobby before it became my career. I enjoy it immensely and I want people around me who feel the same way. If you're just here for the paycheck then I hired the wrong guy. You won't deliver the standard of quality I want because when push comes to shove you just don't care.
Now, if you're like four out of five people out there then having read this you think I'm full of shit. And that's OK. There are plenty of suck jobs out there that will pay you well enough to drive a nice car and vacation at the beach. I wish you all the best in life and may you find your bliss.
But if you're the one out of five that finds the job worth working for its own sake then I want you working with me.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
how do you Slashdot readers keep up with your continuing education, while still maintaining a personal life? Is it naive to try to leave my work at work?
New to IT, huh. There is no life outside of work. Once you are put in charge of a network or production application and you are placed on call you are expected to be available 24/7/365. Most operations run with as few people as possible. So plan for it, keep an extra bottle of water at your desk and have someone else take care of your pets, or get rid of the pets. You won't be home that much to take care of them.
Makes that job at the fast food restraunt sound good now doesn't it? "Want fries with that?" you can leave at work. A network down or a crashed server you can't. Well you can, but you won't be going back to that job anytime soon.
You can try to grow your skills and knowledge in the office, or you can remove that self-imposed limitation and learn all day long. I may just love my line of work too much (software development), but when a shiny new technology comes along, you have to remind me to get sleep. Choosing to learn cool things will make you more productive and ultimately happier. Asking slashdot whether you should wait for the man to foot the bill on some geek training is certainly a sign that you ought to change professions.
I doubt you'd be required to learn something like that on your own time, but don't be surprised if the person who is willing to do it gets promoted, or rewarded in some other way, before you do.
Unfortunately for you, there are a lot of people out there who genuinely enjoy learning things like AD administration, or (fill in the blank) technology. They will take the time to learn off-the-clock, and to them, it doesn't seem like work (they also put learning ahead of other silly things like paying bills, laundry, shopping, etc). So how can you possibly compete against those types of people..? Quit your job, and start doing something that you genuinely enjoy doing. The rest will fall into place.
training seminars and certification programs are generally barely useful. they may serve as a general introduction, but really are a form of scam. the person 'teaching' mostly has poorly developed materials, and only a slightly better grasp of the material than you (otherwise they would be actually doing those things and making more money). there are
of course exceptions.
the norm in the industry is invariably to teach yourself. get the manual (not the training materials), set up a sand box and just figure it out. all the necessary resources (books, time to study them, test equipment) are directly part of your job and should be treated as such.
if management cant realize that you aren't currently qualified to do your job, and aren't willing to bring in someone else or give you the time to get your hands around it, then i would start looking. and yes, the cultural expectation is that IT isn't a 40 hour job. i'm not defending it, but thats what people have come to expect.
the most valuable quality of someone in your position is the willingness to just dig in and get it done. experience with specific systems, although thats what most places claim they want, isn't anywhere as useful. after working your way through enough seemingly unsolvable problems, you will start to get a knack.
I, would, recommend, taking, an; English: course.
/s
In 14 years in the workforce, the only employer that has ever trained me on the clock was the US Army. Not just the MOS and ASI, which added up to over 14 months worth of classroom time. It was also week or month long courses in specific topics. They had contractors that flew from base to base just to teach that one class.
Everywhere else I have worked at, training was on me. Zero OJT, and probably less than 12 hours worth of seminars, conferences and demos over the past 9 years or so since I turned civilian.
At my previous job I actually trained some of my programmers, but I was never offered training. Whatever I have picked up has been on my own. My budget includes buying a few programming books per month, so my only investment is the personal time I spend learning new stuff.
Would I let my employer pay for training? Hell yeah.
Pedro
----
The Insomniac Coder
The only reasonable reply to bosses who say, "What if I train them and then they leave?" (which they WILL say if pushed for why they don't feel like investing in "their greatest resource") is, "What if you don't train them and they stay?"
Primary bread winner with no kids? Holy crap, does your husband do anything or sit around in his underwear all day.
2nd Question: Where can I find a geeky girl like you? It be almost as good as getting married to money:D
if you have one, who paid for it?
you or an employer?
if you want the training, take care of it yourself, and get the tax credit at the end of the year. don't let an employer hold it over you(i paid for your training/i'm going to pay for your training)...
in the past, i've heard of employers reimbursing technical training on a sliding scale based on grades(if available), and that withholding the reimbursement for up to 12 months, so as to not pay for training, and have a freshly trained employee go work for someone else.
three can keep a secret, if two are dead - benjamin franklin
You are the administrator. You tell THEM what's required to maintain the system properly. Your training is an essential component of network administration. They promoted you to the position, meaning they didn't go outside to hire someone who already had all the essential skills.
0 82980-8475324?v=glance&n=283155
e rformance%20Trainer.pdf
r ning_map.htm
You obviously didn't sit down with management and get clear about all the responsibilities and outcomes; what's expected on both sides. You need to design a Win-Win solution and get them to buy in for their own benefit. If they pay for it, you should agree to an arrangement that doesn't leave them in the position of throwing money away. If you pay for it, you deserve a big raise and you are under no obligation to stay when another corporation offers you a raise and better benefits. Consider thinking up three alternatives that would satisfy you, and then negotiate the best elements of all of them for a Win-Win solution.
It may require some research to identify the gap between the skills you have and the skills you have to learn. Do it now, before the situation solidifies.
Some organizations will willfully ignore your plight, and before you know it you've spent years in the electronic sweatshop. Know what you want. For clarity, you might use the flowchart and worksheet from Robert Mager's, "Anayzing Performance Problems". http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1879618176/102-9
There is a modified version of Mager's flowchart in this document: http://www.archertraining.co.uk/Documents/The%20P
Here's a spot that could help you determine your learning goals, although it's aimed at people designing courseware: http://www.bryanhopkins.co.uk/learning_design/lea
Lastly, remember it's your life. The company doesn't care for you like your family does. Nobody ever died and said, "I wish I'd spent more time at the office." (unless they were married to my ex-wife). Your work and the rest of your life need to be in alignment.
These are my opinions, of course, based on 40 years of programming.
"The mind works quicker than you think!"
Now *that* is funny.
Well, first off, everyone's busy in "real life" (outside of work). The real object is to separate your work life and your "real life" as soon as possible. If you're doing work on your own time, the company takes that for granted.
Anyway, if they dumped you into that situation, take the time to research what to do while you're at work. If that's not good enough for the higher ups, it's time to look for a new job. In fact, if the management won't send you to the training because they'll afraid you'll leave, it's probably a sign you need to look for a new job anyway. An employer that thinks it's employees will leave because they're being trained, and won't do any training because of it is not a company you want to work for. There are better jobs out there.
Given all that, I would only pay for training myself if it were something *I* was interested in, and that the company wasn't.
And I always pay for my own books. If I leave, I want to be able to take the reference texts I've been using.
Good luck with this.
Training has always been one of those things that some companies do poorly and others do well - and i would suggest if you havent manage to peruade them by now, that, barring a change of management, you wont see it anytime soon. One thing that bugs me though is those that use "I havent been trained as that" as a reply to get out of doing work. If your working in IT and dont have enough interest to jump at the chance to learn a new product/skill etc, get out now and go work at maccas.
If your company is not paying for necessary training and/or other business expenses (and I think they should be), then you should familiarize yourself with your tax laws. They may allow deduction of "non-reimbursed business expenses" and such from your taxes. Sounds like you may have already coughed up some dough, so ask a tax adviser about this. IANATA
I am not a crackpot.
I just love the way the stars in their eyes fade to be replaced by the circles and bags under where the glow was.
Congratulations. You're beginning to wake the fuck up.
Rule 1: Companies need to generate profits. Cash flows from the customers pockets to the stock holders pockets. In order to maximize profits, there must be as little spent on things that are known in accounting circles as expenses.
There is no rule 2, only legal complience issues.
Training is an expense. Training is expendable.
Hell, you are an expense. If you weren't being paid so much, or at all, the stock holders would be delighted.
Hint: When ever you hear somebody say "Our employees are our greatest asset" they're lying, or they don't understand basic accounting, or they're slavers and illegal after-market organ transplanters.
If management doesn't seem interested, its because they aren't. All the arguments about it being counter-productive and costing more in the end don't matter.
See rule 1.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Seriously, sometimes people ask silly questions. If your job is SETTING YOU UP TO FAIL, you're in the wrong job. Do whatever you can to keep things going, and get the resumes out there. What you're talking about isn't a training issues - it's crappy management, putting you in a situation you're not ready for. That you feel more comfortable asking slashdot for help than going to your manager(s) speaks volumes about the situation, as well.
Electronic Hardware Technicians are constantly expected to be learning new things. The industry simply moves very fast. Techs are expected to know 'everything'. And of course it does help to know a little about everything.
Many of the hardware techs are considered rather expendable. They are often the first fired and last hired. The older that you are, the more that this is so.
Unemployed technicians often can only get 'hired' through a temp agency into a company. They encounter a wide range of very-detailed electonic environments. And a wide range of support systems like parts and production databases (which often is custom written by and for the company). One may spend three months doing wireless and then spend the next six months reading the signals from human-body transducers. Then three months laying out multi-layer PCBs. Then six months testing and calibrating nephelometers. All without getting hired anywhere or making more than $13/hr. Sucks, but that's life in the new action outsource economy.
In these situations, training becomes your responsibility. Fortunately, now the web provides a way to get very close to all that you will need to know at a level that you need to comprehend and absorb it. It was much more difficult ten years ago before this resource became available. Even finding datasheets for the ICs on the circuit boards that you were hired to maintain and repair could be extraordinarily difficult. Now it is not so bad to get precise and focused information.
Basically if you work for a company, then the company should and most likely will train you. But it is getting harder each passing year to become an actual employee in a company.
You might have more time to study if you weren't so busy correcting and submitting error corrections to publishers. It sounds to me like you don't like your job and you're looking for some kind of justification for not carring about not carring. This isn't an industry where you can sit back and assume your skillz won't get outdated. You probably should have been warezing Windows 2003 back in 2001 to get up to speed with it. All joking aside though, how much training is really required to create user accounts and a couple login scripts? Google anything else you might have missed, it sounds like your company will be far too inept to notice your not a guru on the subject.
Having a company that's willing to pay for training is nice, it really is.
But the reality is its your career and your responsibility. My first job was with a company that gave a little training to programmers. Most of them griped and complained that they weren't getting enough training. Which was almost true, they had enough training to get started, but they weren't getting nearly enough experience. A few of us took some personal initative and developed useful skills. We actually studied things beyond basic CS. When everybody finally bailed or was laid off, those of us who studied got jobs as engineers and systems admins. The others ended up testers
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
You might consider joining the Association for Computing Machinery. You get access to hundreds of online courses, a monthly magazine, and numerous other benefits. My limited experience suggests the online courses are of variable quality, but you can read the course summaries and find out if there are any of interest. Dues are $99/year.
Companies have vastly different expectations, and there are no standards. Larger companies expect to do more training, and smaller companies will find the $3k outside training courses a bit difficult to swallow.
Your company will take as much as you can give them. The best technical IT workers have done a substantial amount of work off the clock. How good do you want to be, and how much will you be able to offer a company after a layoff in a bad job market?
My suggestion to anyone in your situation would be to spend as much time as you are comfortable, and to spend that time learning transferable skills. Spending time learning internet standards would make more sense than spending time learning your company's proprietary products, in the case where you can choose. If you know something, it would also be a good idea to make documented accomplishments.
If you are thinking of leaving for a more supportive company, and you live in the US, I think now is a great time. Companies are having quite a hard time finding good people.
Good luck
rhadc
...is a simple one.
Training paid for by my employer is to make me more valuable for the company, and will allow me to contribute at a higher level in coming years.
Training paid for by myself is to get a better job.
Either way, I'll come out ahead.
you don't want to spend hours trying to solve a problem that a properly trained domain admin might spend 5 minutes fixing
I think a careful choice of wording this to a manager might be required... Otherwise it just might sound like that the employee is telling how he is completely incompetent and that the manager should just fire him and hire someone more qualified...
Perhaps the original poster could explain his strengths to the manager and discuss how getting this extra bit of training from a class (rather than a book) would allow him to perform is other duties more effectively and overall make him a better administrator.
This is not a flamebait response, but most moderators will treat it so.
"I'm currently working as a Microsoft Systems Administrator. Through a series of bungled management decisions, have found myself responsible for a Windows Server 2003 Active Directory network, that I know nothing about (the person who was sent for training was: not the Microsoft point person, as I was; and left the company, soon after the domain upgrade).
Your a Microsoft Adminstrator but you know nothing of AD services. Your on Par with most MCSE/MSVP/PMS/MS whatever certificate holding persons. Your fine, it's just that most of what you need to know is buried in Microsofts SDK documentation.
It doesn't look as though training will be forthcoming, and I've just been moved from the lab, where I was training myself while simultaneously handling the domain. I've got the MCSA/MCSE Training Kit, but recently I've found numerous errors, so many that I was sent a free Press Kit book, for submitting all of the errors I had found. Between management's reluctance to shell out for training, and being moved from the lab, I'm getting the distinct sense that training is something I'm expected to take care of, on my own time. Is this the de-facto standard within IT, and for all jobs within IT?
Is it your career or mangements career? Who trained Bill Gates or Wozniak? Its up to you to figure stuff out. If your into computers why should you care about the platform? Your next job could be Windows/AIX/AS400/Linux whatever. Always be ready for the next career jump.
If so, how do you Slashdot readers keep up with your continuing education, while still maintaining a personal life? Is it naive to try to leave my work at work?"
"I'm especially interested in hearing from the Slashdot readers of the female persuasion, as I have a husband, a dog, and a household to keep up with (no kids by choice, but I wouldn't have the time to take care of them, even if I wanted to).
I'm male. I have a wife and three kids, one dog and one cat and a habitat they all call home. Yes I work overtime most/sometimes. We do family things on the weekends. I'm currently learning OCAML in my private time (I get up early on weekends, have coffee and learn something new). Whats your problem?
I also have the added responsibility of being the primary breadwinner. My free time is valuable in that it allows me to take care of that which I can't during the day (grocery shopping, dog responsibilities, cleaning, etc), and decompress/de-stress in order to prepare for the next day's work. I like tinkering with computers and learning new stuff, but I fear that if I'm expected train myself, outside of work, I may need to consider a different career.
You may need a new significant other if he/she is not willing to share (along with his/hers) in the responsibilties of your lifes vision quest. I have time to play network games with my kids, satisfy my wife, work (+- 50 hours), play with my dog, and clean house when my wife is too busy.
Without trying to sound mean, whats your problem? Is everything supposed to be given to you?
I like computers, its a life choice for me. Maybe you don't. My advice? Use common sense and choose your own path.
Enjoy,
It's just the normal noises in here.
If your employer were hiring experienced, trained admins, it should expect to pay a premium vs. the cost of training its own experienced admins. Rationale: experienced, trained admins scouting the job market are generally already employed, and testing the waters for an engagement more compelling that in which they are already employed.
It really depends on the position and organization, but in general, if you were hired for IT, you shouldnt need any additional *formal* training in anything specific. If you need to do something with any particular package, you should be able to grab some documentation and at least get it to do what you need it to do whether you attended some seminar or not..
No offense. But you're not qualified for the job you're
in. I don't mean that you're a bad person or incompetent.
It's just that you are not trained in your current job
resposibilities, and won't be.
You have two choices: (1) train yourself, or (2) prepare
for your replacement, which may come when enough mistakes
or errors are made to warrant the hiring.
It sounds like you're trying step (1), so that's good.
Best of luck with your job. It's quite NORMAL for this
to happen, so get good at learning.
Implied contract for factory worker: we train you on our factory equipment, you work for us until you die. Your resume looks like a bunch of crap, but you don't care cos you don't change jobs.
Implied contract for tech worker: you train yourself on industry-standard tools and technologies, you work for us for 3-5 years until you've self-trained yourself into a better job. Your resume benefits from all your self-training, and doesn't really benefit us.
Paid training's great if you can get it but there's a reason it's not normal in tech.
Premature optimization is the root of all evil
Back in like the 80's, training was everywhere, or so it seems. There was a lot more loyalty, both ways. These days things are different. I've seen so many people piss and moan to get training only to then jump ship or start bitching about a raise as soon as they think that they know some more stuff. (Usually the raise comes but you might have to wait a while, like a review cycle, the company comes out ahead in this situation they built knowledge and they didn't just pay a consultant and that's just how it is.) In a healthy environment people want to do good, the employer wants them to be happy and do good and training is a natural part of that. It's abused though. It was abused a lot over the last 10 years.
If you see Windows admin and AD being a career for you and you like it, then I'd do whatever it takes, put a foot in your husband's ass and get him to help more and do whatever it takes to get the career you want. If it's just a J O B to pay the bills then it is completely up to your employer, be warned though, that makes you fodder when it's time for RIFs. That's the nature of the beast. That's the balance, Sometimes it's cheaper to fire someone and get a pro than it is to train someone; it's most certainly easier in a lot of cases. If you really enjoy it, you should do whatever you can to get better at it, period, regardless of how much your employer supports you in that because you'll leave that job and go somewhere else to do that.
My personal opinion and it's not my business, but with no kids, being married, I'd say that something else might be wrong if you simply think that you have no time at all to read some books. You're employer might be willing to send computers and software home with you to learn on your own time. It doesn't take a huge amount of effort or a huge investment. Getting groceries usually doesn't take that much time. I don't know if decompressing is 3 or 4 hours a night of TV or what but a couple hours a week is really all it takes to really start to learn something, it might take a while but a couple hours saturday morning or something is really all it takes. My wife and I support each other, not just one of us does all the work. It takes effort but if you're the bread winner then maybe a little team effort from both of you on your career is worth it. We've gone through the same things and there have been times when I did all the house work because she was in grad school and times when she did a lot more because I was coding 60 hours a week.
"...how do you Slashdot readers keep up with your continuing education, while still maintaining a personal life?"
Have you seen how many jokes are floating around about Slashdotters not having girlfriends?
What are you doing now, you lazy drunken obscene unsayable son of an unnameable gipsy obscenity?
I think that in many ways choosing a long-term profession in IT is almost a lifestyle choice. I think that there is a true case to be made to say 'Hey, you know, a certain level of core competence on a personal level is needed for this guy to effectively even be here'. I think training is a great thing, but I also hold the opinion that training is a weeklong window into a much bigger world than most folks are capable of grasping. For instance, I worked for serveral years for a toy company here in North Carolina designing and administering Peoplesoft databases. When we made a decision (under pressure I might add) to convert our backend SQL Server instance to Oracle/Solaris, the whole team's skillset went out the window. (This was due to forced lock-escalation problems that existed in SQL Server in the past, so we had to do it, and fast... but I digress) Anyway, there was no time for training, we had to figure it out. We did the conversion, recovered the system and moved on, but as part of the deal with Oracle they threw in 4 weeks of training....
.. aspiring to do) the job because he thinks it's going to make him more money. That, to me, is the travesty of what IT departments all over have become. As for the poster, training isn't going to make him love his job, so not to get all zen and all, but is it really where he wants to be if he's asking for public advice about it?
So,
I go to Charlotte to this weeklong Oracle Performance Tuning class that turns out to be full of folks who had heard some ad on the radio that the center had been promoting...
My lab partner was this welder who took the week off from his job at Fedex to come and improve his job prospects. Nice enough guy, and probably smart enough to really be able to do the job, but in the end it all comes down to, he's doing (well
Regarding the poster's other question about the 'Defacto-Standards' of IT, I would say that coming at it from the Management angle (which I was for awhile) maybe someone is trying to see if he'll sink or swim? Not really a kind way to break in the new guy, and it's not really common I think in smaller shops anymore, but it happens a lot in bigger places where there are lots of office politics.
Training => expense => Department Budget => Manager's Performance review
That said, yeah I think it is a little naive to expect to break into any industry without self-sacrafice man.
Just as an aside, you can take a job like that a lonnnnnnnng way. System Administrators spend more money in most companies than a LOT of other departments, and this fact alone keeps them in positions in large companies where CIO and CTO appointments are common from the pool. AD, if its full-blown, can make or break a company organizationally. Take backups seriously, and TEST them.
--chitlenz
PS - Read books by O'Reilly, they really are the best =D
Imagination is the silver lining of Intelligence.
That being said, I was given no "lab time" as Cliff implied. All studying and training was to be done at home. I purchased my own cheap server through Dell, installed Server2k3 on it, and created my own home domain, to which I attached a few boxes. I was continually pressured to advance and achieve, and to be more like my boss, whose home network put the average proffessional installation to shame. This continual pressure to give up my own time to advance is what eventually prompted me to leave the company.
Training materials and testing is expensive. My company gave me all of the financial help with training it could, but expected me to do all of myself and on my own time. Even though I left because of it, I still have to say that the arrangement seems more than fair.
P.S. Cliff, would you like to buy a used Dell server? Cheap!
I grew up under communist policies, and then moved here...
In the last 15 to 20 years I've seen the following VERY disturbing trend here in the USA.
People here do not leave their work at work. We work EXCESSIVE hours and are expected to kill ourselves, damage our health and wound our minds to "be more productive" or "increase productivity". (Ever since I left IT, I sleep more, I have more restful sleep, and I'm not at the edge of becoming homicidal.)
In Europe, even the eastern side, people left their work at work. I recall my mother telling me stories when I started hating the working world I encountered here. "Yep, I remember how we used to have it back home, it wasn't as bad as it seemed, now that I think about it. At least we had assured work, nobody got laid off, everyone had assured (and delivered, without need for lawsuits) pensions and retirement, and when they walked out the door at the end of the day, and off the premises, the coat of "labor" wore off, and it was time to enjoy life.
(Nevermind that she left for work at 0700, came back around 1600 in the afternoon, that would be, 4 o'clock for those who cannot read 24 hr clocks.)
I don't know, but now that I look back at it, the commies weren't nearly as abusive in the work place (corruption was rampant, but at LEAST one could actually get ahead based on their skills, if those skills were formidable, here, its very hard because your healthcare is assured by massive expenses, and the healthcare is rarely there when needed, because most people do not want to "get into expenses", I should know, I've been there... or perhaps "they can't find the time" (I've spent weeks trying to plot a day off to go get a filling for a tooth...)
~D
PS - I'm not praising communism, but I am saying that there are some merits to limiting the amount of power CEO's and CoB's have. Perhaps even making them "the people"... it wouldn't hurt to make those dirty bastards have to EARN a living. They bleed the same as we do, perhaps they should put something back into society before they see another dime.
" What luck for rulers that men do not think" - Adolf Hitler
Forget the MCSE training books. Get Mark Minasi's book and read it cover to cover. Read it at work if you can or at home.
Overpriced training courses are usually a waste of time. if you can't pick this stuff up easily from books, you're probably in the wrong field.
The company should pay for books (mine pays for a safari subscription so I can read whatever I want) but a small company is better off hiring someone who knows their systems.
Your big problem is that the company doesn't know this is a problem. Sorry to be a pain, but this is your fault. A big part of running a network is making sure the bean counters know that they should listen to you about where to spend said beans. You will get a lot more "Yes" answers if you can cost justify whatever it is you're asking for. If you can't justify it, you're probably wrong anyway.
Also, a big part of IT is staying on your game. If your eyes glaze over when you read an RFC, you need to think about another career path.
Consider hiring a consultant to clean things up. OFfhand, it sounds like there isn't more than 4 to 8 hours of work for an experienced consultant to do (you have servers that run.. it can't be that bad) and spending the 600 to 1600 bucks to fix it is a lot cheaper than sending you to mcse boot camp to become another paper cert. Plus you'll probably learn something from the consultant. Once things are cleaned up, you can use 30 mins of their time to get their guidance on what you need to keep the ship on an even keel. Not to teach you everything, but to make a list of things you need to learn, rather than MS's list of quirks for the MCSE tests.
good luck
this sig has been rated E for Everyone.
...work finishes YOU.
Czech language for absolute beginners
it will train them to fulfill their job functions.
If not, it won't.
It is up to you to decide if it is worth staying with a company that shows this kind of disdain and disrespect for you and its employees.
There are plenty of companies that respect their workers and will train them. I strongly recommend finding one.
The best way to learn the hard stuff is 1) do it cuz you love it and spends all your free time on playing with it, 2) find someone who is an expert and learn from them, or 3) find a new job. people who can't figure out a way to learn technology on their own really shouldn't be working in the IT field. I've seen lots of guys who thought they'd make a ton of money as a Sys Admin or programmer and couldn't do crap. in the end, they make life miserable for those who love technology and are good at it. Sounds harsh, but that's reality.
I get sent for training or I am allowed to learn at work. But that means if i were to be compared to someone who learns himself outside of work, i move slower. It is a battle of wits against my colleagues that way. In Conclusion:
He who knows not and knows not that he knows not is a fool; avoid him.
He who knows not and knows that he knows not is a student; teach him.
He who knows and knows not that he knows is asleep; wake him.
He who knows and knows that he knows is a wise man; follow him.
Suggest to the powers-that-be in a memo thus:
The Active directory is dependent upon one (or two) nodes that may go kaput. In such a situation, nobody can log in. Nobody can do any work. This could cost a day or two of lost productivity plus chaos.
The problem may not be solvable without the assistance of highly trained contractors. "Best practices" demands that we have some sort of backup plan.
We have two options: hire a contractor on the spot or get some support when the emergency happens.
Appendix I. Emergency Assitance 24/7:
Contractor A:
rate: $XXX per hour
Contractor B:
rate: $XXX per hour
Contractor C:
rate: $XXX per hour.
Appendix II. Support fees for Active Directory with x nodes:
Contractor A:
Base: $XXXX
Monthly: $XXX
Contractor B:
Base: $XXXX
Monthly: $XXX
etc.
That should scare the bjesus out of them. Once it is in Memo format, it is on the record and ready for discovery with any law suites. They will act because they are legally obliged to prevent loss to their shareholders and there is a memo floating around that will incriminate them should any disaster happen. Put all that in an attached word doc and in your email mention that you are extremely eager to help rectify this situation in any way possible! If that takes improving my skills, I will do it!
Hope that helps.
Cheers,
-b
I can relate as all the jobs that I have had as a systems admin have pretty much been self training. Even the stuff from the Microsoft books wont cover some of the crap that I have had to deal with. The one thing that has helped me hands down in my situations is to grab a pc from work if you can and just setup a AD server at your home. Setup users for individuals (husband, self, dog, tree) and administer them in a home enviroment. When I had no clue about MSSQL but the company at the time wanted one, I had them buy the software and then setup a database on my home server with it. I learned the install process, the tricks from Google(your best friend) and made sure that it was working... then I would break it and fix it and break it and fix it... deleted it and restore it. When I was done (and allow 1 week... I call this evaluation process so you can factor it into your implimentation time) I knew enough about it to set it up. When something else comes along I would just do the same. Not only do you get the hands on knowledge without the fear of breaking the company network but you also get a chance to play with it and apply tweaks that may help you get that raise later on for being knowledable in that field. In the company I am with now I am a multi-hat system admin... Email, Database, AD, FTP, WWW and the company even put me through Flash training and with all the crap that I do daily I never get turned down for a raise. All the items that I have learned (well the flash part is both training and hands on) I find it easier to learn it at home... if anything consider it YOUR lab.
If you could sum it up in a nutshell, maybe you should be writing O'Reily books. --- Domasi 2001
That is my experience with IT in small companies, and to an extent large companies as well. Larger companies tend to provide funding, but the training is largely left up to yourself and your time
Training is an expense. Training is expendable.
Economically speaking, training is an investment in human capital. As with any other investment, like building new factories or installing better machines, expenditure in human capital (training) increases the productivity of the worker. Where this productivity increase offsets the cost of the initial investment, the employee will be trained.
Of course, in this case, the poster seems to be doing fine without training - working his @$$ off, but keeping the network secure and running, which is, after all, what he's paid for.
DATABASE WOW WOW
Where I work, they provided a full 2 weeks or so of training in a bunch of things that they expect us to know.
I don't know how helpful or even pertinent you may find this, but:
I work on Radios for the Marine Corps (in particular, my specialty is those that operate in the HF radio spectrum, and one that does VHF and UHF, used for comm with aircraft). I was sent through a school giving me a basic general knowledge of elecrtonics, then a follow-on school to that teaching me about several of the radios that the Marine Corps uses, including several I have not worked with since the school. The VHF/UHF radio I mentioned was not included in this school--I was told "learn how to fix it" and I talked to some people who fix the thing and read the manual; now I'm pretty good at it. The other 2 radios I repair were covered in shcool, however, one was not covered on the component level, which I am required to troubleshoot to here. The other one, I gained pretty good knowledge of, just no real-world experience from school. When I was turned to my shop in the Fleet Marine Force, I was instructed and supervised by my section head, and others with more experience. I am now currently the section head, and am tasked with doing the same thing. In my opinion, this system is pretty good, reasonably efficient system. It worked for me, and the Marine under me currently is learing quickly. Another note I left out is that I spent nearly a year between the two schools. They also tought us details of reading and understanding electronic schematics during the radio-specific school, which is an absolutely indispensible skill in the particular line of work.
Granted, this is a highly technical field, but there's almost no possibl way anyone except maybe the most gifted of individuals could succeed without the initial training given in the Marine Corps comm-electronics schools.
I hope my comments are helpful to you.
-- Napalm sticks to kids.
Ask yourself, who trains the trainer and who trained the trainer's trainer and so on.. the n th trainer.. Answer - No body, he/she trained him/herself from the product manuals, It is important to study computer science(not applications) as basic education and then whenever a new product/tool/apps is launched, read the product literature/reference manual etc.. and train your self.
This is actually a common problem in management and economics.
:(
The decision is not unique to IT and is encountered at every level of an organisation in every industry. It comes down to who receives the benefit:
A) The Company Receives the benefit (Firm-specific): in this situation it is in the best interest of the company to pay for the training to make that individual more productive or to obtain a high quality of work. It is expected that the company should pay for this simply because the company is the only one receiving the benefit and often does not have to pay the employee for the added ability, the employee cannot simply quit and take those skills to another company. However saying this, it is obvious that a company will often pay more to an individual who is more productive because they either want to encourage the more productive worker to stay (paying just above the alternative wage) or they want to encourage other works to take the training.
B) The employee gets the benefit (generic skill): This type of training occurs where the company needs an employee to take training to improve their skills or efficiency, but arent the only ones to benefit from it. If the individual is unhappy with the company they can simply complete their training then leave - taking all the skills with them to another company. The second company in this situation recieves all the added skills of the employees training without taking any of the risks or costs associated with training. This is a great situation for the employee but is horrible for the company, because they often find themselves paying for someones training and then watching them walk out the door and helping a competitor (the guy that left your company was a classic example). However if the employee is left to foot the bill then there is no incentive for training - why would you spend your money to make the company more productive? (ignoring the effect of employee share programs).
To get a balance between the benefit recieved from a person with generic skills and the company requiring those skills is often found in spliting the bill. I would suggest that you pay for your own training (books etc) but the company pays you to do it on work time or vise-versa. This means that YOU get to keep all the books and files, while also maintaining your personal life. Unfortunately chances are that your company will think twice about helping you get your certificate because they have already been stung, but if the benefits and costs are shared equally between you then you can often tailor the training to suit both of you, and it makes both economic and business sense.
Example: googles approach to employment is one of the best examples i have ever seen. Not only are they paying their coders to work on community projects etc in work hours but they are allowing them the freedom to choose which projects to work for. On the coders side this is great because they have a sense of freedom to their work and are allowed to expand their effort and skills into unrelated fields. But on the company side they are creating a learning organisation, where all employees are encouraged to think outside of the box. This includes the fresh ideas and skills that they can bring in from outside projects, the PR bonus for their hiring technique and a level of insight into the market that no other company has (they literally have their fingers on the pulse). Add onto this the hype around a "google job", alot of coders in Australia would sell their own mother to work for google, and often at a lower average wage.
Sorry about the length and i hope it helps you
Please include the address and name of the hiring manager, thanks!
I had something similar happen to me.
The boss sent a guy to Germany for 6 weeks for training on some equipment that we sold and supported over the western US.
The guy returned, and promptly told the boss he refused to travel to support this or any equipment. The boss wouldn't do anything to change the guy's mind because they were old friends. So the boss demanded that I start to support the equipment, without any training. I said "not without trainng". He got pissed, tried to deflect blame onto me and off of his buddy. I laughed at him.
I stayed on for another 6 months or so before leaving.
Any boss that will do this kind of thing to you is a self serving jerk and not to be trusted.
Leave soon and on your own terms.
GET OUT NOW WHILE YOU STILL CAN! Seriously, run! Gather all your valubles, and LEAVE! Now! It's time to go and NOT LOOK BACK! If you're SMART, you already have your EXIT ROUTE planned! Seriously!
On a Unix system, you have man pages and volumes of great advice on the web for software that works reliably. In your position, there's not much you can really do.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I know the subject seems a bit obtuse, but I'm serious.
....Learn on your own time to enhance and sharpen your knowledge/skills;
....Be interested enough to read materials on your own time (materials that will help you or keep you acclimated to the ever-changing world in which we work)
....Learn on company time by using time-honored tools like trial-and-error, experimentation, searching knowledge base articles, and reading books
If a company wants a job done well, but doesn't want to pay for an established and experienced person, the company should generally expect you to:
The gist of what I am saying is that it takes both personal time and job time to make a honed, skilled employee (probably more in IT, but I could be wrong).
I personally find my job more satisfying (and enriching to my family) if I apply myself on and off the job.
My family is number one in my life, but part of taking care of my family (as the sole provider in my house) is being viable, interested, and successful at work.
A Passionate Independent Musician
So, I'd say use it to learn as much as you can about being sysadmin, and if you like it, then look for a job somewhere else where they will pay you what you will be worth. I had to leave my first programming job (which I moved into from a non-IT position) I guess because my employer thought the opportunity I received was compensation in itself. It was for the first year or two. But after that, I was working at the same level as my "established" IT peers but for about 25% less. I bailed the first chance I got to work somewhere else. The whole move into IT was scary because I took a paycut to do it in the first place *and* I have a wife, two kids, overweight dog, mortgage (also overweight), etc depending on me. It's all been worth it though. I now make what I should, and I work for a decent company now who will pay for some training. Speaking of which, since I made the move into IT, I have been going to school on my own time and dime. That's my other recommendation. Bite the bullet and get an IT-related degree if you don't already have one (your description didn't make it sound like you did). I wouldn't spend a second of my time on certifications that become obsolete in a couple of years until I had the degree. That last bit is the kind of comment that sets off a firestorm around here, but an IT degree is not useless outside the IT field if you ever decide to leave it. A ten-year-old Bachelors degree in CS/CIS will open a lot more doors outside of IT than a stack of contemporary certifications. And if you stay in IT, you can run the certification treadmill, but the opportunity for advancement will never be as good as if you have the degree. Anyway, that's my perspective. I hope it helps. Best of luck to you!
The only hedge against these rules is an ethical company.
*waiting for laughter to die down*Yes, it's not just an urban legend and there are some companies out there that actually care enough about their customers to care even more about their employees; who happen to actually be the (only) face of the company to their customers and, thus, the key to reaching and keeping them. It's amazing how bosses and managers do not understand this concept: if the employee is happy, they will try to make your customers happy. Simple.
Well, one thing can be said if this seems too simple: simple doesn't always equal easy.
comment
ever!
Yes, this is the de-facto standard and the truth is a lot of us in the IT industry don't have a personal life. It's one of the things us "REAL" computer professionals have come to accept throughout the rise and fall of the industry.
I'd like to know why the trained guy left. Perhaps he got trained and started looking for better. Perhaps he sensed a management problem and got what he could before leaving. I doubt he would have done either if he were satisfied. Ask around, maybe some of his old buds will give you a clue.
You are on the scene. Are there other situations that don't smell right?
The fact you are even asking suggests you sense something is wrong. Don't ignore your hunches. Check them out.
Do you really NEED for someone to stand in front of you and read a book to you? If this is the case, then you have no business in technology.
Grab a few old machines. Most IT shops have them laying around somewhere. Set up a network. Teach yourself AD, or whatever it is you need to know. Do it during lunch, stay a couple hours after work and do it.
- It shows your employeer that you have some sort of initiative, and usually helps more than hurts.
- It gives you a new skill. You will use this skill in your day to day job, which equates to experience.
- Once you get this down, find a new job and reap the financial benefits of what you have learned.
- worst case, you stay with your employer, and you know your new task. You can do it quickly, which leaves more time for something else you may want to do/learn.
In this situation, you should learn at work. Get right manual and read it in office. That's all. After all, your manager is the only person who need this, so do not worry.
I am fresh out of college and looking for a job in IT. I am seriously considering a job with shitty hours (1pm-9:30pm) being the low man on the totem pole because they offer very good education compensation. Hopefully I can either move up to better hours quickly, or get some more training and jump ship to a better paying IT job. We'll see.
The company I work for is a development firm that has offices in San Francisco, NYC, Paris, Tokyo and elsewhere in the world. We have people developing in San Francisco and Paris with some bits of work coming from other offices. We do programming during the day and it's highly encouraged for people to learn the markets we cater to as their evolving. There is no way other than to be very commited to keep up and that means constantly learning in or out of the office. I wore slippers to work today and walked in around 9 today. Yesterday, I also wore slippers but strolled in around 10:30. No one cared. Sometimes the guy next to me comes in at 11:30. We work in and out of the office, so when we're actually there doesn't matter. It is more useful, however, to talk to other developers so the office is quite useful. We also fly people to the different offices to meet with groups specializing in something they need.
If you think you've got it rough training yourself on your own time, then perhaps you should consider new careers. This is not a slow game. This is the world as it moves and to work in certain fields and remain employable, you've got to keep up. Read the docs as you tinker. You're not going to set anything up without starting somewhere. Even if you're moved out of the lab, the lab exists. If you want to guarantee for your employer that you're going to ensure no downtime, request testing periods. Surely, they don't expect you to use live systems to try new things. And if they do, then all 5 users on the small network won't care... they'll be used to small business practices. Basically, no reason to stress.
No matter who the boss is, they have never had a computer experience where something didn't behave quite as expected, but the people who knew how to take new information in fast and could fix things fast were the stars.
And how do you fix new tech fast? You learn it all the time.
Reality is nothing but a collective hunch.
The company I work for hardly provides training at all. My department is responsible for tier 1 support of several devices on the network, and I think I've received training on 75% of them, about 10% of which lasted an entire day and is of any value to me. I have to study the equipment and its different configurations during work hours, when something breaks, through the grapevine of field techs, 2nd level, etc. Were I you, I'd do the same - just play with it while you're at work; books & websites don't come close to putting your hands on something.
Of course, the ironic thing is that investing very little in your peoples' personal growth is one of the key reasons that they do go, :-).
Well, that's the reality. If I can offer you the best advice in the world, it is: take personal responsibility for everything that has to do with your career growth. Everything. Training, pensions, promotions, increased responsibility. The days of companies rewarding loyalty are all but gone in corporate America. (There are some places that hold to the long-term view, yes. Go find one of those places, but be aware that they are few.) In this day, the only person thinking long-term about you is you and maybe your loved ones, if they are not completely overloaded by trying to work out their own goals.
Don't expect anything from your company. Go get the training you want, and then make your company aware of how valuable you are. If they do not ante up and treat you right, go elsewhere. What I have seen in the industry over the past decade is that 90% of the respect you get from a job is usually established when you are hired into the company. Not a lot of leeway unless the company is small or otherwise very volatile and they desperately need bigger skills from someone and you can demonstrate that you have them. That's a hard fight, though. People want to keep you exactly where you are relative to them. It's just how most people operate. Not many are mature enough to empower you to rise to as much responsibility and knowledge as you are capable. Not many at all. Usually they'll only empower you if they are terrified of the alternative.
If your company does anything for you, it's either required by law or a pleasant surprise. That's they way to approach it. Otherwise you'll be Waiting for Godot and you'll only get where they want you to get rather than where you want to get.
typically for that level you should have the training b4 you take the job. rat r0wan asks: "I'm currently working as a Microsoft Systems Administrator. Through a series of bungled management decisions, have found myself responsible for a Windows Server 2003 Active Directory network, that I know nothing about (the person who was sent for training was: not the Microsoft point person, as I was; and left the company, soon after the domain upgrade). It doesn't look as though training will be forthcoming, and I've just been moved from the lab, where I was training myself while simultaneously handling the domain. I've got the MCSA/MCSE Training Kit, but recently I've found numerous errors, so many that I was sent a free Press Kit book, for submitting all of the errors I had found. Between management's reluctance to shell out for training, and being moved from the lab, I'm getting the distinct sense that training is something I'm expected to take care of, on my own time. Is this the de-facto standard within IT, and for all jobs within IT? If so, how do you Slashdot readers keep up with your continuing education, while still maintaining a personal life? Is it naive to try to leave my work at work?"
You have choices and so does your employer. If you are too far below the requirements to train you to effectively do your new job in a short amount of money, er, time, you are probably going to be replaced. This happens fairly often.
:-) If you truly enjoy the topic, you'll probably be reading about it in your spare time anyway. I got several certs that way myself - studying on the bus, an extra hour before work, a few late nights...
If you believe that they might afford you the time and money for training, ask them and have a tangible cost/benefit arguement in mind for the inevitable questions.
If you can't make headway and if you believe that you can train yourself to the job in a reasonable amount of time, use your time at work as a primary resource for learning. This should make sense to your employer if they really understand that this is the position that they put you in. This is not to say that you wouldn't put in a bit of time on the bus to and from home, in the evenings or in the morning before work. After all, you gotta look like you're learning the stuff at an extraordinary speed, right?
If all this doesn't work for them or for you, the last choice is to do the best that you can, documenting everything, without killing yourself in the process. You *do* have a life outside the server room and you can reasonably expect to be left to live it, even if you aren't given the means to adequately prepare for the work you have to do.
I'm a system/network admin at a small (1000 user) global company. I basically make most of the recommendations, don't have a real problem getting money for the projects I need it for, report directly to the CTO and CEO, and on a shallow level, have great support from management about keeping/getting software/hardware out of the stone age. My employer gives me 5-10K a year for training, will pay me to go to conferences, and reimburses me for 50% of grad school at a private university. I also get to leave work early for school, but work random hours sometimes when the shit goes down in China or the UK.
:), a bad wakeboarding problem, go to grad school, and still find time to go to the gym, church, hang w/my friends, and keep everything in check. I should probably sleep more, but it's doable, You just might have to really look around.
Am I happy? Hell yea, I get to experiment with new things, am instrumental in the budget, get lots of face time with upper mgmt, and get many perks.
But, I got lucky, but there are those companies that will take care of their employees, I'm not sure if they are few and far between or not... and the best thing, is I'm learning the skills to jump into management.
I have a relationship, a bad snowboarding problem
My suggestion is to work for a consulting agency, then you can find a company that NEEDS and APPRECIATES you, you can get an inside look, and when one comes that may be hiring, you can get your foot in the door.
Also, I can't emphasize getting out there and networking. Some towns may be better or worse at the above things, and corporate culture in Boston is different than in Buffalo. So your local market really defines the answer to your question. If you worked in England, you'd get laughed at if you worked more than 40 hours, (ask our plant in England)
Keep a fresh perspective, figure out what you want to do, make sure your qualifies, or have the skills to learn quickly, and go for the job that fits your lifestyle!!!
Good Luck
JP
When I worked in the IS division of Neiman Marcus, my director told me he was not responsible for getting me training or keeping my skills up to date, even though the certification that required continued education and training was a requirement to get the job. I quit shortly after. Our entire IT training budget was $15,000 for 300+ people. Any company that expects you to do something but doesn't give you the training and the necessary tools to do it isn't worth your time. Any company not willing to invest in me and my career growth doesn't keep me as an employee. Now I make almost double what I made there and I can pay for any training I want. Neiman Marcus, at least before the went private and were bought out, was a cheap company that treated its IT workers like crap... unless you worked for the Neiman Marcus Online/e-commerce division.
Basically it's their responsibility to cough up for training if it's necessary. But in a lot of situations one can subsitute sitting down with a good book on the subject and figuring out what you need to figure out on the company's time. If this approach is too hard/takes too long, you have a good business case for the company to cough up the money for training.
And if they still won't cough up, I guess the work won't get done and either they'll sack you because you can't do your job, or else they'll cave and get you trained. Which one they do I guess depends of what kind of people they are. If you get sacked, you may have been better off without them anyway.
First, you probably already know that IT is generally a very male dominated field (the number of porn hits in a google search for chocolate should prove that). Men stereotypically are excited by challenges and achievement that perhaps no one thought they could do. If I were managing a competitive staff of guys that would be a pretty good way of challenging my employees. It's possible your supervisor really has not imagined your situation very well. Second, rare is the company or organization that is unwilling to train when it makes sense. There are two keys to this. First show them how the training will save them resources (your time, their money, other impacts). Second, demonstrate that they will reap the benefits of the training, a manager's biggest fear in training an employee is that the employee will leave soon after the training makes them a more valuable job prospect. Good luck and I hope the situation rights itself soon.
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
This is the modern economy. You either keep up with everything you need to know, or joe large corporation will hire three people overseas who already are trained in this or that. Welcome to globalism. It's not going away. It's going to get worse. Maintaining a western styled middle class lifestyle is going to become extinct for the most part as the 'great leveling" continues.. The globalism idea is a TWO CLASS society, not three, TWO, of very rich overlords who control politics/business (it's one thing really), and every one else.
Learn what you can, take the money while it is there, because it could vanish on you tomorrow. Blue collar, white collar, green collar, pink collar, man or woman, it doesn't matter, middle class well paid "normal" jobs inside the US are going to be "downsized" as fast as they can pull it off. The global international corporations don't need expensive US citizens any more. I mean, look around, it's obvious. And they don't care about you. This is obvious, too.
If you want to eke it out for some more time you'll have to suck it up and keep learning, even on your own time and at your own expense. There's hundreds of people right now looking for your job, because even with the "stress" and whatnot it's better than what they currently have. Much better. "Stress" for some folks is going home to running water, which would be technically unpalatable in the US, and brown in color, 2 hours a day if lucky, chickens running around in the street, household garbage as a natural resource, open sewage ditches, and electricity on odd days. That's your competition, now think what they would work for, how hard they might work, how much they might try to learn, just to get a little tiny bit more than that description.
That it's the workers responsability and that they should have to hire the best person for the job...
But why not hire someone who has a $70,000 server they bring from home... OH WAIT THAT'S INSANE!
Head over to www.quest.com and look under windows management and under active directory management... they have some great tools around ad/exchange management to help ease some of the pain of going from being an in the MS world... (Recovery manager for AD, Spotlight for AD are two that help immediately.. (recovery manager, while it might not help today, it will save your butt when you need to recovery an ad object or something that was deleted nad you need back in minutes as opposed to hours they also have a cool product line they aquired from www.vintela.com that extends/allows unix/linux machines to authenticate against AD accounts (indentity management/SSO) type stuff (which is what got me started looking at their products a few months ago)....
In Soviet Russia, personal live maintains YOU!
You can run but you can't hide, except, apparently, along the Afghan-Pakistani border.
Well, I guess your resume clearly validates your opinions about the industry.
a company is responsible for two things with it's workers... 1) providing a safe atmosphere and 2) compensating for your time with a paycheck now - if a company wants to stay competitive with other companies they SHOULD want to offer free training, etc... training is a perk, not a requirement of the company. as far as work taking up too much of your (not the author of this thread specifically, but people in general) time and you're needing the money to pay for things at home, etc... you're living a lifestyle choice. you can work 1/2 the time, just don't buy all the nice things you may want. if you value time with your family more than time with your 50 inch television then it shouldn't be a huge issue. we've just created a culture in america that you have to have certain things, that you're owed those nice things, etc... not to mention we're taxed out the %$@# and that's put a strain on families and is a huuuuge reason we don't have moms that stay at home with the kids much anymore. it's just a big hole we've dug ourselves into.
Run the numbers and show your employers that they will more than gain back the investment that they make in training. Do your homework, shop around and show them you have researched the subject. The result might surprise you.
But, as some other posters have noted, you should be willing to shoulder some of the burden yourself. Years ago, I set up Redhat at home on an old '486 and taught myself how to run a webserver. The Linux machines that I introduced at my employer eight years ago were the first on their network and would never have been there if I'd had to ask for training. Linux is now an infrastructure mainstay and many of our commodity services run on it.
Opportunity is what YOU make of it. Good luck.
"Computers are useless. They can only give you answers."
-- Pablo Picasso
Whenever labor is in great supply, employers get to pretty much fuck you at every opportunity. Because if there's something that you won't do, there is som poor unemployed SOB who will for either the same or less money.
I did some work for a large computer maker/direct seller and they did all kinds of shady things. Like expecting you to show up 30 minutes before the start of your scheduled shift and work that time for free. To offer "optional" training, but then penalize you for not taking it during your own time.
More and more companies are starting to do this sort of thing. It doesn't look like it's going to change anytime soon.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
There's no black or white here. At a micro level, the company is. If a company has very specific technologies they expect you to know, then training you is reasonable. Active Directory is not LDAP, and if you have LDAP skills but they need you to work on AD now, they should arrange the training.
On the other hand, at the macro level, you are on your own. You need to be responsible for figuring out what's on the horizon and learning about it before your company realizes they need it. Or before the next company you go to realizes they need it. You'll never stay a step head with company provided training.
It's true that you'll go down a lot of rat holes trying to separate the wheat from the chaff of new technologies, but after a while it's pretty easy to make good guesses. And being able to explain why that hot new technology isn't the be-all is just as good as being proficient at the new good technologies.
No matter who you work for, no matter how much or little training they allow, pay for, or whatever it's YOU who's responsible for YOUR career. You are solely responsible for your own self-growth. If your free time is valuable, then where do you place the value? If you want to be in IT in say 5 years, then it's probably good to have a plan and work to it. Waiting for some corporation to spoon feed you training may not happen. I've been with both good and bad employers, but in either case, I was always personally responsible for my own development.
The thing is personal responsibility. It applies to life in general as it does to technical growth. Once you figure out in life that only you alone are responsible for your actions, life works better. Same thing on technical growth. I don't believe anyone should depennd on some company to set the way your technical growth should be. It is up to each person. You decide where you want to go. If a company is going there at the time, great. If not, you still go.
If you want to learn something bad enough, you eat the cost. Why? Because knowledge is worth a great deal to your future.
This will be revisited when YOU are on the other end of the blade :)
:) but that doesn't mean I don't look out for my fellow man, which, I believe, is what makes me a better citizen than you. I don't help others only when it gives me a tax break.
Remember your words when you've spent 40k and 5 years of college learning a subject which recently became the target of massive outsourcing and layoffs.
I look forward to seeing if you make it past that, I have
~D
" What luck for rulers that men do not think" - Adolf Hitler
Look at it this way: You are "-Incorporated". You are a one person sub-contractor to the big company that you work for.
You have a responsibility to yourself and your family to be prepared to do business.
The employer has a responsibility to it's stockholders to have a trained workforce that can produce the products and services that it ultimately sells to it's customers.
The employee has a responsibility to himself to have the training and knowledge that he needs to make himself valuable to an employer (his customer).
If your company pays for or provides your training, that's great. That's a valuable part of your compensation. But don't limit yourself by being dependent on someone else to make you marketable.
As CEO of Incorporated, you are responsible for determining whether you like doing the work for the big company and whether it's worth the compensation you recieve. That's your responsibility.
With that competitive threat removed, capitalism can be as nasty as it wants to be. Because it has monopoly power now.
People who say, "Our employees are our greatest asset," might just understand the truth of it.
I know, I know, it doesn't always work that way. But without employees, there is no company.
I cried real tears when Li Mu Bai died.
Hate to put it this way to the poster, but that's about the IT norm. And the previous example of sending someone for training only to have them jump ship is why (depending on the size of your company) alot of places are reluctant to send people for training, especially on m$ stuff, because people go "hmm...well my job paid for and now that I have this cert I qualify for this job at company X which pays me more..." and jump ship. Not so much a problem in larger companies, but for smaller ones who dont typically have thousands of dollars to spend on IT staff training, you can be expected to learn it yourself, on your time.
You are responsible for your own career. That means planning your career, deciding what you want to do, deciding what new skills you want/will need in the future, etc.
Your goal = design your own best career
Company goal = maximize your productivity per cost
The decision is up to you.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
My wife and I saved up and bought a small farm in the middle of nowhere in New Zealand. I'm about to quit my last IT job. The other slobs at work are wondering if the axe is going to drop this Friday. I'm laughing my ass off. That's if for me, boys. No more. I played the game one last time, but this time to win. "Win" meaning I don't have to play it anymore.
Have a nice day.
Nothing more to say, have I. At least not in response to that comment. I will eagerly await all of MH42's replies to my comments when I return from my run today. Again... VERY WELL PUT!
~D
" What luck for rulers that men do not think" - Adolf Hitler
You should not expect to work the same job for your entire career.
You should push your employer to provide training if you feel that training will help you get the job done.
Training does not necessarily mean certification; certification is largely useless.
Learn on the job. That's training, too.
Don't focus on the fact that you don't know all that much about AD, or that your 'promotion' may be a management blunder. The point is that someone thought you could do this - and can do it - you ARE doing it. Focus on the positive - don't sell yourself short - especially not to management!
;-)
/.
1) Training
Don't confuse training courses with your 'continuing education'. Training courses should be for learning how to manage the Cisco VPN appliance you just bought, switching to a new mobile device service because the Blackberry network just got shutdown
Who should pay for training? The company should ALWAYS pay for things that directly benefit the company. WHEN they should pay and on what conditions is another matter.
In my experience more and more U.S. companies (regardless of size) are less likely to front the cash for training courses. Many now take a hybrid approach - you pay up front and they reimburse you afterwards. Some companies add conditions like your performance (grades) must be of a certain level, some may go as far to ask for a verbal 'agreement' to remain with the company for a set period of time after the training is completed.
It may have been standard practice to IT staff to get training automatically - but in my opinion that was before the "bubble" burst when IT was so 'new' that training was a necessity - its not the case anymore. In my opinion it is bloat training costs for usless certificates that didn't directly benefit the bottom line is what contributed to many companies going out of business.
If your company will not pay for training - then read books - ON COMPANY TIME. After business hours it is YOUR life - and if the &$@^ hits the fan - it is not YOUR fault - you have done the best under the conditions set for you by the company's management style & culture.
"I'm getting the distinct sense that training" - Don't trust your 'senses' - ask management these questions - more than likely they are feeling burned by the $$ they lost to the last employee who got trained and jumped ship. Identify specific company needs that some training may address - and consider the conditions that would protect the company from loosing the resources that they invest in you.
2) Continuing Education
Your 'continuing education' should be getting that next degree. Be it at the Bachelor, Masters level or higher - a proper degree should be your path to 'career' not an MCSE certificate. You could have a handful of training certificates on your resume - but without a college degree - I won't hire you full time.
Any company you work for should have a 'benefit' package that includes some level of reimbursement for furthering your education. The key difference from training here is that my educational choices are mine and have no relationship to the company or the job. I could choose to study Chiropractic Therapy and my companies educational reimbursement benefit should cover it.
3) Family & IT Work
I have a wife, 3 cats, and 1-year-old twins - and I am the ONLY breadwinner. I leave work @ 6pm to go home and takeover care of the twins for the night. I study for my master's degree online so that my weekends are free to spend time with my family and give my wife the day off.
I 'try' to help my wife with the household responsibilities. If she is too tired / busy - then I cook, clean, or go grocery shopping. (but the last time I made dinner it was awful - I turned all the whites pink in the laundry - and I always skip the vegetable isle when I grocery shop)
My only free time to tinker and learn is in the late hours when everyone is asleep - and half of that time I VPN to the office to check on the Exchange backup, write some code for a client, or read
Decide what your priorities in life are: Are you a get rich google-ipo-wanna-be? Is career advancement so important to you that you've chosen not to have children? Or is your job a means to support your family at a certain level of comfort?
yep, mispelling. cook = kook.
:) still drowsy.
its 0200... quite late, I am going to work too
Lates.
~D
" What luck for rulers that men do not think" - Adolf Hitler
You can sign all the contracts you want like that and then break them. They're illegal in the US.
(This isn't FLAMEBAIT... this is a pointed, scathing wakeup!)
and arrogant. In that "winning the cold war" was included a large dose of LUCK, and a number of mis-steps by other countries along the way. Also, a LOT of thievery and counter-counter-espionage on both sides, too.
And, I guess our tax dollars righteously went to training, arming, and then DUMPING insurgents who then got slaughtered by their governments when the US back out when the political winds changed. I am SURE you're smart enough to know of various cartels, juntas and more that got TOWs, Stingers, LAWs, Claymores and MORE, only to turn on the very entity that once pumped them up and left them deflated. Now when crap comes home to roost, patriotism, not a clean-up job, are the watch-word of the day... Short-term memory effect can be a bitch, especially when the rest of the world will KILL us if they could get away with it, but in the meantime take the fruits of tech, money, and entertainment. Myopia will be our undoing. Ah, but, well, NOOOO 'merkun presidential candidate ever runs on the promise making 'meriku Number Two.
As for evil dictators who "used chemical weapons on" their "own people". Point out where in THIS country such things haven't been done to minorities and Natives! The most "enlightened, technologically-advanced country on the planet" (however militarily "restrained") and we have still to get through institutionalized marketing racism, mistreatment or neglect of veterans, corrupt police departments (not all, but enough of them), companies that place donations in the "necessary evil" department, tainted water supplies, inner-city blight, side-walk pissers, misplaced national and international policies.... Yeh, we work hard at stressing the hell out of the very populace that is paying taxes and are so worn out we neglect to reign in STUPID policy makers and their related peripheral brethren.
No matter WHICH country you hail from, I believe in your right to sink ANY sub that is tapping your cables. If you choose not to sink it, then at least force it to surface-- then film it and demand the surrender of the crew under every legal trick in the books. If the ship/boat/sub STILL refuses, then mortar it until it's out of your water.
Sheesh. The world is FAR bigger than and FAR more important than JUST the good 'ole US of A. It's only a matter of time before things come back full-circle. As just ONE example: China, a few hundred years ago, COULD have been in charge of this land if hegemony rather than tribute system had been their goal. And, don't spout bullshit about "if we woulda lost da wor we'da been speekin' (pick a language)". It would have been a MOOT POINT in many cases, had a LOT of luck not just brute-tech-knowhow had not fallen into the US' lap. Go back and read your history books, not the crap spewed out by the govt marketing machine.
----
Flags and territorialism are incompatible with legitimate higher causes...
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Meanwhile if you're a professional in your own right, i.e. you went to college (or equivalent training on your own time and at your own expense) and you keep your skills fresh by reading/etc. on your own time, now you're actually valuable and should be treated as such by the company. They hired you because you know your stuff. But it's up to you to maintain your value by updating your skills as needed on your own time. Do you pay your doctor to go to conventions, keep up with medical journals etc.? Why would you, being a doctor is their problem.
OK I can see some exceptions, like if the job needs skills that are way out of the mainstream and it's unreasonable to expect to find workers who already learned those skills on their own. My girlfriend's company is gearing up to start training fresh mainframe COBOL programmers again (turns out those layoffs weren't such a great idea), since they know that mainstream comp sci folks are heavily bigoted against COBOL (foolishly) so no one's learning it in school any more. So they have to create their own COBOL programmers.
I'm self-employed so I'm highly biased, but it really bothers me how a lot of people run their careers as if they're a consumer. They expect someone to give them their ideal job/career/life and boo hoo hoo it's so unfair when they don't get it, or they do get it but it turns out to be harder than they thought. Good geek jobs don't just happen to you, it takes a long life of being a geek to qualify for one. This is us having the last laugh, after all the Normals thought they were cooler than us but now they're working at Champs or driving cabs or whatever for crap pay, while we do really interesting (to us) work for decent money. But if you aren't really a geek ... uhhhh ...
If they won't pay to send the primary administrator of a critical production system to the standard training course for the product in question, they are doomed to disaster. If your boss refuses to do something about this, polish your resume and then go over his head. Maybe you'll get your training, or maybe you'll get your boss's job, or maybe you'll get a job with another company that knows what it's doing.
There's no failure quite as dissatisfying as a complete and total solution to the wrong problem.
Most advanced courses here in Europe now have lots of material to read. As an example, I am currently taking the CISSP training. The company pay for the course and examn. But I am expected to read about 150 pages per day before going to the course.
The same when I went on an AD course. So it is becoming the norm that you will have to spend some of your own time to get a certification. But it will also increase your market value.
I know of nobody or almost nobody who has that amount of time left over at work, so they study at home or while commuting.
Many companies hire whomever is trained in what the company needs. The problem is that once the company needs a worker who knows X--and you don't--you'll find yourself laid off.
The company sees it as easier and less expensive to hire workers, burn them out, refuse to pay for new education, and hire those who have paid for their own training.
Disgusting, but true. The bright side of this phenomenon is that word tends to get around, and after 2-3 years, finds itself tacitly 'blacklisted' among IT workers in that city.
Any worker worth her weight in gold will make sure that she is the best at her job, and whatever she does. It is naive to think that ALL your training is the responsibility of your employer, by now you should have realized the nature of IT and how fast things change. You need to keep up with the pace or you'll be left behind. If your actually of the prehistoric belief that everyone must teach you everything in life then be prepared for a life full of limitations, and missed opportunities. Because that simply is not how it is now. The problem I think is how you were taught in college. What they should have taught you is how to "teach yourself". Because above all, that is what defines a "real" IT person vs. one who simply is waiting to be outsourced.
It's your life, your career, and your responsibility. You're not in grade school anymore, no one can make you do anything, and no one is going to take care of you if you fail to take care of yourself. Sure, it would be nice if your employer paid for training, and rewarded your initiative, but that's not the way the world works.
... on the condition that the book belonged to the employer. I worked very hard to get recognized as a senior employee, specifically to get that benefit ... and never used it. By that time I realized that those books were the tools of my trade, and that I wanted to own my tools, instead of depending upon the whim of an employer. Instead I bought all of my tech books myself, and when I left the company, all those books went with me. If I had let the company buy the books, I might have read a few more books, but I would have had to re-buy them at the next job ... without the subsidy. The company's supposed largess was just another way to tie its employees down.
Example: I once had an employer who would purchase, for its senior employees, one book a month
Children wait for someone else to tell them what to do. Adults recognize that there are consequences to their actions, anticipate the future, and plan accordingly.
Be an adult -- take control of your career, and your life. Identify the skills you need to be worth more to *any* employer, and spend your own time and money to get the training. If your current company doesn't recognize your investment and initiative by jacking up your salary, find another company that will.
We call it art because we have names for the things we understand.
Normally I don't post these kinds of comments, but you need it.
:: I like your bike, I stole your imaginary girlfriend.
:: You're a Microsoft Administrator. You're fine. (which in itself is incorrect, but I won't get into that)
Your (possessive)
You're (contraction of two words, you & are)
If you can take out the "your" and replace it with "you are"; and the sentence still makes sense, you've spelt it incorrectly.
You made that error so many times I stopped reading after the third paragraph. If English is not your first language, lesson learned.
If it is... good great God learn to spell. People like me (a project manager) look at bad spelling as a reflection of intelligence - a fitting appendix to the thread here as well.
Typos are excusable, ignorance of language is not.
Interesting peppering punctuation use in the post, I've never used a colon that way myself...
Bravery is not a function of firepower.
~J.C. Denton (Deus Ex)
You'll find a different emphasis in other countries (Japan = company, Germany = society), but here in the U.S. it's basically the worker's responsibility in all professional fields. I'm not saying I think that's the way to go, but that's basically the way it is. The best thing in the world for a U.S. company is to have workers training themselves off the clock (at home)! The shareholders will be sooo happy!!
Since companies have systematically destroyed any loyalty/trust with their workforce, they now have the mindset that their employees don't trust them, so why give them training? If we train them, they'll just jump ship because they have no loyalty! Pretty sad, but that's where we're at. Don't trust your employer to take care of you, because they know you won't trust them and will treat you accordingly We're all on our own.
There are two key questions that drive IT training.
(1) Is your company an IT company? If not, expect less enthusiasm for buying training for you, because IT isn't revenue. It's cost. And for any business, the less cost, the better (and forget the long term benefit blah blah... budgeting gets done year by year, or completely seat of the pants if not a big enough shop to have an IT budget.
(2) As alluded to above, how big is your company? Are they big enough to even have a standing conversation about IT training or is it something that they never think about, even for a moment, until you bring it up and then they go, "whazzat? You're the computer person don't you already know?"
There is no "norm for IT." There are norms for training in general as they relate to whether you're training on core business (vs overhead) and business size (i.e., free money to spend). Go to Microsoft as part of their IT staff and ask for training on inventory management techniques, because someone asks you questions about inventory management software. What? Huh? Good luck.
Cisco will (probably) happily train you as an employee on Cisco products. Or networking. Why? DUH! They sell the danged product! But I doubt that Joe's Gigantic Shop of Big Shoes will. They don't care about the fricking network! It had just better work!
With that said, in non-IT shops, unless they're big ones that have figured out that their people need to know something more, most orgs are a lot happier with your non-optimized, unmanageable infrastructure than you are. You think it can be better. They think it's just fine because it works, and if it doesn't work, it's because you're not doing your job, not because you need training that they're supposed to give you.
There are definitely nicer situations and YMMV. But if you want to make a career-- versus a paycheck-- in IT, taking ownership of your training is going to be part of the turf, unless you are decidedly fortunate.
Good luck. Tough space to work in, IT. Definitely a fast-moving balancing act, and definitely not for everybody.
Which ties back into the original subject rather neatly, I think. If your employer pays for you to learn new stuff, good for you - take advantage of it. If not, oh well. Either way, you'd be well advised to take every opportunity to learn new things, even stupid things like Windows administration, and if that means doing it on your own time, so be it. The alternative is to risk waking up some morning and finding yourself out of work and unemployable because nobody wants the sorts of skills you have any more.
ABSURDITY, n.: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.
Is the only way to assure the your own employability, that and not being female, preggers and over thirty. If your management doesn't want to invest in training for you, it's likely because you're viewed as eminently replacable. There are a number of reasons why this might be so: 1) you are percieved as too usefull to promote 2) IT is not a prority and your present skills are seen as sufficient to handle your tasks 3) Windows Admins are a dime a dozen, your employer knows this You are not alone. Investing in an employee's training is a matter of compliance with corporate standards, why would they hire you to do a job they hae to train you to be qualified for? Human resources want all the employees to be 18, male, posessing 30 years of relevant work experience and training AND willing to work for minimum wage My suggestion to you is to buy the certifications you need to get a better job, acquire the skills you need to get a real job. MCSE does not an engineer make.
Some good phrases to have at your disposal:
- "Uhh, I need to experiment with that -- can I come back in an hour?" Then do it.
- "Gee, that's a new problem to me. I need to play around with it to come up with a solution. Can you come back in an hour?"
- "Oops, my bad. I'll fix it."
If your bosses have a clue, they realize what you know and are trying to put you in a situation that requires just a bit more than what you're used to. At least that's what I do with the guys who work for me - and once they do the job, they have just a bit more. On the other hand, if your manager(s) are clueless, you should be looking for another job no matter what the circumstances.Also, realize that you're somewhere between a mechanic, a secretary, and a bartender. As a mechanic, you get to fix stuff. But, it's a white collar job and you get people coming in and asking for stuff the same way they might ask for a secretary to do things. Oh, and you get to know everyone the same way a bartender gets to know their customers. It took me years to figure out what part I really play in the organization -- without my ego and my preconcieved notions getting in the way.
I hope this helps -- and welcome to everyday IT!
"...Between management's reluctance to shell out for training, and being moved from the lab, I'm getting the distinct sense that training is something I'm expected to take care of, on my own time."
To me, that is a sure sign your management is heavily populated with drooling idiots.
I suggest you get the training you need ON COMPANY DIME+time if at all possible (check with HR, not your boss, most remotely decent companies will at least pay for work related training/classes)
Once that's all done, discreetly look for a real job, if the place is that much of a steaming pile.
If she said the same to her employer/manager I am not suprised she didn't get training.
Training is expensive. Not just the training costs themselves but also because it usually removes the person from work.
Now who would you choose for training? Female A: claims she has a life outside of work, probably going to have a baby anytime now or Male B: Work is his life, can't have babies.
Gee, that is a thoughie. Oh the baby argument is sexist but I am telling you what it is like in the real world. One woman in a company of thousands pulls the being absent for years trick and every woman in the company and every woman in companies where the male managers know a guy in another company where it happened will be tainted with the brush of being unreliable.
Common perception is that women see work as something to do until they get kids. You put them in a position where they are critical and they will just disappear for months. True? Sorta, while I never met any "highlevel" females who did this it sure can mess up a company when the "lowlevel" secretary decides that she has had it and is going to take care of her own baby and no a bunch of middle aged babies. Offcourse the fact that this female was underpaid, undervalued is never mentioned. Just maternity leave is risky. Every male knows this. Sorry.
Then stating also that you value your private life is not a good thing. I am male and even I can't get away with that one. Companies investing thousands of dollars in a person want to be sure they get a willing slave in return. Doesn't matter if that person is going to leave right after completing the training what matters is perception.
And finally the biggest killer in getting training? Just being to damn valuable. I actually been told I couldn't get trained because they couldn't get me the time off needed from projects. So the guys who were "unemployed" got the the training while the guy who was earning the salaries by being outsourced had to buy his own books. Oh and ended up having to be the teacher to the guys just having received a 20.000 guilder training. Grrrr.
Whenever an employer starts talking about training your bullshit meter should spring into the red. I have had several "offers" and it never works out. In the rare occasions where it actually reaches a "planned" stage there is always some project that I am suddenly needed on because the guy that was on it and received lots and lots of training can't hack it. Or left for greener pastures with his shiny new diploma.
Those who can, do. Those who can't get trained and leave the company.
As for the whole butter trap, can you blame men for trying it? Call us sexist pigs if you want, just also remember to call us master and serve us. Resistance is futile. We are male, you will serve us.
If you think it is wrong, just realise that no matter how fucked up men are, women are worse. Just examine yourselve (if your female) what you want in a male partner and then check how many of your wishes contradict themselves. Strong, yet caring. Able to express his emotions but not a cry baby. And the biggest one, "he musn't mind me earning more then him" vs "he better earn a good income". No women respects a man with a low paycheck. The only way for a woman to get the man she wants is to have a harem or someone with a split personality.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I have no idea about American Employment Law, but here in the UK it looks to me like you have a case for Constructive Dismissal before an Employment Tribunal.
h p?eny=19
A constructive dismissal is where an employee resigns because of some action by the employer which causes the employee to believe that continuation of employment is impossible.
This action could be a detrimental change in the contract of employment, (although it has to be a fundamental change), or a refusal to improve intolerable working conditions.
Constructive dismissal cases are hard to win, and unless your conditions are absolutely intolerable you should take advice before walking out on your job.
http://www.worksmart.org.uk/rights/viewquestion.p
A Trade Union, or Labor Union, as I think they are called in the US will certainly offer advice on your position and help with any dispute you may have with your employer (if US Employment Law allows), and only if you are a member of course.
I work in a very large company however my devision of the company gets over looked (we are cost recovery). We also have a Systems group which deal with all the IT infrustructure which leaves me as a sys admin of the L10n/i18n departments (including dev and qa) which is around 600 machines and 30 servers. To be fair I am left to it, I don't get much corporate politics regarding my setup. I have my own AD, etc. to be totally seperated from the corporate system. Unfortunatly training gets lost for me. Managers get plenty as "it is needed" but I am just expected to get on with it. This has good sides and bad sides. The good is that I get 1 day a week (minimum half a day a week) to do my own training. If it is easier for me to train at home then I train at home. It works great for me as I can use all my resources at work and I can learn what I want to do the way I prefer. I have been on several training courses in the past and, to be honest, I don't really like sitting in a classroom listening to someone tell me or working in a "real world lab". I enjoy setting up a dev lab from scratch and trying lots of different things out as that is how I learn best. If I get stuck I know many people who can help me and newsgroups/forums are a great way to get help online (and for free!). On the other side of things I am expected to "just know everything". However most people are ok about giving me a week or two to get to know it to the level they need (however this isnt always the case).
There is no single answer to your question though sadly. It all depends where you work and what kind of person you are. I prefer freedom of time to train myself however others love being sent on thousand £ courses so they can get a pretty certificate and a badge.
This is a world economy. It is competative. Companies nowadays assume that they don't need to train their employees because there is an abundant supply of people who do have the training who are waiting to take jobs. It is cheaper to hire a person who is already trained than to train an existing employee.
This is not the boom and dominance of the 50's and 60's which allowed a man to support a family in suburbia with his unskilled labor job. Get with the program.
And 25 years go by in the world of Office automation, things have changed.
While it was routine for MS DOS 3.0 admins, to get trained in OS/2, VMS or heck, MS Windows, and I was even offered courses on MS Word (I declined that one) such practices are just not needed anymore. I havent met a single office worker who didnt know how to "File - save", or pick up some similar tasks within a week in a long time. I havent met an IT worker who didnt have a basic knowladge about hardware, OS, apps, and little things like ACl's and security principles.
Now, we can go to another week (or five..) training to get the hang of Yet Another Incarnation of MS WIndows, every freaking 3 or 4 years, but well.. Im bored by them!
Just give me a stack of self tutor kits, leave some room for reading and fiddling at work, expect me to get a exam every two months, which I expect my employer to pay, and Im good to go.
The amount of private time I need to spend is pretty minimal, say a few hours each week, and an hour a day each day in the exam week.
I score nearly perfect each time, and I think its fair.
And I still dont need no stinking word courses.
"I think what we need to see in America isn't Communism , it's Socialism..."
*rolls eyes*
I hear socialist grass is greener than democratic grass too.
Here's a hint. No system formed by the hand of man, is immune to the corruption of man's heart. Not one! Building a society (any society) on a foundation of weak character, is a recipe for disaster. That's why you're seeing the woe that the world's going through. Not because someone didn't pick the right political system.
I bet your company has a mission statement that says "our most valuable asset is our people". Find out how much your company spends on annual hardware/software maintenance. Is it the normal 5-6%?? Work out 5-6% of your annual salary and go see the HR department or CEO and ask if your training budget can be adjusted to match their mission statement. You should get a minimum 1 week of instructor led training (offsite) per year or more if there is a significant change to your IT systems. If not, they are not serious about their people and you need to find a new job.
Often, formal training is a waste of time. Cramming and crash courses on trivia don't help much. The point of a college education is that graduates should have the tools and knowledge to pick up material relevant to specific duties. No hand-holding "training" needed. Even if the degree is in a completely unrelated area, part of a decent education is learning how to learn. A trouble with MSCE sorts of training is that much of it is degenerate rote memorization of facts that are going to be inaccurate or inapplicable in novel situations. Maybe the best way to train for a particular duty is a week long formal training seminar. But for most duties, I can learn faster, cheaper, and better with some decent documentation and a sandbox than sitting on my butt trying to stay awake for a lecture. Anytime a source wanders into areas I already know, or that I won't need, I can easily skip it if the source is a book. Not as easy if the source is a lecture.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
Companies are there to make money. You are there to make a pay check. The pay check is pre-determined by whatever you signed onto, the profit of the company is determined solely by return on investment (over the long haul). You are not there to make the company money, that is the job of the company. If you were there to make the company money, you would be making the decisions, not following them. You'd also have a budget, as investments aren't free.
Training is an investment. You can choose to train yourself (by going to courses, etc) but the only time that makes sense is if you're getting a ROI (return on investment) such as a raise or a job somewhere else that pays enough more that you'll get the investment back and more before you'd get anything more than a cost-of-living raise as things stand.
In general, though, investments are the business of the company because they are the ones who are looking for return. No investment, no return. In practice, companies won't do this because they're cheap. It's much more cost-effective to hire someone at a dirt-cheap rate, force THEM to make the investment, but ensure they never get any return from it. Many companies will even regard training as using up vacation time (which is usually unpaid) so you get ripped off three ways at once and essentially end up paying your employer for the dubious priviledge of doing their work for them.
In another sense, since the work goes to support the national ecomony, the training ALSO goes to support the national ecomony, AND since a skilled workforce is likely to attract more jobs, I'd argue that the Government actually has a greater responsibility in paying the costs than you do. A highly skilled, highly educated workforce is far more beneficial to them than it is to you personally.
However, theory is immaterial if it isn't how things work in practice. How things work in practice is that employees have to do not only their own jobs but everyone else's job too. It sucks, it's a crappy system, it's inherently unstable and will eventually collapse, but it is the way it is done. That means that you pay for your training, whether you ever see an ounce of benefit or not.
The best I can suggest to anyone in that situation is to grab some used textbooks, download a trial version of whatever it is, and practice at home. It'll cost a lot less. You might not do as good a job at work, but if they don't care, then let them suffer with the long-term consequences. If the consequences aren't on your job description, they're not yours to worry about. Sure, that's self-centered, but copmpanies (and Governments) will never learn good conduct if ethical employees keep enabling them. Treat them like they're a drug addict. Don't enable. If you do, you just become part of the problem.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Your company has a culture, every company has a culture. The culture of the company tells you and everyone else what they value. If your preferred culture and the values you hold do not match up with the culture and the values of your employer, prepare for an unhappy future. Because the culture of a company is difficult to change and your values change very slowly over time.
For the OP: If they are explicitly asking you to study on your own time and you don't want to, say, "no". If you are not getting paid to do it and you don't want to do it, don't do it. I read another post above about making a formal letter to the boss, "I need XYZ to do the job and I am telling you that if XYZ does not happen, there will be problems later on." XYZ = [training, more help, coaching, etc]
More about culture: There are 4 basic cultures. Read up about the early work of 'Robert E. Quinn' and the 'Competing Values Framework'. In a nutshell, your company is most strongly aligned with one of the following cultures:
- Open : we like things loose and social, we invent and grow, we are creative
- Market : show me the money, productivity, bottom line
- Hierarchy: planning, structure, infrastructure, procedures, chain of command, quality
- Clan : people are our most important asset (and actually MEAN that)
On the values side, look up 'Edgar H Schein' and his values framework. He identified a list of what people values and how different corporate cultures match or oppose those values.
The bottom line of all this rambling is this; be aware of what you need from your work and whether or not your company is providing for those needs. If it isn't, maybe it's time to look for another company or another department.
- Richard
Not just answers, the correct questions.
"How do you Slashdot readers keep up with your continuing education, while still maintaining a personal life?"
Personal life? Life?Mod points are a dangerous tool. Abuse them wisely.
Hmm... what the hell :-). Slashdot me with some resumes and save me some recruitment costs. I think it's obvious we are in the same mindset.
;-). My budget allocation for this is about $20,000 for this year. May not sound like much, but I know how to get good training within a reasonable budget not decided by non-technical accountants.
:-)
Training is not that expensive with CBT technologies and a VirtualPC lab (although I prefer VMWare
The trouble for me is that there is just so much training available that it is quite staggering. Most of you do not realize just how much free training is available for Microsoft Partners - we get free MS Courseware, technology demonstration kits (COMPLETE virtual PC labs, optimally preconfigured by Microsoft so you don't have to), Partner-exclusive content. Heck, keeping up with free Microsoft training is a full-time job, and I am not kidding.
I can buy a 14-hr eCourse for about $300 and have you people be certified in something very valuable. I can get a Microsoft Dynamics Foundation course for $200 that will give you basics of just about every ERP app that Microsoft has.
If you work for a Microsoft Partner, ask to get your account associated with your organization, and head over to http://partner.microsoft.com/ - you'll be quite surprised at what's available to you.
Those amounts are far less than most of you are paid in a day, so the "training cost is too high" is simply bogus. I don't like to pay the typical full cost of instructor-led training, but we do get nice deals from Microsoft that make it quite affordable sometimes.
My requirements?
1. A ton of expertise in [CRM, Great Plains, Exchange, RMS, SBS, Active directory, Disaster recovery, Clustering, Geoclustering] or [Solution sales in excess of $3MM/year, Business needs analysis for 6-figure projects] or [desire for an internship at a fixed monthly rate for someone who wants to get to this level and who is already certified].
2. Willingness to be certified within 30 days of hire, and yes I can cover that cost if you are productive immediately.
3. I do not support offshoring US economy and some of our work is of sensitive nature, so you must reside inside US, although that exact place of residence can be anywhere. Hmm... that all-elusive telecommuting opportunity for rural recluses?
If the environment is bad, the person will leave anyway. If what I offer is enticing enough, you'll stay with the company. I have a plan in mind for some golden handcuffs that is not yet final, but I hate it when companies do not share.
We work very closely with Microsoft and the immediate goal for 2006 is to become the #1 source for Microsoft Exchange expertise. There are other areas that we are pursuing, primarily the Microsoft Dynamics expertise.
Oh yeah, I believe in maximizing opportunity for everyone. If you happen to become a salesperson, you'll get paid what they get paid as far as their commission goes in addition to regular technical salary.
Nope, this is not a sarcastic post. Send me an e-mail and we'll talk [sd-resume [at] crashproofsolutions [dot] com]. I am really looking for some sales leads so I can afford to hire quite a few of you for a dream job.
Leonid S. Knyshov
Find me on Quora
Well, quite categorized view of things. Question more what one does than capabilities.
Many companies would go downunder quickly without skilled labour. Very few enterpreuners has all the skills their labor has, in width or depth. However, management and business skills are their field too.
It's more about set of skills and concentrating to something than about capabilities generally.
If your view would be taken literally, basically nobody us should fly with planes because best pilots are in the board rooms of airliners. Same goes to hospitals, firemen and lot of academics(like Nobel prize winners).
Infact why should anybody do work at all? Since we all of those smart enterpreuners, let them do all the work as they're best at it. Bill Gates could for example clean my toilet as he obivously is better than I'm at it.
One final note, money and business can also be inherited. It doesn't need smarts for everyone.
Nobody knows the trouble I've seen, nobody knows has the trouble seen me, even I sometimes wonder why I write these line
Remember your words when you've spent 40k and 5 years of college learning a subject which recently became the target of massive outsourcing and layoffs.
Try 5 years and $150K
IF Training = 0 AND management="clueless" THEN FindNewJob=Now ELSE SET KeepHeadDown="YES" AND GOSUB PrayNothingGoesWrong. ON ERROR Gosub YouWillBeBlamedAndFired END
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
There are essentially 2 ways an organisation can consider an employee, either:
- Asset/Investment therefore a constituant of the value of the business.
- Expense/Commodity item therefore they provide a service to the business as a cost.
Within any organisation both types of employee exist.
Business's strive to commoditize employees by simplifying and documenting processes, this allows the business to be more flexible about its workforce because employees can be replaced with other employees/outsource etc. that provide the same service to the business at either less cost or less risk. A business that can replace employees easily is more flexible and therfore can grow faster and manage expenses better. People in commodity positions will probably only get training if its proven to be more cost effective for the company to train the person than it is to replace them. General thought is that providing training for people in commodity positions on standard skills isn't good for retention of those people because they are just better equipped to work elsewhere.
Most businesses at some level have some categories of valuable knowledge such as visionaries and thought leaders. These people are investments for the business, they command high salaries and actually define the shape of the organisation. In knowledge industries there can be quite a lot of people in this category and the businesses USP is based around these people. As a result such people are an investment for the business with real asset value. Just in the same way as maintaining your house helps retain and increase its value, companies will usually invest in training these assets in order to keep them at maximum effectiveness.
In short if you are a commdity, accept it and keep yourself at maximum value. If you are an asset demand training if you think you can demonstrate that it will provide value to the business.
The OP didn't mention whether she was a full-time employee or a contractor, although she implied that she was an FTE. I've been in IT for 20 years now and all of the jobs I've held as an FTE have provided training, usually two weeks per year. Contractors are generally not offered training, and consequently I find that they tend to do more self-study, prototyping, etc. in their spare time in order to keep their skills current.
More and more, though, I think both FTE's and contractors need to improve their knowledge and skills on their own time just to keep up. This is something that I accept gladly.
"When in doubt, use brute force."
In my opinion thought she's already proven that it wouldn't be worth training her because she's so quick to quit.
As an employer I'd only put extra effort into training someone I felt would stay for the long run. Not somebody who jumps ship when the going gets rough.
The always on target response. In the IT field you need to always be learning. Some of this time will come out of your time, although you should get some training allowance.
One company I worked for had a great training budget, but no one could ever get training approved. I got a major P.O. for a year long training pass signed by a departing manager. After that manager couldn't approve training any more. You may have to travel for training.
As previously noted, document your requests and show what benefit the company gets from training. When a problem shows up, instead of jumping on the fix, pull open volume 1 of the doc set and and start a page by page search for the error message. This works really well with multi volume manuals. Explain that the 10 minute fix is in here someplace, I know I can find it.
Don't forget user forums and usenet. I document my time on usenet as training and research. Google groups is your friend.
If you still love the game then expand your skill set because it is good for the game and it will make you better at it.
Man, woman or mold - it doesn't matter. Having great chops matters. The AD isn't _that_ complicated. Forget the cert, learn. You can go get your MCSE anytime you want if you have the chops.
Do it because you want to, otherwise return the favor but getting yourself a position you are more comfortable doing.
Love the game.
This
My employer is smart enough to know that if they want things done right, they will provide training. They don't do training on any old thing, however, only the things that make up the basics of their system. I (we) learn other things ourselves - which we many times apply to the job on our own.
It is common. Get over it, stop whinging.
Yay me!
I somehow get hired as a medical assistant (or some other job that requires training). I have no training. Is it my employeers responsibility to train me or should have I either a.) not accepted said position or b.) not possibly misled to get the position.
A man once asked me, "What if I train my employees and they leave?" So I asked, "What if you do NOT train them, and they stay?"
Windows Server 2003 Active Directory network,
MCSA/MCSE Training Kit,
numerous errors
husband, a dog...
Let's see, you're married to a dog and forced to run a Microsoft network. I could see how that would be annoying. ;)
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
When I start negotiations abouth salary and additional benefits i always have two point that are NOT negotiable:
* minimal salary (to my norm);
* anual training budget.
The problem is that as far as non-college training and certification processes go, the price has been driven up by companies who do buy the training and certification for their employees. Take the CISSP for example, the assorted tests required for certification alone would be roughly half my salary, assuming that I already knew everything on the tests and didn't have to take classes. Three day seminars are regularly thousands of dollars, because they're aimed at getting companies to send people, not at individuals looking to better themselves on "their own time" (not to mention these are all on weekdays, I'd pay thousands out of pocket for some of these if they were over a weekend, but taking three days in a row off work is too much when one works for a small company like mine).
Which ties back into the original subject rather neatly, I think. If your employer pays for you to learn new stuff, good for you - take advantage of it. If not, oh well. Either way, you'd be well advised to take every opportunity to learn new things, even stupid things like Windows administration, and if that means doing it on your own time, so be it. The alternative is to risk waking up some morning and finding yourself out of work and unemployable because nobody wants the sorts of skills you have any more.
From my point of view the thing that really matters when deciding which job to go after or which offer to take is how marketable will your skills be when you have to change jobs in a few years? I would rather take a low paying job that say, gives me Oracle or Java development skills than a very high paying job that offers knowledge few companies want. I have always followed this principle and have yet to live to regret it unlike some of my classmates from university who followed the money and are now stuck in difficult to get out of niches in the job market.
The thing that really burns about training is that alot of companies don't do it any more because the people that they do take the trouble to train are frequently poached by other organizations right after they are fully trained and be cause there are no legal safeguards against such poaching. To a certain extent I can understand this, your company sinks a significant sum into training somebody say as an MCSE (or the even more expensive Oracle and Cisco certificates) and then has to watch the guy go to some other company the day he gets his qualifications. Why isn't it possible, for example, to allow companies to make training contracts, stipulating for example lower pay during the training period when the worker is only of limited value, followed by a suitable pay rise when he is finished and then binding him/her to the job for a period afterwards so the employer is insured against poachers? Possibly not the best solution but surely something can be done. It sucks that there really are companies out there whose training policy is simply to leech off (what they doubtless regard as) the 'morons', ie. firms and companies that are still socially responsible enough to offer their employees training programs. Another thing I often hear corporate types whine about is that it should really be the employees and not the companies who pay for things like MCSE, Cisco or Oracle certifications which is a nice thought and I would probably do so if the well stocked portfolio of such certificates that these same corporate slimers then argue I should pay for out of my own pocket didn't cost an arm and a leg. I don't suppose they have taken a look at what those training courses complete with lectures actually cost?
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
As a former MCT, I saw most Training Companies hiring MCT with no experience. A couple months running the network and you will have more knowledge than the instructor. Read the books. Take the test then bail on that company.
There is an entire complex back story to the situation I am in with the job that I currently work at that I didn't include in the original question because it would have taken pages upon pages of verbiage to explain in it's entirety. In summation:
a)Others have gone for training above and beyond what I am asking for. There is an employee who had his entire Cisco training paid for at the company's expense.
b)The primary manager who has the decision making capabilities for the department I am in is a rabid anti-Microsoft zealot. Most suggestions that I make, or have made in the past...even if they are backed up with careful research...are met with a flat out "no" or not responded to.
c)I did, in the past, put tremendous energy into learning and researching those aspects of my job that I wasn't entirely familiar with. I took and passed cert tests after doing loads of self study. It is just recently, with the upgrade from NT to AD and Server 2003 that I find myself in over my head when it comes to training myself at the same time as I am being held responsible for the production environment. I have attempted to learn and do on the fly, but errors have occurred as a result...some disastrous, some not so much. Hence my recent request for training: my goal was to prevent further damage to the production setup by getting some basic knowledge underneath my belt, and for the training to serve as a springboard to my own learning.
This is only a brief synopsis of the work issues I am contending with; I could go into more detail, but it would take more time than I have, and probably more pages than most readers would be willing to wade through.
Thanks for all of the responses so far.
If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention.
One way to maximize your ROI for training is to make sure you get the most out of the time you put into it.
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I work in IT in the sub-prime financing industry. I don't make a boat-load of money, but I do get paid for training. I have been there just over 3 months, and I have already gone to Missouri for 3 days to learn more about our database, and to sarasota Fl (a 2 hour drive) for training on something we were taking over (which didn't pan out, but I still got paid for the time).
What is in your job description? Do you feel they pay you a competitive salary? I know I am making a little less than I should with a Comp Sci degree, but after doing 2.5 years of call center work, I'm happy to be where I am now.
My work has also stated that they will pay for some training if it is relevant to what we do, and depending on the cost. We are a fairly small operation, the whole company is probably less than 200 employees, spread across 5 different locations, with most of them at my PoE or down south at the headquarters.
Also, I'd like to point out that my company is trying to move AWAY from outsourcing and bring more things back into the company, for quality control and security reasons. Part of my job will be to implement some kind of interface to our database, I'm leaning toward PHP/Mysql at this point, but I think my boss wants a commercial solution, probably MSSQL. The normal reports are written in COBOL, and have some limitations, so with PHP/MYSQL it will give us more flexibility. I don't know how to use either of them. I, and my employer, have the understanding that this is a work in progress and I will learn as I go.
-- Having a Creationist Museum is like having an Atheist place of worship
Your employer's problem:
If they want competent network administration, they must pay (time and cost) to train their people.
Your problem:
You want training to increase your knowledge and marketability.
If your employer wants to solve their problem, they are responsible for doing so. If you want to solve your problem, you are responsible for doing so.
I found that even if your employer is willing to send you to training for a week a year, it's not enough to keep up. For me, it's been better to make sure I spend around 5 hours a week figuring out something new or experimenting with things we already use. It's definitely easier to buy your own books and keep your own library then it is to convince an employer to maintain a library. In some cases, it makes life easier to supply your own computers.
So my company offers money for college. They'll reimburse you about three grand a year. That's damn good for a community college (which is what I'm going to start doing this summer) but I don't think it'll go far once I get to a four-year university. As for the free-time, luckily my wife and I don't have kids yet, and we're both going to get some college done (hopefully she'll get completely finished with her Bachelors) before we mate.
Although your employer is behaving badly, you have to make a business decision.
:(
If you invest $X and Y hours, what will the return be ?
To you, personally ?
The next calculation is whether you can get a better return on the investment by learning some
other skill with about the same level of up front spend.
In neither of these cases should you assume you are going to stay in the same firm. There are plenty of jobs boards out there where you can work out your market value, or you can talk to a pimp. I'd offer to help myself, but we don't do network people.
I don't see that you are under any moral obligation to spend your time & money on helping your employer undo the effect of bad decisions.
Taking what you say at face value, you're going to screw up. You are now in charge of a mildly complex system that you don't understand. Although I assume you're a competent individual in general, you are now not equipped to do your job. Bad things will happen.
You may well get blamed for these screwups, and even if you do the training, there will be a lag between study and competence. I recall the first time I had to build a LAN. Wasn't pretty or reliable and took >10 times as long to build compared to the work of someone who knew what they were doing.
(think how long it would take you to discover about crossover cables if no one had ever told you
Thus you need to start some pre-emptive blame managment.
You need to have emails saying that without proper training, you cannot guarantee the integrity of a resource that is critical to your firm.
A good next step is to say that you need to hire in a consultant because there's things you can't do.
The costs of this will be non-trivial, and inevitably a lot more than paying or training you.
Done right, they may even require that you go on training.
But however it works out, do not invest your time or money for free.
DCFC the pimp
Dominic Connor,Quant Headhunter
One thing I haven't seen mentioned is the notion of taking a course on whatever topic you're looking for at a local university. If your company offers you some sort of tuition reimbursement program, then you'd have to front the money, but then you have incentive to do well in the course, and get paid back when you finish the course successfully.
In my experience:
1) Most mid- and large-sized companies offer some form of tuition reimbursement; I don't know if this statement holds true for smaller business, though I'm sure you could make the case to your boss if you work at a smaller company.
2) Most colleges that offer technical majors offer at least some basic programming, system administration, and other "IT / MIS" related courses.
Given this, I don't think it's unreasonable that you look for, and take, a course and get reimbursed for it. Your primary focus WHENEVER you're proposing something to your boss should be: "Here's how the company benefits." Remember, he doesn't give two shits for something that you *want* that won't benefit the company in some way. Benefits to the company of this approach:
1) Most courses at a college are a term or semester in length; You get more exposure, and probably retain more useful info as a result.
2) It's on YOUR time, so the company doesn't lose a valuable employee for 5 days of off-site training at a vendor site.
3) It's on YOUR dime, and it's YOUR risk with the money -- if you sign up for the class, spend a couple thousand dollars on the class, and then fuck around and do nothing, the company doesn't lose money.
4) The company only reimburses you if you actually pass the class.
Now, secretly, there are these incentives for you, which you should never share with your boss:
1) You get the knowledge you need. This means shorter hours & a more manageable work environment for you in the long run.
2) You will be seen as a creative go-getter who is willing to place a bet with your own money (the tuition) on your own ability to learn.
3) You don't lose money, so long as you apply yourself and pass the class.
4) You have a HUGE incentive to pass the class, because you know that if you get lazy, you lose the tuition you paid.
Remember: Your boss doesn't give two shits about all the benefits to you. If the company is going to reimburse you for training expenses, they need to know how it benefits THEM. What's their ROI? Other than that, get yourself some books, keep a browser open to your favorite search engine, and dive in. Learning by doing is also a very good educational experience.
Where I work, we require people with certifications, to maintain the certification of the business. Without me having these certs, our company could not do business. So for me at least, training and certification is very important to the company, and they gladly pay for my certification tests and allow me to take time aside to study. (at $150/pop it's in their best interest that I pass on the first try!) I was also promised a raise for every certification I passed. I have yet to see any of those. So that goes to show you, the company will only pay for that which they consider important to them.
The company does have other options. They can try to find someone that's already certified and trained and hire them at the same price they're already paying you. That would be arguably a better deal for the company. If they cannot find a better deal like that, then they have to decide if the money invested in you will have a positive return. Depending on how good of a case you can make to your managers, this may or may not happen. They may think that you're capable enough to keep them limping along just fine without additional training, and that's their call. Eventually though, they will either train you, or hire someone that has either trained themselves or has gotten someone else to train them. This means you are either better trained, better performing, and less stressed, or you're unemployed. It's in your best interest to make a good case to management for the benefits to the company for training you.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
My employeer will pay for any training I want as long as it is job related; they will also pay for any certifications that I feel like taking job related or not. The other up side to my employeer is that they make me stay in the lab all day except for when one of our users has a problem that requires a deskside visit.
"Really, I'm not out to destroy Microsoft. That will just be a completely unintentional side effect." Linus Torvalds
I admire your efforts to self-study and run a family at the same time, however I'm not sure that anyone of us are owed specific training unless it's stated somewhere on our contracts. I like to dive in and learn, utilise and exploit new technologies. You gain skills from experience, and finding out how to implement the 'best' solutions. If you are 'able' to get training then you usually you learn enough to set yourself off on more self-study. I've never been on training which has enabled me to do anything more than continue to educate myself, if somewhat more efficiently.
Feel free to b!tch it out with your manager, but unless you want to make a stand, it's something which 'will' infringe on your time.
I got used to this mindset until I got myself a girlfriend and moved in with her. It's great, but there's obviously less time to lock myself away and geek out. That said, when I do have something important to get on with, I make a point of letting it enter into my own time. It's part of my work ethic. I enjoy what I do and would be doing it anyway, even if it wasn't my occupation - perhaps less due to the whole g/f thing. I'm not sure what my point is.. well it is that you should only let work over-run into your personal time when it's something which you feel is interesting enough. If not, leave it for the office and learn on the job. Your solutions and abilities will evolve in time, and those above won't care as long as whatever you're doing works; yet you may later feel some embarrassment regarding the mode of your solution. That said, if you make a point of implementing a clean, efficient and scalable solution, you can never really go wrong. You'll still feel embarrassment down the line, no matter how you implement it. If you don't, then you're not learning and that's bad.
Very incoherent.. but that's how I approach it
Exactly why I don't hire someone with a certification -- they only know what someone tells them. I would rather hire someone with creativity and a foundational understanding of computer science.
In England, firing someone for being unable to do a job to which they have been moved without training might (IANAL) count as unfair dismissal. You could take your ex-employer to an Employment Tribunal.
Ne mæg werig mod wyrde wiðstondan, ne se hreo hyge helpe gefremman.
--Colin Jensen
colinandbethany.com
Responsibility for training is yours, but only a foolish company would fail to provide it anyway. You've chosen to work in a field that's constantly moving. Other fields with similar requirements, such as medicine, insurance, and accounting, are full of professionals who go out and get their own continuing education, and large companies that spend their own money to make sure their employees get it because that may not be their responsibility, but it's darn sure the right thing to do, both for the business and for the employee.
The problem here is likely one of falling for Microsoft's sales pitches. Many people in IT management believe that no training is required to administrate Windows systems, because Microsoft tells them no training is required. The result? Crappy systems, crappy networks, crappy performance; Microsoft isn't just driving Moore's Law, it's driving Sturgeon's too.
You have to be able to push back. As Dilbert first discovered, men have an innate ability to sniff "unnecessary work". If they really needed this done, then they would give the resources. If they don't give the resources, it's not your problem. Push back this unnecessary work!
It's become Corporatism. Large corporations are more and more above the state, the state is so dependent on them (especially since they have the poewr to simply increase unemployment with a snap of a finger) that they pretty much dictate the financial and taxation system. And with an increasing speed they also dictate the judical and legal system. When was the last time you've seen a corp getting more than a slap on the wrist for something you, Mr. Ordinary, would go to jail for ages and get ripped of all your posessions to pay for "damages".
For those who have no idea what I'm talking about, look up Sony and Rootkit, or today's incident with the MPAA or Germany's GVU.
In theory, yes, you could go ahead and open up your own biz if you're not happy with your job. In fact, though, the state needs to compensate for the grants and gift it has to give to those corps that pretty much have it in their grasp. So who do they turn to?
You can't blackmail the state with outsourcing to Abu Dhabi.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Flamebait?!? This is one of the most insightful comments here!
Prior to starting my own business, I was in IT for ten years, the last seven of them in management. Training was always the biggest issue I faced.
While every employer I was with recognized that IT was business critical, funding was always woefully inadequate. I especially remember having to beg for funding for to replace back up tapes that were five years old. (If the tapes were that old, imagine how old the equipment was.)
In ten years, and managing over 200 people during that time, I was able to secure funding to send 5 of them to training. Yet the network engineers, support techs, programmers, etc. were all expected to keep up with cutting edge technologies and practices.
And this isn't just a male or female issue. It's an IT worker issue in general. Most of the people who worked for me obtained training on their own time and on their own dime, some even obtaining degrees. The best I could do for these folks was adjust their work schedules where possible to accomodate their classes.
Sometimes it was possible to get pay increases for them after they received a certification or degree, but that was the exception rather than the rule.
So sadly, in IT you are pretty much on your own. My advice to you, as it was to everyone who worked for me at a company that didn't support or recognize training, is to gain the knowledge in any way you can. And while you're balancing work, training, and homelife, you should also be networking, contacting recruiters, and using any other means available to you to find employment at company that will support you and reward you for your efforts.
If you prefer to stay where you're at, gather as many whitepapers and articles as you can on training ROI. Arm yourself, and your boss, with this information, and present a business case for any training you may need.
There is a labor shortage coming on the near horizon. Strategic hiring and retention are going to be increasing in importance. You can use the cost of attrition to help you make your business case. (You can visit my website at http://www.johncelloconsulting.com/ for more information on this. I also have an attrition cost calculator at http://www.johncelloconsulting.com/attcalc.html.)
Wishing you the best of luck.
There's no higher-ups getting rich off of government work. In THEORY anyways... I don't need to get into how tax money is abused.
You need to have a heart to heart with your boss. Find out what the company IS willing to do. If they expect you to train on you own time, then decide if you want to jump ship over it. If you don't want to jump ship, then explain that you'll be doing your training "on-the-job" and that it will make some tasks take longer because you'll have to research them while you work on them.
Worst case, post your resume on Dice/Monster/... and quietly look elsewhere. And don't take another position without talking to employees of that company who work in your area (admin). They'll tell you what it's like to work there so you don't get a nasty surprise.
Some people are afraid to express concerns to their managers because it may hurt their image. But, if you allow this kind of problem to fester, it will surely lead to worse problems. Good managers will try their best to address the problem and appreciate your trust in talking to them. Bad ones will not and that is another reason to have the talk. You need to find out if it is worth staying in your current position. An honest discussion will tell you all you need to know.
Most admins I've dealt with are over-worked, so quality of life issues make your choice of careers problematic. The places where I've seen admins who keep sane hours are: very large aerospace firms (tied very closely to the government) and the federal government. Anywhere else, they're usually over-worked.
Good Luck.
d4,...,Nf3, or maybe I should use a Ratfaced Mcdougal?
First, I'm not in IT, I'm an EE for the past 25 years. I have worked for small companies and large ones; I haven't seen large ones pull this kind of stuff, but they exist. I've seen small companies that have a strong respect for your time outside of working hours and ones that don't. Maybe IT is different--if so, it isn't a sustainable difference.
I hear you describing a classic trap. If management is (first) inclined to give you more than you can handle during working hours and (second) you cave and do the work, they've got you. If you point the issue out and they continue to give you more than you can do during working hours, then they have demonstrated that they can't be trusted. You have demonstrated that you will do what it takes to get the job done. Guess what you get as a reward--more work.
Maybe this is an oversight on their part. Let them know there is a problem; continue to demonstrate that you will get the job done. If they don't fix it, look for other work. The situation will continue to get worse as long as you stay.
Steve
It's up to you to negotiate what you are worth to your company. If they don't have to train you, you can ask for a higher salary
The company provides training but in the form of a free interest loan to the employee, payable during one or two years.
Thus the employee receives the training he needs, but if he jumps ship too soon he is left with a bill to pay, which in all honestly, is quite fair.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
$40k and 5 years? Either you went to school a long freakin' time ago, or you went to state school, in-state.
I have seen a company give training for a individual and with in 6 months they leave the company.
Most companies would rather not pay for any certified training. As soon as you are scertified you are worth more and have a better chance to get a job else where.
I worked at a warehouse and I was trained to use a fork lift. I was not certified but just trained on the job from the other guys. If I had a certificate then I could have easily left the company and found another job working a fork lift at better pay.
Same goes for computers. Our Management has sent emails around saying they do actively encourge training but if you want a promotion you need the certification. Funny thing is they come to you and say they want to give you the promotion but you lack the certification so too bad. So you get the training on your own time. It is fairly easy to get the training required because you are already doing the job that the certified training is for it just putting in some extra time. After about 6 months management say they really wanted to give the promotion but your work has slipped a bit in the past 6 months (you are no longer putting in 200 hours a month). So it takes about another 6 months befor you finally get the promotion. By that time most employees are so pissed at the management they grab the new title and start looking for other work else where.
Most companies would rather see you sit and stuggle through your work then get you trained up in fear that you will leave.
Make sure the training is off-site, not a 'Flash/Powerpoint slide thing with a quiz at the end' during your 'free time' at work, so that you can actually learn without being interrupted every 20 minutes.
For you, the Training should be relative to your responsibilities and objectives at work. For Management, it has to be an investment in your productivity and better performance.
Present your request for training to your Management.
If Management says no, leave with your current skills and what you've learned, else they will just suck you dry.
Sorry folks, maybe I'm just lucky, but I've been very happy with available training. First, there's online (free) training. Learn to read HOWTOs and free online books. OpenCourseware is good for academic content. Buy a book or two per month from Borders. You should be able to get reimbursed for that pretty easily. Conferences are a bit harder, especially Blackhat/RSA/SANS and the other expensive ones-- for these, try submitting a presentation. If you're going to speak at one of these things, your company may be more receptive.
Otherwise, take a vacation day or two and go to a cheaper conference (Defcon, OWASP) or a free one (there are many of these). The point is, investing a couple hundred bucks a year into your education will likely pay you back a hundred-fold.
Most employers don't want to throw away money, but you can usually make a convincing argument. Otherwise, earn favors by going the 'extra mile' and then cash them in for training.
Since most of these conferences publish their content online after the show, you usually don't NEED to be there-- between that, and books, you can get the same training.
Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. --Nietzsche
en tee
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
I'm sorry to hear that you've joined the ranks of Microsoft's victims. But, you see, their counterfactual TCO has left you in the unenviable position of being thought to be... well, not to be euphamistic, they think you're easily replaced. That's a big part of MS's FUD, after all: there are so *many* MCSE & etc. types out there.
More immediately, I'm sure you're getting some fallout from your employer's experience with the recently-departed person they spent training funds on. For better or worse, some penny-pinching idiot is surely thinking "so we spend money training them to make it easier for them to jump ship? I don't think so!"
Life sucks, but sometimes it sucks more. Microsoft helps put the more in.
Are you working to live or living to work? My advice depends on your reply.
I gotta agree. While his wording is rather harsh, the subject is a very harsh reality so it fits. There is no reason why a woman should be the breadwinner AND take care of the house. She can do that on her own without a man draining her resources.
His other harsh reality point is one of equality. Women wanted equality and they got it and now many realize that it really sucks ass. I don't want to work 70 hour weeks just to feed my kids but being an adult means I go and do it without bitching. I certainly don't want my wife to have to do the same thing.
Fortunately I have a wife that doesn't work and takes care of the home and kids. Nobody can do both by themselves and having a role does not mean one is not equal to another. It means you're smart enough to divy up the work so nobody is overwhelmed. People who feel they can work full time AND take care of kids is what is known as an irresponsible, neglectful, abusive parent. Some people don't have a choice and I'm not talking about them, but those who do it by choice should be sterilized and have their kids taken away. Harsh? Yes. Very. It's just as harsh as being a kid who has to raise themselves because mom and dad would rather work and have expensive things than be with them. Both have to work because the cost of living is too high? Then MOVE. Where I live I can buy a 4 bdr house in a nice neighborhood for $120,000. Don't take the choices you make and bitch about them like its some horrible thing out of your control.
Oh yeah, and I am posting this AC because some noob will just mod it down anyway.
This is kindergarten stuff. If you don't know how to handle this situation, you are going to have a bunch more trouble everywhere in your life. You have allowed your job to take control of your life. This has nothing to do with IT.
God, Marriage, Family . . . in that order . . . !!!
Get off Slashdot, go home, spend time with your family, spend time with God.
Work can complain. Tell them what you need, not the other way around. They pay you to work. If you can't do the work without the training, tell them. But, don't sacrifice yourself or your family for work.
Sorry, but I feel for the submitter. What she is experiencing is pretty dang normal - it's exactly what I experienced with my last job. I worked my tail off for this other company....60+ hours a week minimum +oncall rotation. There would be times when I'd see more of my cube in a week than I'd see of my own house. I remember one time not being able to go to see my family at holiday time (even though I requested it off 3 months in advance and had it off) because my boss decided he didn't "want the pager" and gave it to me about 1659 (or 4:59pm) on Dec. 23rd, and so I had to stay at home, and couldn't see any of my family...because he wanted to see his. If my "joke-of-a-boss" decided that we were going to get some new hardware/software, then I was expected to learn it on my own time and that I needed to get certified, then I was own my own for the cost, however I would be able to put my new certification on my business cards for free.
One of the best things that happened to me was getting out of IT, (more specifically telecom) and getting into another company where I'm still working in IT, but without all the pressure. My health has improved, my emotional state has improved, and I'm getting paid more. I'm still able to 'geek out' at home, and do what I want, and I have to say I'm happier for it.
I suggest you start quietly looking for a way out into another field - because I fear it is only going to get worse, and you and your family are all going to suffer.
Every company I've ever worked at told me there would be training,
but there was always some reason I would never get it. The budget
got cut later, what I was working on was 'critical and we can't spare
the time', etc. Your professional development is your concern, not theirs.
If your profession is less important than your home life you probably
should consider changing things to match your priorities. But, then there's
that pesky rent bill to consider...
-- Programming with boost is like building a house with lego. It's a cool but I wouldn't want to live in it
It is a well stablished practice in any job that the employer has to provide the necessary tools to do you job.
/.ers, most of them are teenagers, or live in basements, thus extra work brings some extra excitment lacking on their lives. If you want to thinker because you can't live without doing so, all the power to you, but you seem to have a busy live out of work, that is precious and IMNSHO should be protected no matter what.
This should include the necessary training when they are the instigators of a change in your work situation (i.e if they hired you as an experienced Windows SA with experience in W2K+3, then it is your responsibility to be trained). If you were hired for a diferent role and the hot potato of a server you are not familiar with is dropped in your lap, then the company has to do its utmos to provide training.
This training is not necessarily in the form of paid curses, some companies can't afford this. But they can pay for books and allow you to put aside some time during working hours so you can learn the skills you need on your own. I would consider this a reasonable arrangement if the company can't pay instructor lead training.
Please don't allow your work to creep into your private life. Don't listen to the
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I know nothing about your company, but in my experience, training budgets are decided at the onset of each fiscal year. These budgets are balanced against monies slated for employee compensation increases, perhaps additional employees, contractors, tools, etc. If your company doesn't keep some money for employee training, than it doesn't believe investing in employees is worthwhile, and you may want to check your other options.
Take heart, this is not simply an IT issue, it is a corporate issue.
Here are some things to ask yourself...
How frequently do employees "rise in the ranks" at your company?
Are new higher-up positions always filled with people off the street?
Does your company have any benefits for continuing adult education? Tuition reimbursement?
How important is this domain that you now control?
What would be the cost to the business if you left?
If your company is blind to employee education as an investment in the business, than you may be able to remind your supervisor that the cost of replacement will be higher than the cost of training. Of course, don't bluff with your job, be prepared to walk if your going to lay it on the table. You don't need to threaten to quit to get the message across. Ultimately, your supervisor will need to answer for their decisions, and if those decisions are costing the company money, they will be in a tough situation. Remember, if you've agressively pursued training, and not recieved it, you have a good stand against a boss who thinks training is your responsibility. Placing unqualified people in important positions is bad management, plain and simple.
In light of the ridiculously narrow skillsets demanded on so many advertised positions, it is absolutely the employer's responsibility to provide training. If they can pay for your stupid boss's 2-week "fact finding" trip to Hawaii and his Masters of Braindead Assholery (aka MBA), then it's the least they can do to get you up to speed on the buzzword of the week.
Whining to /. ain't gonna fix anything. Unless you lied about your experience/skills when you read the job description (and hopefully worked with your supervisor on your specific position description), then you should be provided training (formal or otherwise) for any new duty/skill required of your position.
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
In large corporations thre is usually an emphasis on the company paying the training. They have money in the budget and cannot (legally) spend it on anything else. That said, those employees who take time away from work, even for training, are looked at as being less loyal. Besides, if you know what you are doing, it is more obvious that those over you have absolutely no clue what you are doing and that makes them look bad. I would be looking for work else where. I know, it is easier to stay, but perhaps the person in front of you was able to see the writing on the wall better and got out. It is only a matter of time before the system collapses and you will get the blame.
I'd say training depends on your organization & culture rather than an IT standard, and even within organizations its not consistent. It really depends on the management staff to decide the culture on training, because even if your organization has no official policy on training, there are usually plenty of ways to 'work around the system' to get what you want for your teams.
Training also provides multiple benefits to both the individual and the organization. I'm a big fan of both training and cross training, and I don't mean 'sit down' sessions with people, I generally prefer programs that offer some form of certificate/degree/etc that both provide the company a solid point of reference from which to judge your skill growth and also provide the employee a 'valuation point' on their resume. I've seen the best value in organizations occur when the training level is high, as the skill levels and exposure rise the higher probability the people in training will create ideas or processes that return a significant reward to the organization.
A lot of the threads on this post seem to point to 'we don't have time to train' and that's just wrong, especially from a management perspective. Any organization worth its salt has enough data/metrics around its operations to be able to budget in some time for training every day and should build 'training programs' to encourage and push its people. It would be nice to assume that people would keep training and pushing their skills in their 'spare time', but not everyone is either that ambitious or has a lifestyle that accomodates that, so the best bet, to have strong teams and make progress as an organization, is to bring training into the workplace and make it an institution. If you're so slammed on a daily basis that you can't see straight and you're doing all manner of overtime, then you've got management issues (or perhaps you're working for a startup, which is a different issue) and prioritization problems.
Depending on your organization, training support might not be explicit, but its there, and the more you push for it, the more you'll find. If you're successful in showing the connection between training and increased performance/efficiency you'll suddenly find that your entire organization is adopting that mentality as well.
Strong training programs make the difference between organizations that are treading water and fighting fires and those that are building themselves to be ready for tomorrow's challenges and opportunities.
If one of my neighbors gets sick, and I find out they haven't the resources to get well, I will do whatever I can to help them through. If little Johnny can't live without an expensive operation, you can be sure that my neighbors and I will see to it that he recieves the operation.
People banding together to make the world better is what makes a community. The government taking care of you does not.
How would I propose to provide health care to everyone? I would not. I know a man whose family is destitute. About a year ago he did a job and got paid $2000. He bought a TV. He can afford health care, he just doesn't want it. I realize there are some who truly need health care, but I don't see what the deal is. Also, I truly don't know anyone who can't get access to a doctor if they need it. One of my friends works for the county health dept. as a doctor for those who can't afford it. There is a Free Doctor's clinic here in town. While I admit I don't have a clear picture of the whole health care problem, I know there are a lot of POOR families around here, and they all have access to medical attention. I don't want to change that right now, but I don't want to expand it, either.
As for water, I am pretty sure my grandparents' home didn't have running water. I am certain their homes where they grew up didn't have running water. This is not to say running water is not a good thing, but history has shown that life does not require indoor plumbing.
I cried real tears when Li Mu Bai died.
My experience: I've had a vareity of admin jobs in different industries over the last 16 years.
Most of the time, I have been responsible for my own training. Most of the time, I've opted to learn on the job and not pursue a certification.
I've found that certifications and working experience both carry weight, depending on how much prior hands-on experience your interviewer has had. (experience is more important to those hiring managers who have it themselves)
The way I've tried to use this to my own benefit: if my employer is running me ragged, won't provide training, doesn't compensate me well (money, fringes, whatever), I do the best job I can and work hard to learn how to deal with whatever they're throwing at me. I read stuff online, RTFM, buy a good third-party book on the subject, etc. I stay for a year, and then look for something else.
In that year, I've acquired a new skill that makes me more valuable to a new employer. At the next place, I'm in either in a siutation that I like, or I'm being trained for my next move.
Since 1990, I've worked for eight different companies; only two of those provded me with time and budget to pursue formal training.
This strategy landed me at what I considered a good job within five years. Unfortunately, the tech bubble burst six years after that, I was laid off, and I've had to scramble again since 2001. This time, instead of leaving for something better, I've been laid off every year. Each successive job, however, trained me for the next one, even if I left involuntarily.
Last year, however, I found another good place to work, where I am currently employed. Good place to work = sane hours, short commute, nice people, interesting projects, decent compensation.
I've found there are good companies out there; but until you find them your life will be stressful.
I'd say learn it on your own but largely on company time. Learn it on your
:)
own time as well if you want to learn it, or think it will help you in the
future. But if the company wants to assign me a new task which you need to
learn to perform, then I have no problem with study it on company time. If they
don't like that they can hire someone who already knows the task.
On the otherhand I wouldn't expect a company to pay for outside training,
beyond getting you some books on the subject. If the subject is expecially
difficult to learn from books, the company may find it beneficial to get
you outside training. Otherwise spending a few grand on courses is a bit much
when someone should be able to pick up the material from books while on the
job.
Look at the flip side, worse than a job where you are expected to learn new
things is a job where you are not permitted to grow. Flipping burgers the
same way for 20 years could get awfully boring
If you work in IT; it is a given that your company should provide a yearly training budget ($2000-3000 a year). I have gone over my training budget every year, though management may sometimes complain they're getting a ROI as soon as I get back from training. With training you are less likely to break things, create more efficient work, and definitely more secure work. Your company should provide time off to cover the training course. It should be billed to over-head and it's a write off for them. If your company doesn't provide these sorts of benefits, you're probably working in an IT sweat shop. Don't burn out, push back and make them realize that you have a life outside of work.
I'm a self taught MCSE with other certs as well. I've learned and certified everything on my own. The companies I worked for usually either didn't have the funds or did not make training a priority.
My advice is simple. Decide how far you need to go to be effective in your job. Thay may mean a Server 2003 and an XP Professional certification and that's all. Or it may mean a full MCSE 2003 track. It may also mean Cisco CCNA and/or A+ and/or other certs. Take a good look at your responsibilities and daily issues and decide which tracks make the most sense to be competent in your job.
Then try to find one or more people in your circle (co-workers, friends, family or other interested parties) and put together a short term study group. Keep these suggestions in mind:
I've been able to use this method to complete the MCSE certification for Windows NT 4.0 SErver and the accerated exam to upgrade to Windows 2000 Server. We've also done Cisco CCNA and Novell CNA with this method. It works and works consistently.
Make sure that all participants are serious about taking the exams, that each person knows they need to purchase their own materials and exam vouchers. Also, set a schedule to complete the material including exam preparation. You'll need to set aside another couple of hours during the week to read through the chapter(s). Treat this like a part time job. It will take between 10-16 hours each week, but you can schedule this and know that you are able to make time for family as well. You can also space out the exams so you get some time in between. Maybe 6 or 8 weeks for the study group and 4 weeks off.
We were able to get through each of the 2000 Server exams in about 6-8 weeks, meeting on Sunday morning from 10am - 2pm. We had to read the chapter(s) on our own, reviewed the material and the exercises and go through the practice exams when we met. We were able to clear up confusion and compare notes during the meetings. It worked very well and got many of us through exams we would have struggled with otherwise. We also compared information when we took the exam. The strongest in the subject sat for the exam first and provided feedback on where to focus for the other students. A sample schedule might be:
We preferred either SYBEX or the MS PRESS exam materials, but also used EXAM CRAM when available. The Trancender practice exams were best, but also used TestPREP successfully. Do some reading when deciding on the right exam preparation materials to determine if anyone else has had success using the material you are considering.
I can discuss our experience further if you want. Email me at:
Good Luck and don't put it off. Get through it and get back to feeling good about work.presleye69@yahoo.com
Actually I understand your delema. I am sorry this is even an issue but as a female in this society it is very hard to compete in the outside workplace since you are expected to complete your inside work (home front)IT is very competitive and change is very fast, constant study is necessary to keep up. Some companies, the large ones will provide tuition assistance. Yours do not? Have you asked? You may also want to get your husband involved to help more on the home front so you have more time. If he is not selfish or egotistical he will. You are a team after all. You, however, do not sound all that committed to your chosen profession. IT is pretty intense and the people in it are different than your average joe or josephine, they are intense, creative and most times nothing else matters. You have to multitask. My suggestion is to seek help from your husband, install a network at home. 3 or 4 old computers to train with. You need to have internet access at home and visit your library and bookstore regularly. There are also free sites for IT study. Hang in there, we need more women in the field!
It took Ford's reto-styled Mustang, the first really interesting mcar in a decade, to get those boneheads at Chrysler to revive the Charger and the troglodytes at GM to show off a new Camaro. My dad saw this ten years ago and these people with more education purport to be forward thinking innovators?
If you can't get training without any strings attached, tell your supervisor that in return for providing training -- during company time -- you will commit to at least one year of additional employment. If you don't stay at least another year, you have to pay the company back.
You lose some freedom, but you gain knowledge, experience, and help the company. I'd be gone at the end of the year, though, if I worked for a company like that.
-rb
Even back when I was starting out as a programmer (in 1988), it was assumed that each of us would be spending a certain amount of time training ourselves. My employer back then was nice enough to give us some paid time during the day for OJT (On-the-Job Training), at least when there weren't higher-priority things to do, but sometimes I ended up reading manuals at home because I didn't have the time to do so at work.
It'll vary by employer, of course, and often each manager will have their own policy w.r.t. OJT eevn within a single organization. If people expect a job to be done right, they should allow a certain amount of time for reading, online studying, or formal coursework, but I'm not sure you should "expect" that. Some organizations have more long-term focus than others, and employee development helps the company in the long run, but sometimes it's hard to justify the time spent that way when there are fires to fight and clients to feed.
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
Sure, they can't force you to remain with the company, but they can ask you to sign a contract that says if you leave before your year is up, you get the bill for the training. Simple enough, without being illegal.
Virg
I've been on both sides of this issue, as a corporate puke and a business owner. As a corporate puke, I always wanted to do the best I could and to constantly learn about new technology. I bought and read every tech book that was relevant for my work. I paid for training myself when I could and asked for time off to participate in it. It was only after I showed actual initiative did my employer pay for the books and classes. I didn't immediately look for a hand out - my education is my own personal betterment afterall. They offered, I didn't ask. Granted, that's probably not the norm. But that's how I was raised - to earn things for myself.
But now as a business owner, I expect that sort of initiative from my employees. I once had a contract worker charge me for taking the time to learn over a weekend an application we used day to day. He bought one of those 'Learn Brain Surgery in 24 Hrs' books - charged me for the book and the supposed 24 hrs he spent going thru it cover to cover. I was offended by that. Not that I was against his learning the app - but immediately out of the gate, how he expected me to PAY for that time. Time, I might add, that was unverified and unrequested. Had he taken initiative and demonstrated that he was trying on his own, I would have gladly offered to pay for further professional training. Instead, I let him go after barely a week in the office. Harsh? Maybe. But then again, you gotta be this high to ride this ride, baby. Growth starts with yourself.
Alas that was years ago.
Get your training, use your current employer as your test lab, and get another job.Ahh, in the grand scheme of things.... such SMALL minds....
image word: "resists"
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
You stated that they had sent someone out for training and that they left the company soon after the upgrade to AD. It's possible that after getting their "fingers burned" that they are not wanting to spend more on training (why train someone for another company?). One way around this is to offer to sign a contract that you will continue to work for the company for a specified length of time if they pay for the training and that if you leave before the said time then you are responsible for paying back the cost of the training.
No one's mentioned it yet, but if you are a regular employee and you buy books and pay for your own training, you have to pay taxes on the money you earn before you can pay for those things. If your employer pays, it's a business expense and is tax deductable.
A really henious employer would send you to training and deduct the cost from your paycheck. You'd have more money in your pocket, but it still doesn't feel right.
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
This story is off the page, but the situation with healthcare in the US, isn't "trying to make the shareholders happy", or "insurance companies are ripping us off". Remember high healthcare costs are affecting EVERYBODY. The problem in a nutshell, is the American Public's "Save me at any cost" attitude. It's kind of hard to lower costs when we're throwing expensive solutions at every problem under the sun. From diagnostics, to treatment(1). The only cure is people being presented with the actual costs of their treatment. Insurance hides that fact. The other thing is the American Public is reactive, instead of proactive in their approach to health.
BTW Big companies don't buy insurance in bulk, so much as they are self-insured as far as healthcare's concerned. In other words they're paying the employee's bills out of their pocket, and hire an insurance company to administer the whole thing.
(1) Yes, the legal aspect contributes as well.
Here's one way to look at it: What do the most successful companies do? I work for Apple. They will happily pay to train me for anything related to my job. (In fact, I believe they also have a program where I can take courses solely to enrich my personal life, and they will contribute to the cost. I think.) They even have courses come to campus for us to take on things ranging from finances to child rearing. They do this because they know that the investment in their employees are worth it.
I don't know what they do at Google or Microsoft, or anywhere else, but I'd bet they have some similar sort of policy. Anyone care to comment?
You need to diversify, Spread out, learn abut not-Microsoft stuff. The last thing you want to be is a the guy who was skilled at maintaining coal fires in steam locamotives. Being SO specialized makes you very volerable to shifts in "technology of the decade". Your emplyer has ZERO motazation to keep you up to date. It's easier to simply fire you and hire someone else. What do you do what you are NOT being paid for your time? I hope it's "messing with computers" because that's what you _like_ to do. If you don't actually _like_ this stuff find something else that you do. I got into this field in the 8th grade, back in the early 1970's and now I get paid for my hobby. (Yes I have other interrests but sailing, scuba, and photography didn't pay as well.)
Oh, hurt me AC. Ha, ha, ha.
Morons who spend their time harassing people on Slashdot have never done so much as worked for a large company, much less done IT for them or any other company. People like you will be lucky to work their way up from dishwasher to bartender before you piss someone off and have to start all over again.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
> Remember that if you stay home to take care of the kid, this calculation assumes that your salary would have remained the same indefinitely -- an invalid assumption for a career-oriented woman.
True to consider, but your other calculation assumes that both parents would rather work full time and have a nanny spending the bulk of the day with the kid(s), which is also not necessarily a valid assumption. While I agree that both parents' careers need to be considered, if both parents want a parent to raise the kids full time instead of a hired caretaker, then the calculation must incorporate one or the other in total, not a split of both, since it's not usually feasible for both parents to work part-time so they can split the stay-at-home portion of it.
> I also want to quote this stunning piece...which is so incredibly true that I'm amazed it's even looked at any other way.
See above. The quote only works if neither parent wants to stay home with the kids, and frankly the number of couples where that's true is in the minority. Reconsider your amazement.
Virg
training classes never cover what you really need, how to put out fires.(well, unless you are in firefighting school, but I digress) When a server is down, you have to find the problem NOW, not tomorrow. If you've been to training, your boss will probably, and in some senses, reasonably expect that since he/she has shelled out good money to have you trained, you are now an expert on that subject. If you've been to training, you will look very bad when it takes longer to fix a problem than the boss expects it should take a "trained professional."
on the other hand, when the untrained IT geek solves the problem through their own wits and resources, they look very good. Even if they take too long to solve the problem, they have the "I wasn't provided training" excuse to fall back on.
It's not about maximizing your chance of success, it's about maximizing your chance of being perceived as a success by your boss.
is it a shitty attiude? yes. but remember that no matter who signs your paycheck, you are always working for yourself.
Also, be aware that if you have training, you're more valuable and could potentially be worth more money. This is why it is so hard to get even an entry-level job in IT because it's presumed as soon as they train you, that you'll jump ship to some other employer who pays more, so rather than spending any money on training of new or existing workers, they'll pay for someone who has needed experience because the beancounters see it as cheaper that way. That it represents a long-term waste of capital and human resources is not visible to people who are only interested in their own huge golden parachutes, and long term isn't five, ten or twenty years, but two quarters from now. It's no wonder there is so much turnover in I.T. The shortsidedness and incompetence of management creates a vicious cycle making things worse.
The big advantage to this is that it isn't really hard to do really well, because when bad mediocrity is the standard of ordinary performance, just doing a decent job can become outstanding.
Paul Robinson
The lessons of history teach us - if they teach us anything - that nobody learns the lessons that history teaches us.
People who work free overtime for the love of their job are not only hurting themselves in the long term, but everyone else in the industry. Because computing attracts people who do this for a hobby as well, it's always easy to tell people who won't work for free "If you won't do it, we'll just get someone who will".
;)) but to everyone around me in the industry.
The question I always ask these people - would you work from 9-5 for free. If the answer to that is no, then why are they doing free overtime ?
If you love what you do, hack on opensource code or build an ISP with some friends, but don't make other people rich at your own expense.
I used to do this, but I realised the harm I was doing not just to myself (60 hour weeks make me cranky and that upsets my wife
This saturday, I'll be putting in 10 hours. But at the end of february, I'll see a good sized extra chunk in my pay packet.
This was recently brought up to me at my office.
In the position I occupy at my job my requirements and duties that I perform encompass the same job done by people with the benefits and title of manager in other divisions of my company. In addition we have to do things far above and beyond what our counterparts in other divisions do. Unfortunately, because of our small team size and budget constraints we are considered rank and file employees. No manager benefits, no manager pay, and no perks like managers get.
One of the mandatory company policies for people who do the job that we do is extensive training. Through a combination of other job experience, on the job training (fending for ourselves actually), and blind luck we have a team that can perform at an adequate level when compared to the other divisons. However, none of us have had any of the training that the other teams have had. Considering the lip service and culture importance our company puts on training this is irregular and even hypocritical.
Recently we had a meeting with our team leader and his boss, the division head. The division head lamented our performance in certain areas, while praising us in others. Immediately our team leader (who has not been properly trained yet either!) chimed in that we had not had the same training that the other teams have had and that it might improve our performance if we had it.
The division leader said something to the effect of "well you shouldn't use that as an excuse, nor should you say it too loudly. The company just might decide to replace all of you with people who have had the training."
Pragmatic as it seems to think this way I was taken aback and still feel upset about it. It just dosenn't taste right for some reason to me.
My recommendation is to be careful. If step 4 is this...
4) replace our whiny untrained employee with someone who has been properly trained and will work for less money.
Then step 5 withh look like this:
5a) PROFIT!!! (for the comapny!)
5b) UNEMPLOYMENT LINE!!!!!! (For you!)
Before this little meeting I thought I worked for decent people who had my and the companies best interestes in mind. Now I fully understand that they see me as a component in a larger machine; replacable, disposable, and not the leat bit worthy of investing any maintenace in.
I hope your company is better off as far as having respect for people who have made them tons of money like our team has. Please take the words to heart, they may be thinking just like my company is.
When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
After you've read that, ask yourself, "Do I really enjoy what I do?"
If the answer is "No," by all means, look for another career and best of luck to you. Granted wherever you go and whatever you do, there's a 97% chance you'll be working with a computer on some level. Furthermore, because you are IT experienced, anyone and everyone that finds that out will be asking you for help, so it won't be as if you're leaving the IT career, you'll just have another, probably more satisfying career on the side while you continue to do IT support.
If you answer "Yes," all I can say is knuckle down.
Welcome to the pits, the grind, the bottom rung. Regardless of your title or experience in IT, executives consider you just as important as the janitor. I've been working in IT professionally for 22 years now. I'm a system administrator for a small company, and every day I leave feeling as if I accomplished absolutely nothing. Even when I perform small miracles (served as SysAdmin AND IT Manger for one year), I receive no recognition, no thanks and definitely no financial reward or time off. "It's expected."
As for the training, the company definitely owes you that training if they expect you to fill the role. However, it is up to the discretion of the company leaders. We've got a network admin who's in the same situation as you. They moved him from desktop support to network admin, changed him from hourly to salary and told him to get MCSE certified on his own time. The company will foot the bill for the tests. I know, whoopity do.
I was fortunate in my training that the company was doing well and for the nine months I had been here to that point, I had no training at all. I was able to financially justify the cost of a MCSE bootcamp. It was the most intense two weeks I've ever experienced yet, but it was worth it. I'm a husband and father of two kids. That's part of the reason I chose the bootcamp: to avoid household distractions and stress. I honestly cannot suggest anything to help you as a wife, homemaker and breadwinner except to get your husband to share your plan of training and pitch in more than he does now. If he can just be self-sufficient, that would probably help you out considerably. I know I don't generally contribute enough at home, but if my wife wanted to commit to something like training (or college or an evening job), I'd step up to it.
You might talk to HR or your manager and see if you could schedule an hour or two a week at work for study time, or even better, a half day off each week dedicated to studying. It's a long shot, but worth the time to ask. I'm guessing like many of us you work 45, 50 or more hours per week. If you're salary and still get your work done, there should be little issue. See if they'll agree to a trial run.
Personally, I've been re-evaluating my career over the past two years. It's not worth it. I enjoy technology and I enjoy solving problems, but what a company makes me do for work is completely unsatisfying. I'm working on making a career change myself.
I have 8 years UNIX Systems Administrator experience, and was then dumped in MS World 10 years ago. The last training I received was 5 years ago, and at such a low level I could have given the course myself! I am female, have no children or pets; and am happy to console with someone else in what appears to be a similar situation. You could say I work for the Government, there are 500 staff, 20 support staff of which I am one, and in western EU area. It doesn't look as though training will be forthcoming for me anytime soon, so I've started throwing that back at management when they start pressuring me. I bought my own online training via the USA last year, but find myself having no time during work to even look at that, never mind trying to read the manual! I'm supposed to work a 40 hour week, have tea/lunch breaks in my own time, no overtime - take time off in lieiu is the idea - which is a joke. I tried to change career a year ago, starting off another college course in a completely unrelated area..but I ended up getting even more stressed trying to study that, keep up in work, and have a life. I have a BSc in Computer Science, and an MSc all achieved in Evening College. I now hate working in IT, after spending all that time studying, and 18 years work! I was happier on half the salary with loads of training for heavens sake! If I left my current position, I would be on half the salary anywhere else and I can't afford that and pay a mortgage/car/credit card. I am contemplating an MBA in management or HR, to get into management and try change things. It's more money, and any exam or study time I would need is taken from my holidays, and it will be a struggle. I fear you cannot have a life, and need to be a geek locked in a dark room with no human communication to survive in IT now. I work in the Public Sector, we don't have to meet profit or budgetary targets. Everyone in the EU is trying to get females into the Science/Engineering sectors and all I see is discrimination and incompetence. I can't see a solution - I wish there was one, just to keep me sane.
I face this same issue, and in fact, after 6 months it will probably be the reason I'll be leaving this company very soon (i.e., in weeks).
My company gives somewhat generous training for semester long courses and certain short courses but no time to complete them.
That basically means no conferences or tutorials unless you take the time to take the day off.
I get the impression that bigger companies don't have a problem with training costs (reasonable ones). But they have a problem with granting you time off; a compromise solution would be to be allowed to take a leave of absence during the time you attend training classes. Yes, your paycheck would be lower, but at least it wouldn't interfere with vacation days.
Unfortunately, big companies are pretty much committed to the 40 hour work week, 52 weeks a year, 2 weeks of vacation.
Last year I used 5 of my 15 vacation/personal days on training. It sucks, it really sucks.
Robert Nagle, Idiotprogrammer, Houston
If so, how do you Slashdot readers keep up with your continuing education, while still maintaining a personal life? Is it naive to try to leave my work at work?"
/. is our daily education, so is Goatse
/.-er to even have a girlfriend) and she wants me home too. The coming of offspring of course brings the usual tension when you are constantly on a 24/7 standby. So no leaving work at work for me.
Welcome to Slashdot darling,
1:
2: We don't have a personal life, we are nerds sitting in front of our computers in the basement of our parents all day
3: We don't have a job, we are nerds remember. The lucky ones under us who have a job usually live in the nearest datacenter.
Serious now: I understand you, I am Male but I had the same issues. I have a wife (which is very uncommon for a
The solution: Quit your job and find something less stressful (not IT-manager, sys- or netadmin). GOOD sys- and netadmins on all levels are hard to find and expensive, that's why they have only one of us in every company doing the amount of work that the managment-level needs 10 people and 15 secretary's for. Next to that, IT is the most under-budgetted part of any company while sales is over-budgetted and still doesn't get it right nor done.
I used to work in an environment like yours and I had to quit before my health was totally ruined. Once you start to fall asleep on bus/train in the morning AND the evening on a 15 minute trip and thereby overshoot your location, once your partner complains that you fall asleep right after dinner or that you start dreaming (I literally started dreaming this) that your boss calls you again at 3am because the world comes to an end in his eyes because a single disk in a RAID5 array fails THEN you have to do something about it.
My solution: I went to my manager(s) and told them that we needed at least 2 extra persons or I would quit. They got 1 someone who didn't have a clue but still tried to play boss and then I quit and moved far, far away.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
My father was an aeronautical and mechanical engineer (plus physicist when he taught) and my mother was a research biologist/microbiologist.
I strongly DOUBT their jobs were less complex or intensive than those of a spyware cleaning monkey (which is probably 90% of IT jobs left in the US).
~D
" What luck for rulers that men do not think" - Adolf Hitler
In my role as manager and "wrench turner" both paths are valid. When one of my junior staffers starts asking for training on "gobblesoft server" I look to see what they are doing to gain that knowledge themselves. Are checking vendor whitepapers, support docs, etc. Are they using the web to find and gather information on their own. If they come asking for training with no initiative directed at self study, then they will most likely get passed over. On the flip side, when I see them taking time to add new material to their reading list. Asking others for input on the new technology, it makes sense to invest in them. I have found that many times via user groups or the vendors themselves, training is avaliable for little or no cost. Certainly not a full certification track, but often good basic training for minimal investment. At the pace of change I am seeing adn the dwindlingfunds, self study leveraged with company paid training is the only way I can hope to keep gathering the skills I will need next year, and the year after...
You might want to consider a different husband too...your current one sounds like a lazy deadbeat.
As I recall from my childhood, being unemployed, was a crime.
Also, my father was a very... ummm... troublemaking type of individual, he jumped a LOT of jobs, nobody MADE a job for him, he did everything from weapons design, aircraft design and was even part of the cosmonaut program (sadly when they wanted to send him to russia so he would give all the credit to the russians, he withdrew). The "party" didn't like him, so he eventually decided to come to america, because he heard it was great here. And for a good deal of years it was. But now I watch as it becomes the same type of place as it was back home. Only with more unemployment and lots of homeless people.
We once had a saying "shhhh... the walls have eyes and ears".
~D
" What luck for rulers that men do not think" - Adolf Hitler
I found that when I had let myself get out of shape when I worked IT, and I was "fat and happy" as that poster I replied to earlier said he/she was, almost all my mental faculties had slowed down, as had my physical abilities.
I got back in shape and I noticed that not only my mood, but everything from attention to intuition and memory are all working much better.
I use my lunch breaks to study The Art Of War, Bushido, Oakeshott's Catalog O' Swords, and get some paralells drawn between what Sun Tzu said, and what the idiots in chief and entourage are screwing up doing opposite what one of the world's greatest generals outlined as "the way to conduct a successful and profitable war".
I will post in my journal about it, I'm working on writing up a treatise on The Art of War and its connections to our "modern" and "civilized" world.
~D
" What luck for rulers that men do not think" - Adolf Hitler
At one side, you have the fat and happy camp, as you stated, but on the other side there's the stressed out thin camp. I'm afraid I belong to the second camp, since I wheigh in at barely 85kg (which is normal considering my height).
http://jcsnippets.atspace.com/ - a collection of Java & C# snippets
I spent six years working for a large-ish financial institution and weathered layoff after layoff but I knew it couldn't last: the news came down they were outsourcing my group.
Of 13 people, they kept two and they were the youngest and least paid. The rest of us were scattered to the four winds or offered non-IT positions in the company. Not a desirable thing for most of us.
I actually felt sorry for the two who were hired on with the oursourcer because they were immediately swamped with more work than they could ever handle.
I looked at the intervening time between my last job and the current one as the best time to upgrade skills and obtain certifications because if I was working I'd never want to do it.
I was able to take advantage of the state I live in as they had a dis-located worker program thru the local unemployment office.
This was funded at the federal level so something similar might exist for you..
I had a series of courses I wanted to take as well as the associated tests and got the state to pay the freight on about one third of it with the rest of it paid for out of pocket. Painful when I was out of work but it was sort of a gamble.
But it was worth it - once I had four fresh certifications (and 15 years of solid experience to boot) that made a big difference in getting interviews, and getting an offer.
I was sending out resumes during the time I was jobless and it was mostly the same resume without the certs. I got a few offers but they were all significantly less money than I had been making and positions of less responsibility.
When the right offer came I jumped on it and many of my co-workers who are working on the certification track come to me for advice since they're in the position where I was previously.
The certs made me look more attractive to employers but ultimately it is the experience that will get you hired.
But sometimes they'll overlook the experience if you have no certs.
I considered it a cost of working in
my desired field.
Your situation is different because you are working - but consider this - your chances of getting further employment after this job are higher if you do get those certifications - the experience
and certs in your case go hand in hand.
So while it would be nice for your employer to shell out coin so you can do this, they are not obligated to.
I spent about $4,000 out of pocket that was part of my "just in case" fund on training and certifications and tests but it was worth it since I'm working and comfortable.
I've gained 10 lbs since I started driving, but I'm still around 187 to 190 lbs, instead of 215 or 220... the upside is that I'm more BUFF than fat... which is good.
I hear what you say tho. I think I noticed one thing when I got fat. I had to fight to be complacent about everything in order to retain my "good nature" (believe no such thing, I am quite neurotic and very draconian about my own self).
I expect high things of others, but I expect perfection of myself, and strive for it. I know I'll reach it very far off or never, but if I do not try, I have nobody to blame but myself.
~D
" What luck for rulers that men do not think" - Adolf Hitler
> ... how do you Slashdot readers keep up with your continuing education, while still maintaining a personal life?
You must be new here...
If you disagree with me on social issues, then it's pretty clear that you are a narrow-minded bigot.
Well, that might be true (actually it's not, but whatever) - however the fact remains that every single time you've shared your supposedly expert opinion on topics that involve IT/enterprise you have been lying through your teeth. Every time you've claimed that "sharing is good" and offered yourself as an example, you've been lying through your teeth, because you've obviously never written a line of meaningful production code in your life. You are not, or have ever been in a position to influence anything related to IT, anywhere (well, except maybe for Joe Bob's Outrageous Steak Emporium).
Do your pals on the BRLUG know your Slashdot alias? I bet they would love to read your toxic rants and discuss them on the mailing list.
Every time you do your "ZOMFG M$ IS TEH SUX" routine and even remotely begin to claim that your "experience" in IT or software development bears out your opinion, someone will post a link to your resume for everyone to chuckle at. And don't bother removing it, it's already cached and posted elsewhere for posterity.
Wow, I have read through a lot of the comments some of them are pretty interesting. Personally, I have become rather disillusioned with the corporate culture. I believe largely they are becoming less and less interested in fostering the development of their employees. It is all about the short term bottom line. Particularly in the IT industry there has been a huge influx of "qualified" people. From my experience the general consensus is that "if you don't want to learn hoe to do your job better on your time, we will find someone who will." That could be some kid just out of college that they can pay a fraction of what an experienced person. (If that statement makes me sound like an old fart... I just broke the 30 barrier) Most companies are not interested in if you have a family or other interests outside of work. Maybe it is just an escape, but my answer has been to tell the corporate culture to 'piss off' and start doing freelance work and start my own business. I'll tell you I might not be making the big bucks quite yet, but I sleep better at night knowing that I don't have to get up and face the "Bob's"... The money will come. http://www.bullshitjob.com/officespace/missingwork .wav
Today's IT world is a dog-eat-dog world, and unless you work for the Government, or a Union, you can expect to be your own career manager and work bloody hard if you want to get ahead or even KEEP your job.
:)
:)
;)
Long gone are the days when there is such a thing as 'companly loyalty' (either FOR or FROM the company) -- and YOU are expected to deliver VALUE to the company in exchange for your salary. (And if that 'value' means that you work 14 or more hours per day of unpaid overtime, pay for your own education, lunches and whatever -- that's part of the 'package'.)
Just about EVERY company gives 'lip service' to "we value our people above all else" -- well -- they SAY the words, but when it comes down to signing the purchase order to IMPROVE their people, or giving time off even if you want to buy your own upgrading, you'll find that words are about ALL you'll get.
It's a dog-eat-dog world -- and if you aren't ready to work 16 hour days and spend your 'own time' in training and upgrading yourself -- better be prepared to step aside and let younger and more movitated people bulldoze right over top of you.
The IT industry is NOT for people who just want to work 7.5 hours per day, turn off their phone and go home.
It is NOT for people who expect to finish 4 years of college or university and expect to coast along the rest of their working career on whatever they happened to learn in school.
The IT industry is cut-throat, hard, long work. Keep in mind that having a job is a privilege and not a 'right' -- nobody 'owes' you (or anyone else) a living.
You are expected to keep YOURSELF up to date and if you happen to have (or not have) time for a 'life' -- that's your own problem and not something for the company to worry about.
I'm sorry if this is not what a lot of people want to hear -- but as a professional with over 25 years of IT industry experience -- I can say that this is what I've discovered time and time and time again.
If you want someone to blow sunshine up your butt -- better to visit a 'career counsellor' at one of the thousands of 'get an MCSE make a fortune' schools. They won't tell the truth, but they'll have lots of nice words to hear, and free coffee and even provide financing for the program if you sign up right away.
As for myself, over the past 8 years, I have passed over 30 certification exams, and even now feel myself falling behind because I haven't had time to do many more in the past year or so to keep up to date.
Where that hurts is in the pocketbook -- because people see that you have let your skills get a little behind -- and there are plenty of competitors for your next job who DO have current skills.
Always remember -- YOU are YOUR OWN CAREER MANAGER -- and it is up to YOU to determine what you want to do with your life, where you want to fit in, and what you need to do to get there.
If you want the 7.5 hours per day, paid training and low (but steady) salary until you retire -- there are plenty of mindless government jobs available.
Either that or move to Japan where company loyalty still exists.
I know of one. And no, I won't tell you where. I would rather keep that piece of information in my monopolistic clutches.
*g*
I can throw myself at the ground, and miss.
In short, it is your responsibility to improve your skills so you can get a better job or more pay or even to just accomplish what your manager is expecting of you.
Longer version: http://getmotivation.com/jimrohn/jrmajor_key.html I'd suggest that you make a plan to obtain the training you need; present it to your manager; if they don't go for it, get the training anyway, solve the problems you face, and find a new job.
I would not say that this is a bad management strategy for not training. I would say that this is a bad management strategy for putting people without the proper training in a position that they are not ready for. Frankly I have spent eighteen years on the pursuit of my Master's degree in Information Technology and twenty years gaining the experience that I have. The thought that an organization would put poeple in a postion of importance without the proper skills would make me sell my stock. What was that companies name again?
Damn, you're not bitter are you?
:( But it's true. And that's why I fight for guaranteed training as part of a negotiation to join a team. That's just all there is to it. Either you agree to provide me with 10k a year in training when you hire me, or you don't get my talents. You'd be surprised at how fast they do that. And if they don't, then they are not a company that I'm willing to work for.
:)
I think it's just terribly sad.
I also have medical issues that preclude me from working much over 40 hours a week. If they demand 70 (which two companies I was offered positions with warned me of, one including an hour and a half commute) - I walk away, no matter how bad I need the job. I'm sorry, but I'm trying to be a mom here, and I'll be damned if after 15 years, I'm gonna be a slave. I've fought my way tooth, nail, and claw to get where I am, and I've got the skills they need. Remember that when you go into interviews AND negotiations.
It didn't just get me the training either... it got it for my teammates across the board.
Sorry man... the Internet pooped on me.
There's no standard, like just about everything on the business side of IT. If you stick around in the same area or with the same types of companies, you'll find a lot of them have similar practices, but IT workers are employed in too many different places by too many different types of organizations in too many industries to find even a single practice that all of them share.
Furthermore, training especially seems kinda off the map in a lot of companies, even larger ones. I usually ask about the availability of training in job interviews, not because I'm particularly interested (I'm a big enough nerd that I usually keep myself up to date without consciously making an effort), but because I figure it makes me look gung ho. I virtually never get a concrete answer, even at Fortune 500 companies.
I do have to give props to my last employer, though. Training didn't just fall out of the sky, but if you found something you wanted to learn and brought it up you generally got it. Management was even pretty lenient about it having to apply directly to your job.
Game... blouses.
I'm retired US Army/National Guard and I've spent a good deal of time trying to cleanup the shit your talking about; maybe if we're lucky my Son will get the job done and my Grand-daughters wouldn't have too.
The mentality of "Anybody but an X" has screwed us up in the past and not just us as in the US, but us as in humanity. Doesn't matter if it's American vs. Russian or Capitalist vs. Communist or Christian vs. Muslim; it always leads to a slippery slope that ones who lead us down rarely think about climbing back up.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Virginia Tech, first 4 years on grants, last year on loans... most expenses from last year :( rest were loan repays, grants paid for mostly everything though.
Computer Science Grad.
~D
" What luck for rulers that men do not think" - Adolf Hitler
You are the primary breadwinner and you have to do all of the household chores? WTF is your husband doing? Get him to share more of the household load, so you have some more free time to catch up on your learning needs...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Well...
:(
Legally it is, yes. However, a lot of places step all over their employees, and when they grow a backbone (like I did, thankfully I had already resigned) they fire you. Yes, I was fired with a week to go to my end of employment, so no big loss there. I got upset with all sorts of shit being said in my name, and demanded that it stop.
Plus, how the hell has the work week for IT ppl been declining when we're required to sleep with our cellphones two out of two to three weekends?? (or more often when someone gets a backbone/aka fired.)
Ever get called on a nightly server outage (lovely windows) in the middle of the fucking night?!? (I mean that quite literally, lady's halfway to orgasm and cellphone starts vibrating on the nightstand... oh yeah... talk about "sorry honey, I'll just finish up and leave you with your bunny to finish yourself, work called and the goddamn windows farm is offline again".) Oh yeah... sadly, that's not just a joke
~D
" What luck for rulers that men do not think" - Adolf Hitler
The problem has two names: "Shareholder Value" and "Quarterly reports"
Let me explain that with an example:
Company A:
In A, projects are long term (long is much longer than 90 days, btw).
Therefore, in A employees are trained in their work time and thus they
can improve their skills, they make sensible recommendations to managemant
and (last but not least) can lead more projects to success, because only
few projects are considered "learning experiments".
Management literally enforces 40h weeks, because they found out that
the first 2 hours of a 10 hour day are wasted on fixing bugs that
overworked workers produced in the last two hours of the day before.
In company A, everybody knows that the long term success will ensure
the survival of the company _and_ the survival of their jobs.
Company B:
In company B, people who are not familiar with the newest "bleeding edge"
technologies get fired within two weeks. As the newest technologies promise
to be the must productive ones, for every three fired workers two new ones
will be employed (those who know the most buzzwords).
This philosophy is not only applied to workers but also to upper management.
In company B, long term strategy means 70 to 90 days.
+++ STOCK REPORT +++ STOCK REPORT +++
Breaking news:
After a dreadful quarter B got a new CEO and a new CTO - both of them
will downsize the company and concentrate on the most beneficial
fields of operation.
B is a STRONG BUY!
A has increased his profit by 21%. This is 6% lower than analysts expected.
A is rated as low performer.
Summary:
- good training, happy employees, long term profit -> bad
- no training, hire and fire, short term profit and long term bancruptcy -> good
For many people (e.g. some shareholders), companies are just what CPUs are
for overclockers:
Things that can be made run fast and hot and productive. This makes them break
soon, but that does not matter because they will be exchanged by then.
to determine how much abuse we take. At my last job there was an expectation for me to train on my own time, but there was no training available anywhere. So I trained myself at work. This field is so fluid and changing so rapidly that there is no way to keep up "on our own time". I enjoy taking courses on new technology and better ways of managing time, etc. but the stuff that comes up at the job that I don't know how to handle, I feel it's my responsible to find the information, but the employer's job to pay me to do it. Otherwise I'll get to service printers and do support calls and sweep the floors rather than learn what I need to know to keep the system functioning. We all go down. I'll get the blame but that won't help to save the company.
That is the most insightful comment I have ever read on Slashdot.
In a general sense, and this applies to any sort of training not just IT stuff. They hired you because they decided that your skill set and abilities matched their business need. But as I understand from your posting they then changed something, either about your job, or what you work on or with, and now your skill set no longer matches.
They are RESPONSIBLE to provide the training, and you are RESPONSIBLE to learn.
We own 2 cars.
We have Dish TV.
We have one kid and one due in June.
We put away a couple hundred every month for retirement, and manage to put some into savings.
We have a telephone and 1 cell phone (we used to have 2, but got rid of one. Too much money).
High-speed internet (which I understand costs too much around here)
We get our cars fixed when we need to.
We manage to donate about 11% to charity each month
We have pets. (Only one now. The cat was just killed, and it cost more to put him to sleep than to feed him for a year. How about that?)
My wife and I both got Masters degrees and paid for them both, with the exception of a thousand dollar gift from my dad.
We have the insurance thing going on, on the home, the car, and our health. We have kinda inadequate benefits, so we pay a little extra for some supplemental insurance.
My wife has back problems so that brings in some extra bills (not all covered by our plan) and expenses (more expensive bed, etc.).
You might be interested to know that my wife will quit working in May, and she makes about 1/3 of our total income.
Did I forget anything?
Oh, I am 6'2" and weigh 150 lbs. Hardly fat. Definitely happy.
I must confess I don't understand the point you were trying to make with your post. I am not trying to antagonize, I am trying to give you an example of a family that makes less than $50x/yr and maintains a high standard of living.
Something from your post that bothers me, however, is this: "I haven't bought a house because I find paying interest rates to be antithetical to my way of thinking."
When I payed rent, I was paying someone else's interest rates, now I am paying mine. That's my way of thinking, please tell me more about yours. Again, I am not trying to antagonize, it's just that your statement flies in the face of everything that I have thought since I graduated high school.
I cried real tears when Li Mu Bai died.
I must ask.
:) But I am interested how you found such an awesome rate, and how you afford to keep your house maintained (unless it was brand new, most houses have a LOT of secondary costs tacked on, I used to do HVAC work at one time so I've seen repair bills for gas, electrical, etc... and they're NOT pretty).
If you are christian, you've forgotten the fact that Usury (known as interest rates nowadays) are damned by 2 of the "single god" (monotheistic) religions, Christianity and Islam? (I am uncertain about Judaism since I am unfamiliar with the Talmuddic Torah.)
Beyond that, the logic dictates that if there is $500.00 dollars put into play in a game of monopoly, you cannot collect 500.00 plus 10% interest if there isn't more put into play.
However the resource game is a game of ZERO SUM... There is no more created than is available. Money has been made elastic, but all it does is make YOU have less buying power. Same with ME and everyone else whose name isn't Rothschild (pronounced Roth Shield, not roth's child). Everytime more money is put into play, OUR money loses value. The rich (this means the money printers) lose nothing. They already know that since they control the supply, everyone else plays by their rules. Every country with a central bank, even Switzerland plays by this rule. (Only difference is the Suisse have 40% of their cash backed in gold, everyone else has, well... umm... lets see, we have Electrum and Copper, and they are both going bye bye quite quick).
Anyways, if I give you 500 bucks, and there are only 500 bucks in play, how will you ever pay me back 550?? Please enlighten me. Interest only works if someone's livelihood is annihilated to pay for those that pay interest. I can assure you it will not be the richer group, it will be you or me or someone.
~D
PS - your master's degrees do not make you invincible, and yes, my parents house was 120 when they bought it, it had appreciated to a lot more than that when they considered selling it. I find that paying any interest is a lossy proposition period.
PPS - I do not feel antagonized
" What luck for rulers that men do not think" - Adolf Hitler
I sure do know our Masters don't really protect us all that much. I have been thinking for a while that I need to learn some other kind of backup trade so I don't end up loading trucks if I ever get fired or something. I brought it up to illustrate the possibility of getting a Masters degree without sacrificing everything or getting into excessive debt. I am aware that it is not a job-guarantee. I am thinking that I need to learn another trade, in case something happens.
I think our money system is messed up. I am no economist, obviously, but it seems to me that it is messed up. I can't answer your '500 bucks' riddle. I'll have to think that one over. In board games, if we ran out of cash, we would write it on little papers. Anyway, it's the only game in town that I can see. Someone said the one thing to remember about interest is: "Them that understands it gets it. Them that don't pays it."
About your parents' house.... If they bought it at 120 and it appreciated, how did they lose? Did they get a 2nd mortgage?
Anyway, about how we maintain, I have found that if you are willing to stay out of debt you can make quite good. The trick is how you define 'good.' Some people think the American Dream is keeping up with the Joneses. I think it is staying out of debt. Maybe the trick with us is that our total car payment is like $150. We rarely eat out. I don't know. I like to think it's karma for that 11% (or something like that). I gotta get rid of that car payment. I think if we could have our only debt as the house, we would be well-off indeed.
How do we keep the house up? We are careful, and we curb each others' spending. We have handy friends. I don't know. We haven't had to do many repairs. Our home was built in 1987, and the only problem I have is the shingles. A couple more years and I'll have to put more on. Maybe our low upkeep is also due to good karma.
Other things we do to protect ourselves: we keep a 72-hour emergency kit in the house and in the minivan. We are starting to acquire a year's supply of food.
I'll have to get back to you on that $500 riddle.
I cried real tears when Li Mu Bai died.
Of course, anyone who goes into debt for ALL THE MONEY IN THE WORLD probably deserves to be in their situation. The trick is not to get in to that much debt.
I used to think I subscribed to the American Dream. I guess I don't. My dream is for my children to grow up honest and kind and healthy and free. If that means we have to go without some luxuries, then so be it. If that means I'm still driving my '90 Buick in 5 years, that's fine with me. Oh well, I'll just have to stop calling this the American Dream, and just call it My Family Plan.
I cried real tears when Li Mu Bai died.
CompTIA Survey indicates your experience is par for the course. 85% of IT professionals decide for themselves what training or education they get. I suppose there's good and bad in this -- at least they're not being forced to go to unneeded training, as workers in many other fields do. (Sorry if this has already been linked -- just found this post and didn't have time to read all 700 replies.)