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The Dirty Jobs of IT
dantwood writes "In an Infoworld article, Dan Tynan writes about the '7 Dirtiest Jobs' in IT. Number three? Enterprise espionage engineer (black ops). 'Seeking slippery individuals comfortable with lying, cheating, stealing, breaking, and entering for penetration testing of enterprise networks. Requirements include familiarity with hacking, malware, and forgery; must be able to plausibly impersonate a pest control specialist or a fire marshal. Please submit rap sheet along with resume.'" Paging Mike Rowe, Mike Rowe to the IT desk.
One-page link.
That link is certainly weird. While loading, a script tried to "read private data from any window". Is Infoworld hacked or something?
lying, cheating, stealing, breaking, and entering for penetration testing of enterprise networks
Sounds like fun.
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
When will this be on Dirty Jobs
Hey, last time Mike Rowe was on Slashdot he was getting sued by Microsoft!
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/01/19/133233&tid=109
Now that's a dirty job.
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
who publishes stories on IT web sites and only puts a tiny amount of information on each page but has tons of pages in a desperate attempt to increase ad revenue? I think that should be #1 on the list.
Monstar L
If "dirty" implies unpleasant to preform, I think anything that forces you interact with an end user should be higher on the list. If "dirty" implies morally wrong, only the espionage engineer seems to apply. But if "dirty" implies physically dirty, only 1 and 2 apply. This article seems to combine all the different definitions, but I enjoyed reading it anyway. I think intern would fit somewhere on the list event though it isn't a job, exactly. You get to experience whatever other people would like to avoid, so you get a nice spectrum of unpleasantry.
For a time I was the primary (er, only) technical person for an eCommerce site. I learned one important lesson. Sales people have zero morals. They would lie to their own mother to make a sale. Hell, they would toss in sex with their baby sister to make a sale. I felt sleazy just keeping their servers running. I hope I never have to take that kind of job again.
-- Will program for bandwidth
What is the point of linking to the Dirty Jobs entry on Wikipedia? What's wrong with the actual Discovery Channel site ??
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
Slashdot editor. Just think of all the firehose entries you have to post^H^H^H^Hedit.
Oh really, I think corporate spy would be a simple job. Find out what they want you to do, turn in your company/boss, flip them off as the FBI takes them away, collect the reward and get a new job. Sounds awfully simple to me. If anyone ever asked me to pull some illegal bullshit job like that I'd be like "Hmm, yeah can you repeat that and speak closer to my MP3 recorder?"
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
How about Consumer Espionage Engineer . That's what that **AA is into these days. They probably pay pretty good money for individuals with low enough morals to spy on their friends,... ;-)
Official arrestee when they break the LAW in the process of doing their "job".
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Finally some recognition.
Dirty IT job No. 7: Legacy systems archaeologist WANTED: INDIVIDUALS FAMILIAR WITH 3270
Hey, that #7 job doesn't sound bad at all. Legacy systems? I'll take that any day over most of those other jobs. It's probably not very outsourceable and is obscure enough that when you actually do a good job you'll be revered as a god by those who depend on your work.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 is the magic number.
How about equipment in an 'institutional' environment? Replacing printers, terminals and interface hardware in areas where the dust lays almost an inch thick like dryer lint. One spark in the wrong place and FWOOOM. How about facilites where there are wiring problems? Never touch a metal doorframe and a metal computer case at the same time, cause you'll get a jolt (not cola). How about servicing a line printer with five guys with guns on one side and a score or more of arrestees peering at you behind an expanded steel screen with the place smelling like BO, spit and fingerprint ink?
A spelunker explores caves, not underwater wrecks.
My teacher stayed in a nearby motel and hacked in over the telephone, but a military officer with expertise in security parachuted into the base at night - it's a big base, with lots of wide open space.
He started breaking into computer rooms. Interestingly, he was detected but not caught. My teacher intercepted emails from the base staff warning that an intruder had been seen in the area.
Eventually they went public, and submitted a report to the staff as to how they could improve security.
They emphasized that this sort of thing is meant to help, and not to cost anyone their jobs.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
Would this then, be a description of Mike Rowe Soft?
Jus' wonderin'...
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Number 8 BSA guy
Slashdot Dupe Checker.
Is there a compelling reason to make us start at the end of the article? Other than possibly heading off a hundred "WHY ISN'T THIS ARTICLE ALL ON ONE PAGE?!" posts, I mean?
Also known as s.h.I.T. a recent innovation in CS
From TFA: "For tips on penetration testing, see "How to think like an online con artist" /.'ers know anything about penetration. hehe
Like any
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
Must disagree with the crack about low self-esteem. Having never worked help desk, I say these troopers are surprisingly patient and well-balanced individuals. These troopers must be commended not only for their ability to abstract problems and processes, but also for their increasingly rare phone skills. They are good guys. Now... desktop support itself can get pretty dirty... as in when the PEBKAC is the sticky grime on the keyboard itself.
The Admin and the Engineer
Steve Jobs?
1) Dreamweaver webmaster
2) Keyboard cleaner (cheetos and pepsi and genetic splatter, oh my!)
3) Floating point wrangler
4) Monochrome wire detangler
5) Witnessing <body bgcolor="#FFFF00">
6) rpm dependency arbitrator
7) "Cowboy Neal option" writer
UTF-8: There and Back Again
Having done both, I completely disagree. In fact, I have yet to meet a help desk zombie who hasn't dreamed of becoming an on-site reboot specialist. It doesn't take long for a help desk zombie to wish they could simply get the person on the other end of the phone to do what they tell them and nothing else, or even just understand what they have told them. Getting to be an on-site reboot specialist allows one to work directly on a machine without the person who has no idea playing a literal game of telephone with your instructions to mess things up. In addition, on-site rebooters usually get paid more for doing less and can get rid of angry customers at least for a time by telling them to go get coffee. The only real exception I've seen to this would be the Graveyard Support Vampire who have other priorities than more money or getting the job done ASAP to meet quota.
It may be undesirable by most of the kids around here, but there is nothing bad about coding COBOL for a living:
You are always in demand, unlike several other IT fields
Pays well
Stable work
Stable code.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
It would have been an even better article had they chosen one definition of 'dirty' and stuck with it consistently.
As far as Dirty IT job No. 2: Datacenter migration specialistgoes... *yawn*. Move a bunch of boxes, cable 'em up and hit the on button. Big Deal. Come talk to me when you've moved an entire printing plant three blocks across three weeks - without interrupting production or missing a deadline.
Because I work in education I have to be both a legacy specialist AND help desk. But I honestly dont consider them that dirty personally. Maybe partly because I have a education background, so Im used to working with users, and maybe because I find a elegance in legacy code, but both are fun to me, and both make me almost 50 grand after only 2 years of full time work.
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
Scrub down that database!
I fear the Y2038 bug
More and more I'm finding that simple upgrade jobs are taking longer to do due to masses of dust and crap.
Upgrading a 256mb to 1 gb takes maybe 5 mins. The last one took over an hour, It was so bad I took photos.
The dust was so thick that I had to dismantle everything, vacuum, use artist brushes and compressed air, reassemble after oiling the fans! I even replaced the power supply as it was too stuffed with dust to be safe.
By the time I finished, my workspace was filled with dust, crap everywhere.
Next time I'll blow it out with compressed air outside in the sunlight.
Don't be apathetic. Procrastinate!
...but I've had 5 of these jobs in my career.
/.'s will get the incredible irony of that.
No, I haven't had #1, but the wet end of a paper making machine is very close. It's amazing what will grow in warm pulp, if you leave it there a while. And how your shoes literally fall apart when you walk through the stuff they use to clean it off. Literally. In minutes. Leather is no match for DuStrip.
Cat Herder is the worst of them. Being a rebootnik isn't quite as much fun as a third-party field tech, driving back and forto from the airport 3 miles away in a driving snowstorm to get *another* part to make that ^&*) Alpha server run again, so people can rent porn. Yeah.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
It's a dirty job to be a penetration tester? Looks pretty cool to me. Awful to stand in a server room sandwiched between (horror!) a server rack and a wall? That's called working in a server room. And since when are support techs all patronizing idiots, and night-shifters all zombies. For the most part, at our company people treat our techs with respect. This is sensationalist BS... a lot of people would kill for any of these jobs.
The lab tech at the police officer that gets to deal with computer crimes. Yeah, once the police knock down the door to the house of someone collecting child porn, he's the guy that has to touch the keyboard...
Pretty early on in my career, I worked at a Multi Level Marketing [read: Pyramid Scheme] company.
The company makes multi-millions, and I was personally in charge of the systems that calculates, tallies, and print out "reward" cheques every month. I had to be intimately familiar with all the details and clauses and sub-clauses and secret definitions of obvious words like "one week" or heck even what "50" means. I knew first hand that what our marketing people said was very different from what our sales people said, which is different from when people call our customer service, and which in turn is many miles away from how the system actually works.
They never lie, because you get sued when you lie.
But ever since, I have been convinced that it is dirtier to speak in half-truths and equivocations than out-right lies.
[confession]
I was young and dismissed my disgust at the company as my being too "picky" about jobs. I convined myself to tough it out. Eventually I found out the company was stealing from ME, and only then did I quit. So I already got what I deserved. [/confession]
sorry about posting as AC, but I have a rather unique handle I've been using for quite a few years.
Regarding the Undead of #6...
Help Desk is a Customer Service position requiring a basic level of technical competence & teachability, NOT a tech position requiring only a basic level of people skills. This is especially true when the Help Desk person is dealing primarily with people with minimal to no technical skills.
The job should go to someone who likes people-- and who may not want an IT career per se, but does enjoy tinkering around with the stuff a little and learning a little bit about it. It should not go to a tech wizard who just wants to drudge through it so that he can get promoted to a position where he hopes he won't have to deal with another human being ever again.
People skills are more fundamental to the job than technical skills. (and no, I'm not a help-desk person. I like people, but not enough to be able to deal with being interrupted by them every ten minutes all day long.)
online porn distribution!
Now that's dirty
The guy sent in to probe for the intel of the people who may very well lose their jobs in an oursourcing deal has a crappy job. Those people have zero motivation to help, are often scared and angry.
Even though medicine and IT aren't obviously related, I've garnered a lot of wonderful problem solving theory from Dr. House.
Rule #1: Patients lie
My best experience with a dirty IT job was at a Chemical Plant turned Furniture Factory. I never before hoped the burning sensation in my hands was just fiberglass.
Logic is flawed
I should've read into the "of IT" more. Really, I was thinking someone had a dirtier job than I did repairing cables crawling through the mud under a building, working 40 hours a week in an office that flooded with every rain storm (the water carried beach sand, I was working at a resort), the cables the guys I replaced ran through a cesspool yard... if you're thinking nothing is worse than that, you're right. Sadly, this article raised my hopes that I didn't have it so bad... then crushed them.
Chewbacon
The Bible is like Wikipedia: written by a bunch of people and verifiable by questionable sources.
What if your job description is a list of all of the jobs listed on that list?
The Dirty Jobs of IT
Is that you, Steve?
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
It sounds like written by a 15 year old.
Of course COBOL is still around. There currently is virtually no other language beeing able to replace it because they lack BCD arithmetics for easy to predict precision.
Also there is another one missing. "Developer for organically grown commercial computing enviroments". If you ever had to programm something serious under Windows, and then later tried another OS you will know what I mean. You have Interfaces which are borderline bizarre, partly undocumented, and only plausible if you take decades of company policy into account. It is even more frustrating when you find an error in the interfaces you are using. It is virtually impossible to reach anybody who even remotely cares for your problem, even if the code which shows the problem only has 5 lines and is an exact copy of one of the examples giving out by the people writing the interface.
Personal experience has taught me the magic formula for telling when a user (over the phone) is lying. (And no, I don't mean that their lips are moving). In all seriousness, I've found an almost 100% correlation with this simple "is the user lying" test. I call it the 2 Second Rule.
... at which time a few seconds have passed and you'll hear back down the telephone line ".....no". BINGO! User is lying.
Ask the user your question. E.g. "Did you do {insert something the user may have done}". If the user takes longer than 2 seconds to reply to a simple yes/no question, they are lying. No one takes 3 seconds to say yes or no.
People only take this length of time to reply if a more complex thought process has kicked off in the background. Something along the lines of "oh no, I did do that... should I have? Should I tell support? Will they still help me or think less of me if I say yes?"
anyone who was really good at this wouldn't have a rap sheet... as they wouldn't have been caught
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
Dirty IT job No. 7: Legacy systems archaeologist
WANTED: INDIVIDUALS FAMILIAR WITH 3270, VAX/VMS, COBOL, AS/400, AND OTHER LEGACY SYSTEMS
I have to disagree: It may not be the very best idea to try to connect AS/400 applications to webbrowsers, but an AS/400 is certainly NOT a legacy system. The system architecture of the AS/400 is actually much more modern than that of most other systems. Do you know any other system with a persistent single-level-storage, that continues working exactly where it stopped before the power was lost, after you boot it up again - I mean, it does not RESTART processes, it CONTINUES them. Or do you know another system, where you can plug in a completely different main processor, just recompile the OS kernel, and every application on the system will be AUTOMATICALLY ported to the new processor architecture upon first start - as if they were Java programs? Ever heard of the "technology independent machine interface" (TIMI)?
Reimplementing your old applications on an AS/400 is much LESS of a risk than trying to migrate those applications to so-called modern systems like PC-servers, because an AS/400 is orders of magnitudes more secure (you DO know it has hardware-supported pointer protection, don't you?) and more realiable than a PC-server.
I think theres something wrong with me. My job qualifies for 2, help desk zombie/reboot specialist, of the 7 and I rather like it.
Score:-1, Insightful
Win! Wait, no, the other thing - Fail! No, hold on...... (Head kerplodes)
The IP lawyer seizes what is obvious and then grabs copyright on it. The marketing type will promise the world to the clients whilst forgetting to confer with developers as to whether it is at all possible. Also the marketing guys for overriding ship dates so that POS like Vista can get delivered to manufacturing months before it is ready for a real customer.
See my journal, I write things there
My resume has 5 of 7....no wonder I am miserable.
But it says it requires familiarity with hacking and forgery.....not corporate fraud.
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
Vinge thought that "Programmer-archaeologist" might be a growth career area.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.