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.

Comments

Link covers several pages

[TFer_Atvar]

One-page link.

Uhm...

[OpenSourced]

lying, cheating, stealing, breaking, and entering for penetration testing of enterprise networks

Sounds like fun.

Re:Uhm...

[sapphire wyvern]

You know, running a penetration testing firm sounds like an excellent cover for black-hat hackers.

Nothing gives you plausible deniability for your data heists like being paid to try stealing it in the first place...

What about the guy

[antifoidulus]

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.

Re:What about the guy

[countSudoku()]

Welcome to *world. Everytime you see a URL that ends with ...world.com you're in for a shite load of badly designed pages with a minimum of technical content strewn about a myriad of ugly web-widgets in an attempt to outwit adblock+. Good luck with that! No need to RTFA when that's the case, it's safe to assume anything from the summary.

Re:What about the guy

[morgan_greywolf]

Or, how about the guy who publishes user-submitted stories with varying amounts of information on geek websites, adds a misleading headline and sensationalizes the summary, including several misspelled words, and then sits back and waits for all the users to write things like "Fr1st Ps0t", "In Soviet Russia...", "I for one welcome..." and goatse.cx links, all in a desparate attempt to increase subscribers and ad revenue?

I, for one, welcome our new dirty, spelling-challenged, sensationalizing user-submitted story-posting editor overlords!

Left out ecommerce

[rossz]

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.

Again with the Wikipedia!!

[sczimme]

What is the point of linking to the Dirty Jobs entry on Wikipedia? What's wrong with the actual Discovery Channel site ??

Re:Again with the Wikipedia!!

[B3ryllium]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circlejerk

Re:Again with the Wikipedia!!

[dubl-u]

What is the point of linking to the Dirty Jobs entry on Wikipedia? What's wrong with the actual Discovery Channel site?

Well, I looked at your link and I see some ads and a big Flash thingy. (I'm using FlashBlock so I have to click to view Flash. Wonderful!) If I load the Flash, I see some fancily designed animated cruft with a bunch of buttons that may or may not lead to actual information. Much of text is at slightly random skewed angles, and there's no obvious place to find basic facts.

When I look a the Wikipedia article, on the other hand, I see no ads, no Flash, and some nicely formatted text, written to give quick answers, laid out in tidy sections, all using a standard format that I'm familiar with from a bunch of previous visits.

Other than that, no reason.

Re:Again with the Wikipedia!!

[dubl-u]

So your grumbling boils down to a) Flash and b) your comparative lack of familiarity with the Discovery Channel sites.

No, my point is that Wikipedia is easier to get information out of. That's because they understand that fancy design reduces utility. Further, their only reason for existence is to provide answers, whereas the Discovery Channel has different purposes, like promoting their show, reinforcing the fan base, and selling my attention to advertisers.

And suggesting that it's somehow more efficient to become familiar with every primary-source site on the web rather than just one? You can't expect to be taken seriously with statements like that, can you?

it is silly to use Wikipedia when there are better/more direct sources. Basic critical thinking skills will allow you to see that.

Basic critical thinking skills? Yes, please use them before posting. It will save us all some time.

More direct sources are very rarely better for a quick overview, which is why I have shelves of dictionaries, almanacs, concordances, indexes, encyclopedias, guides, maps, analyses, abstracts, and literature surveys. I also have plenty of primary sources, and go to them when needed. But the whole point of an encyclopedia, on-line or off-, is to make basic info more conveniently available than primary sources. Which is what 99% of people want as a starting point. If you don't, fine. Post your little link and move along.

Re:Again with the Wikipedia!!

[teh moges]

Weird, that's not what your wikipedia page says...

Re:Mike Rowe!

[Alexx K]

Actually, this guy is the TV narrator, and this guy was sued by Microsoft.

Finally

[redeye01]

Finally some recognition.
Dirty IT job No. 7: Legacy systems archaeologist WANTED: INDIVIDUALS FAMILIAR WITH 3270

#7 seems pretty sweet

[sokoban]

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.

Risking your life to test security

[MichaelCrawford]

I took a security course at Interop many years ago. The guy who taught the course worked on a "Tiger Team" that tested the security of White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. They only base employee who knew in advance was the base commander.

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.

Re:Risking your life to test security

[QuantumG]

Parachute eh? Why not just wait until there's an airshow at Holloman airforce base, which is right next door, and drive over to White Sands.. it's not like they have any real border security between the two. I know because I nearly accidentally drove the wrong way into White Sands last time I was at Holloman.. thankfully they do put up a nice big sign saying "WARNING: rockets being tested".

Mike Rowe?

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Would this then, be a description of Mike Rowe Soft?

Jus' wonderin'...

#0 dirtiest IT job

[freelunch]

Slashdot Dupe Checker.

Re:#0 dirtiest IT job

[halcyon1234]

Just a note for job-seekers: the above position is yet to be filled. Please drop off resumes at /dev/null.

The real list

[halcyon1234]

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

I don't think so...

[painandgreed]

...help desk zombie, but even lower on the totem pole, is the on-site reboot specialist...

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.

Re:I don't think so...

[painandgreed]

One of the first thing that any IT support person needs to know is that "USERS LIE". With people on the other end of the phone, they are certain there is some secret "fixed" button and if they stall and are a pain long enough, you'll tell them where it is so they make stuff up in an effort to speed things along. Sometimes, you even do tell them where the "fixed" button is (for their problem anyway) and they'll keep on lying because they don't recognise it as being the instructions for pushing the "fixed" button. They may not even know they are lying, but they still lie. Many times, they'll try and describe what is happening, and do so in a way that either offers no information or wrong information who actually knows what the terms they are using actually mean. Then there are the people who simply call the help desk but are still trying to solve the problem on their own. The number of times I've told people to click one button or open a window and not to do anything else, and could hear frantic typing over the phone drives is non-trivial. When I repeat "do not do anything" they'll tell me they aren't. Then when I ask them to do something like read the error message that appears or follow a set of steps that has to be done in order without doing anything else, they tell me to hold on and reboot the machine to return to the state I told them to get in. This in one of the main reasons help desk zombies want to get their hands on the machine, users lie and when the person who is actually trying to fix the machine can't see the machine and must rely upon a lier to tell them what is going in, it makes things really hard.

On the other side of things, the on-site reboot specialists have to deal with the users who give them no information and still expect results.

#2 isn't dirty in the least

[nurb432]

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.

Left out Multi-Level Marketing

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Chemical Plant

[enigmastrat]

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.

Who are they talking about?

[ScrewMaster]

The Dirty Jobs of IT

Is that you, Steve?

Something wrong with that

[octogen]

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.