Slashdot Mirror
Tech's 10 Worst Entry-Level Jobs
Nicholas Carlson writes "These employers (Amazon, Google, Yahoo, etc), and the others hiring for tech's 10 worst entry-level jobs will look good on a resume someday, but for now the only good these jobs promise the world is the pleasant feeling you and I can share knowing we're not the ones stuck in them." The story is really obnoxiously laid out, requiring many many clicks to read very little actual content. Perhaps Valleywag could afford to hire another of tech's worst jobs: the web designer.
So, if it sucks so bad, why did he submit it and why did it make it to the front page?
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
That job is so easy to automate. Even with dialout, upload, check script, etc. Man, what a bomb.
Conversion Rate Optimisation French / English consultant
I'd have to say that's not the worst entry-level job in tech by a long shot, ever since I started working in the wonderful area of, wait a minute some guy had to restart his DSL modem and needed me to hold his hand, tech support.
Seriously, working in tech support is about as low as it gets, you're expected to have college-level skills while everyone assumes you're some high school dropout who is barely capable of reading and writing, the pay is horrible and very few people really appreciate the work you do (most of the time the first thing you hear after helping someone fix a problem is "...and how are you going to compensate me for this?").
/Mikael
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
I think the point here was that it's about "crap entry level jobs at well known big IT companies". Having Google on your resume is an asset. Your job, while absolutely sucky was not at a high-profile IT company.
$70k\year for an entry-level position? How is that a 'bad job', exactly, whatever the actual work is?
Suddenly a no-name site with BAD content starts getting a ton of front page articles == paid slashvertisement.
Boycott. For great justice.
Uhhh... Yeah, that's pretty much how it is.
Imagine it the other way around, though; There have been many times where I have been on the phone to somebody like yourself, having already performed ALL of the troubleshooting tips you'll go through (having done them at least three times before on seperate calls), yet you still WILL NOT proceed with escalating a call until you've been through them ONE MORE TIME to make sure we've done it right.
Too damn right you get a mouth full, you insensitive clod!
Finally had enough. Come see us over at https://soylentnews.org/
Here's my take from back when I was in IT.
Developing software can be really interesting, cool, challenging, stimulating, etc... but when the project it done, they really don't need you anymore - unless you work for a software firm. Even if it's a large company with a shitload of projects, eventually they'll be done. With the current trend of buying canned software and integrating (usually done by the canned software co.) there's less opportunity for he hard core developer.
Support, DBA, and other admin type of jobs.
Ghetto indeed! There' always something to be done and some of the scripts I've seen from you admins can rival much software I've seen. And if I could do it all over again, I would be going for an admin job/career. Why? Because there's a bigger demand for them and you're more likely to have a job. I learned the hard way that it's more important to have a steady job than to be chasing after the highest rate and the coolest project. Well, maybe in the beginning I would do that, but definitely later on, I'd switch to the steady stuff. And, invest my money a bit beter - save, save, save!
Just this old fart's $0.5.
I'm wondering if they'd be working in Seattle.
Since when is $80K an "entry level job" in this industry?
And when is being a SysAdmin an "entry level job"?
Who writes that crap?
Seriously, what a bunch of wimps. News flash to all youngsters: yes, you may dream of running your own mega-billion dollar tech company, or coding for websites from your beach house in St. Barts, or covering Hollywood celebrities in your hot-item-of-the-moment blog, but it most likely ain't gonna happen.
What's so bad about most of these jobs? Sure, they all look kind of mundane and I wouldn't want to do them for 50 years, but when did we start thinking that every job was supposed to be so fun, fun, FUN! I realize this may sound a bit like a "get of my lawn" post, but the biggest fantasy we've hoisted onto young people is making them think that work is supposed to be glamorous and the be all/end all of life.
I'm lucky enough to be in a job that I enjoy very much, but at the end of the day I realize that it's a JOB and that if for whatever reason I have to work on some projects that are a little mundane or boring it's no big deal.
The worst job has to be the one you can't escape. You can't make nearly as much money elsewhere but you have no chance of advancement where you are.
The guy who fixes our computers has been with us for about ten years. He got the idea that he should upgrade his education. He got a BComm. It cost a lot and it was hard work. The trouble is that he has no administrative experience so our mutual employer won't promote him to anything where he can use the degree. His only option is to quit and take an entry level position elsewhere. The trouble is that he can't afford to take a cut in pay.
That has to be the worst job. Look up 'wage slave' in the dictionary and you see buddy's face.
That never made sense to me. Assuming what we've learned from running tech support (almost all my knowledge of this comes from /. as I've never called them), they keep notes on respective customers, like whether or not they're a douchebag idiot. How hard would it be to agree to a quick and easy ten point scale rating? That way, when a customer calls up, you can quickly see whether or not she's a senile and foul-mouthed octogenarian or a fairly bright kid who tried recommended practices first before calling in?
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
Yeah, see the thing is that even though I'm not just some script-monkey I still need to check certain things with the customer and I can honestly say that any customer who knows what he/she is doing shouldn't need more than a few minutes to go through all the things I need him/her to check.
If I don't check these things before sending off a ticket then the 3rd line techs send it back to me with a note to contact the customer and get the necessary info (plus a comment about always getting all relevant info)...
Can't really type now, some guy has managed to mangle the settings for his DSL modem's built-in WAP and I need to guide him through setting everything up again... Somehow he thinks it's related to his browser proxy settings... *sigh*
/Mikael
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
No, instead you get to agonize over which font the text should be in.
I'll keep my nice clean text, thanks.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Actually, none of them were that bad. One of them started at $80,000/y. It seemed more like he picked a random sample of 12 entry level jobs a few months ago, took pictures of the associated workspaces and is now looking to get four articles on Slashdot (some of these already made it): 10 Best Workspaces in IT, 10 Worst Workspaces in IT; Ten Worst Entry-Level IT Jobs; and Ten Best Entry-Level IT Jobs--all from the same 12 jobs.
This sounds awful close to the standard Slashdot business model.
The quality of the job is really how you approach it.
Often Tech Support jobs are hated by college grads because they feel the work is really below them, in many ways it is. But if you put that asside and focus on making peoples lives a bit easier then the job would be less of a pain, and letting the angry insults roll off your back.
Or you can be a software developer on actually a very exciting project but you tend to focus on the mononoty and your ideas that got rejected, making working on the project just mizerable. Vs. exciting if you focus on the interesting bits and the ideas that you contributed and got approved.
It is often the mindset of the job that makes it good or bad. Yes managers and corporate culture can effect your mindset as well. And just staying happy with your job isn't really an option. But it is not always the job itself but what you make of it.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
A level 3 tech's time is much more costly to the company than a L1's or even a L2's. It's like a pyramid. Lots of L1 techs to screen out the reboot-will-fix-it-for-now callers, some L2 techs to gather the information for the L3 and possibly script monkey away the problem and avoid escalating to L3 and then just a handful of L3 techs that handle the few calls that get through to them.
Toss in draconian call metric systems, skeleton crews and call volumes that burn out your L1 and L2 techs before they start getting raises and you've got a system that favors not promoting customers up the chain if at all possible.
Another thing to remember: when you call in you are bothering the other person on the other end as well. They really don't want to talk to you. They will make you share in the suffering. If the L2 techs can find a way to keep you in L1 hell, they will. L3 does the same.
I'm amazed that we haven't had enough incidents yet to coin the phrase "going tech support". Hitler and Stalin don't have anything on the average L2 tech when it comes to malevolence and a burning desire to rid the world of all life in the cruelest, most painful ways possible.
I do technical support for cell phones and BlackBerrys. Although I try to get a feel for each person's competency and react accordingly, it does happen that a competent-sounding person has overlooked something obvious. Better safe than sorry, I say, if the basic troubleshooting is pretty quick to do. It's embarrassing to escalate something and find out that it was a no-brainer after all.
I do get callers who are in charge of setting up other people's devices, and when I hear from them multiple times, I start trusting that they know what they're doing.
One thing's for sure, though: I don't just talk like a robot through some script. I'm a human who likes helping humans.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
Lying through their teeth, or simply not understanding or communicating the same things you were? I can't think of the first reason somebody who makes the effort to call a support center would need to lie about anything. Very curious indeed.
You win, but your cyberchicken job sounds like a great story to talk about your skills and adaptability when you're looking for a new job.
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
"...USDA inspectors who walked about with permanent anal cramps.."
Exactly how I like my food inspectors.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
It not really either lying or understanding. Many times the customer calling in believes that they automatically know more than you, since you're just a "script reading monkey." Once armed with this belief, they ignore everything you say and insist that their diagnosis must be correct, even when its absolutely bollocks.
We all know what to do, but we don't know how to get re-elected once we have done it
WooHoo! Invoking Godwin's law less than 15 comments deep in the discussion!
Come on Cmdr Taco, you even pointed out that the article is nearly impossible to navigate, and most of the /. comments have shown how stupid the content is. Is it that slow of a day that you have to post stories you know are crap?
No, a dial-up modem is not really a network connection in the ad-hoc sense that these systems were probably using. At least to me a "network" involves two (arguably three) or more identifiable and addressable nodes and a dialup connection fails on both.
There's no identification mechanism on either side (IP address, machine name, etc) of a point to point (not PPP) dialup connection you either initiate or answer and once the handshake is complete there's no further distinction between the two nodes. There's no addressing mechanism either, you just pump stuff out your serial port and the other side gets it nor not, you may never know unless you were running a specialized transfer app/protocol like Kermit or X/Y/Zmodem. In fact you can't even tell if there is "another side" sometimes you may just be sending to the bit bucket.
Article X: The powers not delegated... by the Constitution...are reserved...to the people
Simply restarting anything never solves the problem. It only potentially provides a crude work-around.
Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.
Want to know the most important skill that helped me move from skilled computer hack (as in 'hack job', not hacker) to professional software engineer (and a happy one at that)?
Looking without seeing. I don't see the actual contents anymore - salaries, names, numbers, cause of death, how the fire started, child abusers, IRS cheaters, executive emails discussing layoffs - none of it. I see the code. I see the machines. I see whether the application talks to the database via ODBC or not. I see that the printer is printing, and the queues are moving. But I don't even glom the contents of the data - haven't for years.
Some stuff, I'm much happier (and safer) not knowing. I highly recommend it.
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
See, you make my point exactly. What you are calling a lie, is not a lie. He is telling you something that is factually incorrect, making your job harder to accomplish. A misunderstanding, regardless of who's not understanding correctly is not a lie. I get a little suspicious when people start throwing the "lie" tag around, because if you stop and think about it, what does a user have to gain by lying during a tech support call?