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Staying Current In a Small Office Environment?
MyLongNickName writes "Less than a month ago I took a position at a smaller firm (around 50 employees) as an IT Manager. As you might expect from the size of the company, I oversee quite a variety of tasks. I come from a background of computer programming, and am definitely not a master of every function. We rely on third-party solutions providers for areas like our networking, web hosting, phone systems, etc. I am used to working in a larger environment with a large IT staff (and not just because of super sizing at McDonald's). Just the daily rubbing elbows allowed me to stay current in areas that I did not directly touch. And when I had a question, I personally knew someone who could answer my question. I am not in that environment now. How do I stay current? I don't want to be a master of every technology, but I want to be aware of trends in the industry. I want to not depend on one contractor advising me."
that's how I stay current.
"The Most Fun Possible on 4 wheels" is at SunBuggy in Las Vegas
At least, thats how I would do it. Look into joining one or two professional IT associations that deal with your 'area' of concern and network a lot.
With fewer people at work to 'leech' off of, you will need to spend more time out of work keeping those skills up. That means more effort on your part, and an actual drive to keep up the pace.
RSS. Seriously, get feeds from everything you deem relevant, apply some filters, and go to town. There's really no better way to get convenient access to information you want without having specialists at your side.
Here are a few things that have helped me out:
Hope this helps!
Carousel is a lie!
and keep reading/commenting on tech related sites like this. The networking group is easy to find in any metro area with some Googling. Another oft overlooked method in this day and age is the good ol' subscription to a magazine. (eWeek and NetworkWorld are free and tend to follow the new buzzwords well enough. Currently you can read about cloud computing and speculation on Semantic web stuff)
In all honesty, you simply wanting to keep up-to-date is going to be enough. If you are interested in the subject matter to begin with, then you often find you keep up to speed with out making the _specific_ effort.
Invexi - a Phoenix, AZ based web design and web development company.
You'll also stay current in supercomputing, RIAA tactics, IP infringement, Video Games, Astronomy, Physics, Puzzles, and *nix flamewars. You might not, however, stay current on your workload.
1) Networking with others is key. Try to maintain contact as much as possible with people at your old firm, especially anyone who is more technically inclined and is willing to answer questions. It's also a good way to find out what the new trends are and whether they are just flash-in-the-pan. That's one of the areas that I failed in when I moved from a really large company to the small company that I work for now. Which means that I've had to do a lot of the research myself.
2) Don't be afraid to cry "Uncle!" and hire someone on a short-term basis. Make sure that they show you their work so you can understand what they did. Black box systems are a no-no, as are consultants or support people who prefer to make their changes behind a curtain. As much as you may not want to be master of everything, in a smaller company you really need to become a jack-of-all-trades. Or at least be proficient enough to know when the staff or contact workers are blowing smoke up your ass.
3) Unless you absolutely hate reading (if so - you may be in the wrong job), try to read at least one technical book per month. And/Or take at least one 4 hour class per quarter. It keeps you in the game mentally and keeps you from ending up in a dead-end because you let all your skills get rusty. However you choose to do it - continuing education is key if you want to be self-reliant to a large degree.
I started working at my current firm about 8 years ago (and telecommuted for the first 7 years). There are still a few parts of the operation that aren't under my control (the PBX), but otherwise I have my finger on the pulse of everything else. I do a lot of experimenting on the side (it took 2 years for us to put Linux into production use). I work crazy hours some weeks. But, on the flip side, because it's a small company - I can set my own schedule to a very large degree. I'll gladly take flexibility, very little politics (I speak directly to the CEO and have the power to make purchases/decisions), and goal-oriented environment (make it work - keep the clients happy) and lower salary over being paid big bucks at a big firm.
The biggest tools that help me keep my sanity:
1) Nagios - or any other monitoring system. Knowing that something is broken before anyone else notices is a big advantage. You get a reputation for keeping the ship running smoothly without people having to scream to get something fixed. A lot of the people will think that you're psychic at times.
2) Wiki or Version Control System for internal documentation of systems. Network maps, rack layouts, what cable goes where on the back of a rack, pictures of equipment, etc. are very important. There are a lot of times where I've pulled up pictures of equipment in order to walk a regular employee at the office through restarting something (instead of having to drive in - or wait for a technical employee to be there). Get a good, small camera, and take lots of photos. Scratch notes on the back of a napkin and scan those in. Just have some sort of central location where your staff can look for information. I call it "just in case I (or you) get hit by a bus" documentation.
3) Automatic configuration change tracking. You can do this by hand, trying to track changes on an internal blog or a spreadsheet, or a text file, but automated tools are better. If you run Linux servers, use something like FSVS to shove all of your configuration files into a Subversion repository. That way, you can go back and look at what changes were made to the server along with why they were made. You can also do things like using rsync or looking through old backups, but I prefer to use an actual version control system designed for the purpose. Get your staff in the habit of using the tool when they make changes.
Wolde you bothe eate your cake, and have your cake?
I agree, I do however think they have got a bit more sensationalist - but I think that is more experience in Slashdot and in the field of CS and knowledge of the subject matter then what is really meant to be there. So my issue not Slashdot's. Slashdot is a wonder of info for anyone seeking technical knowledge. Just learn to avoid the obvious flame pits of religion, politics and dichotomy wars (vi/emacs, gnome/KDE, etc.) - oh and learn to read a troll for what it is rather than it being a different position and you will be fine. The amount of sheer knowledge and experience here in many fields is an awesome thing to draw upon.
:) - - Sera
Nice to see a low UID say it though.
Slashdot, where armchair scientists get shouted down and armchair theologians get modded up.
I'm in much the same position, but I don't see my goal so much as keeping current, as becoming as knowledgeable as possible about the software and hardware that I have to oversee. I could care less what Yahoo! is trading at. There's security news to keep up on but we don't run any outside services, so I find that my time is better spent digging deeper into GPOs, deploying software and whatnot.
Learn as much as you can stomach about networks. Just grab one of the certification course books, like for the CCNA. You have to keep up-to-date with hardware and OS because things will change, but hopefully not too quickly, and the nice thing about being in charge of IT, is those changes happen through you.
Political though it may be, Thurrott's supersite has good info a lot of the time.
You are living in an age of free, universally available information. There is almost literally no limit to how much useful, free information is out there, and the most prevalent type of information is typically on computing - software and hardware.
If you've gotten this far in your career without realizing this little fact, I'd be a bit concerned about your intellectual vitality if I were your employer. Being able to shoot ideas off fellow employees is one thing; having to rely on them to keep your knowledge up-to-par is another.
Granted, it depends on the type of information you're after, and to what depth you want, but there is not going to be a golden spoon for getting Manager-approved sound bite knowledge - and that appears to be what you're after.
Just as programmers will have to spend hours of their day pouring over interface documentation, so will you have to do as an IT administrator. You will have to demonstrate a curiosity in how things work, and when you come upon something which is foreign, look it up. There are dozens of Internet-published tech rags with information, if you're looking for something only roughly instructive, and Wikipedia is an awesome resource if you're trying to get a high-level understanding of what something is and how it works. Then, you'll have enough information to dig deeper.
You'd be surprised how many hours you'll save simply by googling something relatively simple - like installing Windows 2003 on an HP low-end Opteron server. It'll point out shortcomings and problems which would take you, the tech guy, hours to figure out on your own on aggregate. Time spent reading documentation more than makes up for time lost trying to figure out esoteric problems.
Hell, then there's just the simple google search. No, they won't all yield results you'll want to use; you might spend an hour or two just digging for a snippet of information, but you'll learn a lot about the extenuating circumstances in the process. A quick google search is often one of the best ways to quickly determine whether a certain course of action is a bad idea - not a good idea, but a bad idea, as people are likely to bitch if something doesn't work properly or if something is inherently shitty. Though, sometimes, something is so bad that nobody uses it.
And, of course, this is Slashdot... spend an hour or so on here every week reading comments on pertinent threads, and you'll pick up on a lot of "peer knowledge". Of course, it won't all be correct - but then, you'll run into that with coworkers, too.
I'd have thought anyone in IT would've figured this shit out by their freshman year of high school, or at least, by the end of the freshman university year.
Maybe sysadmin duties are a lot more divergent than programming duties and knowledge than I'd thought, but either way, you've got quite a bit of reading ahead of you!
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers