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Even Dirtier IT Jobs

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the summon-mike-rowe dept.

snydeq writes "InfoWorld's Dan Tynan offers up 7 'even dirtier IT jobs' in a follow-up of last year's 7 dirtiest jobs in IT. Number four? Zombie console monkey. 'Wanted: Individuals with low self-esteem and high boredom threshold willing to spend long hours poring over server logs and watching blinking lights on a network console.'"

6 of 175 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Based on how fast that burned by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    One-page link.

  2. Running Infoworld's web server by David+Gerard · · Score: 2, Informative

    Taken "offline for maintenance", i.e. applying a plunger to it after it got Slashdotted.

    This is what they get for spreading a story over eight pages.

    --
    http://rocknerd.co.uk
  3. Re:Bad jobs? Maybe. But some people will take them by iamacat · · Score: 3, Informative

    So are you saying that your only alternative to naked, starving and illiterate kids is a night shift job as bestiality porn site QA engineer? I think most people have more pleasant, even though lower-paying choices. I just looked at my kid's eyes and I think, if it comes to that, she needs a sane dad more than XBOX360 or a 4 bedroom house.

  4. Re:ironic... by twokay · · Score: 4, Informative

    Or just link to the printable version of the article in question (where possible), to save the 8 extra hits to their server to read the whole thing. Although... maybe that's their problem.

    --
    Wannabe nerd.
  5. Re:ironic... by sa1lnr · · Score: 5, Informative

    Already done.

    https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2175

  6. Re:Bad jobs? Maybe. But some people will take them by Mr2cents · · Score: 3, Informative

    And paradoxically, it seems to be difficult to get a job when you're unemployed. When I didn't have a job I felt like I was begging for a chance, so I got a job at an cable company/ISP helpdesk. Five months later I got a job as an embedded software engineer (what I was looking for).

    It was a pretty lousy job, when I came home I felt completely empty. You get verbal abuse, everything from people who don't know the first thing about computers, all the way to undisguisable idiots. Still, I can advise everyone to do it for a while. You get a lot of people skills, and you get a lot of direct feedback from people struggling with technology. This is invaluable when you start developing these things yourself, as your mental image of the end-user is is less self-centered. It has helped me staying very alert about intuitivity and consistent mental models.

    PS: the verbal abuse was sporadic. People call for help, and most of them seem to be aware that yelling first and then asking "can you help me?" isn't very productive. If you really want to thicken your skin, get a job at the payments helpdesk, not the technical one. If you can help them, you also receive a lot of gratitude.

    --
    "It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey