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The Dirtiest Jobs in IT
snydeq writes "Carcasses, garter belts, anthrax — there is no end to nasty when it comes to working in IT, as the fourth installment of InfoWorld's Dirty IT Jobs series proves. From the systems sanitation engineer, to the human server rack, surviving in today's IT job market often means thriving in difficult conditions, including standing in two feet of water holding a plugged-in server or finding yourself in a sniper's crosshairs while attempting to install a communications link." In case you missed them, here are the first three parts.
A few years ago I was really actively working on porn industry, but against common believe it's not really that dirty. Well, for the women maybe. But otherwise it's really professional and actually a fun industry to work on.
why would you quit? sounds much better than working in my cubical farm.
Without porn there would be no internet. Porn companies did a lot for www in the beginning. They pioneered videos and HD and a lot more stuff.
Maybe it WAS a cube farm and it made porno boring and repetitive...
I once arrived at work super early, and caught a cleaner whacking off to a porn site in my office. I don't think it's possible to feel as dirty as staring down at your keyboard/mouse realising that you've been using that for weeks. Ugh. Obviously they went straight in the bin.... (and the cleaner was sacked on the spot)
Maybe it WAS a cube farm and it made porno boring and repetitive...
dunno if it was boring, quite sure it was repetitive :)
Depending on the industry where this happened (such as healthcare) leaving a terminal available for a cleaner to access would also be a sackable offense.
Actually, it sounds like your keyboard was what received the sacking
This story just goes to illustrate that even "dirty" incidents (not so much jobs, InfoWorld is reaching a bit for sensationalism, imagine that) in IT are really not all that dirty in the same way the rest of the workforce understands "dirty".
I hate articles formatted like that, why do I need to click 7 or 8 times to read one article? Put it all on one page super jags.
Your leave everything accessible to the cleaners? No passwords on the computers?
Do you also leave the bank account information and online banking passwords written on a whiteboard for them to view?
Worked in a server room in a basement that was on a heavily wooded property, spiders, salamanders and moles weren't uncommon. I got bit in the head by a Hobo Spider, necrotic tissue and nerve damage ensued.
You wouldn't believe the carpal tunnel claims...
Garbage collector.
I can see you have a mastery of the English language. No doubt a requirement to work in such a "professional" industry.
Your mind will be turned into mush in just a month. Hunting backups in Fukushima suddently looks like a healthier alternative.
Could it get any worse than astro-turfing for InfoWorld? Probably not. Maybe if it became common knowledge that InfoWorld actually pays Slashdot for placing his astro-turf slashvertisements...?
Ya, um, maybe you've watched a bit too much TV, but in order to get access to someones personal data you need MORE then a keyboard. Who's to say the cleaning staff wasn't logged on as a guest account on the machine?
It's quite common in some industry's, FYI, to have the cleaning staff required to pass a certain level of security clearance.
But hey, one guy's funny anecdote is enough information for you to blindly ramble on like you know everything, so feel free to continue.
Actually, they missed one: Content Examiner - okay, so I don't know the exact title these folks had - but a friend who used to work at PhotoBucket told me about these poor saps - basically their job was to spend all day examining all content uploaded into the network to ensure it wasn't porn, child porn, death porn, porn, Etc.
Apparently the burn rate was 2 months per person, max. No mental health services provided - these were temps they were "using" for this - as for what the long term effects are of this crap, well, start trolling...
This reminds me of the worlds unluckiest computer shop on http://stimie.net/
Who said that the cleaner was logged in as GP? Any of my coworkers can log into my PC, and I can log into any of theirs. Since so many things are tied into having a user ID and password (payroll for one), I wouldn't be surprised if the cleaning crew have logins as well.
On a related note, FriendFinder Networks is filing for an IPO.
Dealt with a couple of interview candidates who had worked there (they apparently use Perl). I don't think any of them really appreciated the time they spent there, though.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
The worst IT job I ever had was with Jayne Mansfield. You know, she was a fantastic bird, you know ..... big tits, huge bum, and everything like that, but I had the terrible job of retrieving routers from her bum. Bloody hell, that was a task. Well, it was quite a task 'cause she had a big bum ... But I had to, used to go round, you know, of an evening ... when Jayne was sleeping or sort of comatose, like, you know, you know, just lying there, and, er, I had to retrieve these routers from her arsehole.
(and if any of you get that ref, you're a very sick person)
try getting bit by a hobo sapiens! rrrrawwr!
Roger from American Dad, or Paul Lynde?
Not everyone's first language is English.
Sure it is, you just have to speak slower and louder to jog their memory. ;)
They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it's not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance. - Terry Pratchett
No it would not unless he was in charge of security. All the pc's would lock on inactivity and require credentials to get back in. It is possible that the cleaner had credentials since for instance at my hospital every employee has an id and password that can be used to log in from any computer attached to our network. They are not even supposed to be shut down at night because they need to receive updates.
I notice on slashdot that a lot of people have misconceptions about how hospital networks actually function and also how HIPPA/HITECH is actually satisfied. Let me put it this way. If you are not in the healthcare industry and you are about to make a post that some lapse in security is a sackable offence in a hospital environment 99% of the time you are outright dead wrong and look like a moron for saying so.
I hate to break it to you, but the internet existed long before any porn dollars started rolling in. The internet may not exist as it does today without porn, but it would certainly exist.
"But this one goes to 11!"
I don't know why you got modded down... this is entirely valid.
I used to work for an extremely large organization that authenticated on Active Directory, and did not place any permission restrictions on what workstations were used. Anyone with a valid AD account could log into any workstations, and able to access whatever resources that their particular profile had access too, regardless of workstation. Many used roaming profiles and some worked on multiple sites, so it was even more insignificant which workstation they actually used.
Garbage collection?
It is common in a lot of smaller to midsize companies that a dedicated cleaning guy/group or janitors (not a rent-a-cleaner) have their own e-mail address and can subsequently logon to the computers at work even if it's just to see special tasks (clean up the break room before a meeting) or log their time.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
"IT - Have you tried turning it off and on again?"
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
http://xkcd.com/705/
Was that wrong? Should I not have done that? I tell you, I gotta plead ignorence on this thing, because if anyone had said anything to me at all when I first started here that that sort of thing is frowned upon... you know, cause I've worked in a lot of offices, and I tell you, people do that all the time.
Leaving guest accounts enabled should be a sacking offense for whoever is responsible for that piece of configuration.
I once interviewed for a job at a sex toy making place. They needed an IT guy for backups, as well as making sure the systems that popped out the dildos were going, and to call service if one of the plastic mold machines had issues that were of more than dropping pellets in the feed bin and such.
The funny thing is that the place had actual R&D. They wanted to make USB rechargeable vibrators, but were concerned about safety, so they were sticking with the tried and true "D" cells, until they could find a decent way of having a decent battery pack that was up to their safety standards (which obviously included complete immersion in liquids.) I think they were last experimenting with induction charging, like how older electric toothbrushes were charged.
gotta be working for Mike Rowe Soft !
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
I work in the same industry. I love it.
Now, I don't actually see much of the content. What I like is the equipment we get, the vendors we deal with.
We commonly test top-tier equipment for companies like Cisco and Foundry.
We have multiple GB fiber lines going across the Pacific and Atlantic.
We have people trying to blackmail and extort money out of us all the time, threating DDoS attacks and trying to hack the systems.
We get all manner of attacks 24/7. Keeps us on our toes and it never gets boring.
The fun is that we are also not as structured as larger companies.
So when it comes to things like creating new storage solutions, servers, databases, we still have the fun of being able to try new things.
Oh, and then there is producing your own content, getting the equipment to edit and encode the content for various systems.
Doing things like InfiniBand and CUDA for faster transcoding.
For some of the geeks here, our hardware and technology is better then the content.
OMG someone please mod this up bigtime!
"I'm taking this loop off." - Jack O'Neill
why? for your industry sure, for my industry absolutely, but for some it might make sense to have a generic, limited access account setup on some systems - it depends on many factors that neither you nor I could even guess at.
I notice you said "leaving guest accounts enabled" I assume you were assuming I was talking about the ones in Windows? I hope not...
Oh God, is that myth STILL going around? Next you will tell us (wrongly) that they are the reason that VHS beat Beta.
I hate to break it to you, but the internet existed long before any porn dollars started rolling in. The internet may not exist as it does today without porn, but it would certainly exist.
First, he specified the Web and not the entire Internet. Also, regarding the Web, he didn't claim they invented HTTP. Relax.
Now for what he actually did claim: what part of his specific mention of things like HD videos was difficult to understand? If you want to argue against him then make your claim that the porn industry did not pioneer HD video and streaming video in general. Responding to claims that were never made just makes you look foolish.
I sure wish you guys would work on your reading comprehension issues prior to posting. It would dramatically improve the signal-to-noise ratio.
Well yeah, that's what usually happens when you know nothing about a subject and for some reason still insist on forming strong opinions about it.
That doesn't seem to stop anyone, though. I guess they think if they just have enough passion it will make up for being factually wrong, somehow.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Hey! You said 'porn' twice.
Without porn there would be no internet.
I said:
the internet existed long before any porn dollars started rolling in
You said:
First, he specified the Web and not the entire Internet
Also note I did not refute or contradict his claim entirely, I only modified it to make it more accurate. I have no doubt porn has shaped the way the internet is today, yet still stand by my original statements
I sure wish you anonymous cowards would work on your reading comprehension issues prior to posting. It would dramatically improve the signal-to-noise ratio.
"But this one goes to 11!"
Remember, the road of high technology is paved mainly by young single people with tons of disposable income. (Do a mental inventory of all the 'cool electronics' your parents own. Yep, it all dates before you, except maybe for the TV.)
Remember that magical point in time somewhere around the Geforce 2 era when it was more important to upgrade the video card, and the processor didn't really matter? Gee, I wonder why today's video cards are far more advanced than today's processors?
The real path to male liberation
Al Gore invented the Internet to relieve his Chakra.
Is that a bunch of flying croc?
-- I have a private email server in my basement.
Sir, I've been waiting patiently for 3 weeks to get an IP address for my equipment. Could you please get off your worry-free, lapse-proof ass and actually do something?
Signed, The Rest Of Us At The Hospital
The real path to male liberation
They didnt made the internet. Just the part that went from www to xxx.
I bet the cleaner was embarrassed to be caught out too. How long had she been working there?
Ok, I admit it.. I loll'ed.
Gore worked on the bills that allowed the commercialization of the internet. So he was partially responsible for the 'net as we know it now. He never said he invented the internet. When will that myth end?
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
Sounds like he already 'sacked' himself. Repeatedly.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
>I notice on slashdot that a lot of people have misconceptions about how hospital networks actually function and also how HIPPA
Before you start waving your dick around and criticizing the average Slashdotter's knowledge of healthcare IT, please learn how many P's are in the acronym for "Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996"
gawd.
you gave me a boner just talking about this stuff.
Remember that magical point in time somewhere around the Geforce 2 era when it was more important to upgrade the video card, and the processor didn't really matter? Gee, I wonder why today's video cards are far more advanced than today's processors?
They aren't, they just do the same things over an over again and really easy to design the hardware in parallel. You still need a CPU to setup and throw data and instructions at it at it because comparatively speaking the GPU is inflexible and dumb.
I wish I was actively working IN the porn industry too. I will get paid, get to work as a professional, and it will really be for fun for my di.. , i mean me.
Dude, he was just cleaning himself out!
Obviously they went straight in the bin.... (and the cleaner was sacked on the spot)
I don't understand this need to be super-serious about trivial matters. No need to give the guy a pink slip. Have a laugh, then forget about it.
My dad once owned a company. When working late, he caught one department head fucking the cleaning lady. Did you think he sacked the guy? Hell, no. Just laughed and asked him to turn off the lights when they'd leave the office.
8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?
Never. Republicans need something to make themselves feel good and feel that Democrats are dumber.
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
While the internet wasn't invented yet and the keyboards for word processors were twice the size of those today, I was an engineer in charge of "the chain". That's the various mechanical rail lines that carry the various parts of the slaughtered animal to be processed. Two of my buddies were in charge of the cheek and tongue station, where they had to cut the cheek meat and tongue from the cow's head as it passed by them on hooks, and a morbid lot they were.
And no, you never get used to the smell. It stays with you hours after you leave and assaults you two miles away as you go back to work the next day.
I can't imagine running a server room 10 miles within that environment....and yes, I remain an unrepentant carvivore.
Been there, done that. I've spent shifts sitting on top in a large dairy barn programming the controller for the cleaning system (a system of chains on tracks that drag th $@#% through the barn to a large piston pump that pushs it out to a holding tank. The control wasn't fancy, but my client was installing a new automated system that involved sensors at various points, and since there were multiple chain loops, timing became a major issue, that took several days to calibrate. Working on a custom designed grain mixer for the same dairy operation was actually even worse. Dealing with the feed involved a lot of dust, while the excrement just sat there, unless the motors were causing it to be moved. THe worst machine I've ever seen was a PC controlling a CNC machine in a wood shop. The sawdust wasn't that dirty compared to other places I've worked in, but that PC should have been sent to the DELL marketing department to promote the durability of their machines. I actually opened it up to install a NIC, but it turned into a huge job cleaning out the sawdust that was basically PACKED into the machine. the fans were struggling to turn, and not moving any air in any useful direction. Then there have been cable runs for the sewage treatment plant, which can only be described as a shitty job. I worked at on site where we were moving the patch pannels to a centralized location, and I looked like a coal miner at the end of every shift there. Can't complain too much though, I chose to do general IT contracting in a rural area instead of taking a nice desk job in the city. It gives me the freedom to live on a farm without a horrible commute, and I have flexible hours, and interesting challenges.
It was on a university network, so anyone with a valid ID could login to the terminal. I never left my PC logged in for fear of students accessing grades!
As soon as Al Gore invents a time machine to go back and stop aggrandizing his petty accomplishments.
Is Windows still doing the "copy the entire profile over the network" thing when you log in at someone else's computer? And then copy it again when you log in at yet another?
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
I lose a bit of accuracy on every post, but make it up in volume.
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
The reason for guest accounts in the first place is to not have people logging into other people's accounts or using them.
Example: a customer, a vendor, salesman, whatever says "can I use your computer to check my gmail?" Probably 90% of the people out there aren't going to say no.
So you let him use your computer. And then while he uses it, you have to babysit him. And stand over him. Otherwise, you just gave him full access to the network.
The alternative is to enable guest accounts.
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
FFS people it's a joke!!! Jesus it seems the number of people who really do take things so serious on here increases by the week. Personally I would have give the guy a hand rather than bin the keyboard.