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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.
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.
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".
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.
yup, the splash ad to start, then the giant scroll down ad... both of which I clicked close before I saw who was being advertised. Then , select the print link to place all the content in one place. Done. You dont need to click through 7 or 8 times, but 3 if you know what to expect is still a bit much.
You wouldn't believe the carpal tunnel claims...
Your mind will be turned into mush in just a month. Hunting backups in Fukushima suddently looks like a healthier alternative.
One page print version
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.
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.
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
Dirtiest IT Job: Working for Infoworld coding scripts to split articles into several pages.
English is not this
My God! It's full of Arse!
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
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.
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/
Cleaning filters?
--
To invent you need a good junk and a pile of imagination. T. Ed Sun.
Zing!
Personally my worst job was working on a dairy farm. This is going back oh 10 years or so. So dealing with modern to ancient equipment(including a 8088), a mix of various network protocols, different types of cabling(the mishmash of coax and ethernet was fun along with the super corroded terminators - no touchie they were rotted, and so was the cable), switches which had never been powered off. UPS cabinets on a 480v line, and of course the step-up transformer sitting next to it with bare unshielded connectors(none of which had been tested since their install).
I'm honestly surprised the entire place didn't catch fire, and take the 8000 head of cattle with it. Oh and of course then there was the automatic feed, watering and nutrient injection system which was run off this really old 386sx. I swear it had been hit by lightening. The inside of the case looked like rats, mice, voles, and spiders had been breeding in it. They probably had been. Followed by the open ended 100ft run of cabling between one building and the other. Which rats had gotten into and chewed through both the coax, and ethernet. Man was that ever fun to re-run.
Om, nomnomnom...
Leaving guest accounts enabled should be a sacking offense for whoever is responsible for that piece of configuration.
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
Hum... wasn't the original quote with something like crabs? or lobsters maybe?
D&C, yep, quite sick...
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...
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
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
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.
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"
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.
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
I'm confused: You seem to be thinking as "coax" as being somewhat different from "ethernet," when the former term usually means "10base2," which the latter ("ethernet," or 802.3) encompasses.
[/pedant]
I'll attempt to meet your agricultural horror story with one of my own, though: Radio communications gear on a grain elevator.
Everything is covered in muck, inside and out: It is literally filled with flour (be it from corn, beans, or wheat), which has been degenerated by ambient moisture, insects, and time.
If the gear needs fan cooling to survive, forget it: Filtering the air is a non-starter because it would be a never-ending maintenance disaster, and complex HVAC systems aren't usually allowed by the owner due to the (perfectly rational) fear of explosion from sparks...and systems which would successfully mitigate that fear are both too expensive, and too big.
And, of course, using fan cooling but not filtering the air at all would cause rapid failure, as the gear itself would become the filter.
Simple, enclosed cabinets don't work, because things get hot in the summertime, and the lack of airflow causes failure in a hurry.
The best solution is open, 2-post racks, with passive convection cooling, a lot of muck, and occasional failures (which are tolerable in this application).
I still ponder how it is, exactly, that rodents are able to survive on top of a 200' grain elevator.
But, dude: Coax between buildings? That's just asking for catastrophic failures and/or fire, without rather special grounding considerations (see, for example, Motorola R56 for an idea) to make it safe, and even then it's a bad idea for reliability. Cat5 isn't much better.
Kid-proof tablet..
Oh, and another reply, just because the story is at the end of the front page and nobody will read it except, perhaps, you:
Some of our most stable systems are, in fact, 8088-based boxes that do alphanumeric and stored-voice paging. These proprietary designs haven't changed substantially in ~30 years, and they just don't fail: In this market, such gear is (still!) considered high-end. (It might be important to also note that they don't have any moving parts, except for perhaps a few relays.)
Sometimes, old tech is the most reliable tech. I've seen a lot more dead Pentium 4/Athlon machines than 8088 PCs: The former fail in expensive and hard-to-track ways (bad caps, bad solder joints), while the 8088s likely never failed at all (but were just binned because they were no longer useful enough to stay in service).
Kid-proof tablet..
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!
Your sense of humour gets gruesome too. You reminded me of the time I had to walk by the heads on their way to the tongue and cheek line. The skinned heads with their eyes hanging out on the nerve stocks. There was a government inspector standing about 30 feet away so I yelled at her to come look at one of the heads going by. I said, "look! look at this one!" She came scooting up in a hurry and looked at it and of course didn't see anything wrong, so looked at me puzzled. I looked at her and said, "you'd better call a vet, this cow's lookin' a bit peaked.' She just looked disgusted with me and walked away. Yes, the sense of humour can 'turn' too in those places. :D
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
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