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.

Comments

Porn industry

[x*yy*x]

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.

Re:Porn industry

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Porn industry

[robthebloke]

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)

Re:Porn industry

[pixline]

Maybe it WAS a cube farm and it made porno boring and repetitive...

dunno if it was boring, quite sure it was repetitive :)

Re:Porn industry

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Porn industry

[royallthefourth]

Actually, it sounds like your keyboard was what received the sacking

Yeah...

[pyrr]

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".

Re:Yeah...

[oodaloop]

Exactly. The guy who does stateside reachback support for IT people in Iraq who are in the "rear" compared to infantry and other warfighters on the frontlines doesn't exactly get a lot of sympathy from me. Oh, you had to answer the phone late at night? Cry me a river.

Re:Yeah...

[oodaloop]

It's still not frontline work. For being in Iraq, it's one of the easiest jobs you can find. At a time when troops were out in the field with little to no shelter, these guys were living in palaces, literally. I've been to a few of them. They're nice. Solid walls, electricity, (and eventually, not sure when) plenty of AC. Considering what kind of real work was being at the same time not too far away, anyone doing IT support in a palace shouldn't be complaining about work conditions. I was in the Perfume Palace in Baghdad in 2005 one time when a .50 cal round came in through the window and smacked into a map board. I've told people the story as a humorous anecdote while making pains not to sound like I was complaining, usually in the same breath while mockingly complaining the chowhall didn't have any rainbow sprinkles for the ice cream. As pyrr said, these stories just show how easy IT people have it compared to people who do real work.

Re:Yeah...

[vldragon]

And there aire IT people in combat comms that are the first one's in the field, that have to wear full body armor, helmet, & a weapon while setting up comms in the heat of battle. Don't assume to know every asset of every field. We all have a job to do in war, some have it easy, some have it tough but we're all on the same side and we all make sacrifices. There is no need to downplay one persons sarcrifice, no matter how small, because you or those you now had it rougher. It deminished all of our sacrifices when we fight amonst ourselves. Semper Fi.

Spiders

[Wyatt Earp]

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.

Re:Spiders

[JonySuede]

it was probably a brown recluse spider not the Hobo Spider since the tissue necrosis cannot be reproduced in the lab using that spider venom. For more info read : An approach to spider bites. Erroneous attribution of dermonecrotic lesions to brown recluse or hobo spider bites in Canada. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15455808

Re:Spiders

[Wyatt Earp]

Except for taking the spider to the Oregon Poison Center at Oregon Health Sciences University, where it was shipped off to Oregon State and they said "It's a Hobo Spider" and Brown Recluse not being native to the area.

A spider that was identified as a Hobo Spider (Tegenaria agrestis), it bit my head, other Tegenaria agrestis and T.domestica were seen in my building and in my basement, I had tissue necrosis and nerve pain.

I've read the NIH report and all the drama on the Hobo vs Funnel Webs vs Brown Recluse, the scaring is more similar to Tegenaria duellica/T.agrestis/T.domestica but the spider chewing on my head was a T.agrestis.

http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/00042059.htm

Re:Spiders

[hobo sapiens]

try getting bit by a hobo sapiens! rrrrawwr!

Re:Spiders

[JonySuede]

OK then the ref in my article might be wrong even if they are more recent.... I was feeling safe since I hate dangerous spiders and they don't live in Canada were I live. Since you tell me that T.agrestis is really dangerous and you seems to have good scientific refs combined with anecdotal evidence so I will start to live in fear of the brown spiders again .....

Re:Spiders

[theshowmecanuck]

My first job as a full time IT person was as a network analyst at a meat plant that killed 3500 head of cattle a day. I took it because I was broke and needed the money right after school. The facility I worked at was their only Canadian operation and given the size, it required a Canadian office of around 200 people (accounting, procurement, sales, shipping, etc.). So they had to have a network admin on site. That would be me for the time I was there.

The "interesting" part of the job was the part when they told me that at other facilities that didn't have offices in them, they were administered remotely, but since I was there, I had to take care of the computers in the plant as well as the office. Nothing says "IT" like walking through blood as you pass the giant skinning machines that tear the whole hide from the cow in one shot. Or watching them trim the hooves off... about a foot (pun intended) up the leg on your way to the terminal in the blood room (it was literally called the blood room... every part is used). The worst part is the smell in the skinning a hide rooms. The sight of the skinned animals is nothing after a while. The smell in those rooms, that's another thing. Took me 20 or 30 minutes to get through the door the first time I had to go. I went for a salami sub right after... get back on the horse an all that or become vegan. I still eat meat. All that, and just make sure you wash your boots off before going back into the office. The "knocking station" where they "knocked" (killed the animals was for me a sad place. It was done quickly and humanely, but it did make me feel sad. You can literally see the 'light' going off in their eyes. Like I said, I still eat meat, and enjoy it. But I think everyone that eats meat should have to go through one of these plants to remind you where your hamburger really comes from. It isn't just a package in the supermarket. But that's just me.

I did that for seven months before getting into a programming shop. Thank God.

FWIW, the company had something like a dozen processing facilities and most of their IT work (new users, backups, etc) was done remotely by network admins in Wichita with help from techs on site who normally worked on industrial automation. They had a surprising number of systems that were required to run the plant, including Oracle databases, mail servers, network servers, VAX, AS/400, satellite uplink and downlink to futures markets, etc. Had to administer many of them, and backup all. Some were administered remotely (e.g. AS/400).

Re:Porn industry

[SilentStaid]

You wouldn't believe the carpal tunnel claims...

End user support

[gmuslera]

Your mind will be turned into mush in just a month. Hunting backups in Fukushima suddently looks like a healthier alternative.

Re:End user support

[d'fim]

Hunting backups in Fukushima

Be vewy, vewy, qwiet.....

snydeq Has the Worst Job in IT

[RobotRunAmok]

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...?

Re:Porn industry

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Format

[Whalou]

Dirtiest IT Job: Working for Infoworld coding scripts to split articles into several pages.

Re:Porn industry

[Mister Whirly]

He said:

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.

Re:Porn industry

[cerberusss]

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.