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The High Tech Sweatshop
Its 4:30 am on a Friday and I just finished the last Mountain Dew. We ran out of coffee hours ago, the remains of it now black sludge at the bottom of the pot. The buildings air conditioning went off sometime the previous night and its up to almost 90 degrees in the server room. The two volunteer hackers on the staff went home after 12 hours, leaving me and the sysadmin...
This is a normal day for me.
I'm a systems engineer in the client services division of a network security software company. Basically what that means is that when networks break, I fix them.
I am 22 years old, I make a large multiple of the national average salary, and if I cashed in my stock options I could buy a very nice house. I'm also sixty pounds overweight, I sleep an average of four hours a night, and I have several ulcers. I usually spend about 60 hours a week at the office, but I'm on call 24 hours a day seven days a week. If I was honest with myself Id probably say I worked about one hundred hours last week. This is a normal life for someone working in this industry.
We live in a world today that runs on information. And people want all of it now. When was the last time you actually wrote out a personal letter to someone, on paper, in pen? Why bother when E-mail is so much faster and easier? But what goes on behind the scenes when you hit the "send" button? There are thousands of people out there just like me who have titles like "Network engineer" and "Systems administrator". We keep that information flowing, and we get paid what seems like a lot of money to do it. If you've been in the market for a good network admin lately you know what I mean. The market is pushing the salary into the 100k+ plus range for someone with the necessary experience to handle even a relatively small network, never mind what the really large companies like State Farm insurance or Wells Fargo bank have.
I started work on this problem with the sysadmin on Thursday before the close of business, getting things set up, preparing for the changes etc... The company was switching internet service providers that night because the previous one hadn't provided the level of service they needed. This entailed changing the IP addresses, and DNS configurations of every machine in the building, running three different operating systems, probably two hundred machines all told, then setting up the servers, routers, and switches necessary to get it all running. It's a big job, but with six people working on it we figured we could get it done before start of business the next day. Normally you would do this kind of thing over a weekend, but the ISP could either do the changeover tonight, or wait till next week, and we needed to be online before Monday.
Getting back to what happens when you press the send button. You expect the computer to send the message, and that the person it was sent to will receive it. What happens to the message then is an incredibly complex series of storage, sending, routing, switching, redirecting, forwarding and retrieving, that is all over in a fraction of a second, or at most a few minutes. But you don't care how or why it gets there, only that it does, and this is all you should care about. After all you don't have to know how your cars engine works in order to drive it right. But someone has to know in case it breaks. And when your email breaks you expect someone to fix it. It doesn't matter what time it is, or where the message is being sent, you want it to get there now.
Its now 8 am and the network is still down. We've managed to isolate a routing problem and are in the process of fixing it. The ISP gave us the wrong IP addresses and now we have to go back and redo all two hundred machines in the building. The router was crashing and we couldn't figure out why. Two hours on the phone with the vendors support, and three levels of support engineer later we fix it. People are starting to come in to work and ask why they can't get their email. The changeover process takes us about three hours and finally everyone has the right IP, but things still aren't working right. A bunch of people use DHCP for their laptops and the DHCP people cant get out to the net. The CEO of the company is one of those people...
So what do we do? Well we hire people to take care of the network. And we give them benefits and pay like any normal employee. We also give them pagers, cell phones, a direct phone lines to their houses so that any time, any where, we can get them, because the network could go down, and we DEPEND on that network, and those people. This is where things go skew from the normal business model.
All compensation is basically in exchange for time. The only thing humans have to give is their time. When I pay you a salary it is in exchange for me being able to use your abilities for a certain period of time every year. The assumption is that the more experienced or knowledgeable you are the more your time is worth. This works fine when you are being paid a wage, but salaried employees aren't. They exist under the polite fiction that all their work can be done in a forty hour period every week, no matter how much work there is. We all know this isn't the case of course. And when it comes to Systems administrators and network engineers that polite fiction isn't so polite. In exchange for high salaries and large stock options the company owns you all day and all night, every day and every night. You are "Mission critical". High salaries become an illusion because when it gets down to it your hourly rate isn't much better than the assistant manager of the local Pep Boys.
I finally went home at 1 that afternoon. I couldn't stay awake any more and if I didn't leave right then I wouldn't have been able to drive home. The funny thing is I felt guilty for leaving. Things still weren't working quite right, and I felt like I should have stayed until they were. Even funnier is that I volunteered for this. The only part of the job that I actually had to do was to change a few IP addresses and configure the firewall, but I thought I'd lend a hand, and I couldn't do the firewall till everything else was working anyway. My wife hadn't seen me in two and a half days, and I could barely give her a kiss when I walked through the door and collapsed on my bed. The SysAdmin was fired a few hours after I left. Back to work Monday morning.
You wrote:
"If you have to go to a user's desk to do something, then you're doing something wrong."
I see where you're coming from, but in my job as a network admin, what it really comes down to is that the users want someone experienced (i.e. me) to hold their hand every once in a while. And I'm not going to blow them off or be condescending to them - having good relations with your coworkers is good for your job and your career.
So basically I agree with the thrust of your article (in a medium to large network, not using DHCP/BOOTP is *dumb* or lazy) but there are good reasons to visit (l)users that have nothing to do with technical issues.
So our sister facility (that our MIS dept services also) in Garfield NJ decides they want to move stuff around and add a security system.
:)
We (way up here in Highland NY) get a phone call 2pm and are told "I can't get on the AS/400" so the usual 30 minutes of attempting to figure out what really is wrong with the user over the phone.
We then finally pull from them that the "security" guys were just cutting(!) some "phone lines."
Well as it turns out that "phone line" was our Cat 5 line from the upstairs office facility to the downstairs production floor. There goes 35 connections!
So if we leave now (2ish) we will get there at 5 and they will have left. So we just finish up the usual 12 hour day here in Highland and then run home and grab a bite to eat, change into "sweatshop" clothing (from khaki's to shorts) and head down to Garfield. 2 hour trip, one way. We get there, all the lights are off, can't find the panel. Time to light the way with a flashlight.
Anyway, its about 105 degrees with about 80 percent humidity and about 11 hours of work running 800 feet of pure hell through concrete, brick, wood, and what seemed to be like butter: suspended ceilings
Did I mention the whole MIS dept is me and one other guy? For 300 users (most god-awful PCs) and 3 locations (all of which are 2+ hours away from each other.
Just another lovely day in MIS. Remember folks: the MIS folks don't exsist untill someone can't send email!
Oh wow. You get paid much more than the average salary in the United States (which is around $20,000-$25,000/year). That's what comes with the job. If you want, I'm sure you could find a 40 hour/week job at the local McDonald's that would solve your overwork problem.
Basically, there are billions of people in the world that work more than you, and get less money for it. Overall, you're pretty damn well off. At least you don't work 100 hours/week and have to live off $100/year.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I pose the question: What changes need to take place to improve system/network administrators' working conditions.
Two things: sys admins need to refuse to take such conditions, and they need to persuade their fellows to do likewise. Just like you did. As long as there are people who will put up with ridiculous hours, there are plenty of employers who are willing to take advantage of them.
Don't feel loyalty to a company -- they sure won't feel it back.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
Masquerading is also your friend. When I had to handle an IP renumber, It took changes to two, count them two machines. The machines on the inside network didn't notice or need to know about any of it.
A good initial setup will save many long hours of pain down the road. That's probably why the sysadmin in this story got fired. The author was a victim of that admin's bad engineering decisions.
then because the people working on those desktops, the admins and coders, will refuse to take proxied connections or flaky performance from NAT/IPmasq.
The purpose of an admin is to keep the systems running, not make the users happy. If someone INSISTS on having a non-masked IP, tell'em they can have it, but you are not going to support it. If you renumber, e-mail them in advance, and let them sort it out. Otherwise, tell them that its IPMASQ or no net for you. If there's not a security issue, stick a box outside the firewall and let them log on to that if they want.
DHCP can give out static addresses based on the MAC address. With some creative automation, you can have a master list that is distributed downstream to the local DHCP servers and their redundant secondaries. There ARE holes in DHCP to be certain. That's what a firewall is for. If the internet was layed out like most intranets are, we'd still be trying to develop a working routing table through FIDOnet and uucp based discussions.
they haven't gotten any email for the last two hours.
echo "yes, the net is working" |mail -s FYI phb@hell.com
In the crontab, every 2 minutes. For more fun, grab a few random spams and echo those instead.
As y'all know, I've done a lot of work on the NT platform, and in my experience about 80% of NT problems can be traced to poor systems administration (about 15% more are caused by deploying it into inappropriate roles, and about 5% because of flaws in NT). Why is such a large proportion due to this cause? It's because NT looks like Win95 on the surface, a simple, domestic OS, and it's very easy for people to bluff their way into sysadmin roles on the NT platform - there are people calling themselves Domain Administrators who I wouldn't trust to look after a digital watch, much less an enterprise computing resource! And there's no way to find out until a recovery situation for most companies, as they lack the skills for a truly rigorous hiring process. This isn't a criticism - after all, that's why people get hired, to bring a skill into the company in the first place!
I've never worked with Netware, but I gather the Novell folk found themselves in a similar situation in the early 90's. A bunch of people who could manage the basics were placed in positions of responsibility, and when the situation arose that required deadly skills, they just weren't capable. And everyone suffered for this: the corporates didn't have the network support they needed, the operators were humiliated and fired, and the industry as a whole was blamed. However, the CNA/CNE programme went a long way to weeding out the incompetent, and the MCP programme is starting to have an impact in the quality of NT staff.
Any kid can download linux and teach themselves, which is a good thing when viewed abstractly, but it will definitely result in a lot more people on the market who, whether intentionally or not, grossly exagerate and misrepresent their own skills. This can only be a bad thing, it will bring ill-repute on the sysadmin profession.
The only question I have left... Is whether this girl, who, if I'm lucky enough, may be my wife, and whether, if I'm lucky enough to have kids, my future kids will be (a) satisfied and proud of my carreer (b) sufficiently supported.
the answer is so simple I didn't believe it when I first heard it said to me:
Your children will be proud of you no matter what, If you are a father figure and a dad to them. Don't treat them as objects, treat them as what they truly are: your progeny, the heirs to your kingdom, no matter how large or small, your most cherished gifts. It's not the job that makes the child proud of his dad, it's the fact that his dad is there and does things with him and shows him those things that dads show best. You could be a lowly Cat5 cable crimper and your kids will love you as long as you're there for them.
First off: Things like "coffee is gone, last mountain dew" and then "sixty pounds overweight" and "multiple ulcers" are not mutually exclusive. His health is directly related in how he eats and how he treats himself.
As far as salaried hours and time spent and the "polite" 40 hour weeks -- he's not demanding it so he's getting pushed around.
If he were smart he'd cash in his stock options and find another job where they'd not push him around like that. I know this is easier said than done becuase I feel for the guy. I don't like leaving until things are working. I hate seeing something only partly working. I've pushed myself like he has.
I, however, have wised up.
No longer do I work more than 50 hours a week (normally 40). No longer do I take on the world as my own personal responsibility. I have a wife and a child and another on the way. I have my own worries and there isn't an amount of money in the world which would rearrange those top priorities. I make decent coin (less than he claims anyway) and yes I could be making more somewhere where they demand 80 hour weeks and 24 hour on call, but I refuse to do that becuase of my family. My health and my family are not worth it.
There are emergencies, yes. There are times when I do have to run into the shop at 5am to fix something. But those times are few and far between. I get a healthy amount of sleep at night. I play with my children at home. I wear a pager, yes, but it hardly goes off because my network doesn't die when someone plugs in a new computer or trips over a power cable.
If companies require 24 hour 7 day a week tech assistance, then they need to hire multiple techs and have one pager that is circulated between them. "Ok, Ben, this is your week for 24/7" If the network is up and down that much, the network is designed poorly.
Lastly, why the HELL are 200 machines NOT on DHCP?!? If we change ISPs I change one config file and IPs, gateways and DNS are updated for everyone. I change another file and all our web clients are updated. Sounds like his network falls into the "poorly designed" category.
I really do feel for the guy, but there is no reason to push himself / allow others to push him like that. If he's half as qualified as he says, he can get a job ANYWHERE and sleep at night.
Used to work like that, no more. There is plenty of work available.
I don't get paid for 24/7, so I don't do it. It's good business to stick to your contract, they don't thank you for the extra.
Living in Europe with the Working time directive is quite handy, maybe the US needs something similar.
Deleted
I'm sorry. I don't mean to be rude, but this is the same as every other labor-related story thats cropped up in the last few weeks on here. I bet we see the same B.S. about unions and the same arguments for and against that.
;) If you've got high profile clients, you could always use a NAT solution to handle the switchover period. I think Linux could probably even do it for you.
In the end though, it boils down to one thing. If you don't like it, quit. As you said, you're making multiples of the national average income for someone your age. You could always go sell clothes at The Gap or something. Or take one of those several hundred thousand other open IT jobs at companies that have sufficient technical resources and skills in house not to end up in that sort of a situation. (And a properly designed network architecture shouldn't have nearly the issues in that sort of a switch over... but I'll get to that)
There is a tendancy for people in the industry -- particularly people who are in positions significantly beyond their realistic abilities (I'm not saying this is your case, but A case) -- for people not to stick up for themselves. If you don't like working late hours, don't. Half the time people think they have to, their management really isn't saying that, they're just assuming it. If management IS saying it, then say no. If they fire you, they fire you. If you really have any skills, you'll get another job without any problems, and if you don't, maybe thats what you should concern yourself with.
On the area of mass IP migration, I hope this story serves as a warning to anyone else working in those situations. Its not difficult to engineer your network systems to handle this cleanly. Generate your DNS entries out of a database. Generate a DHCPD configuration file that assigns internal-only IP's for each server, Also out of the database, do the same thing with your server configuration, and IP configuration. Simple scripts to do that. (And you're not using NT for real work are you? You probably could do it with NT anyway, just takes a bit more hacking)
A few days before the switchover, change your SOA's for a near-immediate changeover. Run a query against the database to regenerate your various configuration files, and bring down and back up the networks on the servers. On most systems you won't even need a reboot, and you'll have a few seconds downtime.
I've done provider switchovers at companies with dozens of servers and hundreds of clients no-sweat with less than an hour downtime. If you don't have any other downtimes, you're still doing better than EBay
- An ISP switch should take a maximum of 4 hours, and that includes remapping IP addresses of the servers on your DMZ and reconfiguring your router to the new ISP.
- If you use network address translation (masquerading) and internal (10.x.x.x) IP addresses, then NO CHANGES are needed internally when changing ISPs.
- All workstations and most servers should be using DHCP to allocate IP addresses and download net mask, domain name, etc.
- The DNS servers should use Dynamic DNS to resolve host names to DHCP-allocated IP addresses.
- By letting himself be abused in this manner, he is lowering the standards of a suitable work environment for everybody in this industry.
- If this guy was really so smart, he could find a real job doing the same type of work on a normal 8 to 10 hours a day, 5 days a week schedule. For MORE money. Quality is in demand.
- He is running himself into an early grave, as he himself testifies.
- He has no life outside of work. Ugh.
- He is confusing spinning his wheels with moving fast. Its the MPH that count, not RPMs.
- Not only is he a whiner, he's a SMUG whiner.
Sometimes, you just gotta know when to say NO!"The only good windmill is a tilted windmill."
http://www.fourmilab.ch/webtools/demoron iser
Please... I can?t stand reading HTML with a bunch of ?question marks? littering it. It?s very annoying, don?t you think?
punchline of your story is that they fired the (only?) full time system administrator.
about sean dreilinger
It's not all that uncommon. I was one of these "indispensable" people, maintaining a system that I made robust enough that it didn't often cause problems. The system was mission critical. Did management provide backups for me? In their eyes they did, they gave me two backups, one an IBM MVS guys who was struggling to learn Unix (which is what this system was using), the other a Powerbuilder/Visual Basic program who thought Unix was too icky or something. Both were pretty useless as backups. the VB programmer tended to break things more.
Management recognized that these people weren't learning, and did little to correct the problem, other than give lip service to it. To make it worse, I discovered that the useless backups were getting paid more than I was. I decided to quit, and the company had no choice but to bring me in on a consulting basis, until they could get new staff competant enough to maintain the system.
Of all the comments I've ever posted, this is definately one of them
Listen, I work for a smaller corporation that is a part of a much larger one. I hear these kinds of stories all the time. The 36 hour turn around for a complete backup, installing new HD and then repartitioning the thing and putting the files back where they need to go was the most recent one. It does not sound to bad until you realize how complex the file structure has to be for our object file transfer program we use to move files around to be applied to the database. Also over half that time is taken getting the files off in the first place.
Anyway, I want to get more technical and I have been thinking about getting out of being a Help Desk Manager looking over techs and being a tech again. The tough part is that I hear stories like this and wonder with a family, house and a good wife at my back is it really worth it even to chase down something I truly love? Gimme some thoughts people.
ACK
I find if I talk people through and help them learn to get it right it pays off more than shouting at them. They will also be more inclined to help you in the future.
I also beleive in treating your inferiors in how you would like your superiors to treat you.
"Because we are not employing at entry level, offshoring will kill our industry stone dead."
Sounds familiar...
:-)
.idl files...
14+ hour days, 7 days a week for 18 months.
I decided to bug out and get into testing/development. 7 hour days, 5 days a week. The disadvantage was that I took a drop in salary, and now don't have a real choice in what I do. The advantage is that I can now spend several hours a night with friends, gardening, reading, listening to music, getting some proper sleep etc. I also lost about 30 pounds (from UK 13.5 stones to UK 12 stones), and I've never felt better.
If you're in this situation, my advice would be take some time off and examine why you're really doing this. Is it for money, love, or apathy? If you've got ulcers, I'd think long and hard about this one.
I wonder how sysadmin's attitude compares to those of doctors? I'm not trying to compare the jobs here, but junior doctors (here in the UK) work very long hours. But you couldn't tell them to stop. I wonder if it's for the same reasons? When I moved over to development, I tried to do everything myself, in much the same way as I did in sysadmin. I was taken aside, told to chill, and then realised that I could now ask the sysadmin to fix stuff, and could also depend more on the team.
Ramble mode off.
Anthony
PS. I'd recommend gardening to anyone. Wrist deep in dirt is a great balance to figuring out
----- Documentation is worth it just to be able to answer all your mail with 'RTFM' - Alan Cox.
Come now, people...
Certifications and degrees do not prove knowledge. I've seen all too many people wandering around with certifications and/or degrees who couldn't config their heads out of a paper bag. Meanwhile, I've met a great many home-grown technicians and engineers who could rewrite your OS from the ground up, even though they had never set foot in a college classroom or even picked up an A+ study guide.
At my last job, we had an 18-year old desktop support technician who knew more about the NT domain at the company than our MCSE-certified Systems Engineer did. Sure, the MCSE could quote Microsoft recommendations all day, but didn't have a single bit of real-world experience behind an NT domain. He couldn't handle the "make due with what we have" philosophy of our small company. He knew what we should have (according to Microsoft) to do what we wanted to do. He didn't know how to operate in the real world of tight budgets and obsolete hardware.
At my current job, I have a coworker who recently went from no certifications to an MCSE in just over 2 months. He's now certified to administer software that he's never even seen outside of shrinkwrap. Today he's also a Microsoft Certified Trainer, and plans to make his fortune training the future MCSEs to pass their tests without ever having to actually touch NT Server.
The biggest problem with certifications is that they hide the qualities that employers really should be looking for behind this "Microsoft says I'm qualified" facade. If you have an MCSE, most employers assume that means you know how to administer an NT domain. Unfortunately, that's not always the case. If you don't have an MCSE, you have to prove that you can admin that domain.
If you have a CS degree, most employers assume that means you spent at least 4 years dedicated to learning your subject matter. The fact is that most college students today spend their 4+ years trying to get a degree while learning as little as possible.
This is not to say that certifications and degrees are worthless. Far from it. While they do NOT prove knowledge, they DO prove dedication. If you're not willing to spend the few months necessary to get your MCSE, how can your employer know that you're willing to spend the time necessary to make his network operate properly?
The point, however, is that certifications alone do not make one great. When it all comes down to the wire, knowledge is what really counts.
- Rob Cottrell
Some people wonder why Sysadmins are known for being so cranky, why the whole "Bastard Operator from Hell" culture came about. They see intolerance for ignorance, and put it down to elitism.
But that's not the whole story. When someone fscks up - like giving out the wrong IP addresses, in Morrigan's case - it can cause a lot of headaches. So you blow up at them. I'm known in my Company for exploding over the phone at Telco staff when they give me stupid answers to simple questions: not just because I look down on them, but because their incompetence causes more unneccessary work for me.
Is it any wonder BOfHs are what they are?
This guy has only himself to blame for all of his work. If he knew what he was doing, he would not have to go to every workstation to fix them. They made this neat thing called DHCP. And they have the equivilent for the routers. Mabey you should try some planning before you go off and do something. If you have to go to a users desk to do something, then your doing something wrong. Thats whats really wrong with this industry, all these people that think they are super duper hot shots, and they don't know crap, but at least they know more then the average monkey. Then they go and screw everything up, and then when they fix their own mistake, management is like, your so smart.
This is a nasty little death spiral, and it takes a lot of effort to reach escape velocity. I've been there, I've done that, and my sympathy goes out to those who have neither the time to interview nor the money to just quit and be unemployed for a couple of months.
But, IMHO, it's worth it.
Also, remember to put your values in perspective. A lot of people are making high five figure or low six figure salaries. How important are those last few thousand dollars?
You don't live twice as well on $40k than $20k, nor twice as well at $80k than $40k. That first $20k or $30k is very important; you keep wheels on the street, roof over the head, and food in the fridge with that. Everything else is toys and gravy; the lifestyle equivalent of chrome. Many of us could afford to take a pay cut; for those of us who are losing their minds, that pay cut pays dividends in sanity.
One of my contacts is a consultant and family man who cannot stand 40-hour work weeks. He works ~20 hours per week, makes enough money to get by reasonably comfortably, and has the time to raise his kids. If you're making a lot of money, how important is that money to you? I've gotten to the point where I am not going to give significant new amounts of effort for any amount of money the corporate world wants to throw at me. I have enough; while more money may mean better toys,
--The basis of all love is respect
The company I work for expects everybody to take vacation. This forces people to learn enough to cover for each other, and to lose that "geek addiction"--the realization that a particular employee is as mission-critical as the RAID array. This also prevents burnout; this outfit is aggressive about reducing turnover.
It works about halfway decently; nowhere near perfectly, but better than if they weren't aggressive on this count.
Part of the reason for my company being "enlightened" is that we are a technical business. Life is probably much harder in an IS department for a non-computer company (like a financial outfit or retailer).
--The basis of all love is respect
I'm sorry. I don't mean to be rude, but this is the same as every other labor-related story thats cropped up in the last few weeks on here. I bet we see the same B.S. about unions and the same arguments for and against that.
;) (Not meant to be a flame, but I do see a lot of those posts.)
As opposed to the same B.S. about "if you don't like it, leave?"
In the end though, it boils down to one thing. If you don't like it, quit. As you said, you're making multiples of the national average income for someone your age. You could always go sell clothes at The Gap or something.
False. When I recently found myself unemployed, I applied for that sort of job. Mostly because I just needed to be making money. And never got any calls back. I'm overqualified to be a sales-floor person since I've worked various data-entry-with-some-thought and secretarial jobs, not to mention have a college degree, and I have no supervisory experience so they won't hire me as a manager.
And depending on what sort of market you're in, there may or may not be one of those "other" types of jobs. Admittedly, this kind of treating employees like they have no lives is why I left the bank. (The worst example: 60-hour workweek between Christmas and New Year's, while my then-girlfriend was visiting from out of state, which contributed quite a bit to our breaking up. I know it doesn't sound that bad, but we were very much not getting paid enough, anywhere NEAR enough, to justify this. Try $8.50/hour or so. This was back in 1997; I knew that the closer we got to Y2K the worse it would get. I quit that job as of Christmas Eve 1998, thankfully.)
But as I was saying, depending on where you are and how free you are to move elsewhere, sometimes the "just leave"option is just not viable. Being overqualified for "lesser" jobs can be a serious problem if you try to go that route. Even if the job is only one step down from whatever you're doing at the moment.
Also, changing careers is difficult. When I went to the Job Service office while I was unemployed, they basically started trying to convince me to go back to the bank, when I left the bank at least in part because I don't want to work in the financial industry. (Fortunately, I got this job right before that would've happened.)
Like I said, it's just not that simple.
"Somebody exploded a letter-bomb today
Erm, not exactly. You see, there are those pesky job applications that you have to fill out that ask what your last 3-4 jobs were and where you went to school. You also have to sign the bottom and certify that "everything is true and complete." This is pretty much what they want in retail, rather than a resume.
They can fire you if they later find out you lied. No joke.
And yes, I am fully aware of how to "tailor" a resume based on what kind of job I am trying to get. Generally, in my case, this is the "censored" vs. "uncensored" versions of my resume -- the "censored" one leaves off the experience I have in leadership roles of various campus groups that "suits" might consider questionable.
I got my current job with the uncensored version. *grin* Note to self: Burn the censored resume and never re-make it.
"Somebody exploded a letter-bomb today
Yep, all of us on
And yes, some people just can't be bothered to think, and they do stupid things. My gripe here is with the "experts" who can't seem to distinguish between someone who is just new to computers and needs to be taught basic concepts (even those which seem ridiculously basic) and flat out can't-be-bothered-to-think stupidity.
For instance, I can understand why someone who has been using the 'net from work and wants to get connected at home doesn't understand about the need for a modem. You don't have to "dial in" at work, generally speaking, after all. It's just there for most of us. I can understand why someone whose main method of net-socialization was (pick one) MUDs, Citadel-based BBSes, or IRC would have trouble transferring command knowledge to the other two; they have very little in common. (Even typing "help" is no help when what you needed to type is "H" or "/help." *grin*) Other people I've talked to sit back and say "how stupid can you be to not understand how that works?" *sigh*
"Somebody exploded a letter-bomb today
No matter what their actual job description is, the person who knows how to fix things when they break will be continually called upon to do so. By everyone. And I do mean continually.
My work-study job was predominantly secretarial/admin. assistant type stuff for a woman who does teacher in-service programs. She's quite intelligent, but knows very little about computers. As part of my "job" on a few different occasions, I got to go to her house and fix her personal computer. Generally, what turned out to be wrong was something fairly simple that was obvious to me, but not to her. (Her idiot ISP had misled her into thinking that 9600 baud was an appropriate speed to attempt to run Netscape on. OOOOOOOPS! Other similar problems had occurred as well.)
There were also the calls from my mother about "how do you get this to work?" She didn't want to ask my father, who knows more about computers than I do, because she didn't want the long technical explanation that she wouldn't understand anyhow, she just wanted it to WORK. I still get those calls.
Even at the other jobs I've held prior to this one, I've been the computer-savvy one and on several occasions had to spend a good piece of my day: explaining that the Budweiser Frogs virus is a hoax (and putting up with a very rude co-worker who said she'd "trust a company vice-president over a bunch of snotty college kids any day." Um, maybe the college kids actually understand computers? No, never! *sigh*), teaching people how to send e-mail, "fixing" various "bugs" directly trace-able to misunderstandings of how the program works, and answering various "how'd you do that?" questions when I had done something like change the type size on icons or the background colors in the CICS screen.
Way to keep me from getting my work done. *grin* And this is 99% end-user stuff. My father, who knows a great deal about how to set up networks, etc. (all self-taught) was really not allowed to have a life. Still isn't, sometimes.
Sometimes I'd go with him. He'd set me up to play games (when I was younger) or get into my Internet account (when I was older), and he'd work on fixing whatever the latest thing to break was. Invariably, we were there for at least an hour later than we were supposed to be. Either the problem would be more complex than he had thought, or someone would see him in the building and start hitting him with questions because they (with good reason) did not trust the actual computer services folks.
But, as far as the "real" tech folk (who have been marginal at best, dangerously incompetent at worst) go at the community college he is a professor at, he's quite unpopular. Things like stumbling across a gaping security hole in the system, pointing it out, and getting reprimanded for trying to poke holes in security. What fun.
The problem is that the faster computers and information get, the more demanding people will become that they STAY that way. And until the industry as a whole has the sense to scream "STOP IT!" in some form or another, this is going to continue. And it is going to continue to get worse. Mad as Mom and I used to get at Dad about this, and much as the stress started to take a toll on his health, I don't think that he was regularly getting only four hours of sleep and/or working 100-hour weeks. (60-80, probably, but not 100.)
I keep hoping that this problem will fade once more people get at least a basic understanding of how systems work, but we have a long way to go before that happens.
"Somebody exploded a letter-bomb today
You're expected to keep the network running, regardless of the changes that are thrown your way or the IEU (Idiot End User, pronounced "eeww") that can't send email.
/. threads is the implication of "anyone who isn't a [sysadmin/Linux expert/programmer/insert category of your choice here] is an idiot and not worthy of my respect."
/.ers have. But that doesn't mean it's acceptable to treat them like "idiots."
:)
Classic example of what bothers me about a lot of computer experts, right there. Admittedly, it is irritating to deal with folks who don't understand computers when they just won't listen to you.
However, scattered through this and other
Here's a clue, folks. I used to work for an orthodontic school. The department chair is 77 years old, and one of the foremost experts in his particular field (treatment of facial birth defects, especially cleft lip and palate). He's been teaching since the 1950s, written books and journal articles galore, and knows less about computers than I did at the age of five.
Is this man an "idiot"? I hardly think so. People who don't have a high level of proficiency with computers are not stupid, generally speaking. They are either: (a) sufficiently old to have been using typewriters or pen-and-ink for most of their lives, and thus a bit set in their ways; (b) experts in other fields (dentistry, music, early childhood education, what-have-you) who devote a lot of time to their area of expertise and don't have enough left over to become computer gurus; or (c) honestly trying to learn and frustrated by arrogant "experts" who focus on what they are doing wrong and act as if the end-user is wasting the expert's time, not to mention by technology that becomes obsolete practically before it hits the market.
I know it gets frustrating to keep explaining "simple" concepts to someone who doesn't have the same intuitive understanding of computers that most
Hell, by some people's standards, I'm an "idiot." I'm a technical writer, not a programmer.
*steps off soapbox*
"Somebody exploded a letter-bomb today
Good. Employers like you are exactly the sort I wouldn't want to work for anyhow.
Ah, how quickly you assume what I left off of my resume. One item was work with the campus GLB group, yes. But the other two were a more generalized student-activist group (working out of a state university in NY, which had a wonderful system that could very well get killed by Pataki and co.) and the newly-started-up gaming club.
Ever had to explain to a potential employer that no, you're really not a satanist even though you play AD&D?
"Somebody exploded a letter-bomb today
I can sure sympathize with this. Its not just a problem for net techs. This salary trap applies to lots of jobs.
I suggest exercising those stock options without cashing in. You get some extra consideration from the company -- how much depends on the company -- and you maybe get some justification for all those hours. Dividends don't amount to much as a percentage of current price, but they might be pretty attractive at the option price.
This isn't a solution of course, but it might help and it won't hurt.
Zax
-- We are Linux. Resistance is measured in Ohms.
Sympathy first: I, and all of us who make the machine go, feel for you. From one point of view, you are a noble hero trapped in an evil system.
_ __
You may, however, take another point of view that will give you your life back - you don't need this job. This job needs you.
That's how they sucked you in, right? You're "mission essential". You're "on the team" and the team needs 110% from every player, right? It's YOUR JOB and you'll LET YOUR TEAMMATES DOWN if you don't live for it.
I'm going to indulge in a bit of personal speculation here, so I ask that you not be offended if it isn't you; it's a profile that tech employers look for, and your post shows some of the signs.
You are young, technically competant (perhaps even brilliant), have a powerful work ethic, and little social life. You probably relocated to take this job, further separating you from non-work involvements. You want money, of course, but also recognition of your value.
This looks complimentary, from my perspective - but you must realize that your employers do not think like you, or me - they are an alien race. To them, you are a "technical person": i.e., not a real person. When they find someone who fits the profile above, it's like hitting the lottery - they can buy your whole life for the price of a real person's 40 hour week!
You've already made the connection to hourly pay, which is good. Check this out, too - do you make more than the CEO of the company? More than the CFO? No?
Were eithier of those working at 4 am last Friday in a 90 degree room? Do they ever have "emergencies"? NO?
Hmmm.... Now, in a logical world, that should mean that you are more important. You HAVE TO make it work. It is CRITICAL. What the CEO does isn't - it can wait for morning.
So there is a twisted prestige involved, too - you must be important. They tell you how critical you are all the time.
Consider that for a moment - if anyone is that critical, a very foolish management decision has been made. What if that critical person is killed in an accident? The business closes and everyone goes home, right? After all, that ONE PERSON was the only one who could keep it running, and keep us competitve - without him, we just have to quit.
Have you ever heard of that happening?
Was the SysAdmin "mission critical"? When did he switch from being essential to being disposable? What changed?
Nothing.
It's a lot cheaper to provide the illusion of importance than to hire enough people to actually run a 24/7 operation. They are lieing to you, and if you buy it, you will someday be disposed of when someone needs a scapegoat for a failed policy.
I could keep ranting for pages, but it is time to sum up: You are getting robbed of your time, and you cannot expect the robbers to stop it if you don't make them.
Take less money; ditch the prestige. Work where your boundaries are respected. When you are off, be OFF - no pager, no phone calls. Remember, even surgeons and nurses ( who are compensated specifically for on-call time, even if they are not called) get days of inaccessability.
If you want the money, contract your work on your terms by the hour, and reject jobs when you feel like you are working too much - you will find that this might make you even more valuable because you are so hard to get.
When the brilliant "technical people" are no longer offering whole lives for sale at bargain rates, the business minds will begin to give over reasonable staffing plans - but not until what they are now doing hurts them. It is up to us, folks.
Pat.
_______________________________________________
Remember, there is no "I" in team - but there is a "U" in F___ YOU!
As another in the countless horde of the "been there, done that, probably going to do it again" types, I feel that the only wisdom I can add to this is a little reality check:
You are not curing cancer.
You are not saving the world from mass destruction
go home.
Too often, I find that we sysadmins shoot ourselves in the foot by trying too hard to meet a user's requests. We get a project request, bust our ass to complete the project in record time, and please the user community immensely. This is all fine and good until we get another project request, and now we're expected to complete it in record time as well because "you did it once before, why can't you do it again?" Usually, in the first instance, it was not necessary for us to complete our project so quickly. Our users would have probably been happy if it was finished a week or two later, but we delivered if only to demonstrate that we could. But then we've doomed ourselves, because now the user expects miracles to happen; s/he actually makes plans based on the fact that miracles occur on a regular basis. And we chastise them for their naivete, even if we set them up for it in the first place by working hard when we really shouldn't.
Why do we work so hard? Part of it is to keep the high-paying job, but it's mostly because we take some sort of masochistic pride in burning the midnight oil longer than anyone else; working on some component that has been deemed mission critical by someone who has grown too lazy to know how to conduct business with an abacus. And we call this martyr syndrome professionalism.
But in the end, for most of us who work for corporate or academic institutions, what have we accomplished when we finally go home? Some people can receive an e-mail about "How to make $$$$ FAST" in ten seconds instead of ten minutes. Some people can make more money in less time. Some people never notice that anything changed. Their lives go on.
I'm not saying that we should be fat and lazy, but we shouldn't be burning ourselves out when we don't have to. Yes, there will always be projects and network outages and an ever-increasing pile of work that we need to tunnel out of, but no it doesn't have to all be done today. Any project that requires any sort of planning should be done without anticipating anything like overtime. If overtime is required, it has to be for a good reason. Too often, we bitch about having unreasonable project deliverable dates, but that's usually because we just don't know well enough to push back.