This is very true. I am currently evaluating a forklift upgrade of one of my POPs, and we're looking at the Cisco vs. Juniper proposition.
While I'm a VP level operational head at an ISP, the Cisco rep told me straight out that he doesn't typically engage technical people like me when he comes in. He typically talks to the C level people, and it shows, because he's not keeping up with the Juniper rep. The Juniper team has already put me in front of many technical product development people, and the depth of the conversations have been truly refreshing. I'm feeling more and more comfortable with going Juniper as the days go by.
Not only is Cogent a provider of poor quality bandwidth, the parent cites the true reason why these de-peerings happen - not playing fair and contributing to the well being of the backbone.
I was once a disillusioned IT worker. I oft wondered why my ability and all my raw potential weren't being properly compensated as I struggled through the first half of my career. Further clouding my vision was an early payoff in consulting where I managed to bill out more than what was probably justified when I was in my early 20s. There was a distinct lack of IT talent in the community I find myself in and got a lot of business via word of mouth.
It wasn't till later on in my career I learned some humility and became easier to work with, and that's when the bucks started to roll in. When my can-do attitude started to shed the rampant contrarian in me. I see a lot of kids younger than me that go through this - I recently tried to give some budding superstars inside and outside my company some coaching in this regard; however, they didn't become open till they lost their jobs. It seems that this is a lesson the young continue to need to learn, and my dad had hinted to me that this would be my struggle with others as he saw me grow up to be a smart alecky know it all.
So if there's one thing I can recommend to the under 25 crowd, it's this: a little humility and willingness to learn from others goes a long way. You'll find that people that don't always have all the top technical answers at their disposal are useful in other ways: managing chemistry with team members, negotiating with clients, directing personnel in certain directions and managing crisis before they get out of control.
Your assumption - that militant Islam is a threat to our way of life and requires military action - is just as awful as the GPs temper tantrum. You just have the benefit of dressing yourself up in a cloak of reasonableness, which is easy to do when people start mentioning conspiracies.
Seriously though - how does one counteract a militant movement with military, without creating more militants? Not to mention Iraq was not a center of militant Islamists before - Hussein saw the Islamists as his greatest enemy too, except when their enemy was his enemy. Islamists peripherally involved in other conflicts not centered in Iraq may have gotten some support, but not much, not to the degree with which Afghanistan was support Al Queda.
The point of the article is that men like the PsyOps sergeant have the right idea here. How do you effectively deal with an enemy, especially one that rallies behind an ideal? You marginalize the enemy, and you take away their support structure amongst the local populace. Now if we could figure out a way to do that on a global scale, without rushing in and invading each country, we might be on to something.
I do manage to have a girlfriend, an active social life, and handle company business when called upon. If you didn't notice, I wasn't complaining about my situation, I was wondering why people automatically assume something about how one conducts themselves.
You know - I get this complaint sometimes from some of our front line guys. Luckily it's not too out of control due to our environment...
Anyways, on to my point. I'm not technically the management team, but on the org chart, there's only one guy above me. I work odd hours, in different places in the office, I help the boss a lot, plan with the boss a lot, pitch the rest of management on stuff, work on making everyone else's jobs more efficient and I'm not always helping the guys on the frontline. In fact, it's so hard for me to get any project work done when I'm at the office because - and despite my best efforts to train these guys in my areas of expertise to where they are self reliant - I don't go in to the office in the morning anymore. I deal with customers from home, then I lock myself in a conference room when I get in to the office so I can get a couple things done on whatever project I'm tracking.
One day I came in at 12:30 pm and left at 4, when one of the guys on our networking staff finishes his shift. He wasn't ready to leave because he hadn't finished helping a customer.
As I was walking out, the guy says to me "How do you come in after me and then leave before me? This is ridiculous!"
I didn't even answer him. I had been working with a team in India on a functional spec till 4 am. I couldn't believe that not only did I get this sort of treatment, but that I had also supported this person for a raise and had kept track of how he had progressed behind the scenes.
Is it just me, or do a lot of people here (and in real life) assume everyone that's management or has management type functions lives a cushy easy-mode work existence? I'm not sitting here stuffing my face full of expensed food - and if I am, I'm usually working. I live, breathe and exude this job 24/7.
As much as everyone's telling you to specialize, play up a certain aspect of your resume, I say forget it.
Bill yourself as the guy who can do everything. More importantly, convey your ability to learn new things, how flexible you are and how you can cut across different areas of knowledge and come up with novel solutions. But most of all, let them know you're the guy to go to. That you can be responsible for a project and see it through.
I started out in a small shop working for an extremely smart guy who believed in my potential. And while I left after six months, and went through a series of jobs where I fell in to half through dumb luck, the other half by marketing myself the way I told you to, and a myriad of consulting jobs picked up by both reputation and more dumb luck... I ended up right back where I started, 10 years later. I've taken all the experience I learned along the way, in project management, in working with large scale systems, working with server farms, starting a business, developing products and even all the little grunt work in between and am applying it all at the company I first started out at. I'm highly compensated now and my future's pretty well set.
What did take awhile to develop was the attitude and the accumulated experience to get recognized. It mostly happened for me around year 7 - everything began to change. Not only was I starting to look at work not as something to be suffered through and where I was underappreciated - but that it was a place where I could benefit by 1) making money 2) learn how to take care of business and 3) execute. This is also when the big money offers started to come in, for strange sounding or odd positions you can't find a million people to fill such as Technical Account Manager, Operations Expert etc.
Looking to hit a small shop where you're the jack-of-all-trades IT manager might not be a bad place to start. It'll help get you get used to being responsible to a T.
Always remember: you will be limited only by your imagination and the integrity you keep not only with others, but with yourself. Good luck.
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This is very true. I am currently evaluating a forklift upgrade of one of my POPs, and we're looking at the Cisco vs. Juniper proposition.
While I'm a VP level operational head at an ISP, the Cisco rep told me straight out that he doesn't typically engage technical people like me when he comes in. He typically talks to the C level people, and it shows, because he's not keeping up with the Juniper rep. The Juniper team has already put me in front of many technical product development people, and the depth of the conversations have been truly refreshing. I'm feeling more and more comfortable with going Juniper as the days go by.
Not only is Cogent a provider of poor quality bandwidth, the parent cites the true reason why these de-peerings happen - not playing fair and contributing to the well being of the backbone.
And now I know I need an official proofreader ...
I was once a disillusioned IT worker. I oft wondered why my ability and all my raw potential weren't being properly compensated as I struggled through the first half of my career. Further clouding my vision was an early payoff in consulting where I managed to bill out more than what was probably justified when I was in my early 20s. There was a distinct lack of IT talent in the community I find myself in and got a lot of business via word of mouth.
It wasn't till later on in my career I learned some humility and became easier to work with, and that's when the bucks started to roll in. When my can-do attitude started to shed the rampant contrarian in me. I see a lot of kids younger than me that go through this - I recently tried to give some budding superstars inside and outside my company some coaching in this regard; however, they didn't become open till they lost their jobs. It seems that this is a lesson the young continue to need to learn, and my dad had hinted to me that this would be my struggle with others as he saw me grow up to be a smart alecky know it all.
So if there's one thing I can recommend to the under 25 crowd, it's this: a little humility and willingness to learn from others goes a long way. You'll find that people that don't always have all the top technical answers at their disposal are useful in other ways: managing chemistry with team members, negotiating with clients, directing personnel in certain directions and managing crisis before they get out of control.
Your assumption - that militant Islam is a threat to our way of life and requires military action - is just as awful as the GPs temper tantrum. You just have the benefit of dressing yourself up in a cloak of reasonableness, which is easy to do when people start mentioning conspiracies.
Seriously though - how does one counteract a militant movement with military, without creating more militants? Not to mention Iraq was not a center of militant Islamists before - Hussein saw the Islamists as his greatest enemy too, except when their enemy was his enemy. Islamists peripherally involved in other conflicts not centered in Iraq may have gotten some support, but not much, not to the degree with which Afghanistan was support Al Queda.
The point of the article is that men like the PsyOps sergeant have the right idea here. How do you effectively deal with an enemy, especially one that rallies behind an ideal? You marginalize the enemy, and you take away their support structure amongst the local populace. Now if we could figure out a way to do that on a global scale, without rushing in and invading each country, we might be on to something.
I do manage to have a girlfriend, an active social life, and handle company business when called upon. If you didn't notice, I wasn't complaining about my situation, I was wondering why people automatically assume something about how one conducts themselves.
So thanks for assuming.
You know - I get this complaint sometimes from some of our front line guys. Luckily it's not too out of control due to our environment ...
Anyways, on to my point. I'm not technically the management team, but on the org chart, there's only one guy above me. I work odd hours, in different places in the office, I help the boss a lot, plan with the boss a lot, pitch the rest of management on stuff, work on making everyone else's jobs more efficient and I'm not always helping the guys on the frontline. In fact, it's so hard for me to get any project work done when I'm at the office because - and despite my best efforts to train these guys in my areas of expertise to where they are self reliant - I don't go in to the office in the morning anymore. I deal with customers from home, then I lock myself in a conference room when I get in to the office so I can get a couple things done on whatever project I'm tracking.
One day I came in at 12:30 pm and left at 4, when one of the guys on our networking staff finishes his shift. He wasn't ready to leave because he hadn't finished helping a customer.
As I was walking out, the guy says to me "How do you come in after me and then leave before me? This is ridiculous!"
I didn't even answer him. I had been working with a team in India on a functional spec till 4 am. I couldn't believe that not only did I get this sort of treatment, but that I had also supported this person for a raise and had kept track of how he had progressed behind the scenes.
Is it just me, or do a lot of people here (and in real life) assume everyone that's management or has management type functions lives a cushy easy-mode work existence? I'm not sitting here stuffing my face full of expensed food - and if I am, I'm usually working. I live, breathe and exude this job 24/7.
I wonder which one you feel is nonstandard.
As much as everyone's telling you to specialize, play up a certain aspect of your resume, I say forget it.
... I ended up right back where I started, 10 years later. I've taken all the experience I learned along the way, in project management, in working with large scale systems, working with server farms, starting a business, developing products and even all the little grunt work in between and am applying it all at the company I first started out at. I'm highly compensated now and my future's pretty well set.
Bill yourself as the guy who can do everything. More importantly, convey your ability to learn new things, how flexible you are and how you can cut across different areas of knowledge and come up with novel solutions. But most of all, let them know you're the guy to go to. That you can be responsible for a project and see it through.
I started out in a small shop working for an extremely smart guy who believed in my potential. And while I left after six months, and went through a series of jobs where I fell in to half through dumb luck, the other half by marketing myself the way I told you to, and a myriad of consulting jobs picked up by both reputation and more dumb luck
What did take awhile to develop was the attitude and the accumulated experience to get recognized. It mostly happened for me around year 7 - everything began to change. Not only was I starting to look at work not as something to be suffered through and where I was underappreciated - but that it was a place where I could benefit by 1) making money 2) learn how to take care of business and 3) execute. This is also when the big money offers started to come in, for strange sounding or odd positions you can't find a million people to fill such as Technical Account Manager, Operations Expert etc.
Looking to hit a small shop where you're the jack-of-all-trades IT manager might not be a bad place to start. It'll help get you get used to being responsible to a T.
Always remember: you will be limited only by your imagination and the integrity you keep not only with others, but with yourself. Good luck.
We are born, not made.