What do you do that your job is still mostly technical?
My job changed around me over the past several years. It is still defined as technical, but I only do 10% of actual technical, touch a server work. The rest is all administrative, change management, processes and procedures.
As we are told when expected to answer the phone at any time, any day of the week - "It's part of the job."
Geez, I miss the 90s where techies wrote their own ticket and businesses thrived.
As an intern you will be asked to do numerous, trivial, non-IT related tasks by customers, managers and your peers/leads. You will undoubtedly be the victim of several jokes at your lack of knowledge. ("Go find the token ring that fell out of the ethernet." "Go download the internet to her computer.")
My suggestions, other than seek another industry, is to read, read, read, shoulder surf your leads and build your own test box(es) to play with.
I've been in IT nearly 26 years. I started as "the computer guy" at an optometry in my home town. It consisted of one PC and three dumb terminals running off that. I then sold electronics at Sears while I was in college (not for IT degree) and played with computers on the side. I then worked at a computer rental shop where we simply loaded OSes and wiped computers as they came and went. Finally I landed a desktop support job, tailed/helped the server guys in my spare time and then had enough experience to become a server administrator. Now I've specialized in Windows and VMware. I like where I work, but I hate the lack of satisfaction of my job. I came into IT for the technical work, the challenge of figuring out problems and to not deal with people. Now my job is 90% administrative - planning changes, talking with 12 different teams/managers to get approvals, documentation so managers understand what is happening - about 2 weeks' of clerical work, all so I can do 1hour of actual work late at night or on the weekend as I miss time with my family.
Point is you are starting down a long road. If you are willing to take on extra work constantly, continually read current and new technology, constantly study and test for certifications, you might be in a comfortable position in 5-7 years.
If you have any family or social life, add 5 years to this as IT is designed for single people with no lives. It helps if you can pack light and depart for travel quickly. It also helps if you can survive on 2 hours of sleep a day.
If I had it to do all over again, I'd go into carpentry, cooking or health care. Anything but IT.
You must not have stayed in Toastmasters long enough if you think it cannot help with long speeches.:-)
As part of the Advanced Communicator Gold achievement, you have to present a seminar which is 4-8 hours depending upon your subject. If you train at any Toastmasters Learning Institute, you're speaking for 45-60 minutes. If you use one of the advanced manuals such as Discussion Leader, each project is 20-40 minutes.
Aside from this are the advanced clubs that focus on professional speaking, the Accredited Speaker Program and then outside of Toastmasters but slightly associated, the National Speakers Association.
Great point you brought out, though, is preparedness.
From the start Toastmasters will teach you about writing a speech and organizing your thoughts. This applies to a 5-7 minute speech, a 1-2 minute table topic or a 4 hour presentation.
I haven't heard him speak live, but after watching several minutes of the video on his website, I completely agree.
While his experiences may have some tips for future or present speakers, I certainly hope no one is relying on this book as their only source for public speaking.
"What's in it for me?" That is what will be going through your audience's mind throughout your speech/presentation. If you do not give them value and something to take away, you've wasted their time.
Plus people remember stories. They won't remember the bullet chart, the acronym or hardly any of the technical terms you say, but tell them a story that ties it together and they'll remember it for a long, long time.
I've been in Toastmasters over 8 years. What was just described in the review of this book, a person could learn in presenting and receiving feedback in three to six speeches (six weeks to six months depending on your initiative). As a long term educational and development program, Toastmasters can go into much more depth as well. The main strength of Toastmasters is that it provides a safe place to practice, receive friendly support and receive accurate, helpful feedback. Clubs vary greatly, so shopping around is encouraged.
Visit http://www.toastmasters.org/ and use the "Find a Club" link. If there is not a club conveniently close to you, consider making a trip to one and asking for help in starting a club. I guarantee they will get someone in touch with you and will offer assistance in forming a club closer to you.
I'm not a professional public speaker yet, but everything reviewed about this book above I've already learned and experienced.
Having never heard of the author, I Googled him and found his website. Watching the first 5 minutes of his video in the bottom right had me cringing - unprofessional dress (maybe appropriate for where he was), playing around with the "stage," too much hand waving, too many "filler" words to hear his message clearly, mispronunciation or diction unclear, speaking too fast and moving around too much.
I won't be buying the book from what I've read and seen.
"IT" for the unwashed masses is "all things related to computers that I don't understand." They cannot comprehend the difference between a developer or a sysadmin. They cannot distinguish between software and hardware. They call the black box sitting on their floor/desktop the "CPU," for goodness sakes. They neither understand nor care what you call yourself just as long as you 'make it go,' they make money and you make money.
Call yourself whatever you want and add whatever certifications and initials behind your name that you want. If you work in technology you are under the IT umbrella. We do what we do because they don't understand it.
Also as some have recommended techniques with written "password," type out your password but add a common or nonsense word into the middle of it. Then you just know to remove that word.
I think the "duh" classification needs to be added to this.
As if we couldn't tell where the money was being spent; definitely not in development.
Why do you think the games are so disappointing after seeing those shiny, 3D, live action commercials? "Actual game play may vary."
Let me guess. Their second largest expenditure is for the legal team: assimilating new development talent, buying out competition, defending against false advertising.
I still have strong map reading skills AND I can write calligraphy.
I can even read ancient Dwarven runes on maps to find a 5' x 6' door in the side of a mountain.
This post and the parent echoed my thoughts exactly.
You want respect? You chose the wrong career.
I've been doing this for 25 years and burned out for the last five. I have respect for myself, my skills and how effectively I keep the business running.
There is no respect for ME as a person. They respect the skills I have and what I can do for them right now. When the business makes millions because I did my job, the respect (and bonus) goes to the upper management. That's just the way IT works. Live with it or leave.
Yep, I have two of those and both still in good working condition.
Add the 13" RGB monitor, cassette storage device, speech synthesizer and dozens of cartridges and manuals and I've got a nice little setup. I get it out once in a while to play a few nostalgic games (Tunnels of Doom & Parsec) and help my daughters appreciate how much computers have changed and stayed the same. I learned how to count in hexidecimal (how you programmed graphic tiles) and program in BASIC on that machine a few years before I touched a PC.
I also have an Atari 800 and an original IBM XT(?) with only floppy disks and a green monochrome monitor. It even has a Sperry wide carriage dot matrix printer with a parallel cable permanently attached to the printer.
Every comic book store I've ever visited has some or all of the aspects depicted in those scenes. Comic book stores, the owners and the customers are geeky and to some extent creepy. I'm a sci-fi/fantasy/computer geek, but comic books go beyond any level of geekiness I could achieve.
By the article title and title of the reviewed book, I thought this would be about how businesses create artificial ethics so they can operate within their own boundaries instead of following real ethics based upon honesty or virtue.
Just from my own experience over the past 25 years, I see this as false.
Younger adults may have the *capacity* to be sharper, but they certainly are not displaying such skill. I have struggled to teach younger IT employees relatively simple concepts of computers. They don't get it or they don't want to get it. I've been in the industry so long, I know *why* computers work and therefore how best to troubleshoot them when they don't work. When you have someone come in who has only ever known a computer with a mouse and Windows, they have no clue what goes on under the hood much less once data leaves the NIC.
I see IT right now desperately needing a balance of older and younger employees. You have to have the older for the experience and good decision making. You need the younger people to learn IT, especially newer technology, and the freedom (read single) and stamina to travel constantly and work long hours.
Personally, at 39 I have noticed my capability for learning new concepts or remembering numerous details has decreased over the past 3-5 years. Yet I also know now how to work smarter and not harder, and I'm still the SME of several technologies at my company.
I wouldn't want my 11 year old to see it, a big part for the violence, partly for the nudity but mostly for the boredom.
The violence was expected and acceptable for a movie of this theme and darkness. Typically I can tell my children how fake the violence is (like Lord of the Rings battles). Seeing someone's hands cut off... that's just graphically brutal for the chock factor.
*I* got tired of all the nudity, especially of Dr. Manhattan. Mainly there was no reason for any of it except the sex scene, and that was staged like a porno. "Ooh, we just saved people. I'm so turned on. Let's get naked and pose unrealistically."
I have never read the Watchmen, and I only had a vague awareness of it from the one person in my office that did know about it. I was expecting a superhero movie (good vs. bad) or at least an X-men morality play (not good or bad, but warring over differences). Instead I see a bunch of schizophrenic sociopaths who handle crime and violence with more crime and violence. Plus the believability wasn't there. It's hard enough to suspend reality for heroes who have super powers, but why even try to believe that someone in top physical condition could do anything that was done in the movie?
I thought it ironic that one of the heroes commented about "heroin and pornography" and this movie wasn't much better than that.
It was boring, had no message and had no value. I was bored, I didn't get it and I don't really want to. I really regret wasting $5 and a Sunday morning on this movie.
As far as MMO's go, they're "brain dead" when the bulk of the population departs. The body is still kicking, but there's no heart and no thought going into it.
For me, I consider a game dead when I stop playing it, stop hearing about it from friends and stop visiting the website. Isn't that pretty much the point at which it dies for each of us?
Take Ultima Online. Notably the first graphical MMO that reached a real massive population even though it was surpassed in many ways by successors. It's still running. Last I heard the population is about 30k. I heard the last live gathering of players and devs was more like a trailer park smoke and bitch fest.
Everquest, Dark Age of Camelot, Lineage, Guild Wars... I guess they're still running, but who cares? The few thousand people hanging on will be jumping, too, just as soon as they find a new MMO that tickles their fancy or they buy a new computer that can run a game from this decade. They're just more reluctant to change.
I despise Dell on several levels, mostly because I've had to support their high-failure rate hardware for the last 10 years. Then there are cases like this where they offer the public what appears to be a high-end gaming system and sell it for an exorbitant amount of money.
Meanwhile my 24 years in IT, all involving user support, has turned me into a jaded, twisted, malevolent IT professional with nothing but contempt and ill-boding for any issue that could be resolved by a first level tech with an A+ certification.
Thank goodness for/. as an outlet for hostility and bile that might otherwise be blasted onto customers.
I really miss the days of optimism where I felt that what I did mattered and I could fix all the problems I encountered.
Similar experience here. I've used several, paid and free antivirus for decades. Not only has Antivir updated every day or two and kept me virus free (pop-up is trivial), it's also the least CPU and memory intensive of all the ones I've used.
Norton is the industry standard for most of the companies I've worked for. I recall when Norton's update caused the dir00001 issue and filled up hard drives. My main gripe with Norton is how many processes it runs and how difficult it is to remove it.
I preferred McAfee for a long time. They were more accurate and updated more often than Norton. Unfortunately, as malware and spyware became more prevalent, McAfee continued to increase in footprint size and CPU utilization. In a corporate environment where the PC is left on 24hours and scans and updates can be run at night, it's fine. When you first turn on your computer and missed an update and/or scan, though... you can forget productivity for hours while the background scan runs.
I've been really pleased with Avira and I recommend it to my colleagues and customers at every opportunity.
Slashdot Mirror
My job changed around me over the past several years. It is still defined as technical, but I only do 10% of actual technical, touch a server work. The rest is all administrative, change management, processes and procedures.
As we are told when expected to answer the phone at any time, any day of the week - "It's part of the job."
Geez, I miss the 90s where techies wrote their own ticket and businesses thrived.
My suggestions, other than seek another industry, is to read, read, read, shoulder surf your leads and build your own test box(es) to play with.
I've been in IT nearly 26 years. I started as "the computer guy" at an optometry in my home town. It consisted of one PC and three dumb terminals running off that. I then sold electronics at Sears while I was in college (not for IT degree) and played with computers on the side. I then worked at a computer rental shop where we simply loaded OSes and wiped computers as they came and went. Finally I landed a desktop support job, tailed/helped the server guys in my spare time and then had enough experience to become a server administrator. Now I've specialized in Windows and VMware. I like where I work, but I hate the lack of satisfaction of my job. I came into IT for the technical work, the challenge of figuring out problems and to not deal with people. Now my job is 90% administrative - planning changes, talking with 12 different teams/managers to get approvals, documentation so managers understand what is happening - about 2 weeks' of clerical work, all so I can do 1hour of actual work late at night or on the weekend as I miss time with my family.
Point is you are starting down a long road. If you are willing to take on extra work constantly, continually read current and new technology, constantly study and test for certifications, you might be in a comfortable position in 5-7 years.
If you have any family or social life, add 5 years to this as IT is designed for single people with no lives. It helps if you can pack light and depart for travel quickly. It also helps if you can survive on 2 hours of sleep a day.
If I had it to do all over again, I'd go into carpentry, cooking or health care. Anything but IT.
As part of the Advanced Communicator Gold achievement, you have to present a seminar which is 4-8 hours depending upon your subject. If you train at any Toastmasters Learning Institute, you're speaking for 45-60 minutes. If you use one of the advanced manuals such as Discussion Leader, each project is 20-40 minutes.
Aside from this are the advanced clubs that focus on professional speaking, the Accredited Speaker Program and then outside of Toastmasters but slightly associated, the National Speakers Association.
Great point you brought out, though, is preparedness.
From the start Toastmasters will teach you about writing a speech and organizing your thoughts. This applies to a 5-7 minute speech, a 1-2 minute table topic or a 4 hour presentation.
While his experiences may have some tips for future or present speakers, I certainly hope no one is relying on this book as their only source for public speaking.
"What's in it for me?" That is what will be going through your audience's mind throughout your speech/presentation. If you do not give them value and something to take away, you've wasted their time.
Plus people remember stories. They won't remember the bullet chart, the acronym or hardly any of the technical terms you say, but tell them a story that ties it together and they'll remember it for a long, long time.
We Toastmasters definitely know how to party.
I've been in Toastmasters over 8 years. What was just described in the review of this book, a person could learn in presenting and receiving feedback in three to six speeches (six weeks to six months depending on your initiative). As a long term educational and development program, Toastmasters can go into much more depth as well. The main strength of Toastmasters is that it provides a safe place to practice, receive friendly support and receive accurate, helpful feedback. Clubs vary greatly, so shopping around is encouraged.
Visit http://www.toastmasters.org/ and use the "Find a Club" link. If there is not a club conveniently close to you, consider making a trip to one and asking for help in starting a club. I guarantee they will get someone in touch with you and will offer assistance in forming a club closer to you.
I'm not a professional public speaker yet, but everything reviewed about this book above I've already learned and experienced.
Having never heard of the author, I Googled him and found his website. Watching the first 5 minutes of his video in the bottom right had me cringing - unprofessional dress (maybe appropriate for where he was), playing around with the "stage," too much hand waving, too many "filler" words to hear his message clearly, mispronunciation or diction unclear, speaking too fast and moving around too much.
I won't be buying the book from what I've read and seen.
Call yourself whatever you want and add whatever certifications and initials behind your name that you want. If you work in technology you are under the IT umbrella. We do what we do because they don't understand it.
Also as some have recommended techniques with written "password," type out your password but add a common or nonsense word into the middle of it. Then you just know to remove that word.
to produce something so foul that stereotypical nerds look elite and cool.
It's the obvious, forced equal rights representation. Where's the black female, the Asians, Indians or Russians? Contrived.
So in summary, Microsoft is unable to learn from their mistakes.
As if we couldn't tell where the money was being spent; definitely not in development.
Why do you think the games are so disappointing after seeing those shiny, 3D, live action commercials? "Actual game play may vary."
Let me guess. Their second largest expenditure is for the legal team: assimilating new development talent, buying out competition, defending against false advertising.
I can even read ancient Dwarven runes on maps to find a 5' x 6' door in the side of a mountain.
I could probably thatch a roof in a pinch, too.
This post and the parent echoed my thoughts exactly.
You want respect? You chose the wrong career.
I've been doing this for 25 years and burned out for the last five. I have respect for myself, my skills and how effectively I keep the business running.
There is no respect for ME as a person. They respect the skills I have and what I can do for them right now. When the business makes millions because I did my job, the respect (and bonus) goes to the upper management. That's just the way IT works. Live with it or leave.
Add the 13" RGB monitor, cassette storage device, speech synthesizer and dozens of cartridges and manuals and I've got a nice little setup. I get it out once in a while to play a few nostalgic games (Tunnels of Doom & Parsec) and help my daughters appreciate how much computers have changed and stayed the same. I learned how to count in hexidecimal (how you programmed graphic tiles) and program in BASIC on that machine a few years before I touched a PC.
I also have an Atari 800 and an original IBM XT(?) with only floppy disks and a green monochrome monitor. It even has a Sperry wide carriage dot matrix printer with a parallel cable permanently attached to the printer.
Every comic book store I've ever visited has some or all of the aspects depicted in those scenes. Comic book stores, the owners and the customers are geeky and to some extent creepy. I'm a sci-fi/fantasy/computer geek, but comic books go beyond any level of geekiness I could achieve.
This book should be entitled "Robotic Ethics."
Younger adults may have the *capacity* to be sharper, but they certainly are not displaying such skill. I have struggled to teach younger IT employees relatively simple concepts of computers. They don't get it or they don't want to get it. I've been in the industry so long, I know *why* computers work and therefore how best to troubleshoot them when they don't work. When you have someone come in who has only ever known a computer with a mouse and Windows, they have no clue what goes on under the hood much less once data leaves the NIC.
I see IT right now desperately needing a balance of older and younger employees. You have to have the older for the experience and good decision making. You need the younger people to learn IT, especially newer technology, and the freedom (read single) and stamina to travel constantly and work long hours.
Personally, at 39 I have noticed my capability for learning new concepts or remembering numerous details has decreased over the past 3-5 years. Yet I also know now how to work smarter and not harder, and I'm still the SME of several technologies at my company.
The violence was expected and acceptable for a movie of this theme and darkness. Typically I can tell my children how fake the violence is (like Lord of the Rings battles). Seeing someone's hands cut off... that's just graphically brutal for the chock factor.
*I* got tired of all the nudity, especially of Dr. Manhattan. Mainly there was no reason for any of it except the sex scene, and that was staged like a porno. "Ooh, we just saved people. I'm so turned on. Let's get naked and pose unrealistically."
I have never read the Watchmen, and I only had a vague awareness of it from the one person in my office that did know about it. I was expecting a superhero movie (good vs. bad) or at least an X-men morality play (not good or bad, but warring over differences). Instead I see a bunch of schizophrenic sociopaths who handle crime and violence with more crime and violence. Plus the believability wasn't there. It's hard enough to suspend reality for heroes who have super powers, but why even try to believe that someone in top physical condition could do anything that was done in the movie?
I thought it ironic that one of the heroes commented about "heroin and pornography" and this movie wasn't much better than that.
It was boring, had no message and had no value. I was bored, I didn't get it and I don't really want to. I really regret wasting $5 and a Sunday morning on this movie.
For me, I consider a game dead when I stop playing it, stop hearing about it from friends and stop visiting the website. Isn't that pretty much the point at which it dies for each of us?
Take Ultima Online. Notably the first graphical MMO that reached a real massive population even though it was surpassed in many ways by successors. It's still running. Last I heard the population is about 30k. I heard the last live gathering of players and devs was more like a trailer park smoke and bitch fest.
Everquest, Dark Age of Camelot, Lineage, Guild Wars... I guess they're still running, but who cares? The few thousand people hanging on will be jumping, too, just as soon as they find a new MMO that tickles their fancy or they buy a new computer that can run a game from this decade. They're just more reluctant to change.
Here's a comparison. Here's a similar system at CyberPowerPC for $3600: http://www.cyberpowerpc.com/system/Gamer_Infinity_SLI_KO/ Same CPU, same motherboard, but twice the memory, twice the video and nearly twice the HD space.
For $4900 you can get the high end machine overclocked to 4GHz running two 1TB drives in a RAID 0. /drool http://www.cyberpowerpc.com/system/Gamer_Xtreme_XI/
For a simple, cheap desktop to run Office, Dell is fine. For a gaming system - not a chance. Just another way to point out how much Dell sucks.
"Hailing frequencies closed... forever."
R.I.P., Majel.
Thank goodness for /. as an outlet for hostility and bile that might otherwise be blasted onto customers.
I really miss the days of optimism where I felt that what I did mattered and I could fix all the problems I encountered.
Norton is the industry standard for most of the companies I've worked for. I recall when Norton's update caused the dir00001 issue and filled up hard drives. My main gripe with Norton is how many processes it runs and how difficult it is to remove it.
I preferred McAfee for a long time. They were more accurate and updated more often than Norton. Unfortunately, as malware and spyware became more prevalent, McAfee continued to increase in footprint size and CPU utilization. In a corporate environment where the PC is left on 24hours and scans and updates can be run at night, it's fine. When you first turn on your computer and missed an update and/or scan, though... you can forget productivity for hours while the background scan runs.
I've been really pleased with Avira and I recommend it to my colleagues and customers at every opportunity.