I think my shit is just not the shit they are worried about.
My two-hour background interview lasted four hours because the government thought it was odd that I lived in the same apartment for ten years and I had multiple, sometimes overlapping jobs after being out of work for two years (2009-10) and filing for bankruptcy in 2011. Normal "shit" is that most people move every three years or so and have only one job.
My opinion on QA is that if you weren't capable enough to be a software developer then you weren't capable of being in QA either.
That applies only to white box testers who need to know how the code works to write code-specific tests. Black box testers don't to need to know how the code works to test the entire application as a user would. The best black box testers are non-programmers, as they tend not to be linear thinkers and can crash the application in odd ways.
Black box testing is where the tester has no idea what the code inside the application does and test the application like a regular user. White box testing is where the tester knows what the code inside application does and test the application like a programmer. In an ideal development environment, programmers write unit tests to white box test their own code and testers black box test the application as a whole.
When I worked at as a lead video game tester, a developer figured out the password to the bug database, zeroed out all the outstanding issues (including some serious show stoppers) for their game, and pushed for a code release meeting. This was done to stay on schedule for the milestone and bonus payments. Fortunately, management backed up the QA department and took a hard line stance against the developer.. Since the bug database got compromised, we spent six weeks re-testing all 3,000+ bugs. The developer had to fixed all the outstanding bugs for free, as management refused to payout their final milestone and bonus payments.
During the Reagan Administration, the Navy used oil tankers to protect their ships from Iranian mines in the Persian Gulf. Which was ironic considering that the Navy was supposed to be protecting the oil tankers. Minesweepers were hard to find back then.
When I was unemployed for two years (2009-10), there was seven applicants for every job opening. Today it might still be three applicants for every job opening. A normal economy has two applicants for every job opening. This economy is anything but normal.
As a W2 contractor doing I.T. support work, I get paid holidays, 20 Paid Time Off (PTO) days , 401k and health benefits. According to recruiters who contacted me, I could get matching benefits and a 30% increase in pay at a different job. Ironically, the increase in pay rate is because many hipsters are unwilling to commute more than 30 minutes away from San Francisco. Southern Silicon Valley (i.e., San Jose and Sunnyvale) are starving for workers.
If average people who would otherwise have a decent corporate job with a good salary and benefits have to resort to hustling for work, a fast food job might be a better option.
Written by someone who never tried to look for a fast food job after being out of work from a technical job. When I was unemployed for two years (2009-10), I couldn't get a minimum wage job because managers would say I was overqualified and leave for a better job when the economy improves. Besides, they got all these teenagers and illegals looking for minimum wage jobs. I spent two years working two technical jobs for seven days a week to get back on my feet.
Doesn't sound like a fair deal to me. Not sure why everyone is so keen to participate in stuff like this.
How is this any different from working at any other company? If you're an employee, you get laid off when the owner sells the business and retires with a boatload of cash. Or, in my case in 2013, I was laid off and out of work for eight months because the Fortune 500 company had a lousy fiscal year and the CEO got a 60% raise to buy a new yacht. Here's the secret of the new economy: you want to be an owner, not an employee.
For the record, I was misdiagnosed as mentally retarded due to an diagnosed hearing lost, spent eight years in special ed being treated like an idiot, skipped high school, and went to college. I'm a little bit sensitive.
Paying for a certification is an artificial barrier to entry for the disadvantaged to get into the computer field.
I was just poor white boy earning a pittance and working 80 hours a week as a video game tester when I saved up my money to get my A+, Network+ and MCP certifications in one year. I then got a help desk job that paid the same amount of money as a video game tester but only working 40 hours a week. I was able to enjoy life since I was no longer disadvantaged and have a meaningful career.
Or, you could be a responsible professional, and validate what you're about to do, before you do it.
The best way to do that is to focus on one task at a time. Getting it right the first time is more important than getting it done fast.
Of course, if you like perpetually chasing jobs that are being offshored to mindless drones in India, that's fine.
My job requires a U.S. security clearance. Not too many Indians have one of those. My contract is also fully funded for the next four years.
Most professional sysadmins would write automation to handle this for them.
My department handles all the stuff that can't be automated. For example, a workstation that the user refuses to log out of has an up time of 30+ days, doesn't have the latest security patches installed, and won't automatically reboot over the network. Either the user reboots the workstation or I'll set a 60-minute timer for a forced reboot. Either way, the workstation is getting rebooted.
Thanks for letting us all know which camp you're in.
I belong to Camp Big Bucks, getting paid to do the jobs that no one else wants.
What part of "no user is logged into the workstation" don't you understand? A user who is already logged out of the workstation is not going to lose data.
The Republican Party in California has more in common with the spotted owl than 1/10th of the U.S. population. The only way a Republican can get elected in the jungle primary system is to have two popular Democrats split the vote. A serious possibility for the 2016 election to replace Senator Boxer, if the GOP can find a "moderate" candidate.
You ALWAYS - ALWAYS - ALWAYS - validate what system you're on and where you're running before you reboot.
If you don't multitask and focus on one system at a time, you avoid rebooting the wrong system.
Also - if your sysadmins are rebooting *workstations*? You're doing it way, way wrong. A single user workstation should be rebooted by the user themselves.
If the workstation is in a pending reboot and no user is logged into the workstation, I reboot the workstation.
Do you go around in the evenings and power off peoples' laptops before they leave for hte day,
Corporate policy requires that users log off their workstations at the end of the work day. A corporate policy that most users routinely disregard. Since most users start work at 7:00AM, we have a 6:00PM to 8:00PM maintenance window that may initiate a reboot. Also, all workstations are rebooted on Sunday night.
Multitasking in computer security can be somewhat dangerous. If you have multiple terminal windows open, the reboot command to reboot a workstation may get executed in the wrong terminal window and reboot a server with 50+ users. An incident my new coworker went through recently. Most users are understanding, but some are not.
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I think my shit is just not the shit they are worried about.
My two-hour background interview lasted four hours because the government thought it was odd that I lived in the same apartment for ten years and I had multiple, sometimes overlapping jobs after being out of work for two years (2009-10) and filing for bankruptcy in 2011. Normal "shit" is that most people move every three years or so and have only one job.
My opinion on QA is that if you weren't capable enough to be a software developer then you weren't capable of being in QA either.
That applies only to white box testers who need to know how the code works to write code-specific tests. Black box testers don't to need to know how the code works to test the entire application as a user would. The best black box testers are non-programmers, as they tend not to be linear thinkers and can crash the application in odd ways.
You're a bit rusty if you can't tell the difference.
Black box testing is where the tester has no idea what the code inside the application does and test the application like a regular user. White box testing is where the tester knows what the code inside application does and test the application like a programmer. In an ideal development environment, programmers write unit tests to white box test their own code and testers black box test the application as a whole.
When I worked at as a lead video game tester, a developer figured out the password to the bug database, zeroed out all the outstanding issues (including some serious show stoppers) for their game, and pushed for a code release meeting. This was done to stay on schedule for the milestone and bonus payments. Fortunately, management backed up the QA department and took a hard line stance against the developer.. Since the bug database got compromised, we spent six weeks re-testing all 3,000+ bugs. The developer had to fixed all the outstanding bugs for free, as management refused to payout their final milestone and bonus payments.
During the Reagan Administration, the Navy used oil tankers to protect their ships from Iranian mines in the Persian Gulf. Which was ironic considering that the Navy was supposed to be protecting the oil tankers. Minesweepers were hard to find back then.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Earnest_Will
I'm not worrying. My job requires a security clearance, which isn't "sharable" for a few bucks an hour.
When I was unemployed for two years (2009-10), there was seven applicants for every job opening. Today it might still be three applicants for every job opening. A normal economy has two applicants for every job opening. This economy is anything but normal.
Many contractors do not get paid benefits.
As a W2 contractor doing I.T. support work, I get paid holidays, 20 Paid Time Off (PTO) days , 401k and health benefits. According to recruiters who contacted me, I could get matching benefits and a 30% increase in pay at a different job. Ironically, the increase in pay rate is because many hipsters are unwilling to commute more than 30 minutes away from San Francisco. Southern Silicon Valley (i.e., San Jose and Sunnyvale) are starving for workers.
If average people who would otherwise have a decent corporate job with a good salary and benefits have to resort to hustling for work, a fast food job might be a better option.
Written by someone who never tried to look for a fast food job after being out of work from a technical job. When I was unemployed for two years (2009-10), I couldn't get a minimum wage job because managers would say I was overqualified and leave for a better job when the economy improves. Besides, they got all these teenagers and illegals looking for minimum wage jobs. I spent two years working two technical jobs for seven days a week to get back on my feet.
Doesn't sound like a fair deal to me. Not sure why everyone is so keen to participate in stuff like this.
How is this any different from working at any other company? If you're an employee, you get laid off when the owner sells the business and retires with a boatload of cash. Or, in my case in 2013, I was laid off and out of work for eight months because the Fortune 500 company had a lousy fiscal year and the CEO got a 60% raise to buy a new yacht. Here's the secret of the new economy: you want to be an owner, not an employee.
All those GPUs mean exactly one thing: bitcoin mining.
I for one welcome our new bitcoin mining overlords
FTFY
For the record, I was misdiagnosed as mentally retarded due to an diagnosed hearing lost, spent eight years in special ed being treated like an idiot, skipped high school, and went to college. I'm a little bit sensitive.
Paying for a certification is an artificial barrier to entry for the disadvantaged to get into the computer field.
I was just poor white boy earning a pittance and working 80 hours a week as a video game tester when I saved up my money to get my A+, Network+ and MCP certifications in one year. I then got a help desk job that paid the same amount of money as a video game tester but only working 40 hours a week. I was able to enjoy life since I was no longer disadvantaged and have a meaningful career.
Let me check the network at work... 80,000+ Windows workstations. Now that's a lot of Minesweeper.
Or, you could be a responsible professional, and validate what you're about to do, before you do it.
The best way to do that is to focus on one task at a time. Getting it right the first time is more important than getting it done fast.
Of course, if you like perpetually chasing jobs that are being offshored to mindless drones in India, that's fine.
My job requires a U.S. security clearance. Not too many Indians have one of those. My contract is also fully funded for the next four years.
Most professional sysadmins would write automation to handle this for them.
My department handles all the stuff that can't be automated. For example, a workstation that the user refuses to log out of has an up time of 30+ days, doesn't have the latest security patches installed, and won't automatically reboot over the network. Either the user reboots the workstation or I'll set a 60-minute timer for a forced reboot. Either way, the workstation is getting rebooted.
Thanks for letting us all know which camp you're in.
I belong to Camp Big Bucks, getting paid to do the jobs that no one else wants.
What part of "no user is logged into the workstation" don't you understand? A user who is already logged out of the workstation is not going to lose data.
The Republican Party in California has more in common with the spotted owl than 1/10th of the U.S. population. The only way a Republican can get elected in the jungle primary system is to have two popular Democrats split the vote. A serious possibility for the 2016 election to replace Senator Boxer, if the GOP can find a "moderate" candidate.
Seniority can be a bitch.
The comments for this article ae slow on the uptake.
Reposting the same comment doesn't make it correct a second time.
You ALWAYS - ALWAYS - ALWAYS - validate what system you're on and where you're running before you reboot.
If you don't multitask and focus on one system at a time, you avoid rebooting the wrong system.
Also - if your sysadmins are rebooting *workstations*? You're doing it way, way wrong. A single user workstation should be rebooted by the user themselves.
If the workstation is in a pending reboot and no user is logged into the workstation, I reboot the workstation.
Do you go around in the evenings and power off peoples' laptops before they leave for hte day,
Corporate policy requires that users log off their workstations at the end of the work day. A corporate policy that most users routinely disregard. Since most users start work at 7:00AM, we have a 6:00PM to 8:00PM maintenance window that may initiate a reboot. Also, all workstations are rebooted on Sunday night.
You're confusing the InfoSec community with the typical Fortune 500 user base.
Multitasking in computer security can be somewhat dangerous. If you have multiple terminal windows open, the reboot command to reboot a workstation may get executed in the wrong terminal window and reboot a server with 50+ users. An incident my new coworker went through recently. Most users are understanding, but some are not.