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necrobobsledder posted:Salaries are much higher compared to cost of living than Bay Area. I moved from Bay Area to the DC area and I get more for my money here and a somewhat similar salary to the Bay Area for my job. However, a big part of why cost of living is so high for housing is that the region has among the highest median incomes in the country due to massive ubiquity of dual income professional households. Fairfax county has a median household income of like $103k, higher than Santa Clara county. Yeah the more I look into the research triangle the more I like it. Hot summers, cool winters, woods, hills, cheap land, and low taxes. Unless norfolk southern opens its doors up in the next few months I think the triangle will do
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| # ? Dec 21, 2011 19:48 |
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| # ? May 23, 2013 19:19 |
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So someone in my area has been doing this really annoying thing where they basically go down the craigslist ads for people willing to do private IT consulting and flag them all. I really want it to be Geek Squad because I hate Best Buy with a passion, but it could obviously just be some other rear end in a top hat looking to eliminate competition.
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| # ? Dec 22, 2011 15:28 |
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Corvettefisher posted:Yeah the more I look into the research triangle the more I like it. Hot summers, cool winters, woods, hills, cheap land, and low taxes. It's a nice area to live. Like I said, just avoid IBM unless you like being laid off and rehired by restructured departments every few months so they can dick with your benefits.
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| # ? Dec 22, 2011 19:40 |
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psydude posted:So someone in my area has been doing this really annoying thing where they basically go down the craigslist ads for people willing to do private IT consulting and flag them all. I really want it to be Geek Squad because I hate Best Buy with a passion, but it could obviously just be some other rear end in a top hat looking to eliminate competition. It's a codgy old man who has called them all to try and get his 486's turbo button working again so he can get on his aol. Also his clicky stopped working so he had to go use the library computer.
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| # ? Dec 22, 2011 19:41 |
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Rhymenoserous posted:It's a nice area to live. Like I said, just avoid IBM unless you like being laid off and rehired by restructured departments every few months so they can dick with your benefits. poo poo, I just landed an interview with them in Canada. They're rated as one of the best employers here so maybe the situation is different. Plus my department looks fairly stable and I'm not exactly in an IT position, more in a development type position instead.
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| # ? Dec 22, 2011 19:56 |
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Rhymenoserous posted:It's a codgy old man who has called them all to try and get his 486's turbo button working again so he can get on his aol. Also his clicky stopped working so he had to go use the library computer. The scenario I imagined involves a sketchy Armenian technician telling people "You have problem computer? I fix, no problem. Leave computer and payment now; ready in one week."
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| # ? Dec 22, 2011 20:00 |
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Rhymenoserous posted:It's a nice area to live. Like I said, just avoid IBM unless you like being laid off and rehired by restructured departments every few months so they can dick with your benefits. Thanks,My study is VCP/VCAP, CCNA, EMC work mostly just maintaining virtual environments and such. Any employers to look for in the area? I think EMC has a setup down there
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| # ? Dec 22, 2011 20:25 |
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DerDestroyer posted:poo poo, I just landed an interview with them in Canada. They're rated as one of the best employers here so maybe the situation is different. Plus my department looks fairly stable and I'm not exactly in an IT position, more in a development type position instead. You should be fine, Canada actually has labor laws better than "OK I'll hold him down you hit him with the stick"
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| # ? Dec 22, 2011 21:00 |
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Company's folding, getting laid off in a month. My first IT job and I barely last two months  So, I've never been unemployed before. Anything particular to IT that I should know?
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| # ? Dec 22, 2011 22:12 |
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Casull posted:Company's folding, getting laid off in a month. My first IT job and I barely last two months Thread title. Drink up!
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| # ? Dec 22, 2011 22:14 |
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Casull posted:Company's folding, getting laid off in a month. My first IT job and I barely last two months Start spamming your resume now before you lose the job, showing you are currently employed on your resume is a bit of a plus I am told
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| # ? Dec 22, 2011 22:42 |
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psydude posted:The scenario I imagined involves a sketchy Armenian technician telling people "You have problem computer? I fix, no problem. Leave computer and payment now; ready in one week."  Good evening, my name is Hamid. How is the weather in Biloxi?
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| # ? Dec 22, 2011 23:02 |
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This may be the best place to ask, but I'm about to graduate college after seven years of dicking around and I am ready for the next move. I'm been in IT for about 6 years: 2 years helpdesk, 1 year in strictly *nix and server room stuff, and then I scored my current gig as an "IT Specialist" (basically windows/osx helpdesk/sysadmin) for a federal agency. While I've been doing all this I have also spent my after hours/weekends doing small-medium business consultation and have a decent name around town. I'm excited about all of the skills I have learned and this recent job picked up the cost of tuition for me to finish my degree. If everything goes according to plan I'll be graduating in May. I have a pretty wide breadth of skills that I've picked up but I know I'll have to make a decision soon about where I want my career to take me. I have lots of options and a huge personal network to reach out to should I need to. I've been sort of pre-offered a full-time position where I currently am after I graduate with a modest pay increase. I'd be looking at around $55k as soon as I graduate. According to my friends/classmates, it's an obvious choice and I should stay and ride the wave of federal job security until the economy completely dies. I have a few problems with staying, one being that I don't see any real advancement opportunities. The science center I work for is facing severe budget restrictions thanks to congress, and while I believe my boss when he tells me they budgeted me in there, I still am wary. Another problem is that I see a lot of the stereotypical government issues on a day to day basis (things like insane bureaucracy navigation and extremely relaxed time budgeting). I guess my main problem is that I feel an obligation to stay as I know my boss worked really hard to get my tuition reimbursements happening as well as scored me full benefits for the past two years. I feel like I would be pretty assholish to bail immediately after graduating. Also, having tasted the delicious hourly wages of consulting I'm not nearly as excited as most college graduates at the thought of $55k. So right now there's a network operations job in the same science center that I work in, although under a separate department. I know that I have a huge weakness in my skillset in networking and the pay is very good and the guy supervising is looking to train a replacement before he retires (and he makes a whole mess of money). Pushing everything else to the side I would take this job in a heartbeat just to get a solid foundation in telecommunication tech. I'm guessing that everyone will tell me to go for it but I have a serious commitment problem when it comes to my current boss. He fought tooth and nail for me even though I am just a student worker (although I had been working here for almost a year before he was hired). Part of me thinks that I should do whatever I want and chase the delicious dollars wherever they take me, but I don't want to burn bridges/be an unethical immoral rear end in a top hat. So I did the next best thing and asked the internet! Tell me what to do tech-goons. tl;dr: I'm graduating in May and don't know if I should abandon my current cushy government job for the adventure of the private sector.
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| # ? Dec 22, 2011 23:24 |
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North Carolina does not have low taxation - it's got some northern influence in its policies and so isn't quite conservative in its policies (Virginia has much lower taxes though at the cost of higher cost of living across the board). My wife lived there for years and it's maybe low if you're making like $30k or so, which is actually acceptable. RTP salaries will be considerably lower than elsewhere with the cost of living being among the lowest in the country. Lower salaries make it harder to save up a lot and, say, go do a start-up with a bunch in savings. Even if cost of living is nuts in the Bay Area, you could save more as an absolute dollar amount in a few years there than you would in nearly 8 years working in RTP. If you're really good and money and/or networking matter more at your career stage, I'd argue with the Bay Area over settling down in RTP where most people go to work, do a good job, and go home. That's the culture there really as is the case with the DC area I'm finding. Colorado is similar, too (HP and a number of defense contractors around Boulder with cost of living comparable to Washington state). Trying to find people here to take any risk whatsoever with early stage start-ups is a bit frustrating. Nobody cares unless you're funded, wtf. As it is, RTP is where most Fortune 500 companies (aside from the health/big-pharm folks) in-source their R&D efforts and put their "B-teams." So it's no surprising that job-wise, the opportunities I've seen in RTP are hardly cutting edge work that gets me up in the morning (within tech itself though - biotech is different). After all, as a CTO you'd probably send QA and sustaining engineering to your RTP cost center rather than your development itself that's so dependent upon sheer innovation. Even Google's work in Atlanta (another cost-competing region) is pretty much sustaining engineering. The next Gmail or Google Plus isn't going to be developed out of there, it's where you have datacenter optimization and dev-ops guys keeping the gears greased. This might not matter much for pure-bred IT guys, but it matters a lot for a guy like me straddling development and IT operations and especially career developers.
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| # ? Dec 22, 2011 23:42 |
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Casull posted:Company's folding, getting laid off in a month. My first IT job and I barely last two months Get used to infrequent bouts of unemployment and make sure your resume is polished. Spudalicious posted:Stick it out for at least a year - right now the private sector is so hosed it isn't funny. You have a nice, cushy government job with little or no chance of being unemployed for the near future - pay raises are pretty much guaranteed as is health care, so if it were me I'd stick with it and see how things look in a year. You won't be making bank, but at this point the way our economy is going I'd kill for a government job. Daylen Drazzi fucked around with this message at Dec 23, 2011 around 02:49 |
| # ? Dec 23, 2011 02:44 |
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I too would give up a few thousand a year and some of my 5 paid weeks off a year to nestle myself in the warm bosom of Federal Government work.
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| # ? Dec 23, 2011 17:49 |
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So, I'm looking at master's programs for next fall. I'm torn between Computer Science and Management of Information Systems. I'm really leaning toward the CS degree because I think it will add a nice set of extra job skills and worldly knowledge alongside the IT poo poo, as opposed to MIS, which I gather focuses mainly on poo poo you'll already know from working in IT. If nothing else, I feel it will give me the ability to understand where any software engineers are coming from in the event that I wind up in a management position that compasses both fields. Plus, I feel like it might be kind of useful in higher level Sysadmin/Netadmin type poo poo.
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| # ? Dec 27, 2011 03:25 |
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Do you like math? Because there's a lot of it.
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| # ? Dec 27, 2011 04:09 |
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I'm cool with math. I mean, I took 5 CS courses in undergrad, so I'm pretty familiar with the conventions behind the degree.
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| # ? Dec 27, 2011 04:16 |
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I vote MIS or even an MBA style program. If you want to get into management/Director level +++ you'll want a better understanding of the business side of IT decisions than the actual implementation.
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| # ? Dec 27, 2011 04:20 |
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skipdogg posted:I vote MIS or even an MBA style program. If you want to get into management/Director level +++ you'll want a better understanding of the business side of IT decisions than the actual implementation. I agree completely. After 6 years in IT I'd like to get my MBA to better understand the business processes I directly affect (or that affect me, which is more likely the case). You don't need college to teach you sysadmin/netadmin. Hell, plenty of us didn't make it out of high school.
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| # ? Dec 27, 2011 05:34 |
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skipdogg posted:I vote MIS or even an MBA style program. If you want to get into management/Director level +++ you'll want a better understanding of the business side of IT decisions than the actual implementation. I'd go MIS if I were looking to get the "Master's Degree" checkbox on my resume but didn't want to expend all that much effort, CS if I wanted to take something unnecessarily hard because I'm not planning on being a developer or architect or managing developers. I think you're looking for a MBA.
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| # ? Dec 27, 2011 06:37 |
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They offer a MIS/MBA hybrid program that I might look into. Not sure how well regarded those are in the industry.
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| # ? Dec 27, 2011 13:45 |
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psydude posted:They offer a MIS/MBA hybrid program that I might look into. Not sure how well regarded those are in the industry. MIS already has a generous amount of business classes... so not sure why you would want more
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| # ? Dec 27, 2011 14:15 |
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psydude posted:Plus, I feel like it might be kind of useful in higher level Sysadmin/Netadmin type poo poo. If management or sys/net admin is your eventual goal, don't get a MS in CS. Nothing about mathematically proving that a sorting algorithm is O(n^2) is going to help you in the future.
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| # ? Dec 27, 2011 16:35 |
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Mierdaan posted:If management or sys/net admin is your eventual goal, don't get a MS in CS. Nothing about mathematically proving that a sorting algorithm is O(n^2) is going to help you in the future. This. My roommate is looking into networking asking me a whole bunch of CCNA stuff, he wants to go for a CCIE, or at least CCNP he says, which if he does go and get it his Masters in CS won't apply to most of his day-to-day. Most of IT doesn't require a degree, it may come in handy if you are into NetSec/Cypto/ect, and usually requires just advance study in a specific area(s). A Master/Bachelors will look great to an HR but how much money are you pouring in and how much of that are you actually going to get back, that is why I am doing AAS + Certifice programs as it is much more practical. psydude posted:They offer a MIS/MBA hybrid program that I might look into. Not sure how well regarded those are in the industry. Corvettefisher fucked around with this message at Dec 27, 2011 around 17:10 |
| # ? Dec 27, 2011 17:03 |
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Computer Science is as much about computers as astronomy is about telescopes. You might get lucky and find a program that has a security or networking component, but even then you're going to have the kind of knowledge that would help you engineer the systems (program IOS for Cisco, right AV heuristics for Symantec/McAfee/whatever) than to actually implement those technologies. Nthing vote for MBA or MIS. Me, I'm probably going for Urban Planning & Policy masters, because I work for a University and get cheap as hell tuition, but I'm a special kind of nerd, so 
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| # ? Dec 27, 2011 19:21 |
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skipdogg posted:I vote MIS or even an MBA style program. If you want to get into management/Director level +++ you'll want a better understanding of the business side of IT decisions than the actual implementation. If only I had money to finish mine
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| # ? Dec 27, 2011 20:11 |
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Corvettefisher posted:Also I forgot but make sure you have a decent backing of IT experience if you want to go into a management position, while the job may not require it you won't be "That IT manager" I mean, it'll probably take me 3-4 years to finish it part time. By that point I'll have quite a bit of experience in the field. Hadn't considered doing a full on MBA. Might be extra useful since my goal is to eventually start up my own company, so I'll definitely look into it.
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| # ? Dec 27, 2011 20:29 |
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Anyone in here in the Denver metro area and work in IT security?
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| # ? Dec 29, 2011 19:47 |
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So today I was offered a healthcare IT position (Network Analyst I) that pays a more substantial amount of money than what I currently make. The job entails support work between roughly 30 sites (it actually does sound similar to what I do now judging by the interview experience, only on a much larger scale). They did admit to having a rather large queue of support ticket items that's more than what I currently have to work with. However, I'd be their third hire in the department and they have plans to hire a fourth next year. What are the general experiences in healthcare IT? I'm new to it but I've been in the IT support field for more than six years now. The job is offering at least $10k more per year compared to what I do now and I'm being told that I'll never have to pull cable in the new position. What's awkward now is I can't get through to my manager to speak to him because he's on vacation.
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| # ? Dec 30, 2011 05:14 |
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COCKMOUTH.GIF posted:So today I was offered a healthcare IT position (Network Analyst I) that pays a more substantial amount of money than what I currently make. The job entails support work between roughly 30 sites (it actually does sound similar to what I do now judging by the interview experience, only on a much larger scale). They did admit to having a rather large queue of support ticket items that's more than what I currently have to work with. However, I'd be their third hire in the department and they have plans to hire a fourth next year. Really, healthcare IT has a lot of legislative mandates and regulatory bullshit, and the quality of the job depends on the quality of hospital. My boss came from Hoag Memorial Hospital, which serves a relatively well-to-do patient base in Newport Beach -- they had a shitload of money for IT and things generally ran smoothly. I've also known people who have worked in university medical centers and other settings where money is tight and it combines all the worst parts of healthcare IT and academic/non-profit IT. If you're talking about consulting between outpatient medical offices, well, that's a whole other can of worms. Basically, know the job. Misogynist fucked around with this message at Dec 30, 2011 around 05:38 |
| # ? Dec 30, 2011 05:34 |
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I refuse to work in the healthcare and banking IT industries. I've seen the burnouts and know many friends who left to go into long haul trucking just to get away. I consult to a number of local hospitals and the doctors are either fantastic to work with - as in will follow your suggestions because you're the expert, or they're the types that make their assistants handle EVERYTHING and it's just strange. I hope that raise is as substantial as you say.
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| # ? Dec 30, 2011 07:02 |
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vty posted:I refuse to work in the healthcare and banking IT industries. I've seen the burnouts and know many friends who left to go into long haul trucking just to get away. Why did they burn out so hard?
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| # ? Dec 30, 2011 13:43 |
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vty posted:I refuse to work in the healthcare and banking IT industries. I've seen the burnouts and know many friends who left to go into long haul trucking just to get away. I think the promised land is to work for a college or university and ride the gravy train of ridiculous benefits for you and your family into the sunset.
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| # ? Dec 30, 2011 13:48 |
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three posted:Why did they burn out so hard? I think that depends on how much the healthcare provider is willing to put into technology. Healthcare has so many regulations about uptime, availability,records processing, data archiving, client device standards, ect. If you are working for a company that neglects that then patching older systems to accommodate the new regulations will be like trying to put out a fire with a bucket full of holes. Banking I suppose it can be a security mans nightmare. psydude posted:I think the promised land is to work for a college or university and ride the gravy train of ridiculous benefits for you and your family into the sunset. Corvettefisher fucked around with this message at Dec 30, 2011 around 14:02 |
| # ? Dec 30, 2011 13:57 |
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Misogynist posted:Enjoy spearheading constant HIPAA audits. Well the position is with one big non-profit healthcare group that has roughly 8,000 full and part-time employees and about 1,200 physicians. They basically provide service to nearly all of the primary care centers, imaging centers and hospitals in this area. The first 30 days of the new job will be an orientation period in addition to me being a shadow to another member of the team I'd be in just so I'm up to speed. The job itself sounds fairly similar to what I do now and might actually be less work to be honest. Right now I'm juggling the responsibilities of training a new hire, managing two other people in the department, tackling outstanding projects, handling support issues and researching new/better solutions. The offer that came in sounds like technical support between 30 different sites, some VLANing of switches, building packages for deployment and tackling some projects. I've also been told that I won't have to pull any cabling because they have a separate team for that (a blessing because I've already had to cable two 25k+ square foot buildings). The one thing I'm a little concerned about is the potential employer did admit to having a large back-log of tickets in their support queue, but that's the primary reason for them hiring me. The person I spoke to in the interview also admitted that I would be the third person in the team and they have plans to hire a fourth next year. The pay bump is substantial-- I'd be going from hourly to salary so I'm exempt from overtime. 75 hours per pay period (bi-weekly pay), vacation time and benefits. I'm currently around $36k and this job would offer close to $50k. My only concerns are the support queue they have racked up, the fact that I'm new to the healthcare IT industry, and the fact that I did tell certain people at my current job that I was "in for the long-haul" but that's entirely dependent on one major decision.
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| # ? Dec 30, 2011 14:32 |
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Do you live in a city where 40-50k IT jobs are not a dime a dozen? In regard to the support queue- you nearly always walk into a support queue. If they didn't have a capable IT staff (it sounds like they didn't) then the users are already used to terrible and overdue service, so I doubt you'll get crap for having day response times to tickets. Hell, if anything you could clean it up and look like a hero and become a Director of sorts. At least you'll have busy work to do. vty fucked around with this message at Dec 30, 2011 around 16:43 |
| # ? Dec 30, 2011 16:40 |
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Depending on where he lives, 30k a year might be equivalent 40-50k a year when adjusted for cost of living.
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| # ? Dec 30, 2011 16:54 |
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| # ? May 23, 2013 19:19 |
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j3rkstore posted:Just imagine Military networking Nevermind the acronyms, you should see how the networks are set up in general. I've been doing IT work in the Air Force for a few years now and the amount of random cable I've pulled up from the sub-floor is prolly floating around 20 miles at this point between two offices. By office, I don't mean a whole building, either. I mean literally 20 miles of rat's nest split between two ROOMS. Stealth Edit: I'm fairly sure monkeys ran the cable prior to my arrival. No labeling or color coding to speak of. Just miles of blue with the random, coiled up phone cable. Oh, and god forbid we crimp down RJ-45 connectors on the jacket like a functional member of the IT community. No, lets crimp that poo poo down on the wire pairs. Yeah, that'll hold up over time.
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| # ? Dec 30, 2011 17:38 |
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