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Assuming being a "Tech" at computer repair shop counts; I worked as a contractor tech for computer shop from 2005 till 2010. Sometimes I'd work at the shop I was hired as a contractor at, other times I'd be contracted to work for other shops or corporate offices for short periods of time. If I could tolerate the taste of alcohol; I'd be a raging drunk by the time I quit. The main shop I worked for specialized in buying fucktons of used computers/parts and reselling them at top dollar after they were hastily tested and helping people keep zombie computers still running because they(the customers) did not want to buy a new computer for some reason... Oh and screwing customers over when it was convenient From my 5 year experience of being a computer tech I can safely say you will be forced to do things you'd normally think of as criminal activity to keep your job and keep getting payed. It was not just the main shop I worked at which was doing horrible things. Every other shop I worked for did several illegal things on a daily basis. Only the Corporate Offices had any semblance of decency and ethics. If you want to work as a computer tech I highly suggest you stay in the corporate world.
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| # ? Nov 8, 2011 21:56 |
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| # ? May 22, 2013 10:37 |
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the spyder posted:This seems like an appropriate thread for this, maybe someone here will have some good advice for a goon like me. Excuse the messy layout, I have a terrible head cold. Maybe it's just the worry about your family financial situation coming through, but you sound insecure in your skills, and you don't sound like you know where you actually want your career to be going at all. You sound like you've got a good deal of practical work experience under your belt. Given that you have a bunch of projects you sound like you want to be working on, but don't have the time, why are you looking for an IT program? You sound like a perfectly competent, self-directed learner who wants to actually produce things. Save your money and spend time cultivating that instead of paying money to people so bad at IT that, instead of making big bucks in systems engineering, they're teaching at a tech school. The only thing technical school will get you, I think, is exposure to a lot of different technologies so you can figure out where you want to focus and develop yourself. Honestly, though, you can do this on your own by working your way through problems that are interesting to you. If I wanted to scale a web architecture the way that Facebook does, how would I do that? How would I run a near-100% web architecture for a content delivery network? How can I automate a lot of these tasks? Ask questions like these, and seek out answers until you're confident you can't learn any more on the subject. Then come back in twelve months and realize how stupid your decisions were. You'll be amazed how fast you grow. What do you enjoy about IT work? Why do you want to continue in this field over, say, mechanical engineering? If we know that, we know best how to help you get where you're going. Moving along: You went on a bunch of interviews but didn't get any offers. What did you take away from these interviews? Was there anything in your technical skillset that was lacking that they would have preferred in their ideal candidate? Is there something off-putting about your personality or the way you present yourself in interviews? Were you a mess and did your breath smell? Did you honestly sell yourself as the best possible candidate for the job? Lastly: Can you post your resume (feel free to redact relevant parts), so we can get a better idea of exactly where you've been and what you've done?
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| # ? Nov 8, 2011 22:45 |
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sanchez posted:On the upside, if you never turn down the opportunity to learn something or do something new (even if it is unappealing) and don't gently caress up, you'll probably do pretty well, as people like that are rare enough to be valuable still. Most people gloss over how the back-out plan is 100% as important as the steps you take to not gently caress up in the first place.
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| # ? Nov 8, 2011 22:49 |
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Misogynist posted:Everybody fucks up. Don't be afraid to gently caress up or you'll never have the motivation to touch important production infrastructure. Just be the guy smart enough to have a plan that says "I did my due diligence, these are places where I think I might gently caress up, and I'm going to take these steps if this thing happens." If you're really paranoid, write up a little document with "If it all goes to hell in a handbasket, I'll do <x>, it will take <y> number of hours to restore full functionality" and get someone above you to sign it off. And yeah, you always need what I call the 'big red abort'* button - a (as-near-as-possible) failsafe plan to restore things to the way they were before you started loving with them. If your modifications are any more complex than about five steps, practice your restore plan before you start messing with production. * I actually refer to it as the nuclear option, but that's a bit confusing.
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| # ? Nov 8, 2011 23:51 |
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I currently work full time as a "sysadmin" (read: helpdesk with jack of all trades responsibility) for a student union at a large state university. I'm considering going to a community college to start on an AAS in IT in the spring in my spare time and I have a couple questions. Is it worth it to do this? And on that line, is it worth it to get an AAS, then find a state school to get a bachelor's? I make about entry level in a fairly low cost of living area, but I'm one of two people in my department and I don't have much room to go upward at this company. I like my job a lot, and I don't have any doubt that I could do both considering how much free time I typically have here. I've been here for nearly two years, and I've only accumulated A+ and Network+ certs. Mostly Novell environment, transitioning to AD and SCCM over winter break. All of the network hardware in my building is completely managed by the school and I can't mess with it, so my practical experience with network infrastructure and scripting and that sort of thing is extremely limited. I both need and want to get paid more, so is going into student loan debt going to be a worthwhile enterprise in terms of the theoretical increase in salary that a degree would bring?
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| # ? Nov 9, 2011 18:13 |
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Tytanium posted:I currently work full time as a "sysadmin" (read: helpdesk with jack of all trades responsibility) for a student union at a large state university. I'm considering going to a community college to start on an AAS in IT in the spring in my spare time and I have a couple questions. I am doing an AAS in IT and do SA as well. You will save a lot of money that way, I would pick up an AAS, scout around for a little bit, if you find what you want neat, if not go for a BA. CC's are cheap, my VCP class cost about 550 for 4 credit/16 weeks, not sure about your area though. My CC feels more like a university as it is actually bigger(student wise and land wise) than the state university and has multiple location. CC's generally tend to have easy Scholarships Corvettefisher fucked around with this message at Nov 9, 2011 around 18:45 |
| # ? Nov 9, 2011 18:40 |
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Check out WGU for a BSIT. It was really nice getting a degree and not having to sit in class after working all day. And it's cheap.
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| # ? Nov 9, 2011 18:52 |
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Misogynist posted:Everybody fucks up. Don't be afraid to gently caress up or you'll never have the motivation to touch important production infrastructure. Just be the guy smart enough to have a plan that says "I did my due diligence, these are places where I think I might gently caress up, and I'm going to take these steps if this thing happens." A gently caress up is not having a plan to roll back your changes, or making changes you don't have at least a reasonable understanding of on a production system. I don't think that is ever excusable and is usually a result of someone becoming a little complacent or cocky.
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| # ? Nov 9, 2011 19:06 |
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I'm interested to know where this incredible arrogance comes from with regard to programmers. All you have to do is dip in to the House of COBOL to see what I'm talking about. Are programmers like this in real life or is this just a usual internet mask? I can understand an attitude like this in something like finance where you basically have to sell yourself and trample on anyone in front of you to just get a job, but in programming? 
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| # ? Nov 9, 2011 22:45 |
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Red_Fred posted:I'm interested to know where this incredible arrogance comes from with regard to programmers. All you have to do is dip in to the House of COBOL to see what I'm talking about. Are programmers like this in real life or is this just a usual internet mask?
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| # ? Nov 9, 2011 22:56 |
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Misogynist posted:Can you describe in, well, any words what you're referring to? There just seems to be a condescending attitude by people who are good at programming to those who are either in general IT or are bad at programming. I see this attitude on these forums and also at the two Universities I have been to where doing general IT rather than CS will basically get you ridiculed regardless of your ability. Other examples that spring to mind would be the Coding Horrors thread and Recruiters threads in HoC. I'm not having a dig, I'm more interested in where this attitude comes from. 
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| # ? Nov 9, 2011 23:02 |
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So I just got tore up in an interview I had for a help desk analyst position at a small IT company. He posed a lot of questions about how I handle myself during stressful situations. Got me answering questions pretty stubbornly and quickly, he had me on my loving toes. My technical knowledge isn't all that there, but I can grasp a lot of the concepts they work on well. He said the biggest thing in doing a good job was handling stress well. I don't burst into fits of rage or anything, but I have left jobs on short notice because I ultimately hated them. Is this a common question brought up or do the interviewees try and pick you apart to see how you handle it? I'm interested in the position because I have no education or professional background outside of Dell hardware. I have no direction right now and I basically need to stick with anything if I want to do IT at all in my life. I feel like working under this company while small, would get me a lot of good experience and they've got a guy moving up to their "senior" sysadmin after working there for 2 months and had already talked about moving whoever they hire to his current position and ultimately to their "senior" level within 6 months. I know even the title implies that IT is stressful and I've dealt with a lot of stressful end-users and customers and think I could do well doing it all day over the phone. On an unrelated note, any opinions on army, navy, or marine IT work? I'm running out of options and I'm getting flustered with my lack of direction and education, and my debt is piling up faster than I'd like it to.
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| # ? Nov 9, 2011 23:08 |
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I kind of know what you mean, I support a lot of programmers at work and they can be a bit dickish unnecessarily. I just had someone go off on me today that our Windows Storage Server (running NFS Sharing even)was 'garbage' because she couldn't mount a share to her linux box. Now I'm just a dumbass Windows Admin, but even I figured out after 10 minutes she needed to run a 'apt-get install nfs-common' to get that poo poo working on her Ubuntu install. Guess it wasn't installed by default. Either way my poo poo works fine, hers was busted. Just because you can code doesn't mean you know poo poo about IT. One guy at work couldn't even swap his own video card without my help, and he's regarded as one of our better coders.
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| # ? Nov 9, 2011 23:09 |
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Red_Fred posted:There just seems to be a condescending attitude by people who are good at programming to those who are either in general IT or are bad at programming. I see this attitude on these forums and also at the two Universities I have been to where doing general IT rather than CS will basically get you ridiculed regardless of your ability. This thread is more geared to IT due to the fact that COBOL has its own thread geared to programming
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| # ? Nov 10, 2011 00:03 |
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Corvettefisher posted:This thread is more geared to IT due to the fact that COBOL has its own thread geared to programming Well that's why I asked here and not in COBOL. My guess is that it stems from the fact that a CS degree is worth more than an IT degree which maybe makes CS and thus programming seem more prestigious?
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| # ? Nov 10, 2011 01:22 |
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Red_Fred posted:Well that's why I asked here and not in COBOL. My guess is that it stems from the fact that a CS degree is worth more than an IT degree which maybe makes CS and thus programming seem more prestigious? I think, in general that a CS degree would be more prestigious simply because of what is necessary to get it compared to an average IT degree. To me, they both cover wildly different areas of computing that directly comparing that comparing them really doesn't make sense. Some of the worst computer users I've seen have been programmers. Not sure how'd you get a degree that heavily involves a computer and never figure out how a mouse plugs in, but there you go. But in the real world, I'm not sure it really matters all that much, as both groups will be locked away out of the sight in the office. The IT people will get out more as they have to help move a desk, and the programmers get to study code that is older then they are.
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| # ? Nov 10, 2011 06:54 |
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skipdogg posted:I kind of know what you mean, I support a lot of programmers at work and they can be a bit dickish unnecessarily. Second, and not to be a jerk, but there's a lot more to "knowing poo poo about IT" than being able to swap a component for a nearly-identical component without destroying the video card or the computer it goes into. Dijkstra famously said that computer science is as much about computers as astronomy is about telescopes; I'd argue the same about IT, it's just that most workers are completely insulated from the process that takes IT projects from business initiatives to technology implementations. I've known quite a few programmers (and directors) who wouldn't know what the RAM in their computer looked like, but knew a lot more "poo poo about IT" than the dude holding a Guillemot box.
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| # ? Nov 10, 2011 13:09 |
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Red_Fred posted:There just seems to be a condescending attitude by people who are good at programming to those who are either in general IT or are bad at programming. I see this attitude on these forums and also at the two Universities I have been to where doing general IT rather than CS will basically get you ridiculed regardless of your ability. Part of the problem is that most IT programs, which are really CIS programs, are not well-designed. Most of them don't even begin to address the actual problems that most people will face in IT, and instead a bachelor's degree in Computer Information Systems jams together an associate's-level understanding of computer science with an associate's-level understanding of business, with most of the coding classes gutted out and maybe replaced by a course on TCP/IP networking. It's like being a level-3 Fighter/Mage when the rest of your party is all level 7 Fighters and level 7 Mages. You can be all, "Magic Missile!" but you're only shooting two missiles and you can't even cast while wearing armor. That being said, a lot of the ire is that even at an otherwise well-respected college, there's a good chance that if you're a CIS major, you're wasting time that's better spent gaining practical work experience, because the program probably won't teach you enough about business or IT to be actually useful in either. I'm inclined to agree with this assessment; if you want to get into IT but hate code, you're probably better off just majoring in business or English and picking up the job skills on your own time. At the same time, IT today is not the same as IT ten years ago, and IT ten years from now will look drastically different still. There will always be room for helpdesk-type roles, but if you want to advance beyond that there's going to be two directions you can take. The first is the sysadmin route. Unlike a decade ago, this is tremendously automated. If you can't code, or build the mental models of abstraction that coders have, you'll never be able to run a large infrastructure. Two admins who really know their tools will run circles around ten who don't. The other route is the business systems/systems integration route, which will involve planning and managing IT projects (and especially SaaS) from a perspective of business initiatives. You're not going to develop the business acumen for this in the type of classes you'll find in a typical CIS program. What this leaves is that CIS degrees leave somebody completely unprepared for the IT workforce as it stands. This does not mean that someone has no skills just because they have a CIS degree, but from the perspective of the student, it's time that's probably better-spent interning or working low-paying IT jobs to get off the ground. It's definitely a better proposition than spending thousands of dollars to get virtually nothing worthwhile, career-wise, in return. This, of course, does not apply to those people fortunate enough to have gotten into a really good program. And the good news is that there's a lot more of these programs popping up, and they're very rapidly improving in response to what students need. But there's still a lot of really bad programs out there, and they tend to be in the same places where there's really good computer science programs. As for the recruiters thread, well, have you actually dealt with headhunters? Misogynist fucked around with this message at Nov 10, 2011 around 13:28 |
| # ? Nov 10, 2011 13:24 |
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I've got a bachelor's in Computer Science, but I was able to steer my upper emphasis towards more systems related classes (Internet Programming, Network Programming, Database Management, etc). In another college, there's a BS in "Information Technology Infrastructure" and I took a few classes there to round out my program: Project Management, Storage Design and Administration (taught by a pretty high level Samba developer who knows his poo poo) and a Systems Administration class taught by the dumbest man alive. He was about 80, and hadn't updated any of his knowledge in at least 10 years. We learned how to overcome the 4.3 GB hard drive limit in the BIOS/Windows 95 (or whatever, useless knowledge right now). On one of the tests, he copied a diagram of a specific chipset (a 10 year old AMD chipset) out of the book, blanked the labels, and wanted us to label the parts. Thankfully that was an open book test. He's also incapable of following simple instructions, like "DON'T TOUCH THAT loving SWITCH EVERYTHING WORKS PERFECTLY YOU DUMBASS FUCKTARD." At the end of the class I volunteered to drop the course evaluations in the mail box, since I was the only one who knew where it was. On the way there I stopped by my office and the envelope "accidently" opened, and I saw that everyone gave him glowing reviews for all the real world experience he shared with us etc etc. Of course just my luck, that was the last time he taught the class, and the next year it was taught by a form Cisco engineer. I guess the point of all this is that when it comes to IT, those who can't do teach, so unless your teacher has a day job in the industry, you're going to get a poo poo education.
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| # ? Nov 10, 2011 15:44 |
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FISHMANPET posted:I guess the point of all this is that when it comes to IT, those who can't do teach, so unless your teacher has a day job in the industry, you're going to get a poo poo education. Largely true in all fields. Teaching is more about tolerating kids than necessarily being good at the subject matter. This probably gets better the later in education we're talking about, where the salaries are attractive, and the students less.. young and lovely.
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| # ? Nov 10, 2011 15:57 |
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Lot's of condescension in this thread.
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| # ? Nov 10, 2011 16:18 |
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angrytech posted:Lot's of condescension in this thread. You get a lot of people arguing about prestige in IT, everyone is always is smarter/skilled/expedience than you. I really don't know why it is so heavy in IT, guess nerds arguing on forums all day just passes on into the real world. Fact of the matter is: Do what you love because you love it, not because someone else things it is "more important to do"
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| # ? Nov 10, 2011 16:24 |
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Misogynist posted:Whoa, whoa, whoa. Being in general IT and majoring in IT at an academic college are completely different things. This. 100x this. A couple of other things that came up while reading the thread: 1. Know your stack. Wherever you're working there is a stack. For example: LAMP = Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP (and/or perl). Microsoft shops will probably be working off of a Microsoft-centric stack. Whether or not you're directly supporting these systems, showing a little interest in how they work will generally get the most curmudgeonly SysAdmin, DBA, or Software Engineer to show you a couple of diagnostic steps to run before you bug them. Which leads me to #2: 2. With very few exceptions, every DBA, Software Engineer, or System Administrator I've worked with will at some point spend more time with you than you bargained for teaching you how they do what they do, especially if you've done some independent work towards trying to figure out what they do. 3. You don't need a degree, if you've got the desire and ability to self-teach. The upside of the CS degree relevancy conundrum that Misogynist mentioned is there are a ton of self-teach resources available for free, even more if you pay for them. As far as attempting to engage co-workers on their terms: I've had a Systems Architect walk me through the K&R book over a 6 week period, an Engineer who got me up to speed in production J2EE coding over a long weekend, and a DBA spend a couple hours walking me through normal forms. This was all while working helpdesk. The Architect was as condescending a typecast intolerant software engineer as I've ever met. He became less so when dealing with someone who was interested in understanding the importance of "why" as well as "how". Misogynist's advice about a business degree for non-coders is spot-on as well. Get a CS degree if you love the discipline.
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| # ? Nov 10, 2011 16:39 |
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Corvettefisher posted:
This is the exact life style of a call center that I was at. Everyday I walked in I was prepared for some moron going to accost me on why their 10 year old Dell runs terribly and why they think they are privileged enough to deserve a new one, but the company will not spend any money. I think its also worth noting that every-time you apply for a position in one of those major companies/call centers, every other Systems Coordinator/Admin/Tech is going to apply for it even if they have as good of a job or better already. So your likeliness of advancing is severely damaged based on other people trying to get out of their hell hole. Edit: Seriously be prepared to do things that are completely not your job, and say "Yeah I can do that for you" with a smile. I cannot tell you how many spreadsheets I fixed for people who made waaaaaay more than me, or literally having to physical labor for things unrelated to computers/networking. Also be prepared to wade through miles and mile of red tape to get one thing done. I am realizing the more I think back on the job, the angrier I get! What I can say is this: Getting into a small IT firm that works on Server/programming/PC repair for businesses can be one of the best and most rewarding jobs ever. Currently I work for a small one, and its laid back, great, and pays well. JudasIscariot fucked around with this message at Nov 10, 2011 around 17:25 |
| # ? Nov 10, 2011 17:19 |
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This is a little frightening as a college freshman. I'm a business major right now, but I'm probably switching to Info Systems (with Business Minor) next semester. I have web dev experience (PHP, MySQL, XHTML, CSS, some javascript) and a lot of experience doing support for friends and family. But I would love to do either database management or computer analysis and implement computer systems into businesses. I enjoy doing IT support, but I wouldn't want to be a CJ for the rest of my life. Do I really stand a chance or is an IS degree worthless?
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| # ? Nov 10, 2011 18:04 |
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From my experience with large helpdesks/call centers I have observed the following: People are either good or bad at the job, hitting SLA's, call times, etc. People are either liked or not liked by management. If you are good at the job, and management doesn't like you, you will have a job, but a dead end one. If you are good at the job, and management likes you, you will be in your own circle of hell because they will give you more and more work, special projects etc, none of which get you anywhere, but are presented as advancement. You might become a SME or team lead or whatever, but you are still on the helpdesk taking calls, trying to meet your numbers. If you aren't good at the job and management doesn't like you, you are gone very quickly. If you aren't good at the job and management likes you, you become part of the process team, or maybe the person that does the reports. So what we can conclude from this is that call centers suck.
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| # ? Nov 10, 2011 18:12 |
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Fluue posted:This is a little frightening as a college freshman. I'm a business major right now, but I'm probably switching to Info Systems (with Business Minor) next semester. I have web dev experience (PHP, MySQL, XHTML, CSS, some javascript) and a lot of experience doing support for friends and family. Degrees are only as worth how much work you put into them. I notice a lot of colleges chop shopping IT because it is, classified as an in demand, so they will try to push as many people as they can through. If you take the classes seriously, go the extra mile, do some labs in VMware, maybe even get an internship you will have a powerful tool on your hand. Your degree will open up many opportunities in your future and you should pursue it. Just don't float from class to class and you should be fine
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| # ? Nov 10, 2011 18:16 |
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FISHMANPET posted:... hadn't updated any of his knowledge in at least 10 years. We learned how to overcome the 4.3 GB hard drive limit in the BIOS/Windows 95 (or whatever, useless knowledge right now). On one of the tests, he copied a diagram of a specific chipset (a 10 year old AMD chipset) out of the book, blanked the labels, and wanted us to label the parts. Thankfully that was an open book test. He's also incapable of following simple instructions, like "DON'T TOUCH THAT loving SWITCH EVERYTHING WORKS PERFECTLY YOU DUMBASS FUCKTARD." This reminds me of my A+ cert instructor when I was dual enrolled in highschool(2004~2006). One of our tests involved the instructor dumping a box of CPUs manufactured between 1980s~2000 infront of each student. Each student got 12 different CPUs to identify. We had write as much information as we could get from the markings/physical looks of each professor. We had to know the following for each chip we were given; Brand, Name, Speed, FSB, Multiplier, Cache, types of memory typically used with it, and the Socket/Slot. The CPUs in each box were completely random. I ended up getting an assortment of early Pentiums (1, MMX, Pro) and with few 80X86 chips. I knew they screwed up the randomization because a friend ended up getting all Pentiums 3 chips!
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| # ? Nov 10, 2011 18:37 |
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I'll add some two cents and change. Some general tips from my on-the-job experience (10 years at small engineering firm, 2 IT people 80 clients, and 5 years at good sized financial firm, 90 IT people, 1500 clients). 1) Cowboy stuff - do some risk analysis/mitigation before you do anything, regardless of how small you think the change is. There are lot of different levels of this depending on what you actually do in IT, but the principle is the same. 2) Trust - it's a huge part of the job. If you make a public mistake, own up to it immediately. If you make a mistake that no one finds out about, at least tell your boss. If your job requires confidentiality, keep your mouth shut. If your boss trusts that you will let them know about any mistakes you make, their confidence in you will be greatly increased. 3) Attitude - can't say enough about this. I'd rather work with medium smart people who really try and have a positive attitude, than really smart assholes. I've found this to be true in the reverse (I am medium smart but pretty kickass attitude) 4) Listen - Don't spend a conversation with someone mostly thinking about what you are getting ready to say. Make drat sure you understand what your client/boss/coworker meant before you reply. 5) Write - for me at least this is critical. Try to work from written instructions, avoid the "I thought you said" issue. I also keep a word document of my daily activities (1000+ pages), pretty much anything that lasts longer than 3 minutes or has some importance, I will take a note of. It's great when you are able to recall that we had that same issue with server XYZ 19 months ago and this is what we did to fix it. 6) Learn - learn from everyone. Everybody knows something you don't. I'm a backups/SSH/Unix/batch processing admin, and I learn from managers, developers, project managers, tape monkeys, mechanics etc. Most folks are happy if not eager to explain things. 7) Communicate - it's hard to believe but that is one of the key things. Working on something? Tell people. Something is broken? tell people. People who would be up in arms because of something being down for an hour, will say thanks!, when you give them the fifth update that day enumerating the progress thus far. To pile on, yes, a surprisingly large number of IT people don't have CS degrees. What they do have is intelligence, curiosity, flexibility and half-decent people skills. I work with former english majors, warehouse managers, military personnel, biologist and MBA folks...
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| # ? Nov 10, 2011 19:14 |
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Misogynist posted:Whoa, whoa, whoa. Being in general IT and majoring in IT at an academic college are completely different things. I have dealt with headhunters in a different field and had no real problems as long as you understand they are working for themselves first and you second. In regard to the degree discussion I think that all really depends on the job market in your particular area. For example I have a bachelor of science (Geology) and am currently half way through a graduate diploma in Information Sciences (half CS, half IT). Even with this it's very difficult to even get level 1 helpdesk jobs as they look at your CV see you have no degree and no proper experience so why should they give you a chance? In an area where there is a huge demand for IT people this probably wouldn't be the case however.
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| # ? Nov 10, 2011 19:21 |
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Red_Fred posted:In regard to the degree discussion I think that all really depends on the job market in your particular area. For example I have a bachelor of science (Geology) and am currently half way through a graduate diploma in Information Sciences (half CS, half IT). Even with this it's very difficult to even get level 1 helpdesk jobs as they look at your CV see you have no degree and no proper experience so why should they give you a chance? Wow where do you live? It may just be my area but I really haven't heard of anything like that. Hell, I just have EXP, 3 years, and was offered a Cloud Automation Administrator job with HP in Mississippi(turned it down, my current job is better IMO). Unless you are going to a Pro-Profit college for your degree, I really can't see why you would have trouble with at least a helpdesk II, or basic IT; but then again Certs play a fairly large role in the IT.
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| # ? Nov 10, 2011 19:30 |
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Red_Fred posted:I have dealt with headhunters in a different field
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| # ? Nov 10, 2011 19:44 |
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Nubcakes posted:This reminds me of my A+ cert instructor when I was dual enrolled in highschool(2004~2006). One of our tests involved the instructor dumping a box of CPUs manufactured between 1980s~2000 infront of each student. Each student got 12 different CPUs to identify. We had write as much information as we could get from the markings/physical looks of each professor. We had to know the following for each chip we were given; Brand, Name, Speed, FSB, Multiplier, Cache, types of memory typically used with it, and the Socket/Slot. Another gem. In years past my class had a physical lab but this year because of politics and stuff they lost that space and so there was a virtual lab, with one Windows XP, one Server 2003, and one Ubuntu virtual machine per student (which is what the teacher asked for). We used the lab exactly once, and it was to run some program on the XP machine that would tell you processor speed/RAM/other system specs. The man didn't even really understand what the virtual lab was.
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| # ? Nov 10, 2011 19:51 |
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If any of you have experience with getting clearance for contract work, does a 15 year old misdemeanor marijuana possession charge always preclude you from an S clearance? In this case there would be no other issues criminally or financially prior to or after the conviction.
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| # ? Nov 10, 2011 19:57 |
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demonachizer posted:If any of you have experience with getting clearance for contract work, does a 15 year old misdemeanor marijuana possession charge always preclude you from an S clearance? In this case there would be no other issues criminally or financially prior to or after the conviction. Usually they only look at your past 15 year criminal record, but it depends on whom you are working for and the type of Secret clearence needed
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| # ? Nov 10, 2011 19:58 |
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Yeah cool. I figured that my newly gained dual citizenship (Italian) and the fact that I lived there for 2 years would be a more difficult hurdle.
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| # ? Nov 10, 2011 20:24 |
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Corvettefisher posted:Wow where do you live? It may just be my area but I really haven't heard of anything like that. Hell, I just have EXP, 3 years, and was offered a Cloud Automation Administrator job with HP in Mississippi(turned it down, my current job is better IMO). Unless you are going to a Pro-Profit college for your degree, I really can't see why you would have trouble with at least a helpdesk II, or basic IT; but then again Certs play a fairly large role in the IT. Auckland, New Zealand. Which is probably the reason. Misogynist posted:I'm curious what the field was where "headhunter halfway competent at the job they're being paid to do" is the norm and not the exception. Mining in Australia. Huge demand/salaries = eager headhunters.
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| # ? Nov 10, 2011 20:27 |
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demonachizer posted:If any of you have experience with getting clearance for contract work, does a 15 year old misdemeanor marijuana possession charge always preclude you from an S clearance? In this case there would be no other issues criminally or financially prior to or after the conviction. We talked about clearance requirements in TFR not to long ago. The long and the short of it is as long as you are not a felon and are completely honest with your background and answers you give getting clearance isn't a problem. A couple much bigger factors are how much debt you have and being extremely close(married) to a foreign national.
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| # ? Nov 10, 2011 20:31 |
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Naramyth posted:We talked about clearance requirements in TFR not to long ago. The long and the short of it is as long as you are not a felon and are completely honest with your background and answers you give getting clearance isn't a problem. A couple much bigger factors are how much debt you have and being extremely close(married) to a foreign national. Yeah. My wife was actually born in the Soviet Union but has US citizenship (and has for a while). This plus my dual citizenship and living out of the country for a while probably means I should skip the idea. Some day I will try but I can't stomach the probable 9 month+ wait for a clearance. Thanks for the insight on it.
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| # ? Nov 10, 2011 20:34 |
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| # ? May 22, 2013 10:37 |
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FISHMANPET posted:Another gem. In years past my class had a physical lab but this year because of politics and stuff they lost that space and so there was a virtual lab, with one Windows XP, one Server 2003, and one Ubuntu virtual machine per student (which is what the teacher asked for). We used the lab exactly once, and it was to run some program on the XP machine that would tell you processor speed/RAM/other system specs. The man didn't even really understand what the virtual lab was. Outstanding... I got 70% of my knowledge from working on computers purely for hobbyist reasons. I only took the A+ class because It counted as 3 highschool credits, my highschool was a joke to begin with, and the highschool was paying for it. With that in mind, earlier in the semester another test we had was to get 5 computers up and running with the following operating systems; MS-DOS 5.0, Windows 3.11, 98, 2000, XP. By "up and running" I mean; Start with an unformatted drive and mismash of disks/cds 1/2 of which are useless/corrupt. Install the Harddrive, get it detected by the computer, and identify Driver disk for all hardware and operating system disks/bootdisks. Install operating systems, install drivers, get connected to the unsecure network and get internet access. We basically had 4 hours to do this across all 5 computers. After that time was up we were ordered to step away from our stations and the instructor would inspect each computer and grade it. 2000 and XP were cake for almost everyone. 98 was a toss up and only myself and a few others got 3.11 running, MS-DOS 5 was... awful to be charitable. Setting up internet access was pretty bad. I don't think ANYONE got that box up and running fully. Every computer was a different setup so some people just got boned with having to setup an ISA SCSI 1,2 Controller and harddrive in DOS 5 without a manual for either.
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| # ? Nov 10, 2011 20:37 |
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