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I'm certain I will have the officers rapt attention when I explain that our RAID array is down and I'm having to meet Dell at the airport for another PERC controller.
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| # ? Jan 9, 2012 19:05 |
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| # ? May 26, 2013 00:27 |
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three posted:Well, of course it will cover you gas mileage, but you have to account for the depreciation on your car and the wear and tear due to it, as well. I totally agree with this. I had to use my car at my old job and really resented it. Any small to medium size company should be able to afford a company car, usually they are pretty good tax breaks.
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| # ? Jan 9, 2012 20:48 |
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Glad I am getting a Nissan Versa 40/38MPG highway/city and it is only 10k for the stickshift
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| # ? Jan 9, 2012 20:52 |
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Even if you drive a decent car that gets lovely mileage, let's say 20mpg, and gas is $4.00/gallon or whatever, for every gallon of gas you burn you get to keep 7 bucks. If you do a whole oil interval worth of driving on company time, they owe you $1775 above the cost of gas. Pretty sure that will cover wear and tear, unless you drive a Veyron, in which case you'll need another $18,000 just to buy another set of tyres (which you need to do after driving 5,000 miles)
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| # ? Jan 9, 2012 21:11 |
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Just had my IBM interview and it was by far one of the most stressful experiences I've gone through. The interview itself wasn't actually all that complicated or hard either.
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| # ? Jan 10, 2012 01:01 |
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DerDestroyer posted:Just had my IBM interview and it was by far one of the most stressful experiences I've gone through. The interview itself wasn't actually all that complicated or hard either. The funny thing is, that the less you need the job the better you will do in the interview. My best interviews have all been when I wasn't even sure I wanted a new job in the first place.
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| # ? Jan 10, 2012 01:37 |
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Crowley posted:The funny thing is, that the less you need the job the better you will do in the interview. My best interviews have all been when I wasn't even sure I wanted a new job in the first place. I seemed to have a fairly similar experience as well. I just landed a healthcare IT job by acting laid back, joking around with the other people there and just knowing my poo poo. It went so well even my future manager tore his questionnaire in half when he assumed I hated the New York Yankees.
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| # ? Jan 10, 2012 01:41 |
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Crowley posted:The funny thing is, that the less you need the job the better you will do in the interview. My best interviews have all been when I wasn't even sure I wanted a new job in the first place. Yeah that's the thing I don't know if I actually felt I needed the job. The stress part came from the fact that I came across as someone who may actually jump ship on short notice. It's actually quite perplexing why I was called in for an interview anyway if they were so worried my Finance oriented academic background somehow means I'll jump ship for an investment bank. They should know full well I can't even do that anymore with this economy and my no name university. All being said I think I made a good impression and I got my fingers crossed. Whether I get an offer or not will be contingent on whether or not my competition is better than me. The other person they were interviewing went to the wrong office and showed up late.
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| # ? Jan 10, 2012 02:20 |
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So this comes second hand, but it doesn't mean I don't feel for my friend anyway. He's an intern at a defense contractor, and he was handed a list of over 22,000 vendors they've worked with and told to note down what each vendor does. Fun fact: That list? Yeah, it's a god drat EXCEL SPREADSHEET. I've been trying to figure out a way to automate it, because doing that poo poo manually will take loving FOREVER.
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| # ? Jan 10, 2012 18:41 |
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Red_Fred posted:I totally agree with this. I had to use my car at my old job and really resented it. Any small to medium size company should be able to afford a company car, usually they are pretty good tax breaks. Company vehicles are not common in the US, I'm assuming there isn't much incentive to provide them tax wise. If you have a nice car the reimbursement will cover buying and running a second one you don't care about anyway.
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| # ? Jan 10, 2012 18:49 |
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Walter_Sobchak posted:So this comes second hand, but it doesn't mean I don't feel for my friend anyway. convert that poo poo to a .csv. Much easier to work with. If he's familiar with SQL dump it to a table in a database and play around with it in there.
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| # ? Jan 10, 2012 19:14 |
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sanchez posted:Company vehicles are not common in the US, I'm assuming there isn't much incentive to provide them tax wise. If you have a nice car the reimbursement will cover buying and running a second one you don't care about anyway. Oddly enough, my mom said that for a while with gas prices the way they were, it was cheaper for the company to rent her a car than to pay her to drive, for a certain range.
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| # ? Jan 10, 2012 19:24 |
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I'm interested to hear from any Computacenter employees (past and present) if you can pm me please. Thanks!
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| # ? Jan 16, 2012 17:42 |
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Bit of a strange request but are there any New Zealand or Australian System Admins that would be able to give an idea of qualifications and skills needed? Do you have to work up to it from helpdesk or are there junior system admin type roles around? I know there is a lot of info on these forums but not being in the US makes some of it not very relevant.
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| # ? Jan 16, 2012 20:28 |
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I was wondering if anyone had any insight in taking your IT skills overseas. I've been looking to try and move over to either Ireland or the UK and have been posting my resume on a few job sites but I've been getting nothing back. I've been working in high speed trading IT infrastructure for the last three years and thinking on that I would surmise that the skills are niche enough to open up some doors but nothing has clicked yet. Anyone have any pointers to get your foot in the door moving overseas? Also anyone looking to move into the finance IT industry should do so. The technology is always current and the pay is mind boggling. However the only issue is you really contribute almost nothing to society as a whole 
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| # ? Jan 16, 2012 23:34 |
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What's the general time between pay increases in IT? 6-12 months? Then again I guess it really depends on the company and overall performance. I've been working for my current company for a year on Jan. 31st. I did an 8 month stint as a temp before going full time and I got $1 more an hour. I'm just wondering if 30k a year is decent starting pay for a Help Desk tech. I am getting a lot of good systems admin experience so I guess that's adding extra value to the money I'm making. I'd like to stay at the company for a few years, however the minimum increase is 3% a year and I'd like to be doing a little more than that while I'm in my 20s. Of course, if I do good on my reviews, then I could very well make more.
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| # ? Jan 17, 2012 05:23 |
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Vargatron posted:What's the general time between pay increases in IT? 6-12 months? Then again I guess it really depends on the company and overall performance. I have 0 first hand experience with this phenomenon(The getting a job that pays more part. I have experience with getting zero raises.), so YMMV, but I get the impression that pay raises in IT basically don't exist. Work somewhere a couple of years, learn a lot, keep your resume up to date, and then get a job somewhere else that has pay more commensurate to your abilities. If you're expecting them to voluntarily pay you more money than they have to, you're (likely) in for a rough time.
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| # ? Jan 17, 2012 05:41 |
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Vargatron posted:I'm just wondering if 30k a year is decent starting pay for a Help Desk tech. As far as whether raises actually exist in IT, anecdotally, i am currently making approximately 13% more than I was when I started at this position 2.5 years ago, and have also received approximately 6% of annual salary in bonuses since starting. In 2011 I made approximately 3x what I made in 2002, my first full year in IT (I started as helpdesk in 2001 making $11.50/hr, currently make $27.50/hr plus lots of overtime). I ended my stint with my first real employer after 8 years, making about double what I started at.
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| # ? Jan 17, 2012 05:55 |
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devmd01 posted:"I wasn't speeding officer, it's a Sev 1 ticket!" I've actually had that work before, mainly due to the fact that the client site I was rushing to was the police.
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| # ? Jan 17, 2012 08:54 |
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Red_Fred posted:Bit of a strange request but are there any New Zealand or Australian System Admins that would be able to give an idea of qualifications and skills needed? Do you have to work up to it from helpdesk or are there junior system admin type roles around? (I'm a DBA, not sysadmin - but I have a bunch of sysadmin friends) Working up from helldesk is going to be your safest option. Similarly to being a DBA, system administration is a bitch of a field to break into on the bottom side, simply because companies (the ones with any common sense anyway) don't want to hand full control of their network to an unproven rookie.  The good news about helldesk jobs is that most people won't bat an eyelid at short stints, as long as you don't chain three of them in a row or whatever. The other option is to find a helldesk job, see if the company will support you moving up, and if not, keep that job while you look around for something more supportive. Having a job will enable you to push harder in the negotiation phase (both because you've got a fallback option and because employed people are more employable). As far as certifications go, you can't go wrong with Cisco/MS certs. RHCE is about the only notable cert I've heard on the *nix side, but that's an absolute bear of a test. Anything else, I'd wait and see what whoever employs you wants. Re: raises in IT - at my first IT job, I got a 12.5% payrise my first year without even asking for it. Proving how much of a selfish bastard I am, I quit a few months later for a 50% payrise (that turned out to be almost nullified by living costs in my new town - miniature version of the NYC 100k  ). It'll be interesting to see how the upcoming annual review goes at this job - I happen to know I'm almost off the bottom end of the salary band for my role, but I suspect I'm going to get nickel'n'dimed to death.
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| # ? Jan 17, 2012 09:10 |
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Vargatron posted:What's the general time between pay increases in IT? 6-12 months? Then again I guess it really depends on the company and overall performance. Pay increases usually only take place with promotions or additional responsibilities. Your 3% annual merit/cola raise isn't accounted for in the previous statement. 30 to 40K a year depending on cost of living in the local area is fair for entry level helpdesk. Jr./Entry level Admins tend to start in the high 30's to mid 40's. Your annual raise usually depends on company performance. My company has had some rough times lately so out of the last 5 years I only got a merit/cola raise 2 of those years. We have managed to pay out bonus every year though, and I was promoted about 6 months ago with a hefty raise. In lieu of raises our company has also absorbed almost all of the increase of our insurance premiums the last 3 years which has been pretty significant. Last year our premiums went up over 70 bucks a check for health insurance and instead of a raise they just absorbed the cost.
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| # ? Jan 17, 2012 16:26 |
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I ctrl-F'd through this thread but didn't really see anything relevant. Feel free to call me an idiot and point me in the right direction if I missed something. tl;dr: Has anyone ever worked at a law firm? If so, how is/was it? Long version: There's an opportunity for me to move to helldesk at a law firm. I'm currently employed at a company that works primarily on Navy contracts. I like my job well enough, and I'm sure it's good experience for me. I just don't know how much better/worse it could get. Anyway, I work some sort of mutant helldesk/desktop support type role currently. Would I be better served in moving to the law firm and (allegedly) being more of a straight helldesk person? I know the stereotype that lawyers are legendarily cheap, so I'm not sure I want to work somewhere that I'd have to beg and beg to get a computer with anything more than DOS. However, good experience is good experience...
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| # ? Jan 17, 2012 17:15 |
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I wouldn't do it unless there was some major pay increase in play. Like 10K a year or so. Lawyers are super cheap, there's lots of red tape to deal with, and you're going to get treated like poo poo. The previous statement is of course a broad sweeping generalization, but those exist for a reason. Is this a well funded BigLaw type position? If not, Run!
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| # ? Jan 17, 2012 17:17 |
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Walter_Sobchak posted:I ctrl-F'd through this thread but didn't really see anything relevant. Feel free to call me an idiot and point me in the right direction if I missed something. tl;dr: Has anyone ever worked at a law firm? If so, how is/was it? Take this with a grain of salt, but I've never heard anything but horror stories about working at a law firm in any sort of IT capacity. Large ego combined with an unwillingness to invest in proper infrastructure and no appreciation for what you do. Stories coming from both the IT and administrative side of the equation.
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| # ? Jan 17, 2012 17:20 |
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Also, don't law firms love Lotus Notes and Corel Wordperfect? All good fun. To be fair I shouldn't lump Wordperfect with Notes. Notes is just.. well, it was over-ambitious as an email client, and ended up being a mess.
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| # ? Jan 17, 2012 17:26 |
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I started off as a Field Technician making roughly $12.50 per hour. As time went on, I made it to $17.00 per hour and ended up taking on various roles (Help Desk/Field Technician/Network Engineer/almost Junior Systems Administrator) before I just quit the job this past week. I was doing more running around and filling shoes than you can possibly imagine and I would definitely say I was underpaid. With my new position, I'm classified as "Network Analyst I" which could ultimately mean anything and my new rate works out to be $25.00 per hour. The previous job provided me with six years of IT experience and that doesn't include any external experience gained by manipulating Hyper-V environments, building and repairing machines as a side business, etc. The bottom line is if you want to move up in the IT field, you will have to fight tooth and nail for more responsibility and know your poo poo to begin with. If you reach a point where you can't get any more of that, then it's time to look elsewhere for a new job.
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| # ? Jan 17, 2012 17:55 |
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HalloKitty posted:Also, don't law firms love Lotus Notes and Corel Wordperfect? All good fun. Lawyers love WordPerfect.  I work for a mid sized firm. It really isn't that bad. We do have a few attorneys who are complete dick bags and think they are hot poo poo. There are also attorneys who are seeming normal/nice people. A good amount of the total employees (paralegals) at my firm are pretty young and mostly girls, so the environment isn't terrible.
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| # ? Jan 17, 2012 18:14 |
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Walter_Sobchak posted:I ctrl-F'd through this thread but didn't really see anything relevant. Feel free to call me an idiot and point me in the right direction if I missed something. tl;dr: Has anyone ever worked at a law firm? If so, how is/was it? My company contracts IT to a bunch of law firms, be expected to jump through similar data integrity hoops similar to the navy practices. Expect things like Citrix(in house and remote), Lotus Notes, Ancient systems running critical apps. It is a bit sad to see how little they put into it, also I hope you like supporting IPAD/Iphones
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| # ? Jan 17, 2012 20:33 |
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I worked at a law school, but the personalities are the same. Lawyers don't know poo poo about computers, nor do they care to learn about them. This applies to both the law intern and the partner. Fortunately I had an IT department backing me up, but expect to be frustrated by a complete lack of knowledge from your user base.
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| # ? Jan 17, 2012 20:36 |
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Thel posted:(I'm a DBA, not sysadmin - but I have a bunch of sysadmin friends) Thanks for this. I have one more full-time semester at uni so I'm going to trawl through System Admin job descriptions during that time to see what they require in general and to get an idea of how much work is out there.
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| # ? Jan 17, 2012 20:43 |
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psydude posted:I worked at a law school, but the personalities are the same. Lawyers don't know poo poo about computers, nor do they care to learn about them. This applies to both the law intern and the partner. Fortunately I had an IT department backing me up, but expect to be frustrated by a complete lack of knowledge from your user base. Confirm. I do occasional IT work for my father's small firm. He's 55, doesn't own a cell phone, can't touch type, writes his passwords down on sticky notes that he attaches to the actual display area, even after I explained that windows 7 has a sticky notes program built in, and he says point blank that he does not want to learn more about computers.
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| # ? Jan 17, 2012 20:49 |
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Red_Fred posted:Thanks for this. I have one more full-time semester at uni so I'm going to trawl through System Admin job descriptions during that time to see what they require in general and to get an idea of how much work is out there. Another option might be to look around for a small company that has a small IT department. My first two jobs were helpdesk/desktop and network support. I still do a lot of that at my current job (we all do), but because our department is two people plus an intern, I also get a lot of hands on with our servers and network equipment out of necessity. My boss is also super laid back and makes 95% of the IT related decisions himself, so I'm not bound by corporate policies regarding what I can and cannot do at my experience level. psydude fucked around with this message at Jan 17, 2012 around 20:54 |
| # ? Jan 17, 2012 20:52 |
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psydude posted:Another option might be to look around for a small company that has a small IT department. My first two jobs were helpdesk/desktop and network support. I still do a lot of that at my current job (we all do), but because our department is two people plus an intern, I also get a lot of hands on with our servers and network equipment out of necessity. My boss is also super laid back and makes 95% of the IT related decisions himself, so I'm not bound by corporate policies regarding what I can and cannot do at my experience level. The danger there is a single company just isn't able to provide the same range of experience as a consultant gets working on dozens of clients. You'll do a major migration of some sort every year or two vs one every month. The consultant will also be working with a bunch of other consultants, some with much more skill than inhouse IT in a small org could ever have which means they'll have backup and hopefully some guidance that prevents them from learning any bad habits. I've done a bit of both and learnt far more in consulting roles than I ever did inhouse somewhere. You also don't have to care so much about internal politics.
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| # ? Jan 17, 2012 21:14 |
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sanchez posted:The danger there is a single company just isn't able to provide the same range of experience as a consultant gets working on dozens of clients. You'll do a major migration of some sort every year or two vs one every month. Maybe, but this will give him the experience that people are looking for in candidates for junior level sysadmin positions. Most of the positions I've seen require 1-2 years of experience working around 2003/2008, network experience (CCNA being a plus), and maybe 3-5 years of total IT experience. Working in helldesk at a large company is asking to be stuck in a caste. Most of the consultant positions I've seen are aimed more at the mid level people who have a good deal of experience under their belts. psydude fucked around with this message at Jan 17, 2012 around 21:19 |
| # ? Jan 17, 2012 21:17 |
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psydude posted:Maybe, but this will give him the experience that people are looking for in candidates for junior level sysadmin positions. Most of the positions I've seen require 1-2 years of experience working around 2003/2008, network experience (CCNA being a plus), and maybe 3-5 years of additional IT experience. Working in helldesk at a large company is asking to be stuck in a caste. That all makes sense. I'd say look for a helpdesk role at an IT provider, in NZ that'd be someone like datacom or axon (there are smaller ones that'd be nicer to work for as well). Red Fred, if you leave contact details I'll send you the name of my first employer in Auckland. They were always hiring entry level people, the experience was excellent and the company was decent to work for. Money was crap but that's probably to be expected. sanchez fucked around with this message at Jan 17, 2012 around 21:29 |
| # ? Jan 17, 2012 21:19 |
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psydude posted:Maybe, but this will give him the experience that people are looking for in candidates for junior level sysadmin positions. Most of the positions I've seen require 1-2 years of experience working around 2003/2008, network experience (CCNA being a plus), and maybe 3-5 years of total IT experience. Working in helldesk at a large company is asking to be stuck in a caste. Most of the consultant positions I've seen are aimed more at the mid level people who have a good deal of experience under their belts. sanchez posted:That all makes sense. I'd say look for a helpdesk role at an IT provider, in NZ that'd be someone like datacom or axon (there are smaller ones that'd be nicer to work for as well). Wow this is close to home. I'm doing a summer position for the company that took over both of those companies right now actually. Hit me up on nope Let me know when you get this so I can edit out my email.
Red_Fred fucked around with this message at Jan 18, 2012 around 02:49 |
| # ? Jan 17, 2012 21:45 |
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By some strange chance, I applied for a tech position I knew I was over qualified for and was contacted today asking if I would consider interviewing for another position, IT Manger. I have been asked to attend a 4hr interview this Friday and am beyond nervous. I can not wait! My only worry is that I am terrible at tech interviews! I am planning on spending the next few days touching up on some basics, but can any recommend anything I might miss? Very nice guy handling the interview, very cool sounding company. I was straight forward about my previous poor performance in tech interviews and he told me he wants me to draw a large circle surround all I know. Working that one out now... Oh and time to notify my work, but I will most likely finish up the project I am on now before leaving/provide weekend support.
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| # ? Jan 18, 2012 02:31 |
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the spyder posted:Oh and time to notify my work, but I will most likely finish up the project I am on now before leaving/provide weekend support. Do not do this. Never tell a company you're planning to leave until you've signed the contract for the new one. (If they can't figure out why you're looking then the management was probably poo poo anyway.) [quote="the spyder"]By some strange chance, I applied for a tech position I knew I was over qualified for and was contacted today asking if I would consider interviewing for another position, IT Manger. I have been asked to attend a 4hr interview this Friday and am beyond nervous. I can not wait! My only worry is that I am terrible at tech interviews! I am planning on spending the next few days touching up on some basics, but can any recommend anything I might miss? Very nice guy handling the interview, very cool sounding company. I was straight forward about my previous poor performance in tech interviews and he told me he wants me to draw a large circle surround all I know. Working that one out now... When he says "draw a large circle surround [around?] all [you] know", he's saying he wants to figure out what topics you know. It probably won't be a in-depth technical examination on the internals of DNS/AD/[insert your acronym here], but he'll have a list of things they use and he'll probably want to see how many of those boxes you tick. My one piece of advice would be don't try and spin yourself as knowing everything, if you don't know say so. His bullshit detector is probably > your ability to bullshit. Also, he's not going to toss you out of the interview if you've never used NotifyLink for mobile devices, just say "I've never used it but I'm willing to learn" and move on.
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| # ? Jan 18, 2012 04:59 |
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My law firm is great. IT Manager & CEO know the value of IT, so we are well funded and staffed. If this was not the case, this place would devolve into a broken down shitshow that nobody would want to touch. That is the case for any business in any industry. Ask as many questions as you can at the interview to suss out the environment and culture. Assuming they run Office, get good at Office. Swink fucked around with this message at Jan 18, 2012 around 09:29 |
| # ? Jan 18, 2012 09:25 |
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| # ? May 26, 2013 00:27 |
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Corvettefisher posted:also I hope you like supporting IPAD/Iphones Oh, but haven't you heard? iPads increase productivity for managers! So now every loving person should get one and then proceed to somehow corrupt the OS! (not joking, this happened to us once). Thanks for the advice everyone, I really appreciate it. I'm certainly going to be wary of the law firm. I did, however, hear of an opening at BAE Systems. That certainly seems worth my time to check out. Hello, 75% shorter commute.
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| # ? Jan 18, 2012 11:56 |
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