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Pedestrian Xing
Jul 19, 2007

Need some advice here. I just recently got contacted by our biggest software vendor (who I've done contract work for previously) out of the blue with them saying" we want you to work here ASAP". They also offered a starting salary that is a 60% increase over my current one :woop:, move to a much better location, etc. This wouldn't be much of an issue except that I currently do 90% of the AD work here and it's pretty much just me and my boss for 450 users. I have a huge backlog of work but the company wants me there in a month or less. I really like my boss a lot and don't want to gently caress him over or burn any bridges here. How do I break this to him?

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orange sky
May 7, 2007

Pedestrian Xing posted:

Need some advice here. I just recently got contacted by our biggest software vendor (who I've done contract work for previously) out of the blue with them saying" we want you to work here ASAP". They also offered a starting salary that is a 60% increase over my current one :woop:, move to a much better location, etc. This wouldn't be much of an issue except that I currently do 90% of the AD work here and it's pretty much just me and my boss for 450 users. I have a huge backlog of work but the company wants me there in a month or less. I really like my boss a lot and don't want to gently caress him over or burn any bridges here. How do I break this to him?

If he's that cool, he'll understand it. He'll probably even wish it was him. Just be sure to document everything your boss doesn't know, for closure's sake.

SamDabbers
May 26, 2003



Pedestrian Xing posted:

Need some advice here. I just recently got contacted by our biggest software vendor (who I've done contract work for previously) out of the blue with them saying" we want you to work here ASAP". They also offered a starting salary that is a 60% increase over my current one :woop:, move to a much better location, etc. This wouldn't be much of an issue except that I currently do 90% of the AD work here and it's pretty much just me and my boss for 450 users. I have a huge backlog of work but the company wants me there in a month or less. I really like my boss a lot and don't want to gently caress him over or burn any bridges here. How do I break this to him?

Tell him you got a great offer, and you're going to take it. If he's a decent person he'll be glad for you. That huge backlog won't disappear, but maybe he can use it and your departure for greener pastures to justify hiring more people.

whaam
Mar 18, 2008
Do most of you guys have a plan to move into management or project management as you get closer to 40? You don't see many systems engineers, administrators, etc in the 40-55 age range. Is that just due to our industry being so new, or is the usual path into management the only way to avoid being aged out of the industry?

I'm in a senior technical position right now (systems engineer) but often think that I need a plan to move up even though I'm perfectly happy at the moment. My city is too small to have any real opportunities to specialize in one area and I'm too firmly planted with family to move to a bigger city. I keep an eye on the job listings and I rarely see senior technical positions come up and when they do they seem to match my current duties pretty closely.

What is the long term path for someone like me? (Early 30s) I've already moved away from day to day administration to strictly design and project work, but I'd hate to think I've peaked already... For the record though I do enjoy what I do now, and the money is great.

mattfl
Aug 27, 2004

whaam posted:

Do most of you guys have a plan to move into management or project management as you get closer to 40? You don't see many systems engineers, administrators, etc in the 40-55 age range. Is that just due to our industry being so new, or is the usual path into management the only way to avoid being aged out of the industry?

I'm in a senior technical position right now (systems engineer) but often think that I need a plan to move up even though I'm perfectly happy at the moment. My city is too small to have any real opportunities to specialize in one area and I'm too firmly planted with family to move to a bigger city. I keep an eye on the job listings and I rarely see senior technical positions come up and when they do they seem to match my current duties pretty closely.

What is the long term path for someone like me? (Early 30s) I've already moved away from day to day administration to strictly design and project work, but I'd hate to think I've peaked already... For the record though I do enjoy what I do now, and the money is great.

I'm the youngest(35) on my team of sys admins, there are 5 other guys that are 50+ and a woman who is probably around the same age. I want nothing to do with straight management. I look at my bosses calendar and he is in meetings literally 95% of the day, every day. I guess I wouldn't mind project management, but I still like working on the technical side of things and fixing poo poo. I can see myself moving into a team lead/senior role, but straight management? No thanks.

Sepist
Dec 26, 2005

FUCK BITCHES, ROUTE PACKETS

Gravy Boat 2k
I'm in the same situation at 28. I only do design and project work now, hate ops, and have priced myself out of most of the market. At this point the only move forward would be pre-sales or management. If I ended up in management, I think I would just end up being one of those technical managers who sucks at delegating work to my employees so I think I am going to have to move into pre-sales. Also the idea of chasing people down because they forgot to log their hours doesn't sound very appealing to me.

whaam
Mar 18, 2008

Sepist posted:

I'm in the same situation at 28. I only do design and project work now, hate ops, and have priced myself out of most of the market. At this point the only move forward would be pre-sales or management. If I ended up in management, I think I would just end up being one of those technical managers who sucks at delegating work to my employees so I think I am going to have to move into pre-sales. Also the idea of chasing people down because they forgot to log their hours doesn't sound very appealing to me.

Yes I relate to this. The other senior technical positions I see come up don't pay as much as I make now (based on the few that show salary range), and I'm in a very comfortable position seniority wise with lots of benefits and vacation time.

Daylen Drazzi
Mar 10, 2007

Why do I root for Notre Dame? Because I like pain, and disappointment, and anguish. Notre Dame Football has destroyed more dreams than the Irish Potato Famine, and that is the kind of suffering I can get behind.

whaam posted:

Do most of you guys have a plan to move into management or project management as you get closer to 40? You don't see many systems engineers, administrators, etc in the 40-55 age range. Is that just due to our industry being so new, or is the usual path into management the only way to avoid being aged out of the industry?

I'm in a senior technical position right now (systems engineer) but often think that I need a plan to move up even though I'm perfectly happy at the moment. My city is too small to have any real opportunities to specialize in one area and I'm too firmly planted with family to move to a bigger city. I keep an eye on the job listings and I rarely see senior technical positions come up and when they do they seem to match my current duties pretty closely.

What is the long term path for someone like me? (Early 30s) I've already moved away from day to day administration to strictly design and project work, but I'd hate to think I've peaked already... For the record though I do enjoy what I do now, and the money is great.

I can't speak for others, but as I am 42 and finally getting into the actual meat of my career (I just got transferred from the server farm team where I was a server technician, to the Exchange team as a Network Administrator II) I don't think I'm quite ready to give up getting my hands dirty. This might be a different story if I'd been in IT since my early 20's and had 20+ years experience, but I think I'll be holding off moving to management until I'm at least 50 (unless a whopper of an opportunity comes along). For me, management is where you go when learning new technical content is too drat much of a bother, since experience and maturity are far more valuable at that level. Let the yung'uns with their 'neural plasticity' hit the books, complete the project, and make me look like a god to the C-levels.

I like to think that I would make a drat good manager at some point in my career - just not in the next couple years. I've still got some miles left on me before I put it in park.

Alfajor
Jun 10, 2005

The delicious snack cake.

lampey posted:

Do you have exchange? They can change passwords in owa.

We do, but this user doesn't have a mailbox :(

Dark Helmut
Jul 24, 2004

All growns up
The hardest person for me to place is an IT infrastructure manager. Those roles are often filled internally by someone who moves into a role, so when these people get fired often they are up poo poo creek.

Alternatively, there are tons of 40-55ish hands-on infrastructure people.

Keep your tech skills sharp, and you will likely never be jobless.

psydude
Apr 1, 2008

I'm thinking longer term I'd like to eventually move into the strategic planning/decisionmaking side of things (CIO or VP level type stuff). Working in a technical role is really fun, but there's obviously a certain level of fine skills maintenance (especially learning the ins and outs of new technologies) that I'm sure would get difficult to balance with a family.

H.R. Paperstacks
May 1, 2006

This is America
My president is black
and my Lambo is blue

psydude posted:

Working in a technical role is really fun, but there's obviously a certain level of fine skills maintenance (especially learning the ins and outs of new technologies) that I'm sure would get difficult to balance with a family.

Instead of reading little Billy the bedtime story "Three Little Pigs", you read him "Pop and Push goes the MPLS Label".

AlternateAccount
Apr 25, 2005
FYGM

psydude posted:

I'm thinking longer term I'd like to eventually move into the strategic planning/decisionmaking side of things (CIO or VP level type stuff). Working in a technical role is really fun, but there's obviously a certain level of fine skills maintenance (especially learning the ins and outs of new technologies) that I'm sure would get difficult to balance with a family.

I'll be 40 before too much longer and I have really no desire to go into CIO or VP level stuff. I think I will be alright, but it still feels weird to put an artificial cap on things because I don't want to have to dress far better and spend 7/8 working hours in meetings with other execs.

YOLOsubmarine
Oct 19, 2004

When asked which Pokemon he evolved into, Kamara pauses.

"Motherfucking, what's that big dragon shit? That orange motherfucker. Charizard."

There are a lot of older sysadmins. If you get tired of that, quite a lot of the SEs, account managers, and professional services dudes at VARs and vendors are in their 40s or 50s. There are plenty technical jobs out there for people folks in that age range, and as an added bonus a lot of them get you out of operations.

CLAM DOWN
Feb 13, 2007




My department (~30 sysadmins for a very large company) has a pretty high average age too. Company tends to keep people for a long time, our main VM guy has been here 35 years and is retiring in the next few. I would think average age and whatnot definitely depends on the type of company, location, and compensation.

Comradephate
Feb 28, 2009

College Slice

whaam posted:

Do most of you guys have a plan to move into management or project management as you get closer to 40? You don't see many systems engineers, administrators, etc in the 40-55 age range. Is that just due to our industry being so new, or is the usual path into management the only way to avoid being aged out of the industry?

I'm in a senior technical position right now (systems engineer) but often think that I need a plan to move up even though I'm perfectly happy at the moment. My city is too small to have any real opportunities to specialize in one area and I'm too firmly planted with family to move to a bigger city. I keep an eye on the job listings and I rarely see senior technical positions come up and when they do they seem to match my current duties pretty closely.

What is the long term path for someone like me? (Early 30s) I've already moved away from day to day administration to strictly design and project work, but I'd hate to think I've peaked already... For the record though I do enjoy what I do now, and the money is great.

I think that historically the thought process was that if a person is good at their job they should surely be a manager. Some companies/people still think this way, but it's not as absolute.

There's plenty of room to grow basically forever working at a terminal/workbench/whatever. A lot of big companies have a career track that runs parallel to management - team lead/senior engineer, department head/principal engineer, director/fellow engineer, and so on.

If you want to literally run a company, then yeah, you have to go into management. But if you just want to get paid more money to be smart, then there are companies that would love to do that, because they're starting to realize that being good as an engineer doesn't mean you will be good as a manager.

stubblyhead
Sep 13, 2007

That is treason, Johnny!

Fun Shoe

NippleFloss posted:

There are a lot of older sysadmins. If you get tired of that, quite a lot of the SEs, account managers, and professional services dudes at VARs and vendors are in their 40s or 50s. There are plenty technical jobs out there for people folks in that age range, and as an added bonus a lot of them get you out of operations.

I can vouch for this. I do professional services work at a consulting shop, and at 36 I'm definitely at the younger end of my team's distribution. These are a few other guys around my age, but most of them are at least 10 years older than me.

Docjowles
Apr 9, 2009

I do struggle with what I want the next steps in my career to be. Thinking 1,3 and 5 years out. I really love doing technical sysadmin work but I also don't really want to be in my 40's or 50's and still carrying the metaphorical pager. Even with a fairly deep rotation and stable-ish environment, being on-call blows. I don't want to do it forever. But neither do I want to go into pure management and stop getting my hands dirty, at least in the near to middle term. I need to identify the mythical "sysadmin that isn't on call" role.

Docjowles fucked around with this message at 18:56 on Jul 31, 2014

Moey
Oct 22, 2010

I LIKE TO MOVE IT

Docjowles posted:

I do struggle with what I want the next steps in my career to be. Thinking 1,3 and 5 years out. I really love doing technical sysadmin work but I also don't really want to be in my 40's or 50's and still carrying the metaphorical pager. Even with a fairly deep rotation and stable-ish environment, being on-call blows. I don't want to do it forever. But neither do I want to go into pure management and stop getting my hands dirty, at least in the near to middle term. I need to identify the mythical "sysadmin that isn't on call" role.

Whenever I move from here I am hoping to work for a VAR doing technical pre-sales crap, and post-sale implementation. Hand over the keys and walk away.

YOLOsubmarine
Oct 19, 2004

When asked which Pokemon he evolved into, Kamara pauses.

"Motherfucking, what's that big dragon shit? That orange motherfucker. Charizard."

Docjowles posted:

I do struggle with what I want the next steps in my career to be. Thinking 1,3 and 5 years out. I really love doing technical sysadmin work but I also don't really want to be in my 40's or 50's and still carrying the metaphorical pager. Even with a fairly deep rotation and stable-ish environment, being on-call blows. I don't want to do it forever. But neither do I want to go into pure management and stop getting my hands dirty, at least in the near to middle term. I need to identify the mythical "sysadmin that isn't on call" role.

Stop being a sysadmin. Get out of operations. Engineering, architecture, consulting, professional services, pre-sales...these are all technical jobs that provide a lot of opportunity to really get deep into solving technical problems while not being the guy who gets the 3am call when something breaks. I'm on the PS side for a vendor right now and while I occasionally assist with after hours emergencies it's purely by choice. They have a huge support organization that they can call 24/7 so I'm not their first and only line of defense.

There are a ton of jobs like that in IT, but basically none of them are on the operations side.

psydude
Apr 1, 2008

Yeah actually come to think of it, all of the pre-sales and implementation guys at almost every vendor I've worked with have been older dudes.

So I'm not sure if it's due to the government's fiscal year coming to an end in two months, or what, but I've gotten an email or phonecall from a recruiter almost every day for the past 2 weeks.

evol262
Nov 30, 2010
#!/usr/bin/perl

Docjowles posted:

I do struggle with what I want the next steps in my career to be. Thinking 1,3 and 5 years out. I really love doing technical sysadmin work but I also don't really want to be in my 40's or 50's and still carrying the metaphorical pager. Even with a fairly deep rotation and stable-ish environment, being on-call blows. I don't want to do it forever. But neither do I want to go into pure management and stop getting my hands dirty, at least in the near to middle term. I need to identify the mythical "sysadmin that isn't on call" role.

Systems engineering. I haven't been on call in 6 years.

Also, being a team lead and mentoring people as a senior on a team which actually includes juniors is immensely satisfying without dragging you into the business meetings, wrangling PTO for employees, etc, and you're certainly qualified to go be a Sr. Sys. Eng. somewhere.

goobernoodles
May 28, 2011

Wayne Leonard Kirby.

Orioles Magician.
No idea where I should post this. Does anyone know how to script the refreshing of an excel query then saving AS to .csv (and overwrite the previous file)?

There's an option within Data -> Connections -> Usage tab for refreshing data on a schedule. Not sure if that refreshes when the file isn't open or not. Doubt it.



If not, if someone knew how to script fixing the format of dates in a csv, that would work too. Basically, I have a script that exports email addresses and two date fields in MM/DD/YY format in a CSV. Problem is, it doesn't include the leading 0 for January-September and the software I'm importing this csv into requires it. A find/replace script would work too I suppose.

goobernoodles fucked around with this message at 20:00 on Jul 31, 2014

Fenrisulfr
Oct 14, 2012

goobernoodles posted:

If not, if someone knew how to script fixing the format of dates in a csv, that would work too. Basically, I have a script that exports email addresses and two date fields in MM/DD/YY format in a CSV. Problem is, it doesn't include the leading 0 for January-September and the software I'm importing this csv into requires it. A find/replace script would work too I suppose.

Powershell and Import-/Export-CSV plus Get-Date can do this.

Dick Trauma
Nov 30, 2007

God damn it, you've got to be kind.

whaam posted:

Do most of you guys have a plan to move into management or project management as you get closer to 40?

"Closer to 40... " :smith:

adorai
Nov 2, 2002

10/27/04 Never forget
Grimey Drawer

whaam posted:

Do most of you guys have a plan to move into management or project management as you get closer to 40? You don't see many systems engineers, administrators, etc in the 40-55 age range.
Team lead and senior tech at a 750 person company chiming in. My career can take one of two places really, either into management or to another company. My boss (CIO and Executive Vice President) has made it clear that he wants me to succeed him, though probably not as the CIO. He oversees a LOT more than I have expertise in, but I am hoping to get promoted to a real management position in the next year or so. Luckily, it's a small enough organization that I will still be working for a living at least part of the time. To answer your question, I am 34 and it definitely seems that the move to management is the best place to go. I hope to retire as CTO of my organization.

Dark Helmut posted:

The hardest person for me to place is an IT infrastructure manager. Those roles are often filled internally by someone who moves into a role, so when these people get fired often they are up poo poo creek.
Here's hoping I never get fired.

jaegerx
Sep 10, 2012

Maybe this post will get me on your ignore list!


Middle management to me has always seemed like the quickest way to get fired. Especially if you come from a technical background where you expect some productive thing to occur. I've done team lead. Never again. I don't want people working for me or having to deal with career managers that are only there to ensure they keep their job.

Weaponized Autism
Mar 26, 2006

All aboard the Gravy train!
Hair Elf

whaam posted:

Do most of you guys have a plan to move into management or project management as you get closer to 40? You don't see many systems engineers, administrators, etc in the 40-55 age range. Is that just due to our industry being so new, or is the usual path into management the only way to avoid being aged out of the industry?

gently caress management. Techie4lyfe :c00l:

jaegerx
Sep 10, 2012

Maybe this post will get me on your ignore list!


Tailored Sauce posted:

gently caress management. Techie4lyfe :c00l:

Amen. I'm gonna be that 60 year old guy in the corner that smells of whiskey with an eye patch, old grey beard, and a nasa hat. Everyone is scared of me because I've seen poo poo. One day the poo poo will hit the fan and the CEO will say "call in old salty jaegerx" and god knows I will walk into that room with the stare of a 40 year veteran of the poo poo we have seen in IT and finally say "yeah I quit"

Or I'll just solve the issue and go back home to my whiskey. I dunno. I will let you know which in 30 years.

devmd01
Mar 7, 2006

Elektronik
Supersonik
Today I discovered the best use for twitter ever: trolling the gently caress out of an IT conference hashtag and everyone tweeting it.

Selfies at a vendor booth, loving really?!?

Proud Christian Mom
Dec 20, 2006
READING COMPREHENSION IS HARD

jaegerx posted:

Middle management to me has always seemed like the quickest way to get fired. Especially if you come from a technical background where you expect some productive thing to occur. I've done team lead. Never again. I don't want people working for me or having to deal with career managers that are only there to ensure they keep their job.

Only managers that don't know how to dump it all off on an underling get fired.

FISHMANPET
Mar 3, 2007

Sweet 'N Sour
Can't
Melt
Steel Beams
So just for the hell of it, the wife and I are pondering fleeing the US for Canada or somewhere in Europe. Anyone have any experience with something like that, specifically in IT? I know there are lots of IT jobs in New Zealand, but how does it look in other countries?

Che Delilas
Nov 23, 2009
FREE TIBET WEED

devmd01 posted:

Today I discovered the best use for twitter ever: trolling the gently caress out of an IT conference hashtag and everyone tweeting it.

Selfies at a vendor booth, loving really?!?

Look. You can't post something like that and then not include links. It's like saying, "Oh man I just saw something so funny! Well, bye."

jaegerx posted:

Middle management to me has always seemed like the quickest way to get fired. Especially if you come from a technical background where you expect some productive thing to occur. I've done team lead. Never again. I don't want people working for me or having to deal with career managers that are only there to ensure they keep their job.

See, I could see myself doing Team Lead, as long as Team Lead is defined as "The head developer on the team" and not "The project manager." Some of my older relatives have conversed with me about careers in general and they have assured me that at some point in my life I'm going to stop wanting to solve the technical problems and start wanting to solve the human ones, and at that point I'll move into management. I just don't see it. I've never not loved learning new poo poo, especially technical poo poo. I've personally met people in their fifties who turned down management positions to remain DBAs and other upper-level IT guys, because they never lost their love of computational problem solving in one form or another.

If I were a manager my whole day would be smacking people upside the head and telling them to grow up, stop acting like they're in high school, and stop treating other people like poo poo. My whole day. I mean, with what I do now I can generally put my head down and turn up the music and ignore the bullshit, but if I were in charge of overseeing it, I would probably off myself inside a month.

adorai
Nov 2, 2002

10/27/04 Never forget
Grimey Drawer

Che Delilas posted:

If I were a manager my whole day would be smacking people upside the head and telling them to grow up, stop acting like they're in high school, and stop treating other people like poo poo. My whole day. I mean, with what I do now I can generally put my head down and turn up the music and ignore the bullshit, but if I were in charge of overseeing it, I would probably off myself inside a month.
That's not what a manager does, that's what a douche does. A manager develops business and people, and good ones do it with coaching and imagination rather than discipline.

devmd01
Mar 7, 2006

Elektronik
Supersonik

Che Delilas posted:

Look. You can't post something like that and then not include links. It's like saying, "Oh man I just saw something so funny! Well, bye."

My profile is private, so there wouldn't be much of a point as it wont show up. I hit IT conference bingo as soon as I walked past the registration table, jean shorts, hawaiian shirt, and greasy ponytail. I almost asked him about stairs, jesus christ. However, this happened:

https://twitter.com/VMUGEmily/status/494873557277499393

For whatever reason (it wasnt me), I discovered it here and tweeted it to the conference. Great placement whomever! It was moved 20 minutes later.

Only registered members can see post attachments!

Che Delilas
Nov 23, 2009
FREE TIBET WEED

adorai posted:

That's not what a manager does, that's what a douche does. A manager develops business and people, and good ones do it with coaching and imagination rather than discipline.

Right. Which is one of the many reasons I don't want to be a manager.

Aunt Beth
Feb 24, 2006

Baby, you're ready!
Grimey Drawer
For all the sysadmin types out there, about what percentage of your architecture is x86 compatible and what's proprietary (like POWER, SPARC, zEnterprise, etc)? I work for a certain blue behemoth so my picture of what people run is kind of skewed.

Also, what's everyone's opinion of the closed systems? I know in school I was taught that the world runs on Windows and Linux on x86 (virtualization notwithstanding) and then there are a few people to still run UNIX variants and that mainframes are dead and buried. I've seen this is very much not the case, but what's everyone else's perception?

jaegerx
Sep 10, 2012

Maybe this post will get me on your ignore list!


adorai posted:

That's not what a manager does, that's what a douche does. A manager develops business and people, and good ones do it with coaching and imagination rather than discipline.

That's the unicorn manager. Most are there for the bump in salary and bonus. If you find the unicorn you work your rear end off for them.

adorai
Nov 2, 2002

10/27/04 Never forget
Grimey Drawer

Aunt Beth posted:

For all the sysadmin types out there, about what percentage of your CPU processor is x86 compatible and what's proprietary (like POWER, SPARC, zEnterprise, etc)? I work for a certain blue behemoth so my picture of what people run is kind of skewed.
Probably >95% of our clock cycles in the data center are x86. We have one power7 as/400, no idea how many CPUs it is licensed for because I don't have to support it.

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CLAM DOWN
Feb 13, 2007




Aunt Beth posted:

For all the sysadmin types out there, about what percentage of your architecture is x86 compatible and what's proprietary (like POWER, SPARC, zEnterprise, etc)? I work for a certain blue behemoth so my picture of what people run is kind of skewed.

Vast majority is x86 but we have a bunch of SPARC systems as well as my favourites, some old MIPS IRIX systems.

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