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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  , 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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Jul 31, 2014 14:56
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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 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.
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Jul 31, 2014 15:00
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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 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.
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Jul 31, 2014 15:01
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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.
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Jul 31, 2014 15:13
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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 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.
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Jul 31, 2014 15:23
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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.
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Jul 31, 2014 15:25
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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.
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Jul 31, 2014 15:34
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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 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.
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Jul 31, 2014 15:40
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lampey posted:Do you have exchange? They can change passwords in owa. We do, but this user doesn't have a mailbox 
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Jul 31, 2014 15:52
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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.
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Jul 31, 2014 15:57
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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.
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Jul 31, 2014 16:43
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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".
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Jul 31, 2014 17:10
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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.
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Jul 31, 2014 17:38
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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.
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Jul 31, 2014 17:53
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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.
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Jul 31, 2014 18:15
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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 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.
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Jul 31, 2014 18:35
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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.
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Jul 31, 2014 18:35
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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 |
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Jul 31, 2014 18:53
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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.
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Jul 31, 2014 19:07
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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.
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Jul 31, 2014 19:10
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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.
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Jul 31, 2014 19:26
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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.
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Jul 31, 2014 19:39
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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 |
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Jul 31, 2014 19:52
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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.
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Jul 31, 2014 21:48
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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... " 
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Aug 1, 2014 01:08
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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. 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.
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Aug 1, 2014 02:00
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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.
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Aug 1, 2014 02:21
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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 
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Aug 1, 2014 02:54
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Tailored Sauce posted:gently caress management. Techie4lyfe 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.
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Aug 1, 2014 02:59
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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?!?
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Aug 1, 2014 03:40
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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.
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Aug 1, 2014 03:49
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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?
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Aug 1, 2014 03:55
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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. 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.
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Aug 1, 2014 04:00
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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.
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Aug 1, 2014 04:05
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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.
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Aug 1, 2014 04:07
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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.
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Aug 1, 2014 04:08
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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?
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Aug 1, 2014 04:09
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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.
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Aug 1, 2014 04:11
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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.
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Aug 1, 2014 04:11
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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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Aug 1, 2014 04:14
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