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MC Fruit Stripe posted:I have like ten certs - they came with cards? My cisco cert came with a piece of paper. gently caress knows where i've put it though, its been a while and the cert's expired now anyway. Going to have to retake it. Bit of a shame really, if I had the money i could have taken a CCNP and had it renew my CCNA.
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Dec 1, 2014 11:37
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I've mentioned it in other threads when he has waded in to ejaculate his wisdom over us, but it's a real shame that no admins have renamed DAF to "Asok As gently caress" yet, because that'd make his nick actually accurate.
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Dec 1, 2014 18:16
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You know what I don't like?! Exclamation points! They don't motivate me to work faster at all!
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Dec 1, 2014 18:18
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A job came in  It's pretty much a helpdesk/generalist gig to free up the one guy running the IT show for £1000 more per month, but I don't entirely want to leave where I am if I can wrangle out a load more dosh with the threat of me leaving tomorrow. It's weird having choice, usually I'm desperate to cling to anything after a string of temp jobs.
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Dec 1, 2014 18:24
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TerryLennox posted:Seconding this. I'm seriously thinking getting a master in project management as they seem to pull in decent money. I'm all for less work for more pay. So, essentially Wally. I made the jump from engineer to IT project manager a couple years ago. There are probably some places where that is "less work" than being on the line (and on call) but you're trading one kind of bullshit for another. You know how it's always Ops and never Dev that is under pressure when the poo poo hits the fan? Now you're the person upper management calls to communicate that displeasure. It can be an incredibly rewarding job since you're (sometimes) in a position to drive real change that can help your teams. At my last gig I was able to get my guys off of soul-crushing handbuilt deployments and onto Chef and Splunk. The flipside is that only came behind hundreds of hours of dealing with clueless and combative upper management. So your mileage will vary. As a good rule I'd say ask yourself how often you want to have to explain to someone, who has the power to tank your project, why your network architecture has "two of everything".
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Dec 1, 2014 22:12
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MagnumOpus posted:I made the jump from engineer to IT project manager a couple years ago. There are probably some places where that is "less work" than being on the line (and on call) but you're trading one kind of bullshit for another. You know how it's always Ops and never Dev that is under pressure when the poo poo hits the fan? Now you're the person upper management calls to communicate that displeasure. What'd you do with Splunk? I only recently started playing with it to grab twitter feeds and make pretty charts and graphs, but I know it can be used for so much more.
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Dec 1, 2014 22:20
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I earn more than daf. Just wanted to get this out there
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Dec 1, 2014 22:25
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Okay, let's maybe let the circlejerk die out for a while
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Dec 1, 2014 22:28
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ElGroucho posted:You know what I don't like?! Exclamation points! They don't motivate me to work faster at all! You mean that multiple exclamation points don't make you work faster!?! Why does every manager seem to want to send them!?! This must be rectified!!!!
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Dec 1, 2014 22:29
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Fiendish Dr. Wu posted:What'd you do with Splunk? I only recently started playing with it to grab twitter feeds and make pretty charts and graphs, but I know it can be used for so much more. Once you get it pulling in logs from all your systems you can do complex searches that cross multiple logs, generate pretty graphs, make dashboards out of it. Correlate system data with application data. etc.
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Dec 1, 2014 22:32
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MagnumOpus posted:I made the jump from engineer to IT project manager a couple years ago. There are probably some places where that is "less work" than being on the line (and on call) but you're trading one kind of bullshit for another. You know how it's always Ops and never Dev that is under pressure when the poo poo hits the fan? Now you're the person upper management calls to communicate that displeasure. How'd you go about making the jump?
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Dec 1, 2014 22:41
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Fiendish Dr. Wu posted:What'd you do with Splunk? I only recently started playing with it to grab twitter feeds and make pretty charts and graphs, but I know it can be used for so much more. Pretty much this: JHVH-1 posted:Once you get it pulling in logs from all your systems you can do complex searches that cross multiple logs, generate pretty graphs, make dashboards out of it. Correlate system data with application data. etc. It's the correlations and event monitoring automation you can do that really blew our minds. It's a miracle for root cause analysis when you need to crunch logs from a whole cluster and identify who fell over first. Given enough time and motivation you can teach it to recognize fairly complex event patterns and maybe head off some fires before they start. Biggest thing I used it for was metrics for planning capacity upgrades to our virtual private cloud. It is really nice to be able to look 12-18 months ahead when you've got a lot of hardware. Tab8715 posted:How'd you go about making the jump? Accidentally. My team was a pretty stereotypical sysop nerd group and everyone else was leadership-avoidant. Since I'm not shy and I'm super organized I just kept stepping up whenever someone was needed to lead brainstorming sessions, design meetings or whatever. After a while it was just natural for the team to have me slip into that role, and when our projects grew more complex I was asked to step into a formal PM role. I wish I could say something more specific but, as with many things in IT, it's so dependent on your shop. Like I would never tell someone they should go study for a PMP because everywhere I've worked that would have been wrong for the culture, but in some places like financials everything is super regimented and the PMBOK works for them.
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Dec 2, 2014 02:37
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Fiendish Dr. Wu posted:What'd you do with Splunk? I only recently started playing with it to grab twitter feeds and make pretty charts and graphs, but I know it can be used for so much more. I look after a bunch of web servers. It's invaluable for finding out things during an outage like "Ok, I can clearly see that on these servers, the amount of log entries they were generating suddenly changed at 10:30pm" "Let's drill down closer and see if any particular error message started occurring then" "Oh hey, this cryptic message only started showing up at that time and had been completely unknown beforehand, it must be related!" Or the classic "Customers are reporting that the page fails to load, but only sometimes" "Ok, a quick search across the web servers, is there any particular one in my load balanced pool that's throwing errors" "Number #28 is the culprit! Pull it out of the pool and figure out why it broke afterwards!" Splunk is how we discovered the root cause for an issue I was dealing with until 4:30am this morning. Really glad we're flexible with hours and I was able to sleep in till midday. Unfortunately for my manager, he had a taxi picking him up to go to the airport at 5am. gently caress knows how his day went after that.
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Dec 2, 2014 07:42
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Some moron decided SQL Server 2005 Express was good enough for our VCenter DB
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Dec 2, 2014 11:17
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MagnumOpus posted:The flipside is that only came behind hundreds of hours of dealing with clueless and combative upper management. Pretty much being a team leader in a sentence. Bullshit buffer for your team.
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Dec 2, 2014 11:33
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I think across any industry, the people on the ground-level will always have the perception that management is doing less work, even though this is really not true. The issue is that the effects become much more pronounced when a key manager isn't doing his or her job: whereas you and your coworkers can pick up the slack of Worthless Steve the Windows Admin, the same can't be said for a worthless manager.
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Dec 2, 2014 13:10
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internet jerk posted:Pretty much being a team leader in a sentence. Bullshit buffer for your team. Exactly. This venerable post on the Development Abstraction Layer has always stuck with me. It's even more applicable to IT/Ops than Dev because while a dev can transition to management and still have a relevant understanding of the craft after like a decade, if you are out of Ops work for more than a couple years your skillset is probably outdated. This means more than anywhere else you need to be listening to your team and advocating for them, because Bob Greybeard the Sr. Director of Operations might have been a poo poo hot sysadmin in the 90s but ain't no one on Banyan VINES no more. psydude posted:I think across any industry, the people on the ground-level will always have the perception that management is doing less work, even though this is really not true. The issue is that the effects become much more pronounced when a key manager isn't doing his or her job: whereas you and your coworkers can pick up the slack of Worthless Steve the Windows Admin, the same can't be said for a worthless manager. I was really close with my team before I moved into the PM role and after the switch, I noticed that I was handled differently. I suddenly had to work harder to be treated with the same trust and openness because on some level, unconscious or not, I was not part of their team anymore. Once I saw this I worked it out but man those first few months were depressing.
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Dec 2, 2014 14:12
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I'll say that from my vantage point, once you depart from those tech skills you enter a whole different pool with different fish, not only internally but even more so when you re-enter the job market. The great PMs and IT managers will always have work, but time after time I've seen people that get elevated into a management/leadership role, lose their tech edge, and then wind up struggling to find work. PMs have been the hardest thing for me to place this year and they are almost all contracts, and IT managers are often promoted from within. These are general statements at best, I just think it's worth careful consideration. If you can find a way to keep your hands on skills, you will always have more options. I agree to the point that it's less of a thing on the app dev side if you can be involved with code reviews, architecture, etc.
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Dec 2, 2014 15:08
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MagnumOpus posted:Exactly. This venerable post on the Development Abstraction Layer has always stuck with me. It's even more applicable to IT/Ops than Dev because while a dev can transition to management and still have a relevant understanding of the craft after like a decade, if you are out of Ops work for more than a couple years your skillset is probably outdated. This means more than anywhere else you need to be listening to your team and advocating for them, because Bob Greybeard the Sr. Director of Operations might have been a poo poo hot sysadmin in the 90s but ain't no one on Banyan VINES no more. This kind of reminds me of the plan my manager wants to go through with to move the devs onto platforms we manage. We give them their set environment, give them tools to deploy their code into it, give them what they are able to change without us having to jump through hoops. Then we control it from dev through qa, preview and into production. That way everything is consistent, we can automate it and we don't get any stupid surprises spring up on us when they drop the code and say "It was worked in dev, but we set it up like this". It might work out better than trying to convince them to do things the way we like it, and they won't have to spend time configuring systems on their own. Oh and they won't have as much control over the aws and just go buck wild in their code. Right now they have their own dev account and everything is controlled somewhat but it will let us remote a bunch of their requirements that could lead to them wasting our time.
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Dec 2, 2014 15:29
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JHVH-1 posted:This kind of reminds me of the plan my manager wants to go through with to move the devs onto platforms we manage. We give them their set environment, give them tools to deploy their code into it, give them what they are able to change without us having to jump through hoops. Then we control it from dev through qa, preview and into production. That way everything is consistent, we can automate it and we don't get any stupid surprises spring up on us when they drop the code and say "It was worked in dev, but we set it up like this". It might work out better than trying to convince them to do things the way we like it, and they won't have to spend time configuring systems on their own. Oh and they won't have as much control over the aws and just go buck wild in their code. Right now they have their own dev account and everything is controlled somewhat but it will let us remote a bunch of their requirements that could lead to them wasting our time. how many environments do you have? dev/test/prod?
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Dec 2, 2014 15:36
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Fiendish Dr. Wu posted:how many environments do you have? dev/test/prod? Well there is dev, and then qa, but then there are environments for putting code before it goes into prod so larger customers can review it. Theres some work being done to separate content bundled with an app from the code so it can be deployed independently and ween people off having their own custom tailored instance and branch.
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Dec 2, 2014 16:00
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So the last few days have been a nightmare for me at work. Edited-out tl;dr for anonymity sake: I'm a contractor in a field service organization and my boss is playing really hard and fast with office politics, putting me in the middle. I've been taken off a project that I really wanted to be involved with by him because he's territorial and has some weird beef with the project manager. In the meantime, I got a timely email from a VP that I'm friendly with in another department informing me that a position opened up as his PA (the actual title is Project Manager/ Personal Assistant to VP), and asking if I'm interested in applying. Aside from his office politics, which are getting worse and more frequent, my current boss is actually a really good friend and I generally enjoy the work I do. It can be very frustrating, but my coworkers are all great when politics aren't being showered down upon us from above. And my boss kinda saved me from 18 months of unemployment by offering me this contract, so there's more than a little bit of feeling beholden to him involved. Do I stay with IT, continuing to work in a position as a contractor with little real chance of ever being actually employed (advantage here is that it's IT, and I'm reasonably good at it, and when boss isn't making politics he's actually pretty good to work under), or do I move toward this other position that I'm arguably a bit overqualified for, but has the benefit of being an employee with a good company and stellar potential for continuing down the PM path (which I really want)? Drone fucked around with this message at 19:40 on Dec 2, 2014 |
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Dec 2, 2014 18:54
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Umm, pick the PM path holy gently caress is that even a question?
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Dec 2, 2014 19:02
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Tab8715 posted:Umm, pick the PM path holy gently caress is that even a question? The only real reluctance I have is that the PA part is stressed while the PM seems like just a bit of a carrot on a stick. Then again, with PM in the title likely comes with pay that's better than just a PA would have. Oh, and the VP in question has a reputation at the company for going through PA's quickly. Drone fucked around with this message at 19:09 on Dec 2, 2014 |
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Dec 2, 2014 19:06
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Drone posted:Do I stay with IT, continuing to work in a position as a contractor with little real chance of ever being actually employed (advantage here is that it's IT, and I'm reasonably good at it, and when boss isn't making politics he's actually pretty good to work under), or do I move toward this other position that I'm arguably a bit overqualified for, but has the benefit of being an employee with a good company and stellar potential for continuing down the PM path (which I really want)? If your boss is actively loving up your career despite the fact that you consider him a friend outside of work, it is unlikely that this is going to change. If the PM path is actually what you want, it sounds like opportunity is knocking.
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Dec 2, 2014 19:06
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theperminator posted:Some moron decided SQL Server 2005 Express was good enough for our VCenter DB You should upgrade it to 2008, but yeah you really need to put that sucker on a real SQL instance.
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Dec 2, 2014 19:41
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OK, so the job two hours away is making an offer. The other two jobs that I'd much rather have are not ready yet, are both in the early stages. I'm not 100% sure I'll get either. What are the ethics of saying yes to job A, but in the next two weeks before I join them I get a better deal and say sorry for wasting for time, and go with the others?
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Dec 2, 2014 19:48
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Golbez posted:OK, so the job two hours away is making an offer. The other two jobs that I'd much rather have are not ready yet, are both in the early stages. I'm not 100% sure I'll get either. What are the ethics of saying yes to job A, but in the next two weeks before I join them I get a better deal and say sorry for wasting for time, and go with the others? Reneging on an offer after you've already accepted it is a pretty bad move. Are you unemployed right now? Is there a reason why you would take this job that you kind of don't want over the two that it seems like you do?
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Dec 2, 2014 19:51
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incoherent posted:You should upgrade it to 2008, but yeah you really need to put that sucker on a real SQL instance. Why 2008? It's into extended support. He/she should be using 2012 if Express is needed.
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Dec 2, 2014 19:56
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psydude posted:Reneging on an offer after you've already accepted it is a pretty bad move. This. Don't do it.
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Dec 2, 2014 19:57
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psydude posted:Reneging on an offer after you've already accepted it is a pretty bad move. Are you unemployed right now? Is there a reason why you would take this job that you kind of don't want over the two that it seems like you do? Because I desperately want to leave my current job. And this new one is a sure thing with a time limit on accepting, versus two unsure things that I'd prefer.
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Dec 2, 2014 20:03
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Golbez posted:OK, so the job two hours away is making an offer. The other two jobs that I'd much rather have are not ready yet, are both in the early stages. I'm not 100% sure I'll get either. What are the ethics of saying yes to job A, but in the next two weeks before I join them I get a better deal and say sorry for wasting for time, and go with the others? Vulture Culture fucked around with this message at 20:11 on Dec 2, 2014 |
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Dec 2, 2014 20:08
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Golbez posted:OK, so the job two hours away is making an offer. The other two jobs that I'd much rather have are not ready yet, are both in the early stages. I'm not 100% sure I'll get either. What are the ethics of saying yes to job A, but in the next two weeks before I join them I get a better deal and say sorry for wasting for time, and go with the others? Don't take a job two hours away unless you plan to move. It sounds like you don't plan to move.
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Dec 2, 2014 20:23
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CLAM DOWN posted:Why 2008? It's into extended support. He/she should be using 2012 if Express is needed. Whoa mister, just saying thats what my vmware consultant* said for a bigger database. Long term, you should get a Standard SQL license. *not really my consultant, just my VARs next,next,next installed consultant.
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Dec 2, 2014 20:37
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Erwin posted:Don't take a job two hours away unless you plan to move. It sounds like you don't plan to move.
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Dec 2, 2014 20:43
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True, I assumed he was driving. I did an hour each way for over a year, but it was 55 miles each way on a highway that was at capacity so everyone had to be riding each other's bumper at 80mph and traffic would jam up at the slightest tap of someone's brakes and it was basically two hours (at minimum) of white-knuckle stress every day. I moved and now walk to work, and it's the most zen commute and gives me that 15 minutes of wind-down time without having to deal with other drivers. I would have much preferred two hours by train to the hour drive though.
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Dec 2, 2014 20:56
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Drone posted:Aside from his office politics, which are getting worse and more frequent, my current boss is actually a really good friend and I generally enjoy the work I do. It can be very frustrating, but my coworkers are all great when politics aren't being showered down upon us from above. And my boss kinda saved me from 18 months of unemployment by offering me this contract, so there's more than a little bit of feeling beholden to him involved. Okay, if he's a good friend he'll be open to you sitting down with him and telling him how unhappy you are that he screwed you out of a project you really wanted to be on purely for office politics, and that you would really appreciate it if he'd put you back on it now, please, because this is your career and you want that experience. Picture that conversation in your head. Do you see it going well? If not, if you instead imagine that he will fly off the handle or if you worry that you might get fired for bringing it up, then congratulations. You will have realized that your boss isn't your friend. I'm not saying bosses can't be friends; they can. It's just that some people are extremely good at putting on a show of being one of the guys, a buddy, someone you listen to, someone you trust, someone you invite to holiday cookouts. They talk a good game. And then they find the smallest opportunity for personal gain and stick the knife in. I'm not saying your boss is one of those. But ladder-climbers (and I assume that's what he's doing if he's increasing his politicking) don't have friends at the office. They have rungs.
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Dec 2, 2014 21:50
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I'm in complete agreement with Che and as for your boss. Are you sure that's someone you want to be friends with?
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Dec 2, 2014 21:59
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incoherent posted:You should upgrade it to 2008, but yeah you really need to put that sucker on a real SQL instance. Yeah it was the middle of the night so I went to 2008 R2 and will upgrade that to a 2012 R2 edition. I still don't know why it was installed with SQL 2005 when the loving server was installed in like, 2010? maybe that's what vmware bundled with the installer at the time.
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Dec 3, 2014 03:21
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Che Delilas posted:Okay, if he's a good friend he'll be open to you sitting down with him and telling him how unhappy you are that he screwed you out of a project you really wanted to be on purely for office politics, and that you would really appreciate it if he'd put you back on it now, please, because this is your career and you want that experience. Yeah, that was something I had never really thought of before. I wouldn't anticipate such a conversation would go very well, so that helps to put things in perspective. He tried to couch the idea of forbidding me from working on this other project as "protecting" me from it failing and protecting me from taking blame for it, but in the end it's a project on a global scale that literally cannot fail. I sent an email to the VP saying I'm definitely interested in the position. He's already forwarded a note to HR that I've expressed advance interest before the job is internally posted. That job in itself will be very stressful, but the team is all pretty good and the benefits are great. Drone fucked around with this message at 09:48 on Dec 3, 2014 |
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Dec 3, 2014 09:28
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