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dogstile
May 1, 2012

fucking clocks
how do they work?

HalloKitty posted:

Heh, I got fired on Christmas Eve once because the company paid for Christmas Party went on very late on a Thursday, and I was extremely hungover on Friday, and overslept.

Why put it on a bloody Thursday, then? It's a trap!

Ah, youthful exuberance.

I'm getting around this because i've told my manager that i'm getting plastered, so if he wants me to do any work on Saturday he better book it in the afternoon.

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3 Action Economist
May 22, 2002

Educate. Agitate. Liberate.

stubblyhead posted:

Maybe I'm remembering wrong, but didn't something similar happen to you a few Christmases ago?

The first company I did IT for had a massive layoff around this time, but I was safe from that one. They were still jerks, though.

Otherwise, no, I've only ever been fired once before, and that was some short stint doing data entry.

HalloKitty posted:

Heh, I got fired on Christmas Eve once because the company paid for Christmas Party went on very late on a Thursday, and I was extremely hungover on Friday, and overslept.

Why put it on a bloody Thursday, then? It's a trap!

Ah, youthful exuberance.

My former employer's Christmas Party is this Friday; I guess now they don't need to pay for my food.

E: I should cancel that babysitter, thanks for reminding me.

Fiendish Dr. Wu
Nov 11, 2010

You done fucked up now!

dogstile posted:

I'm getting around this because i've told my manager that i'm getting plastered, so if he wants me to do any work on Saturday he better book it in the afternoon.

At least your party is on friday night. HK's was on a thursday, with work the next day.

Sounds like the xmas parties that my navy command put on. I'm reminded of the one year where I ended up having to leave the party to go recover a jet by myself because I was the DD.

BaseballPCHiker
Jan 16, 2006

Those of you who work from home, what do you do for work and what's your job title? Right now I seem to mostly do SCCM work and help out help desk when times get busy. On the few days that I have been able to work from home I've gotten way more done. I'd like to start working from home at least half time in my next position and want to know where to focus my efforts. Honestly right now in my normal day to day work there is nothing that I do that I need to be in office for. I have a networking background and use to do plenty of ASA configurations and remote site work and wouldn't mind doing that again either. Just getting tired of getting bugged for annoying small poo poo from execs and or anyone else who passes by.

Docjowles
Apr 9, 2009

BaseballPCHiker posted:

Those of you who work from home, what do you do for work and what's your job title? Right now I seem to mostly do SCCM work and help out help desk when times get busy. On the few days that I have been able to work from home I've gotten way more done. I'd like to start working from home at least half time in my next position and want to know where to focus my efforts. Honestly right now in my normal day to day work there is nothing that I do that I need to be in office for. I have a networking background and use to do plenty of ASA configurations and remote site work and wouldn't mind doing that again either. Just getting tired of getting bugged for annoying small poo poo from execs and or anyone else who passes by.

I work from home 3-5 days a week depending on what I have going on. System Administrator (officially the team lead, though I was working from home before the promotion too) in an operations role running our public services, not user-facing IT obviously. We have remote hands data center guys so it's extremely rare that I actually need to go into the DC to physically do something. When I do come in it's usually for meetings, or just to get some interaction with someone besides my wife, baby and dog :) I could probably work from home 99% of the time if I really wanted to but I start to get cabin fever. And for meetings where I actually need to contribute, it's just harder to do that over a lovely conference phone connection than in person.

I also live 60-90 minutes one way from the office. If I was closer I'd probably go in more often.

There are tons of tech jobs that COULD be done entirely remote. Whether the company will allow it is the big hurdle.

JHVH-1
Jun 28, 2002
My company only has one real office for some developers in the Ukraine, so everyone else is remote. I'm a devop system administrator.

I have been here 3 months now I think, and my manager decides he has a bunch of vacation days he needs to use before the end of the year so he is basically taking the last 3 weeks of December off. So yay I get dumped with all these tasks he was doing manually before for stuff not yet automated, and get to support our bamboo system and work on other things that were in his ticket backlog. The other sys admin who has been here 9 months longer is supposed to work on his own backlog so he is not getting as much dumped on him. This week has sucked so far and he is not even gone yet but hopefully the holiday week will give a nice break at least.

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

BaseballPCHiker posted:

Those of you who work from home, what do you do for work and what's your job title? Right now I seem to mostly do SCCM work and help out help desk when times get busy. On the few days that I have been able to work from home I've gotten way more done. I'd like to start working from home at least half time in my next position and want to know where to focus my efforts. Honestly right now in my normal day to day work there is nothing that I do that I need to be in office for. I have a networking background and use to do plenty of ASA configurations and remote site work and wouldn't mind doing that again either. Just getting tired of getting bugged for annoying small poo poo from execs and or anyone else who passes by.

Software developer for a major Linux vendor.

I've worked from home as a sysadmin and a systems engineer, plus 50% remote at other positions. It's... different. You miss getting bugged for "annoying small poo poo" from anyone else who passes by. Working remote full-time is isolating, though, even in a company where 60% of our employees work from home, and there's no cultural stigma. On the days when I'm really head down, it feels like I'm working much longer/harder than I ever did when I worked in an office, mostly because there's nobody stopping by to talk to me or bantering over cubicles or running into people when you get coffee or heading out for lunch or whatever. Meetings over video and general bullshit chatrooms (IRC, Jabber, whatever) help establish some sense of normalcy, but it's can still be hard.

I wouldn't explicitly look for remote work unless it's incredibly important to you. Ability to work from home is a perk at many jobs, just not 100% of the time. Find a position you're interested in, then tell them you'd like the option to work from home 50% of the time, and see where that conversation leads.

JHVH-1
Jun 28, 2002
Ah yeah, I had a couple days this week where stuff comes in via the tickets and I don't have to even look at it right away because its technically outside of business hours. But then I have my laptop sitting right in front of me and start researching and start responding because I don't want to loose my train of thought. You gotta make some time away from everything for yourself, but since you are remote you can take a nice lunch break or go do some errands or play video games because you know you have some work scheduled outside of normal hours.

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

JHVH-1 posted:

Ah yeah, I had a couple days this week where stuff comes in via the tickets and I don't have to even look at it right away because its technically outside of business hours. But then I have my laptop sitting right in front of me and start researching and start responding because I don't want to loose my train of thought. You gotta make some time away from everything for yourself, but since you are remote you can take a nice lunch break or go do some errands or play video games because you know you have some work scheduled outside of normal hours.

I mean, creating a work/home separation is a totally different thing which is just as hard for some people who don't even work from home, but are just control freaks or workaholics or set bad expectations and feel like they "need" to respond to things at 9PM.

I meant more that those little breaks where you make fun of a coworker the next row over or someone stops by your office instead of emailing you (while sometimes annoying, still) break up the monotony of your day. For those who don't work from home, imagine that you're having one of your busiest weeks/days/whatever. Except that there's no interruptions at all. Just you and the tickets or huge mess. If you need to ask someone's opinion or advice or respond to something, you send them an IM and wait. No walking over to the PM's desk or getting to vent about what you're doing to the guy from the other side of the floor who talks to you when you're in the break room while you're getting coffee. Just you and the problems.

Sure, you can take a nice lunch break or go run errands or go to the gym or whatever. Nobody's gonna miss you, probably. On the average day. It can be great as long as you don't need a lot of social interaction or you can get that interaction through friends after work. On bad days, though, it's tougher, which is what I meant by feeling like I work longer/harder. Objectively, I'm probably working less than I would be if I were stuck at the office until 6 (I tried to start working around 5:30-6AM and leave by 3 when I was an in an office). Subjectively is a different thing entirely.

All I'm saying is that if you've never done it, it may not be what you're into, and it's not as great as it sounds all the time.

deedee megadoodoo
Sep 28, 2000
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I, I took the one to Flavortown, and that has made all the difference.


My title is Configuration/Release Engineer and I do devops/automation/system administration/warding of demons. There's no reason for me to be in the office other than it's easier to attend meetings in person. I work from home two days a week. I would do more because my commute sucks, but company policy is 2 days. I get the same amount of work done in either place. The only difference is whether people interrupt me via IM or walking up to my desk.

YOLOsubmarine
Oct 19, 2004

When asked which Pokemon he evolved into, Kamara pauses.

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

I had to take the Wonderlic once for a Unix admin position for a small company. They made everyone take it, but it seemed to have almost no bearing on who they actually hired because there were a fair number of people there who couldn't have done better than a 2.

I didn't really mind though, it's only 10 minutes and it's kind of fun to know your score so you can compare it to football players who also, amusingly, have to take it as part of the pre draft combine.

Gucci Loafers
May 20, 2006

Ask yourself, do you really want to talk to pair of really nice gaudy shoes?


I used to work from home at my last sysadmin gig, it's awesome. My commute was less than a half-hour total but who honestly wants to wake up, start their car when it's 0 below, scrap the ice of their windshield and then deal with lovely roads and drivers?

It's such a waste of time and inefficient. It's not just the time you save, it's also the time spent doing everything else and less stress.

What a lot of new companies are doing is simply periodically renting conference rooms in hotels. A few times a month or whatnot you'll get some face-to-face time which is a perfect middle ground.

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

Tab8715 posted:

I used to work from home at my last sysadmin gig, it's awesome. My commute was less than a half-hour total but who honestly wants to wake up, start their car when it's 0 below, scrap the ice of their windshield and then deal with lovely roads and drivers?

It's such a waste of time and inefficient. It's not just the time you save, it's also the time spent doing everything else and less stress.

What a lot of new companies are doing is simply periodically renting conference rooms in hotels. A few times a month or whatnot you'll get some face-to-face time which is a perfect middle ground.

Hackerspaces or collaborative workspaces can also help keep your sanity by spending time with other work from home autists.

12 rats tied together
Sep 7, 2006

BaseballPCHiker posted:

Those of you who work from home, what do you do for work and what's your job title?

Network Engineer. I manage production/corporate networks for a software development/SaaS company. Company policy is Tuesdays and Thursdays are work from home days, but I think all of our customer support staff, HR, and finance departments are either permanently remote or show up at the office 1 day per week. C-levels apparently drop by for a few days every other month or so, so the office itself is just Dev + Ops + HR once a week.

It's really, really nice to be able to just get out of bed and basically be at work, and this might be due to my relatively isolated position but it's also nice to have an entire room to myself with no interruptions to work out a problem or change request.

I miss the random jokes/humor from working in an "open floor plan", but it makes sense with a smaller team of more specialized individuals to give everyone some space. I don't like how long it takes to work through a problem that involves someone else - when it's just a simple change or trace or whatever I can get it done way faster than normal, but if it's a multiple "department" spanning job, it takes forever to get the Virtualization guy, Network guy, and Database guy on the same page. I can't just walk over to their desks and be like "Yo this is broken and it looks like a VM problem". It definitely feels more like a coalition of individuals that share a work tracking system more than it feels like an "Operations Team". But, this is probably about 50% culture and 50% working from home.

3 Action Economist
May 22, 2002

Educate. Agitate. Liberate.
I worked all but 2 days from home as a project manager, and that was only because of weekly meetings.

Mourning Due
Oct 11, 2004

*~ missin u ~*
:canada:
Might be asking a bit too broad a question here, but here goes:

Currently 32, and sick of my job. Vast majority of my contracts where I am are in IT, and while their careers are flourishing mine has been stagnant for two years.

I have always liked IT, and did a year and a half of a Computer systems tech diploma course before money got in the way. Also worked as a microcomputing assistant setting up workstations and installing software across a server. However, I can't say I've got any real official IT experience outside of this, and any coding etc I would say I'm a beginner.

My question is, for those of you who currently work in the industry: what direction should I be going in? I like the idea of coding, but then I'm sure there's millions of people out there who are experts at Python or what have you. What would be an intelligent path to take if I want to be in an entry level position in say a year or so, in a specialised area of IT?

Sorry for how broad and vague this is, just want to get advice from people who have gone down this road before.

TerryLennox
Oct 12, 2009

There is nothing tougher than a tough Mexican, just as there is nothing gentler than a gentle Mexican, nothing more honest than an honest Mexican, and above all nothing sadder than a sad Mexican. -R. Chandler.

Race Realists posted:

no, the bs word and math problems. The problems with those is that I never get enough time to do them (61 questions in 61 minutes.. yeah all the time in the world). The IT related questions were a breeze though. Did not finish at all.

poo poo, that sounds like my experience when I applied to the Panama Canal Authority (basically, gravy train down here, ultra hard to get in, but also very hard to get fired, very good pay, etc). I have an engineering degree...I...should have known those formulas...I used them...in high school. I failed that 20 minute test abysmally. Sure, mr. PCA hirer, I have the area and volume formulas for cylinders, pentagons right on the top off my head. Also they are terrible assholes. They don't have openings...they have a job site where you create your profile and list your experience but cannot apply for jobs. You just apply for positions that may or may not be open. Did I mention you have to renew that profile anually? Because you have to as they erase every profile every year.

3 Action Economist
May 22, 2002

Educate. Agitate. Liberate.

Mourning Due posted:

Might be asking a bit too broad a question here, but here goes:

Currently 32, and sick of my job. Vast majority of my contracts where I am are in IT, and while their careers are flourishing mine has been stagnant for two years.

I have always liked IT, and did a year and a half of a Computer systems tech diploma course before money got in the way. Also worked as a microcomputing assistant setting up workstations and installing software across a server. However, I can't say I've got any real official IT experience outside of this, and any coding etc I would say I'm a beginner.

My question is, for those of you who currently work in the industry: what direction should I be going in? I like the idea of coding, but then I'm sure there's millions of people out there who are experts at Python or what have you. What would be an intelligent path to take if I want to be in an entry level position in say a year or so, in a specialised area of IT?

Sorry for how broad and vague this is, just want to get advice from people who have gone down this road before.

I want to flip this around: what do you like about IT? What do you like about technology in general?

That's the direction you should go.

Vulture Culture
Jul 14, 2003

I was never enjoying it. I only eat it for the nutrients.
What's good in terms of free/open-source wikis these days? I tried XWiki, and it seems nice, but it takes like 20 seconds to render a page and I don't have time to burn on this poo poo.

orange sky
May 7, 2007

Misogynist posted:

What's good in terms of free/open-source wikis these days? I tried XWiki, and it seems nice, but it takes like 20 seconds to render a page and I don't have time to burn on this poo poo.

Have you tried Mediawiki? It's literally a wikipedia. Azure deploys them ready to go.

pofcorn
May 30, 2011
Been using DokuWiki for a few years. Works fine.

Chickenwalker
Apr 21, 2011

by FactsAreUseless
.

Chickenwalker fucked around with this message at 03:00 on Mar 1, 2019

Docjowles
Apr 9, 2009

pofcorn posted:

Been using DokuWiki for a few years. Works fine.

Yeah I've used DokuWiki forever and it's fine. Lots of plugins if you need some extra feature.

Fiendish Dr. Wu
Nov 11, 2010

You done fucked up now!
Question about automation

We have a guy who, once a month, has to verify that certain jobs in Troux are running fine. As of now, he just logs in to the 2 separate instances, goes to Admin > Jobs > Jobs and looks at the Result Code column to make sure all the jobs are running fine (they would be yellow or red if they weren’t). I'd like to be able to automate this process to send out emails with the results. I'm pretty comfortable in Powershell - would that be the best place to start?

Zaepho
Oct 31, 2013

Fiendish Dr. Wu posted:

Question about automation

We have a guy who, once a month, has to verify that certain jobs in Troux are running fine. As of now, he just logs in to the 2 separate instances, goes to Admin > Jobs > Jobs and looks at the Result Code column to make sure all the jobs are running fine (they would be yellow or red if they weren’t). I'd like to be able to automate this process to send out emails with the results. I'm pretty comfortable in Powershell - would that be the best place to start?

Do you have a monitoring system of some sort already in place. I would look into leveraging that to monitor for "Yellow" (Warning?) or "Red" (Failed?) jobs. Powershell may be part of making that work so certainly figuring out how to get the information you need in powershell is definitely not a waste of effort.

crunk dork
Jan 15, 2006
Is it acceptable to negotiate wages after you've been offered a contract? In this specific case I was never explicitly told what the exact rate would be, only a range. I won't be able to review/accept/decline my contract until Monday when HR is back in the office, but I don't want to lose the job or lowball myself when I could've gotten a couple extra dollars.

Fiendish Dr. Wu
Nov 11, 2010

You done fucked up now!

Zaepho posted:

Do you have a monitoring system of some sort already in place. I would look into leveraging that to monitor for "Yellow" (Warning?) or "Red" (Failed?) jobs. Powershell may be part of making that work so certainly figuring out how to get the information you need in powershell is definitely not a waste of effort.

Currently there is no monitoring for this application, so this guy has to go in manually to check. He's set up a once-a-month reminder in outlook to do it. We know it should have a monitoring system but it's not happening right now.

Sickening
Jul 16, 2007

Black summer was the best summer.

Drunk Orc posted:

Is it acceptable to negotiate wages after you've been offered a contract? In this specific case I was never explicitly told what the exact rate would be, only a range. I won't be able to review/accept/decline my contract until Monday when HR is back in the office, but I don't want to lose the job or lowball myself when I could've gotten a couple extra dollars.

Yes. My opinion is that you haven't actually been offered a contact until you have agreed on the wage.

Zaepho
Oct 31, 2013

Fiendish Dr. Wu posted:

Currently there is no monitoring for this application, so this guy has to go in manually to check. He's set up a once-a-month reminder in outlook to do it. We know it should have a monitoring system but it's not happening right now.

If there is an existing monitoring platform though you probably should look to building this check on the existing platform. The whole single pane of glass dream applies here. As a fallback, you can certainly build up your own solution but keep in mind that it will have to be maintained down the line. Reusing existing frameworks is a good way to stay sane in the long run.

Dark Helmut
Jul 24, 2004

All growns up

Drunk Orc posted:

Is it acceptable to negotiate wages after you've been offered a contract? In this specific case I was never explicitly told what the exact rate would be, only a range. I won't be able to review/accept/decline my contract until Monday when HR is back in the office, but I don't want to lose the job or lowball myself when I could've gotten a couple extra dollars.

Assuming you are going through a recruiter/agency, I'm not sure why you (or they) wouldn't agree on a fixed number up front. That way expectations are clear and there are no surprises or disappointments. I'd just ask for the high number, and cite whatever reason you want. There are a few good reasons why they might have asked for a range, for example if the recruiter had other (or knew of other) candidates with higher or lower skill level and wanted to position you for success, but regardless I would press them for "why" if they come back and try and hit you with the low end.


vvvv ah, ok I misinterpreted what you meant by "contract" vvvv

Dark Helmut fucked around with this message at 18:18 on Dec 5, 2014

crunk dork
Jan 15, 2006

Dark Helmut posted:

Assuming you are going through a recruiter/agency, I'm not sure why you (or they) wouldn't agree on a fixed number up front. That way expectations are clear and there are no surprises or disappointments. I'd just ask for the high number, and cite whatever reason you want. There are a few good reasons why they might have asked for a range, for example if the recruiter had other (or knew of other) candidates with higher or lower skill level and wanted to position you for success, but regardless I would press them for "why" if they come back and try and hit you with the low end.

It's a direct hire with a public school. The IT director seemed like he would advocate strongly for me to HR. I understand the school runs on a tight budget too but I want to make at least what I make now in retail. I've got a second interview for another position that would pay much better next week but it's a bit farther and nothing is for sure yet.

ElGroucho
Nov 1, 2005

We already - What about sticking our middle fingers up... That was insane
Fun Shoe
I hate writing helpful scripts to automate things, sharing with the group, and realizing everybody else is doing jack poo poo to automate anything

I'm going to be greedy as poo poo from now on

Vulture Culture
Jul 14, 2003

I was never enjoying it. I only eat it for the nutrients.

orange sky posted:

Have you tried Mediawiki? It's literally a wikipedia. Azure deploys them ready to go.
It's been a few years since I've used MediaWiki. Authentication was a wreck back then, because it was designed to be completely public and it didn't have any kind of access controls built in. Is it still a disaster with a "plugin" structure consisting of a bunch of patches randomly applied to the source, preventing you from ever upgrading it?

stubblyhead
Sep 13, 2007

That is treason, Johnny!

Fun Shoe
A little late to the WFH chat. I've got a draft post on my phone, but I kept getting interrupted/distracted yesterday.

I've been working from home full time for a little over three years doing professional services work for consulting shops of various sizes. It can be difficult to maintain a good work-home balance. For the first couple years I rented some desk space at a local small business so I could get out of the house once in a while, and I actually was able to make reimbursement of that a part of my compensation package. My small company was gobbled up by a much larger one, and they were not willing to continue that deal. We fortunately moved to a larger house about six months after that, and I now have some dedicated office space at home instead of having to multipurpose the bedroom. It is something that has worked very well for me, but it is certainly not for everyone.

orange sky
May 7, 2007

Misogynist posted:

It's been a few years since I've used MediaWiki. Authentication was a wreck back then, because it was designed to be completely public and it didn't have any kind of access controls built in. Is it still a disaster with a "plugin" structure consisting of a bunch of patches randomly applied to the source, preventing you from ever upgrading it?

Kind of. I've been battling with Active Directory authentication for a while now (granted I spend a total of 1 hour a week trying it) but the customization is pretty much al done through code, I believe you can implement some access controls if you tinker with it.

12 rats tied together
Sep 7, 2006

Fiendish Dr. Wu posted:

Question about automation

We have a guy who, once a month, has to verify that certain jobs in Troux are running fine. As of now, he just logs in to the 2 separate instances, goes to Admin > Jobs > Jobs and looks at the Result Code column to make sure all the jobs are running fine (they would be yellow or red if they weren’t). I'd like to be able to automate this process to send out emails with the results. I'm pretty comfortable in Powershell - would that be the best place to start?

Probably yes, if it's running on a windows machine (I have no idea what Troux is). It sounds like your results you want to check are part of the GUI, so automating the monitoring of this depends on how poorly implemented the GUI is.

Is there a log file or some kind of XML document somewhere on the physical machine you can check? Is the Troux "GUI" technically a webpage, maybe?

stevewm
May 10, 2005
With the wiki talk I wanted to add that I just implemented Tiki Wiki (http://info.tiki.org/) as a intranet for our organization.

It is a lot more than just a wiki; it has forums, blogs, wiki pages, polls, calendars, etc.. So really its more like a full blown CMS. Every single feature is a plugin and easily enabled/disabled. It also has a very fine grained permissions system and supports LDAP/AD authentication. (http://doc.tiki.org/LDAP+authentication)

It has several "profiles" you can use to enable a specific set of plugins based on your usage case. I started with the included Corp. Intranet profile and went from there.

It took me a little bit to wrap my head around the permissions system, but I have been very happy with how it turned out.

skipdogg
Nov 29, 2004
Resident SRT-4 Expert

I just got the email equivalent of a guy trying to sell me a watch from his trench coat. The company is legit, the email just made me laugh so I thought I'd share it

*psss* hey, you wanna buy some storage? (opens trench coat) I got that good V7000 stuff cheap.

quote:

Hi Skipdogg,
Please let me know if you have any interest in any of the *FACTORY SEALED IBM V7000 Storage Arrays below at up to 70% off list price from ******.
*All equipment comes with 3 year Factory Warranty and 1-year of Software maintenance included.
*Custom Configurations Available.

IBM V7000 Storage Array with 48 x 4TB SAS Disk Drives
$182,152 IBM List Price
$65,995 Our Price (66% below list price) *Factory Sealed
IBM V7000 Storage Array with 72 x 300GB SAS Disk Drives
$196,768 IBM List Price
$59,995 Our Price (70% below list price) *Factory Sealed
IBM V7000 Storage Array with 48 x 600GB SAS Disk Drives
$137,512 IBM List Price
$54,995 Our Price (61% below list price) *Factory Sealed
IBM V7000 Storage Array with 72 x 900GB SAS Disk Drives AND 24 x 4TB SAS Drives
$309,304 IBM List Price
$99,995 Our Price (68% below list price) *Factory Sealed
IBM V7000 Storage Array with 144 x 1.2TB SAS Disk Drives
$479,656 IBM List Price
$145,300 Our Price (70% below list price) *Factory Sealed
IBM V7000 Storage Array with 72 x 600GB SAS Disk Drives AND 24 x 2TB SATA Drives
$250,544 IBM List Price
$84,995 Our Price (67% below list price) *Factory Sealed

BlueBlazer
Apr 1, 2010

stubblyhead posted:

My small company was gobbled up by a much larger one,

I'm going through this right now, I'm at the stage where I have a decent client book and another midsized techshop is talking about taking me in. How did your pay shift when that happened?

2 years into my own contract work and not doing badly but some stability and back-up sure sounds tempting.

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QuiteEasilyDone
Jul 2, 2010

Won't you play with me?
E/N Incoming: May feel kinda copy paste from my post about a month ago in the "poo poo that pisses me off daily" thread

So basically I've transitioned to a position that started to pay me a worthwhile wage about 6 months ago. Initially it felt like and was a definite upgrade in terms of culture and experiences. I mean how could it not be when I was told to 'Dance' while a coworker threw darts at my feet, same one brought in a stun-gun which was apparently kosher with the management of the company, and general asshattery I'd expect to see in FYAD as opposed to a professional place of business. I was brought in as a Desktop Support Technician from the consulting company to which I spend my days. The client is about 500 users, in a mixed industrial environment.

They're anti-ticketing system... which is cool I guess. Except that things slip. There's no record of anything we do or promise to our endusers and understandably they'e upset when we can't juggle or adequately delegate or even tell each other what we're working on/doing/been requested to do. We don't hold any form of meeting and instead are supposed to divine from the whiteboard the minutia of what we're supposed to do as next step should one of us explode overnight. This is not just an intradepartmental issue, it's interdepartmental. Which leads to my next gripe.

Everything is an emergency and it's so far gone that we get requests that basically amount to, "We want VDI, we're going to need you to implement it in 2 weeks time and go live at that time. Here's your approval for funding.", This is coming from the top, this is coming from the directorate of the company, this is effecting production training. Rolling out Lync in a 1 week time-frame from approval to 80% client deployment on workstations that have never been standardized or otherwise deployed with Office installations of matching Architectures (O2013-64bit with Visio/Project-32bit SURE WHY NOT!:suicide:). At least we get notice when new employees start; up to 2 days to acquire, build, and deploy a new or otherwise rebuilt workstation. Keep in mind, we buy computers in runs of 2-3 so they might not even have a workstation. This apparently means we can't justify getting and setting up some kind of imaging solution for workstations and laptops. Instead this means we need to setup each workstation by hand using a checklist. Oh and no volume licensing of any discription. All retail licenses with no digital repository of any description. You can imagine this has lead to one or two issues down the line.

Opposingly, our SAN has been sending distress signals for the last... 9 months because we're too afraid to do the firmware update required. (Rather something something 24/7 environment... no downtime) We have a literal server from the 90's on original hardware that we're treating like EOD on a live nuclear warhead because it's literally the business and it would cost $60,000 of back support to the vendor to get assistance to get it on a different server because apparently the software knows. (It's probably reading the MAC address and noone seems to be listening to me when I say that they should try P2V and making sure that VM receives that MAC address on the virtual adapter considering the error message references the physical servers hardware address.) This is of course opposed to losing the database of all tooling/tool wear which legal assures us will cause us to fail nearly every single audit from customer to federal and opens us up to the possibility of "actionables" :whip:. Still no business plan to replace/remedy this.

Instead of doing that, we should be focusing on cleaning up the server room/storage room according to the owner of the client. That would be great if the other guys in my group would actually clean up after themselves! Apparently labeling everything to the companies 5S standards (If you're unfamiliar with it, see 6Sigma, FISH!, or similar training/corporatespeak philosophies) Instead the bins are often scattered about with boxes piled high. The head of IT for the client has taken to storing his bike(Unassembled), a snow shovel in a trashbag, some rims and tires, a few boxes from his old apartment that he's not bothered moving among other things that the owner of the client talks to the owner of my company and I'm always the one on the chopping block for.

So instead of learning anything in my interest such as the virtualization side of things or networking, or even the day to day administration of the Server/Virtualization/anythingremotelyInteresting and instead am stuck with trying to patch holes in the hull of this sinking ship. In fact I've been actively discouraged by my boss, the head consultant/owner, in showing interest in any of that and should "focus on the desktop side of things.", Rewind a few months back and being told that this was a growing opportunity with the ability to get hands on and gain lots of experience with the different technologies that they're employing and rolling out. Right. I used to have unfettered access to exchange servers, spam solutions, the firewalls, Vsphere, the switch interfaces, and everything else. Now, it's just rubbish.

I'm not sure I can keep going on like this, if this is my transformation into the next CorvetteFisher/DAF I want off. BAD

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