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Tab8715 posted:Are there any basic guidelines I should know when answering open-ended questions? It is really an opportunity to tell a story and position yourself in the best possible way. Ideally you should say something you should always be positive, have a concrete example of your past technical skills that you can talk about, explain what you learned from this past situation, and further how this situation taught your enough that you can now teach everyone, giving the whole company value even when making mistakes. It is a little bit different for hypothetical and "wierd interview" questions. Some companies will focus a lot more on technical questions. I think about it as having an end goal of the interviewers knowing that you would be a valuable addition to the organization even when making mistakes and work back from there.
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Dec 31, 2014 20:28
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Tab8715 posted:Are there any basic guidelines I should know when answering open-ended questions? Every place is going to have it's own ways of dealing with Big Emergencies, and how you think is best to handle them is going to be a result of where you've worked before hand. I know I wouldn't like that answer, my preferred answer would be "fix it in whatever method is as fast as possible without having side effects that could be potentially worse than the current problem." If you're sitting there listening to someone yell, then the 5-10 minutes they're yelling is 5-10 minutes added to the outage. But I think that way because I work in an Ops team for a cloud application, something going wrong is going to be affecting thousands of people at once, and I don't deal with customers so I can be very short with people in getting the information I need. Someone who's from a background of a VAR or similar would probably prefer your answer as it's more about making the customer feel loved, while I care about the number of seconds the website is down for.
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Jan 1, 2015 10:58
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Part of that is going to be the politics of an organization and the technicians title. I could get away with telling a senior vice president that I needed to get going to actually fix the problem, whereas an entry level helpdesk guy probably would get some blowback from that.
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Jan 1, 2015 16:52
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Not sure if this is the right thread, but I currently work for an IT consulting company doing work for multiple offices in a large city. I do basic support and make sure everythings running from one of the clients offices daily, then work from there on other clients. I just graduated with a degree in computer science and my boss said after graduation that I'm moving to full time with a salary conversion (no discussion). With that, he wants me to manage the training of all new hires, the management of entire offices, managing the construction of new offices, spearheading the development of the company website, be the face for some new clients, etc. Naturally, I asked for a raise with the salary conversion because of the sharp increase in responsibility, in addition to the obvious increase in the amount of hours I'd need to spend working each week. A raise wasn't even a discussion he wanted to have, he said that possibly in six months I could get a small bump if I handle all of the above perfectly. Basically bending over backwards to get the projects done in that timeframe. This would be my first post-graduate job so I'm just confirming with you guys that I'm actually getting hosed over and I should be looking for another place asap.
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Jan 1, 2015 21:23
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RoryGilmore posted:Not sure if this is the right thread, but I currently work for an IT consulting company doing work for multiple offices in a large city. I do basic support and make sure everythings running from one of the clients offices daily, then work from there on other clients. I just graduated with a degree in computer science and my boss said after graduation that I'm moving to full time with a salary conversion (no discussion). With that, he wants me to manage the training of all new hires, the management of entire offices, managing the construction of new offices, spearheading the development of the company website, be the face for some new clients, etc.
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Jan 1, 2015 21:33
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RoryGilmore posted:I'm just confirming with you guys that I'm actually getting hosed over and I should be looking for another place asap.
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Jan 1, 2015 21:33
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Misogynist posted:It sounds like good experience that you don't have on your resume yet, so if you don't have an urgent need for the money, stick it out until you can talk intelligently about those accomplishments in an interview. That will pretty substantially improve your market value down the line. Afterwards, book it out of there to someplace willing to pay you appropriately for the type of work you're doing. I think it will be good experience, but since most of my school work/research was in development work, I'm thinking of just making the jump over to that side (and the starting pay is good too). Also, I forgot to mention that it's salaried without any benefits (two weeks combined vacation/sick is it maybe? which I didn't even have for the year+ I've worked for him)
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Jan 1, 2015 21:42
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How much are you making, what's your job description and where are you located? I'd tell your boss, "yea, sure sounds like a great plan" while looking for gigs in your free time.
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Jan 1, 2015 22:47
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50k/year in NYC. No formal job description, it's a startup so it's basically 'do whatever is needed to help the company grow' now, which is being the main support for multiple clients both remotely and on site (it's just me so I'm doing everything from the low level support with users to maintaining the servers/backups/etc), developing our presence online, training new hires for the lower level work, and now setting up clients in additional offices (so setting up the networks/servers there and working with vendors to get the things we need). He told me 50k/year is generous in the first place for what I'm doing, but he tends to bullshit a lot, so I came here to ask if that was a good number for what I do. I did say "sure sounds great" for the time being, but I think I'll start to look for other work.
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Jan 1, 2015 23:00
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Don't Apple repair tech's make $50k/y starting in NYC but either way, that's low but it sounds like a fun gig. I'd look for something new once you graduate.
Gucci Loafers fucked around with this message at 23:15 on Jan 1, 2015 |
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Jan 1, 2015 23:12
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Looking for some advice from any Aussie goons in the thread. My wife got a job in Sydney and starts mid-January. I'm staying state side until sometime early March and am planning on throwing applications out left and right as soon as she has a local address I can put on my resume. I know what job sites to use in the states to find work but its not really clear to me which ones I'm best off using for Australia. Are sites like Seek the best place to look or are there any IT specific job boards I should be looking at? Do recruiters in Australia enjoy a better rep then they seem to in the US?
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Jan 1, 2015 23:13
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RoryGilmore posted:Naturally, I asked for a raise with the salary conversion because of the sharp increase in responsibility, in addition to the obvious increase in the amount of hours I'd need to spend working each week. A raise wasn't even a discussion he wanted to have, he said that possibly in six months I could get a small bump if I handle all of the above perfectly. Basically bending over backwards to get the projects done in that timeframe. I've said it before and I'll say it again: talk is cheap. Even if he had said "In six months you will get a raise," that's worth exactly nothing. But the best he can do is "POSSIBLY a small bump" if you're loving perfect? That's pure bullshit, he's not planning on giving you another dime and that's not going to change for as long as he can get away with it. I'm not going to weigh in on whether you should stick it out for the experience or not, that's your call, just be aware that what he told you counts for precisely dick.
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Jan 1, 2015 23:16
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Just getting your degree is a great reason to tell interviewers why you're looking for something new. 
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Jan 1, 2015 23:40
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Paladine_PSoT posted:DHCP chat. A while back my entire building's connections were hosed. It took a while to track down the root cause. Ultimately, a dev hosed up setting up a test environment in his office, got his wan and lan ports confused, and was spewing leases for his test domain all over. The dev's test was successful, the network engineer hosed up: is how I read it.
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Jan 2, 2015 03:29
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RoryGilmore posted:50k/year in NYC. No formal job description, it's a startup so it's basically 'do whatever is needed to help the company grow' now, which is being the main support for multiple clients both remotely and on site (it's just me so I'm doing everything from the low level support with users to maintaining the servers/backups/etc), developing our presence online, training new hires for the lower level work, and now setting up clients in additional offices (so setting up the networks/servers there and working with vendors to get the things we need).
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Jan 2, 2015 05:54
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*Sorry, ignore this. Better suited for the certification thread.
Hughmoris fucked around with this message at 07:05 on Jan 2, 2015 |
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Jan 2, 2015 06:56
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RoryGilmore posted:50k/year in NYC. No formal job description, it's a startup so it's basically 'do whatever is needed to help the company grow' now, which is being the main support for multiple clients both remotely and on site (it's just me so I'm doing everything from the low level support with users to maintaining the servers/backups/etc), developing our presence online, training new hires for the lower level work, and now setting up clients in additional offices (so setting up the networks/servers there and working with vendors to get the things we need). 50k in NYC for all that? You are getting screwed. Oh, and since they are moving you to salary without any negotiation, get ready for 80 hour weeks until you resign!
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Jan 2, 2015 07:21
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Harry Lime posted:Looking for some advice from any Aussie goons in the thread. My wife got a job in Sydney and starts mid-January. I'm staying state side until sometime early March and am planning on throwing applications out left and right as soon as she has a local address I can put on my resume. I know what job sites to use in the states to find work but its not really clear to me which ones I'm best off using for Australia. Are sites like Seek the best place to look or are there any IT specific job boards I should be looking at? Do recruiters in Australia enjoy a better rep then they seem to in the US? I used seek to find my most recent position and I'm about to move interstate for it. It's where most companies and recruiters are going to stick a job advertisement, even if it isn't the only place. What sector are you looking to find work in? Another way I've found useful is following companies that do work in fields that interest me on LinkedIn, quite often they will put job listings via that medium as well.
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Jan 2, 2015 08:48
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If it would cost the company more to replace you, you have some leverage for a raise. It is common to have to move to a new company to get "market" rate for the current work you are doing. Even in a large company with well defined roles you would be exptected to be doing tier 3 work as a tier 2 for months before being promoted. See if the company will reimburse costs for certifications or send you to a tech conference. For some managers the credentials matter more and you can grow with the company.
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Jan 2, 2015 12:22
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Alternatively, see about getting some of those responsibilities removed, particularly the ones outside of the IT realm. You're still an entry level employee, and even with your part-time work experience it's going to be hard to get anyone to justify paying you much more until you have a little more experience under your belt.
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Jan 2, 2015 13:32
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Hi guys, I posted in here a while ago about moving into security from a completely different area (photography) got some really useful advice and after quite a bit of work I passed my CCNA R/S and was accepted to do an MSc in computer and network security. Currently half way through the taught course and I'm managing to survive, which is nice. At the end of this I want to get into penetration testing, the course itself doesn't really dwell on that sort of stuff much so I've started trying to do a bit of study on the side to help prepare me for finding work. My question is, I have a dissertation to start in a few months, that will take six to complete, I want to know if there are any topics it might be worth looking at which might be particularly useful for someone wanting to get into pen testing. I figure I don't want to work that long on something I'm just going to forget about after, I want it to be something practical which will give me a concrete push towards being prepared to leave uni. Currently I've been looking into the potential abuse of live migration of virtual machines in the cloud, as my dissertation supervisor has worked on some papers about it, but I just wondered if there might be something useful I'm overlooking.
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Jan 2, 2015 17:10
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Tab8715 posted:I'd tell your boss, "yea, sure sounds like a great plan" while looking for gigs in your free time. This is my feeling on it too. 50k in NYC is pretty crap, but if you've asked for the raise and been denied, what are you going to do? Take the new role and in the meantime start brushing up your resume and applying elsewhere. As Misogynist said, if this is your first "real" job you probably don't have a super long resume of achievements yet. Doing this work will help build that, even if it sucks for a while. Also, keep in mind that salary does NOT automatically mean you aren't eligible for overtime pay. There are specific tests that must be met to exempt you from it. I can't really say from what you described whether you qualify or not but it's worth looking into. Since it sounds like your boss is the type of person who will definitely screw you out of it even if you do qualify.
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Jan 2, 2015 17:30
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What is it with everyone wanting to be an IT Security penetration tester?
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Jan 2, 2015 17:51
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skipdogg posted:What is it with everyone wanting to be an IT Security penetration tester? They think it means being a badass white-hat hacker instead of mostly running scripts to check for vulnerabilities every day.
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Jan 2, 2015 18:19
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NZAmoeba posted:Every place is going to have it's own ways of dealing with Big Emergencies, and how you think is best to handle them is going to be a result of where you've worked before hand. Interesting, but which part of that are you disagreeing with? I was on a Product App. Support team which is more or less basically Operations. If an outage occurred, no matter how severe, we had to make a ticket, page out to development and management before we touched anything.
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Jan 2, 2015 18:28
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skipdogg posted:What is it with everyone wanting to be an IT Security penetration tester? It sounds really cool. Its also easier and more rewarding to tell people what is broken more so than fixing it with realistic goals in mind.
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Jan 2, 2015 18:32
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psydude posted:They think it means being a badass white-hat hacker instead of mostly running scripts to check for vulnerabilities every day. Don't forget the reports. So many reports, and PowerPoint, yes lots of PowerPoint.
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Jan 2, 2015 18:32
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Run everything in Nessus, give report, stick your fingers in your ears and go LALALALALALALALALALA
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Jan 2, 2015 18:34
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skipdogg posted:Don't forget the reports. So many reports, and PowerPoint, yes lots of PowerPoint. And Executive Summaries. "Can you please make a one page summary for our senior management? Just take those 20 pages of data and put them in a couple bullet points. And don't use any of those made-up words you geeks like to use."
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Jan 2, 2015 18:37
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Sickening posted:Its also easier and more rewarding to tell people what is broken more so than fixing it with realistic goals in mind. I think this is it, right there. Everyone is hosed and it's much more fun to tell someone they are hosed and walk away than it is to actually try to fix things in a meaningful way.
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Jan 2, 2015 18:46
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go3 posted:Run everything in Nessus, give report, stick your fingers in your ears and go LALALALALALALALALALA "Literally none of the issues you flagged are real because Red Hat has backported patches for every single one." "LOL IDGAF, nessus says it's bad! Fix your poo poo!" 
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Jan 2, 2015 18:52
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I feel thoroughly encouraged. I suppose you're all not too far off on the reasoning, but writing reports and running scripts is certainly going to be more interesting than photoshopping dust off photos of paintings all day, which was a large part of my last job. I figure it's an interesting field, I've spoken to an acquaintance who does it now and he seems to enjoy it. If it doesn't work out with pen testing there are hopefully other things my masters will be able to take me into, but I'll never know if I don't try it.
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Jan 2, 2015 19:04
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Docjowles posted:"Literally none of the issues you flagged are real because Red Hat has backported patches for every single one." "FreeBSD is not an approved operating system for this network!" "It's the vendor operating system for our security appliances." "Well you need to consider switching to one that runs on Windows instead!"
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Jan 2, 2015 19:15
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The guy that did our pen testing at the bank had Xerox, ATT, Canon etc. name badges for the social engineering aspect of it, so he was kind of like a spy which is pretty cool
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Jan 2, 2015 19:26
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Docjowles posted:"Literally none of the issues you flagged are real because Red Hat has backported patches for every single one." I see you're been dealing with AlertLogic, too. "Backporting? I don't know what that means. Our scans don't lie. Resolve your vulnerabilities." "Ok. Flag the issue as acceptable-risk." "Ok." Next scan, the vulnerability shows up again. "Backporting? I don't know what that means. Our scans don't lie. Resolve your vulnerabilities." And round and round we go.
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Jan 2, 2015 19:26
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IT Security and specifically pen-testing just kind of set me off when I see someone new to IT mention them. The TV has glamorized them so much and reality is nothing like what the tv and movies show. Many people seriously think it's some glamorous job where they're hacking the gibson or doing some poo poo they saw in Swordfish.
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Jan 2, 2015 19:29
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I like security engineering over pen testing/security analysis/forensics, because it's less work, pays better, and you only have to stare at wireshark for diagnostic or testing purposes.
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Jan 2, 2015 19:32
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skipdogg posted:doing some poo poo they saw in Swordfish. Actually when I am managing my trouble ticket queue I am having multiple orgasms like Hugh Jackman in that scene
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Jan 2, 2015 19:32
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Well I've obviously got a bit of time before any decisions need to be made on exactly what I'm going for. I'm sure I have partly fallen for the allure of the 'glamour' but I am vaguely familiar with the tedious aspects of the job. How the hell do you work out if something is right for you from the outside though? Does work experience exist for this sort of thing? I'd hazard a guess no after doing some searching a while back. Should I just go around asking as many people in the industry as I can about their jobs and what it's like day to day?
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Jan 2, 2015 19:56
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CloFan posted:The guy that did our pen testing at the bank had Xerox, ATT, Canon etc. name badges for the social engineering aspect of it, so he was kind of like a spy which is pretty cool The best trick is to carry something heavy. If you're wearing a dumb looking uniform while using both hands to carry a heavy looking UPS or server, people will go out of their way to open doors for you.
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Jan 2, 2015 19:57
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