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syg posted:Well I'm not really in a position to "do anything" aside from whine about it or look elsewhere for work. It was told to me by my CIO without my inquiring. I feel it could be hard to supervise and work with someone directly knowing that I am taking all the responsibility but not being compensated any differently. If the consensus is that it wouldn't bother anyone else then perhaps I am overreacting and just need to forget about it. Unless you work for a giant corp, having someone who isn't pulling their weight affects your bonuses/raises. I would make sure they are trying to hire a replacement helpdesk person for when this webdeveloper is no longer there. They may just be keeping them on to cover the workload until a replacement is hired and trained.
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Jun 29, 2015 20:37
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Can I get some feedback on whether I should be leaning to  into this situation that has me in first place? I'm probably going to get the offer once I meet with the incumbent, who is staying on - they want another sysadmin. The commute length and number of steps seems like it'd exhaust me pretty quick but there are very real benefits that I can't ignore.PROS OF CURRENT SYSADMIN JOB Extremely laid-back company culture (you can more or less march up and down the aisles cursing up a storm and nobody cares Reasonable commute (30-40 mins via car door to door) Lots of downtime Great relationship with boss Non-IT people are down-to-earth and decent Almost everything is outsourced, easier to pick up the phone and shout at a vendor Google Apps/Gmail administration is a breeze Right across the street from the gym chain I use CONS OF CURRENT SYSADMIN JOB Presently underpaid (Got my VCP about two months in) Doing a lot of helpdesk Not much growth in the server/VMware space Lots of application support and testing Heavily locked-down virtual desktop environment - every helpdesk ticket generally has to have top priority Brokerage environment - if someone can't work the company makes no money On-call every other week Driving commute PROS OF PENDING OFFER No dress code (saw guys in shorts on the Wednesday I had my interview) In the West Village (awesome food) Train commute into NYC Lots of latitude on pitching solutions No fixed budget No on-call rotation No remote work presently possible - when you're done for the day you literally can't even get to webmail Minimum 25% salary boost CONS OF PENDING OFFER Requires a non-trivial subway ride - five stops on a local line, adding appx 25 minutes to the commute from getting off the train and getting to the job Total commute is lengthy - 10 mins to drive to the station and park, 10 min train ride, transfer, wait, another train ride for appx. 25-30 mins (if there are no delays), the aforementioned subway Losing around $370/mo in commute costs - parking, NJ Transit, subway (no details towards Transitcheck or similar) Will still have to do helpdesk (much less in quantity; 70 users in two locations vs. 14 users, 1 in the UK) $70/mo more per month for health insurance UK-based company, all infrastructure is in the UK and we are governed by UK data privacy laws Lack of remote means if something breaks, it's time to get on the train and head in Sole Exchange guy - gonna be a steep learning curve Awful, awful latency - they run virtual desktops via thin clients to the UK Will have to wake up much earlier to get to the gym MJP fucked around with this message at 22:06 on Jun 29, 2015 |
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Jun 29, 2015 22:01
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Do you know what the train and subway ride will be like? If you've got the ability to read or mess around on your phone or something that can be pretty nice time. I'm also guessing even though commutting becomes more expensive, the 25% boost in salary more than makes up for it (though I'm guessing just the commuting costs would be going up more than 25%)
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Jun 29, 2015 22:03
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FISHMANPET posted:Do you know what the train and subway ride will be like? If you've got the ability to read or mess around on your phone or something that can be pretty nice time. The 25% boost assumes around a $5k pocket which basically covers the delta in commute and healthcare costs. The train ride will be fairly packed but doable. I gotta transfer at Newark, thanks to our train line sharing space with freight trains on a crowded chunk of it, which won't change anytime soon. Two stops into NYC after I transfer, then I gotta hit up the C/E or 1/2 local to get to either Houston St. or Spring St. and walk another block or two. NJ Transit buses are awful places for awful people, especially the departure area at Port Authority, and would be an even longer commute despite no transfer. I'd definitely be able to mess around on my phone, and I do like train commutes, but I am so spoiled by my last two NYC jobs - within walking distance of Penn Station, easy to get to. MJP fucked around with this message at 22:11 on Jun 29, 2015 |
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Jun 29, 2015 22:09
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Is there some cheap Chrome-casty HDMI dongle that I can stick into the back of a TV to hop on Wifi and show a Sharepoint-updated Excel file? Cheapest obvious thing I've found so far is an Intel Compute Stick.
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Jun 29, 2015 22:47
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Miracast dongle. Microsoft makes a decent one.
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Jun 29, 2015 22:51
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Zero VGS posted:Is there some cheap Chrome-casty HDMI dongle that I can stick into the back of a TV to hop on Wifi and show a Sharepoint-updated Excel file? Cheapest obvious thing I've found so far is an Intel Compute Stick.
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Jun 29, 2015 22:55
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Can someone who works at a sucessful MSP talk about how you manage documentation? Right now much of our institutional knowledge is locked up inside our heads, and in fact, we recently had a new hire quit because he was expecting a corporate-like (single) environment with a fully populated knowledgebase instead of multiple discrete environments, each with their own quasi-, poorly-, or undocumented quirks. Right now we overwhelmingly have the following: Installers, instructions, and license license details in a shared folder Contact info for LOB/systems support in a cloud storage service Almost no KB articles, but 2 KB frameworks No centralized infrastructure documentation like IP schemes or infrastructure diagrams So yeah, it sucks. How am I supposed to fix it, and what do successful solutions look like?
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Jun 29, 2015 22:59
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THANKS OPM.
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Jun 29, 2015 23:46
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Happiness Commando posted:Can someone who works at a sucessful MSP talk about how you manage documentation? Right now much of our institutional knowledge is locked up inside our heads, and in fact, we recently had a new hire quit because he was expecting a corporate-like (single) environment with a fully populated knowledgebase instead of multiple discrete environments, each with their own quasi-, poorly-, or undocumented quirks. I'm also interested in this. I work for a small MSP, and right now we resort to throwing everything into the tickets that we do as notes and such. We use Autotask, and then search function in that sucks pretty bad, so it's a real pain.
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Jun 29, 2015 23:58
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Happiness Commando posted:Can someone who works at a sucessful MSP talk about how you manage documentation? Right now much of our institutional knowledge is locked up inside our heads, and in fact, we recently had a new hire quit because he was expecting a corporate-like (single) environment with a fully populated knowledgebase instead of multiple discrete environments, each with their own quasi-, poorly-, or undocumented quirks. Hey, your company sounds like mine. But we just had two of the top three sources of institutional knowledge quit 6 months ago. We're in the process of installing a new ticket system with an integrated wiki.
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Jun 30, 2015 00:02
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Happiness Commando posted:Can someone who works at a sucessful MSP talk about how you manage documentation? Right now much of our institutional knowledge is locked up inside our heads, and in fact, we recently had a new hire quit because he was expecting a corporate-like (single) environment with a fully populated knowledgebase instead of multiple discrete environments, each with their own quasi-, poorly-, or undocumented quirks. We keep almost everything in connectwise configs. Some configs will have word documents attached if there are screenshots and instructions. This works really well for our business because it integrates with billing, projects, tickets, configs, RMM/monitoring and our in house tools for metrics. N-Able pushes some information to connectwis so some of the configs are created and updated automatically like ip and dns settings of servers. The more important part is getting everyone to understand that documentation needs to be factored in when you do work. If everyone wants to just keep everything in their head you will still have problems no matter what software you use.
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Jun 30, 2015 00:33
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Anyone else run Jive? God help me. Also, Windows 10 on a Surface Pro makes the Surface Pro worth having.
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Jun 30, 2015 02:48
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MC Fruit Stripe posted:Enough people (I'm as guilty as anyone) have been skipping our daily status meeting that my boss is making it Actually Mandatory now. Boooooooo, 15 minutes hearing about what everyone is doing all day even though I'm on all the emails. What exactly is a daily status meeting? I've worked at a variety of places some that rarely had meetings, managers were "hands-off" and others where we have meetings for every sort of thing no matter how relevant or not but you still had to attend. From my own background or a System Administration perspective, I've never found anything more than 2 team meetings a week necessary and anything more isn't necessary and wasteful. If we need to discuss something else it either isn't that important or it's an issue that big a meeting for that only should be organized. On another note, I'm impartial to the Adobe-way of regular scheduled meetings with your immediate manager. Having annual or semi-annual reviews is something that might need to happen for an overall review or HR Purposes but having impromptu meetings aren't effective enough and having some kind of regular one-on-one make sure everyone has the same expectations of the other.
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Jun 30, 2015 04:09
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Happiness Commando posted:Can someone who works at a sucessful MSP talk about how you manage documentation? Right now much of our institutional knowledge is locked up inside our heads, and in fact, we recently had a new hire quit because he was expecting a corporate-like (single) environment with a fully populated knowledgebase instead of multiple discrete environments, each with their own quasi-, poorly-, or undocumented quirks. I work at a mid sized (50 staff) and successful MSP. All customer documentation lives in sharepoint so its fully searchable. Structure is: Customer Docs Library >Customer1 >>Contacts >>Projects >>Forms >>Sales >>Technical >>>Approvals >>>Escalations >>>>App 1 >>>Licenses >>>>App 2 >>>Login Credentials >>>Network Configs >>>Network Diagrams >>>Server Build Sheets (basically all important server info, IP, name, function, spec, etc) >>>Work Instructions (knowledge base pretty much) >Customer 2 >>etc When I got here there was none of this structure and I implemented it all. They did have some of the documentation spread around a single shared drive that the entire company had access to. Each server gets a build sheet, each site gets a network diagram detailing all servers and networking kit in a site and the customer gets an "overall" network diagram showing the connectivity between sites if they have multiple sites. If you have none of this then its just going to be a case of every time you've got a spare 30 minutes is to knock up a random network diagram that is missing. For customers who take our full managed solution, we have a standardised naming convention that they were already using when I joined here and is actually really good once you get used to it. You can normally tell just from a server's name as to what customer is for, what site its on, what IP it is, and what its function is. EG Server = S44101 S = Server (we use D for desktop, L for laptop, W for wireless, R for router, N for other network) 44 = Customer number, each customer gets a number assigned sequentially. If 44 was our newest customer, the next one would be 45. 1 = Site number. Start at 0, go up sequentially, so this is located in their second site. 01 = Device number. These start at 01 and go up sequentially. The way we do the IP addressing is based off of the name. all IP addresses for all customers start with 10.x The second octect is the customer number, so 10.44.x The third octet is the site number X 8, giving us 8 usable /24 subnets for each site which handles 99% of sites. so 10.44.8.x - 10.44.15.x Last octet is the last number. so 10.44.8.1. So S44329 would be 10.44.24.29 We go into hexidecimal to go above number 99. So S44BFD is 10.44.88.253 Servers 01-09 are always VM Hosts, servers 10-12 are DC's, 13-15 are exchange servers, 17 is always BES/Airwatch/WhateveverMDM, 19 is always AV server, etc. All of our own machines here are built on a standardised build which we update every 3-6 months. It includes all the support tools our guys generally need, such as the ticketing system, a populated RDC Manager, a populated SuperPutty, Logmein Rescue, etc. Ahdinko fucked around with this message at 12:06 on Jun 30, 2015 |
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Jun 30, 2015 12:03
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Thanks VMware
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Jun 30, 2015 15:07
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there is/was an MSP thread that mainly discussed MSP software solutions and the consensus was they all blow
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Jun 30, 2015 15:08
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Does anyone know anything about ITIL, specifically services? I feel like we're doing it wrong but maybe it's the ITIL way. We're a University with about 800-1000 IT staff that work for central IT, supporting about 50k students and 30k staff and faculty. There are also various IT staff in individual departments. The central IT department is setup into various "cross functional teams." Each of these teams has... a single function. For example my team manages the Microsoft server infrastructure. We also have various services, probably about 20 or more of them, which we try to provide directly to faculty and departments, but usually end up being offered to those units through their local IT staff. However we're slowly "aligning" everybody and bringing them into the mothership and eliminating or absorbing their local IT staff so they become employed by central IT. This means that as time goes on, more and more demand for IT services comes from within the central IT organization rather than from outside it. That all basically works and makes sense for the organization. But the kicker to me, and the part where it all falls apart, is that services can't consume other services. Our teams are cross functional because we can work under any service (and bill our time accordingly). I work closely with a "hosting" service that provides Windows or Linux virtual machines to external customers. The service director uses customer feedback to determine where investments should be made in infrastructure, processes, and staff in the hosting service offering. But the problem is that most of the users of this hosting service aren't external, so they're not actually using the hosting service. They're consuming resources from my team directly, and we bill that to the appropriate service (for example CRM or document imaging or whatever), bypassing the hosting service director entirely. So the hosting director that guides and funds the hosting service receives no input from a vast and growing majority of his customers because they're not actually his customers. Apparently it's often repeated that services can't consume other services, which means it's people default to reasonably assume that they do consume each other. And if all the funding and strategic direction comes through the service directors, it seems logical to me that services can consume other services, so that the right service directors know the demands for the services under them. So that's a long way of asking if, in ITIL, services are allowed to consume other services.
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Jun 30, 2015 16:23
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Edit: whoops
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Jun 30, 2015 16:35
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Hungry Computer posted:Thanks VMware If you click OK do you get a second error box that says "n't"?
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Jun 30, 2015 16:36
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Hungry Computer posted:Thanks VMware
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Jun 30, 2015 16:42
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FISHMANPET posted:So that's a long way of asking if, in ITIL, services are allowed to consume other services. So I may be off on this, but I believe ITIL got around this whole issue with their latest revision by dividing services between external and internal customers. So technically I think you should/would have to break down some of those internal services into business functions or configuration items. So in your example the internal hosting provider changes that service to become a function or CI to the larger project. So if you are using them to host a new dev environment for something that will be an external service to a customer the hosting provider just provides a piece of that larger puzzle. I think... All this reminds me that I'm glad I never went further with ITIL than the foundation cert. If I remember correctly too there was lots of bitching from the ITSM community about this whole internal/external service issue.
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Jun 30, 2015 16:44
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Hungry Computer posted:Thanks VMware Still better than their flash web client.
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Jun 30, 2015 17:17
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Just wrapped up my three month contract to hire period and got an official job offer It was a bit nervewracking being laid off from my first IT job after three months due to a buyout but a month of being unemployed later I started this 3 month period with a 50% raise over the last job. And, I'm learning a lot more than I was on top of that. One question, for LinkedIn/resumes etc in the future, should I split up the period where I was technically a contractor employed by a consulting company and the time that I officially work for the actual company or just put it as an uninterrupted block of time? For the purposes of background checks and such, I'm sure I need to mention that I was employed by two separate companies in that time period but how about as far as cluttering up my resume?
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Jul 1, 2015 02:09
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rafikki posted:Just wrapped up my three month contract to hire period and got an official job offer Split it out, but note that your client was the company that you ended up full time. I'm not sure how the current style is, but if the job description was fundamentally the same, I would just list both with dates and then a single job description underneath. So something like: MAR 2015 - Present - Kickass Corp - Bit Tickler JAN 2015 - MAR 2015 - Contractor, Inc. for Kickass Corp - Bit Tickler * Browse SA Forums * Watch Let's Plays on You Tube * Porn Torrenting
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Jul 1, 2015 02:16
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rafikki posted:Just wrapped up my three month contract to hire period and got an official job offer I would not split it out. What matters is your work experience and the knowledge you bring to a future employer. That is not affected by a change in where your paycheck comes from while working in the same role.
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Jul 1, 2015 02:26
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lampey posted:I would not split it out. What matters is your work experience and the knowledge you bring to a future employer. That is not affected by a change in where your paycheck comes from while working in the same role. That could cause issues when they call for employment verification. The previous employer typically won't say much, but they will verify that "yes, raffiki worked here from MAR 2015 until DEC 2017", while his resume has JAN 2015 until DEC 2017. At best that will raise eyebrows.
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Jul 1, 2015 02:32
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Heh, both of you have good points and that's why I was asking. I worked through both lines of thought myself and couldn't decide so I figured I'd toss it out here. I'm 100% on board with flosofl is saying but I'm curious if that should apply to my resume and LI profile or if that should only be relegated to an actual job application.
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Jul 1, 2015 02:50
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 "Allow me to retort" You can have it both ways: Kickass Corp (via 3 mo contract to hire) JAN 2015 - Present Bit Tickler * Browse SA Forums * Watch Let's Plays on You Tube * Porn Torrenting This way it's clear there was a contract period and when they call to verify you aren't trying to hide it. BUT, you can win back that ever so precious first page real estate that is PRICELESS. My first rule of thumb in resume writing is "Assume they will never get to the second page" so it's key you don't waste time doubling up a job entry.
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Jul 1, 2015 03:15
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What second page? Anyway, I prefer just not splitting it, and mentioning it in the interview. No one checks employment history unless they're ready to choose a candidate, it's too time consuming.
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Jul 1, 2015 03:18
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Dark Helmut posted:
Good stuff, so just put the (via 3 mo contract to hire) and leave off the consulting company's name there, right? And the whole keeping it to one page was definitely in mind when I was thinking through the options.
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Jul 1, 2015 03:19
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rafikki posted:Good stuff, so just put the (via 3 mo contract to hire) and leave off the consulting company's name there, right? And the whole keeping it to one page was definitely in mind when I was thinking through the options. I'd probably leave it off unless it was relevant, like if I was applying for a job with the same consulting company again.
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Jul 1, 2015 03:25
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rafikki posted:Good stuff, so just put the (via 3 mo contract to hire) and leave off the consulting company's name there, right? And the whole keeping it to one page was definitely in mind when I was thinking through the options. Yeah, and most recruiters are going to delete competing agencies anyway and replace with (contract). If they are smart at least... It's only ever really relevant if the company representing/submitting you has employed you before. Then it shows you're a proven "resource" (har) Also, to speak to the page length thing: If you have been working more than 3-5 years, your resume should probably bleed onto a second page. Don't ever skimp out on recent or relevant details just to stay on one page. But in general the most recent relevant stuff should be right there on top. That first page needs to answer the questions: "Who is rafikki, what does he do that I need, and where has he done what I need lately" Dark Helmut fucked around with this message at 03:52 on Jul 1, 2015 |
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Jul 1, 2015 03:49
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flosofl posted:That could cause issues when they call for employment verification. The previous employer typically won't say much, but they will verify that "yes, raffiki worked here from MAR 2015 until DEC 2017", while his resume has JAN 2015 until DEC 2017. At best that will raise eyebrows. Usually there will be a separate job application form from your resume that lists out this type of questionnaire. A technical resume can cut out a lot of extra details and focus on making you look awesome and getting an interview. Keeping it to one page is really important. You should tailor your resume to each job application and leave off unimportant parts
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Jul 1, 2015 10:28
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In the past I restructured my resume to have some description about who I and and what I do and my primary skills up front on the first page. Then the date sorted stuff after that. I think when you have less experience you tend to just throw anything on there you have ever encountered cause you aren't expected to be a master at it all. Just imagine an interviewer asking you questions about some of the more detailed topics though. If you can't comfortably talk about something off the top of your head then it probably shouldn't be there unless maybe you are mentioning you want to learn more about it or get more experience with it. Really though that part should go into the cover letter when you tell them why you are interested in the position along with pointing out what you might have to offer.
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Jul 1, 2015 15:17
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I should be able to find this somewhere, but I haven't been able to. Does anyone know if, when using Bitlocker, it is possible to encrypt & unlock multiple physical drives using only the TPM (storing recovery keys within AD)? Or do additional data drives always require a password?
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Jul 1, 2015 16:16
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Japanese Dating Sim posted:I should be able to find this somewhere, but I haven't been able to. It's been a while since I've done this, but I seem to recall the number of drives not being the factor when determining unlock method but whether it's the OS drive or not.
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Jul 1, 2015 17:32
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I know this is a dumb thing to get excited over, but I just used logmein for the first time. I feel like a wizard, setting up printers by IP (because gently caress WDS) from 1000 miles away.
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Jul 1, 2015 17:32
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22 Eargesplitten posted:I know this is a dumb thing to get excited over, but I just used logmein for the first time. I feel like a wizard, setting up printers by IP (because gently caress WDS) from 1000 miles away. WDS is horrible, and many printer issues can be traced to Microsoft's class drivers being poo poo.(as that is what WDS will automatically install)
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Jul 1, 2015 20:22
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22 Eargesplitten posted:I know this is a dumb thing to get excited over, but I just used logmein for the first time. I feel like a wizard, setting up printers by IP (because gently caress WDS) from 1000 miles away. IT wizardry is sorta like Heroin and you'll need to move onto harder stuff eventually. I'm not sure if it'll solve the problems for the kind of work you're doing, but in a Windows environment I'd recommend learning powershell. Just imagine the rush of getting a week of work done with a script while you play a video game on the shitter.
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Jul 1, 2015 21:58
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