BaseballPCHiker posted:So I was all excited to leave my last job after they were pulling some scheduling changes on me and wanted to build out a cheap hasty sharepoint site. I'm not so sure anymore.... I stared working for an MSP/consulting (well, they want to be anyways) company two months ago and so far: Spent 40 hours evaluating a 600 person nonprofit and writing a 30 page report on how they're doing Am going to be doing the same thing at a 1200 person company soon for 80 hours + report writing Hopefully will be helping a mid sized company transition to a couple of ASA 5525-x's and fulfill a pretty rigorous set of demands they have for IPS and other fun security measures Got approached today about a possible SharePoint on prem to O365 migration I've also: Reset a trillion passwords Troubleshot scanners and printers which causes me to grind my teeth Went to a client the other day about a Pitney Bowes mail station (never seen one before) and wasted two hours plugging it in and then rebuffing questions about how postage works Wade through hosed up Windows deployments with messy group policies, directories, misconfigured VMs and all without the ability to really force changes which drives me crazy Get called constantly about printers on this RDS server struggling with redirection when I've shown the client how to map from a printserv probably thirty times?? For me the good is outweighing the bad, were smallish and flat so everyone has to pitch in whether you're the highest paid guy on the team or the lowest. I think Judge Schnoopy is probably right - I'd give it some time before I got too worried about making the right or wrong move. Edit: I've been in IT for eight years and my last stop was as an IT guy on an application development team. Before that I managed a small retail stores IT and before that I did helpdesk/sysadmin work in the military. I've enjoyed the variety of what I'm doing now quite a bit. Just gotta take the good with the bad (and frustrating!). milk milk lemonade fucked around with this message at 02:52 on Aug 24, 2016 |
|
#
?
Aug 24, 2016 02:48
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 25, 2024 19:01 |
|
|
psydude posted:My goal is to get Delta Diamond status and then retire from consulting. I'm almost a Hilton Gold member just from working weeks long projects. Delta gold here. Omg it's so worth it. I'm pretty sure I could ask for a handy from the pilot and they'd make it happen.
|
|
#
?
Aug 24, 2016 02:50
|
|
|
I'm Air Canada Elite Beaver status myself
|
|
#
?
Aug 24, 2016 02:51
|
|
|
The rule for my team on meal expenses: just be reasonable. Most of them don't even do it, they say they feel weird about it. "I would have to eat anyway..." I question them.
|
|
#
?
Aug 24, 2016 03:08
|
|
|
CLAM DOWN posted:I'm Air Canada Elite Beaver status myself Wait until you get to Platinum Ptarmigan!
|
|
#
?
Aug 24, 2016 03:18
|
|
|
Dick Trauma posted:Wait until you get to Platinum Ptarmigan! Diamond Moose is what I'm shooting for, free poutine buffet prior to boarding.
|
|
#
?
Aug 24, 2016 03:19
|
|
|
jaegerx posted:Delta gold here. Omg it's so worth it. I'm pretty sure I could ask for a handy from the pilot and they'd make it happen. Note to self: continue flying Delta
|
|
#
?
Aug 24, 2016 03:30
|
|
|
My pier diem is $30 while in ny because all meals are free while in office. Just order from seamless. Otherwise it's $50. No receipts needed unless you go over. Travel is separate. Uber lyft cab etc. Plus since I'm remote I get my internet paid and gym membership.
|
|
#
?
Aug 24, 2016 03:49
|
|
|
I flew Spirit for a personal trip a few months ago because it was cheap, and I would not recommend it.
|
|
#
?
Aug 24, 2016 03:50
|
|
|
anthonypants posted:I flew Spirit for a personal trip a few months ago because it was cheap, and I would not recommend it. The only reason to buy Spirit tickets is because you hate your in-laws and they insist on you paying for them to visit. Flying that airline made me feel some sympathy for the 9/11 terrorists.
|
|
#
?
Aug 24, 2016 03:54
|
|
|
I was on a Spirit flight one time where the flight attendants let a dude board with his wheelchair-bound mother in law in a diabetic coma after questioning him about it extensively at the gate, and then spent an hour and a half treating that mother in law before kicking all involved off the flight. To this day I don't know why the hell they let him board and didn't just stop everyone from boarding. Wouldn't fly again.
|
|
|
#
?
Aug 24, 2016 04:03
|
|
|
jaegerx posted:Delta gold here. Omg it's so worth it. I'm pretty sure I could ask for a handy from the pilot and they'd make it happen. I always associated Delta with being a lovely domestic carrier until I flew Delta business class internationally. I'm dealing with the transfers in Atlanta for the rest of the year just so I can clinch Silver status and start getting those free upgrades. e: Might have another project in Germany that'll push me over the tip. Also close to hitting A-List preferred with Southwest. I was considering going for the companion pass until I found out you can only change the recipient 3 times a year. If I could take anyone I wanted at any time it would have been a different story, because there's nothing like surprising family and friends with a free trip for the west coast or wherever. But alas. psydude fucked around with this message at 05:31 on Aug 24, 2016 |
|
#
?
Aug 24, 2016 05:28
|
|
|
I can expense up to $75 a day for food and "a reasonable amount of alcohol", so far I haven't hit the limit on what reasonable is. I almost fly exclusively with Singapore Airlines and while they are good they will never ever offer anyone a free upgrade for some reason.
|
|
#
?
Aug 24, 2016 05:57
|
|
|
I think this might be the right thread.. I'm working at a company that sells enterprise software relating to IP Telephony, interfacing with cisco and avaya call center offerings(CUCM, UCCX/E, DMCC, etc). Doing support mostly break/fix. Started as a 'support engineer 1' at 42k. After a year I've been moved up to 52k at 'support engineer 2'. This is in Minneapolis. To me this seems pretty good for my first real job in IT. But I'm curious what enterprise support people generally make. Any general telephony people in here? I'm considering trying to get into a more general Cisco or Avaya role at some MSP but haven't really been able to gauge whether it'd be worth leaving my job to set up call center phone environments. I'd be pretty valuable to a lot of the partners we work with, but there might be some sort of non compete there, I assume it's common for non competes to exist between partners? From my current view, it seems like it would be nice to not have my most important work be over WebEx with somebody talking at you the whole time, but I'm sure that stress would just be replaced with something else. Stay at my easy flexible support job at a company who has shown nothing but a desire to keep me around? Or try to jump into a role at a company where I'd have more responsibilities and likely similar pay, but possibly a better job title? Lol.
|
|
#
?
Aug 24, 2016 07:10
|
|
|
Ricky Bad Posts posted:I think this might be the right thread.. Call Center design and implementation seems like a very lucrative niche. We have a dedicated internal team and they make good money, especially since they get stock bonuses as well.
|
|
#
?
Aug 24, 2016 07:24
|
|
|
I had a really strange discussion with my boss about some barely functional hardware that he wants to connect our highest profile client through. Asks me whether it works and I (truthfully) say that it will, for a week or so, and then it will fall over and somebody will need to explain to the client why they are about to be offline for a week. I think he only listened long enough to hear "it will" because his response was along the lines of "oh that's fine and if it breaks we will deal with that". I've already sent the CYA email but the idea of knowingly deploying into a garbage fire of an environment because you have a deadline to hit, when it's guaranteed to cost you more in the long run is completely alien to me.
|
|
#
?
Aug 24, 2016 07:27
|
|
|
Sprechensiesexy posted:Call Center design and implementation seems like a very lucrative niche. We have a dedicated internal team and they make good money, especially since they get stock bonuses as well. Yeah AFAIK call centers will typically do stuff inhouse, maybe some places that want phone stuff anywhere will do a hosted solution, but I would guess then, they have their network/telephone guys work directly with an ISP/carrier (one of our clients is a 50k-100K global company that does this with verizon). I could be wrong, these are just my experiences, our MSP does everything in-house, network/telephony is handled by myself and 2-3 other guys.
|
|
#
?
Aug 24, 2016 07:28
|
|
|
MF_James posted:Yeah AFAIK call centers will typically do stuff inhouse, maybe some places that want phone stuff anywhere will do a hosted solution, but I would guess then, they have their network/telephone guys work directly with an ISP/carrier (one of our clients is a 50k-100K global company that does this with verizon). Yeah that's what I'm trying to figure out. I haven't done any real looking at jobs yet but I bet I could get a job handling a call center, but the majority of the people I'm working with as a recording vendor are people at MSPs. The MSP people seem to loving hate themselves though, so maybe I'll start looking for jobs with municipalities as those are the happiest people I deal with.
|
|
#
?
Aug 24, 2016 07:44
|
|
|
Had a talk with the senior tech. Mostly about how it's going, what i'm doing, what i'm struggling with. then he hit me with this one. "I may be cutting my own fingers by telling u this, I really like having you here. You are still doing great work. But after you get your MSCE. I think you should find someplace else to work. I think the experience of another company will help you grow your skills " So I asked if they weren't planning on extending my contract. "no, it's not that. I want to have you here. We have plenty of projects in 2017 to keep you here" I don't know what to make of this. Is he hinting that my contract at this place wont be extended but not saying it. Is he genuinily looking out for me? Either way. it's not a good feeling being told to find some other place to work.
|
|
#
?
Aug 24, 2016 09:31
|
|
|
I did my MSP tour for three years from late 2006 to the end of 2009, although most of our clients didn't have any fixed contracts and just paid by the hour. It was just me, one coworker and the boss handling everything(said boss spent more time in meetings with clients and potential clients, we did all the hard work for the most part) It did teach me a lot, but it was also quite stressful and occasionally I got emergency calls from a client while working for another one(nothing quite like rushing over to a client only to discover something just needed rebooting, or there was an outage) All of them ran a flavor of Small Business Server 2003 with XP clients and the occasional extra server running TSC duties, during my time there we got a few clients over to 2008 and started a 7 rollout plan(which involved taking a desktop with a fresh 7 install to the client, installing all of their applications on it and documenting the process where needed, then seeing if everything worked and checking off on it, if something didn't work we'd contact the vendor or find a workaround) No standardized builds, barely any imaging, and hand-built desktop machines, as well as licensing and documentation being a mess. By the time I left things had improved quite a bit though, through efforts of both me and my coworker who had prior enterprise experience and decided to set standards. I even got to see an NT4 server with a few years of uptime responsible for the timecard system at one place. It had to be kept alive because replacing it would have been too expensive. Also a Windows 98 box used for a measuring appliance in a steel plant connected via serial port, when I replaced it the insides of it were literally black. Couldn't get the new machine to work at first, the vendor claimed it was two versions out of date and replacing it would be very expensive, turned out the motherboard just had a bad serial port and we managed to get it working with a USB to serial adapter. Also fun: One client had a server with a USB tapedrive and backups were literally taking from 5:30 PM until 8:30 AM, just outside of business hours. Turns out the server only had USB1.1 ports, so we ended up trimming it as much as safely possible.
|
|
#
?
Aug 24, 2016 09:59
|
|
|
RFC2324 posted:The only reason to buy Spirit tickets is because you hate your in-laws and they insist on you paying for them to visit. One of my company's products is an air fare deal site. We literally added a feature to opt out of emails about a given airline because so many people wrote in to say "stop sending me fuckin' Spirit fares. I wouldn't fly them for free"
|
|
#
?
Aug 24, 2016 13:28
|
|
|
Sefal posted:Had a talk with the senior tech. It is a compliment, you goon. He respects your ability and thinks you have the potential to do more than what they have for you, so he is encouraging you to pursue professional development and giving you career advice.
|
|
#
?
Aug 24, 2016 13:32
|
|
|
Ricky Bad Posts posted:I think this might be the right thread.. I support Avaya stuff in large enterprise environments. I will guess that you either do call recording or some sort of reporting stuff since you said DMCC, yes? I work for a BP. Avaya is circling the drain and has been aggressively outsourcing, so there is a niche for more high touch expert support. Also, folks aren't going to just uninstall a PBX with 30k phones on it. I make decent money. For both Avaya and Cisco, certs are a big thing, since having certed folks gives discounts to support contracts and allows access to vendor support. Additionally, both Cisco and Avaya are installing in VMWare VMs, so if you want to go that route, learn VMWare/VSphere. Having said that, there is probably more money in design and sales of telecom stuff. especially advanced CTI/IVR applications. If you are doing CTI and or IVR related work, learn as much as you can. That is where things are going. There is currently a transition from hardware to software happening, where 20 year old applications that are tied to specific hardware are getting edged out by hosted SaaS products. Right now the hosted stuff does not scale as well and have the features the old stuff does, but it is just a matter of time. I can ramble more, but either ask away or PM me if you have more specifics.
|
|
#
?
Aug 24, 2016 13:46
|
|
|
PCjr sidecar posted:It is a compliment, you goon. He respects your ability and thinks you have the potential to do more than what they have for you, so he is encouraging you to pursue professional development and giving you career advice. Indeed. It's rare that you get someone who actually looks out for your long-term best interests and career growth, in particular when it's probably to the detriment of his own needs. That's someone you stay in touch with because he can be an awesome reference down the road.
|
|
#
?
Aug 24, 2016 14:21
|
|
|
I guess I may have jumped to conclusions too fast. I should take his advice and start looking for other companies. I will deffinetaly keep in touch with him. He already put a reference on my linkedin. I'm having the MS 70-413 exam next monday. I hope to be MCSE certified by the end of 2016. An a other note. We started giving out Ipads to almost everyone (except IT ofcourse  )Now I'd like for our ipad users to be able to cast their ipads to the screens in our meeting rooms. do you guys have experience with setting up airplay on screens? the screens have an usb port. I was thinking of setting the airplay on a laptop thats connected to the screen. But I would much rather have the ipad cast directly to the screen. Sefal fucked around with this message at 14:49 on Aug 24, 2016 |
|
#
?
Aug 24, 2016 14:39
|
|
|
PCjr sidecar posted:It is a compliment, you goon. He respects your ability and thinks you have the potential to do more than what they have for you, so he is encouraging you to pursue professional development and giving you career advice. Dark Helmut posted:Indeed. It's rare that you get someone who actually looks out for your long-term best interests and career growth, in particular when it's probably to the detriment of his own needs. That's someone you stay in touch with because he can be an awesome reference down the road. Sefal posted:I guess I may have jumped to conclusions too fast. I should take his advice and start looking for other companies. I will deffinetaly keep in touch with him. He already put a reference on my linkedin. I'm having the MS 70-413 exam next monday. I hope to be MCSE certified by the end of 2016. AirPlay to TV is pretty much going to be through an AppleTV unit hooked to the TVs. AirPlay isn't a renamed MiraCast or IntelWireless Streaming(thing) that a lot of laptops come with. So even if you have another streaming solution setup, you are pretty much looking at $70/television to cast it. There is software that will let you do it to a laptop (such as air server) but they are made for computer screens, not so much broadcasting to a television as a second screen, so it's a bit fumbly to get working that way.
|
|
#
?
Aug 24, 2016 14:53
|
|
|
You can enroll Apple TVs in MDM as well, which is nice. Make sure you nail down the Bonjour broadcasts and have good firewall rules in place to not have 50 Apple TVs appear in the list of destinations, and you're good to go. They are pretty good boxes for this use case.
|
|
#
?
Aug 24, 2016 15:52
|
|
|
Thanks Ants posted:You can enroll Apple TVs in MDM as well, which is nice. Make sure you nail down the Bonjour broadcasts and have good firewall rules in place to not have 50 Apple TVs appear in the list of destinations, and you're good to go. They are pretty good boxes for this use case. And also make sure that if you have them all apart of the same network, name them appropriately. I've been to several companies where the list on the streaming wireless network has six AppleTVs that say "Living Room" 
|
|
#
?
Aug 24, 2016 16:03
|
|
|
Sefal posted:Had a talk with the senior tech. In my opinion he's definitely saying that he thinks you are good, work hard, and have a knack for IT stuffs. Also, he's saying that by finding a new job and branching out, your skills will develop faster and you'll be even more of an asset than you are now. Seeing different environments will give you a wider picture, rather than being in the same place where you handle X in Z way and P in Y way, at another place they might handle X in Y way because of C. Gives you a bigger picture and allows you to learn more.
|
|
#
?
Aug 24, 2016 17:03
|
|
|
Ricky Bad Posts posted:I think this might be the right thread.. I am a Cisco UC engineer and can safely tell you your make more money going to an msp and focusing. I do a lot of UC systems admin and new install deployment. Uccx specialists can make a lot because it's annoying to use and configure and few people want to specialize in it. I'm not sure what your day to day work is, but WebEx remote work isn't going away any time soon.
|
|
#
?
Aug 24, 2016 17:18
|
|
|
There's a job opening at a company that I would like. I applied, got no response. A recruiter later got me a phone interview, but nothing ever came of that. I see this company post about this position on Indeed, LinkedIn, etc. every couple of weeks and it seems like it's been open for months. Would it make sense to apply for it again, or is that just a big ol' waste of time?
|
|
#
?
Aug 24, 2016 18:31
|
|
|
Go for it. Worst you're out 5 minutes
|
|
#
?
Aug 24, 2016 18:49
|
|
|
Does Windows Server 2008R2 or 2012R2 offer a way for users to change their passwords through a web browser? As in go to a website, enter your AD creds, change your password?
|
|
#
?
Aug 24, 2016 19:47
|
|
|
scuz posted:Does Windows Server 2008R2 or 2012R2 offer a way for users to change their passwords through a web browser? As in go to a website, enter your AD creds, change your password?
|
|
#
?
Aug 24, 2016 19:56
|
|
|
beepsandboops posted:There's a job opening at a company that I would like. I applied, got no response. A recruiter later got me a phone interview, but nothing ever came of that. There are some HR Departments and Companies that are continually hiring not because they need someone but because they are just seeing what's out there. Personally, I don't agree with it but it's a thing.
|
|
#
?
Aug 24, 2016 19:59
|
|
|
Yeah, there are companies around here that have had the same developer job listings up for 2-3 years. I think some bigger companies are always open to bringing on talent if the right people come along. I just apply again every ~6 months.
|
|
#
?
Aug 24, 2016 20:10
|
|
|
anthonypants posted:Outlook Web Access does.
|
|
#
?
Aug 24, 2016 20:16
|
|
|
Those of you with no budgets will appreciate this: We just deployed a brand new HP G9 DL360 with 2 12-core intel procs (that's 48 total cores) and 64gb of ram to our DR site. You'll never guess what we need all that power for... It's only function is as a Domain Controller
|
|
#
?
Aug 24, 2016 20:19
|
|
|
scuz posted:Forgot about that, but we don't have an Exchange server, anyway. I wonder if there's a way to just set up an Exchange server (we're a non-profit so it wouldn't cost anything) that does literally nothing at all besides host OWA without screwing with the rest of the domain, etc. GnarlyCharlie4u posted:Those of you with no budgets will appreciate this:
|
|
#
?
Aug 24, 2016 20:22
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 25, 2024 19:01 |
|
|
anthonypants posted:If your non-profit qualifies you can get free or reduced-cost stuff from Microsoft: http://www.techsoup.org/microsoft please say "no, bare metal install" 
|
|
#
?
Aug 24, 2016 20:25
|
|
