Working in IT 3.0: xp_cmdshell

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > Working in IT 3.0: xp_cmdshell

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.

Sheep posted:

Seconding this. I have a friend doing some sort of European IT course thing and some of his required classes are beyond useless - designing poo poo with logic gates, reinvent-the-wheel each week with Python, etc. A lot of it can just be finding a professor that isn't a massive shitheel and will actually impart useful knowledge that you can use in your future career instead of "write a program to find which number in a list has the most factors while using only this incredibly restricted subset of functions in the language"-jerkoff assignments.

I did this by just putting "IT technician - self employed" and has a list of various projects I'd worked on. The guys at Resume to Interview were a big help with fleshing everything out. I'd definitely put "working knowledge of Linux" on your resume - you don't need to be a pro, but pointing out that you have that knowledge is never a bad thing.

I have a question related to something you mentioned about working knowledge. After I was downsized from Dell, I started working for IBM as a field agent permanently assigned to a bank undergoing a transition (bank was bought by a foreign bank). I explicitly outlined in my CV that I was more of a hardware specialist with middle Windows experience (my clustering, AD and IIS knowledge is pretty scarce) yet they threw me to the wolves, since the client basically has doing all productive requests (SQL and Sybase queries, incident handling and such) despite me having 0 previous experience with SQL or Sybase.

I know the basics of SQL and Sybase (I can administer DBs, run queries, program jobs, backup and restore DBs, run performance stored procedures). How should I phrase this in a CV? I don't want to put my foot in my mouth by claiming full DBA experience but I would like to come off from this assignment looking better than query monkey.

# ¿ Oct 30, 2014 04:13

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 22:20

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.

Fiendish Dr. Wu posted:

What about a master's?

Seconding this. I'm seriously thinking getting a master in project management as they seem to pull in decent money. I'm all for less work for more pay. So, essentially Wally.

# ¿ Nov 30, 2014 05:36

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.

# ¿ Dec 4, 2014 23:30

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.

jaegerx posted:

Ugh sadly yes. You will encounter it. It will piss you off. It is terrible that we haven't implemented something new yet despite googles best efforts.

Hehe, you could have worse...a lot worse. I work at a bank that IBM managed to scam into using Lotus...Every time I open that Windows 3.11 interface, my soul dies a little.

# ¿ Dec 10, 2014 05:27

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.

myron cope posted:

So my job just announced a hiring freeze until "at least" next quarter. Which means no new hires or promotions. What a loving joke.

They're still opening new stores and probably will continue to hire whoever they want, just use this as an excuse to not spend money they don't want to spend

Ah, the old Dell "we have no money for pay raises or hiring...eh, this 3 billion dollars we used to buy 3 companies? This company is here to make money not raise your salary!" spiel.

# ¿ Jan 16, 2015 05:06

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.

lampey posted:

In CA working for more than 8 hours in a day is overtime. If you are working this much overtime the business needs to hire more people for multiple reasons. Do you have the option to not work any overtime and just tell people you will help them on the next business day?

Hear, hear. I'm working as an outsourced agent in a bank and gently caress me if management gives a gently caress about being shorthanded. It's been a year and I don't see any effort in securing more personnel. They've just managed to replace the losses from their lovely salaries + brutal oncall schedules (and I'm talking oncalls where people can expect to sleep maybe 3 hours a night). Management knows it needs about double the staff they have at the moment but are not actively hiring new people.

I'm not worried that much because I can request to be transferred to another project/client but this place is a train wreck in motion. At the moment we have like 7 people. 4 DBAs (who each oversee differents databases, like Sybase, SQL, Oracle and DB2), 1 Specialist overseeing WAS stuff, 1 guy from my company overseeing ConnectDirect (that he wasn't a specialist in) and little ole me handling all productive incidents and sundries.

Those DBAs also have to spend an inordinate amount of time in meetings in addition to their duties in implementation and providing second level support for incidents.

Cut and run man, I've repeatedly told the client/supervisor that I'm overwhelmed only for him to tell me that he needs me to pick up additional tasks from the DBAs like learning about MQ, backups and documentation. I hate this guy.

# ¿ Feb 7, 2015 00:57

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.

Sickening posted:

I have no clue how any of you can do contract work at all. Nothing says "We don't value you as an employee" like contract positions do.

I think it depends. When I got laid off at Dell, I started working for an IT outsourcing company. My salary got a nice bump and I have an indefinite contract (that is, a permanent position) with my current workplace. I got outsourced to a bank that has been bought and sold thrice in less than 10 years and thus has a shitload of legacy and data migration issues for a good time to come. My job is not that I can do things that the bank's IT department can't do, rather, they are VERY shorthanded. Their pay scale is not very fair and DBA team is underpaid as hell. The bank treats as one of their employees and actually has done nicer stuff for us contractors than our "home" company. In Xmas, they gave us a ham and turkey each...our company? A 30 buck gift certificate for a supermarket. Would I accept to work directly for the bank? gently caress no! They are utterly disorganized and underpaid. The amount of OT their employees are forced to work is ridiculous (at least in my Dell-no-OT-unless-signed-by-MichaelDell eyes) and the workload is bestial. Most of the applicants see the expected hours and oncalls and just go, no thanks.

I've never worked a fixed time contract. I don't think I ever could nor do I believe that someone would pay a premium for my hourly time.

# ¿ Feb 26, 2015 02:12

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.

MagnumOpus posted:

I watched burnout consume a colleague and close friend of 15 years. Brilliant guy wrestling with emotional demons to begin with. Wasn't the overwork that killed him, it was how management made it worse. He caught a tiny tyrant to report into after a management shakeup. This guy was absolute garbage: zero empathy, deceptive, and prideful. Disrupted work from week one, which I believe was intentional effort to force problems that then had to be solved his way. After months of this my buddy finally loses his temper and sends a email to his boss copying our senior director, calling out trashbag manager on his incompetence while dropping a couple f-bombs.

poo poo Manager throws a tantrum and basically calls for my buddy's head. Senior Director feels his hands are tied because of the hostile tone of the email. My buddy is forced to apologize but I could see it stuck in him like a bad splinter. His working from home days increase, then progress to no-call no-shows. One night I get a call at 3AM and he's raving about how the people living in the apartment beneath him are plotting to kill him. We check him into a retreat center to recover from the full on hallucinations he is now perceiving. Company fires him.

That was about two years ago. Since then, while he can still get jobs on the strength of his experience and knowledge, he only keeps these jobs for a couple months before he grows dissatisfied or depressed. He is angry quite nearly all the time. Ten years ago this was one of the most energetic and motivated people I'd ever known. Now it is like all of that was hollowed out and replaced with rage and mistrust. His friends have done everything we can to try to help him through it all but we seem to only reach him so much. Every time I get a call from someone in that circle of friends, I worry that they're going to tell me he's killed himself.

Obviously we all need money to survive, but please keep an eye on your mental and emotional health.

Goddamn. I loathe to condone violence and vendetta to someone but I would acquit your friend if he ever went full BOFH on that bollard-looking rear end in a top hat.

# ¿ Mar 6, 2015 02:52

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.

orange sky posted:

Working in IT 3.0: Usually 300-400ms ping with occasionally noticeable packet loss.

Yes, you probably will want to off yourself. SQL is extremely, extremely picky.

Holy poo poo am I learning about this. I am not an SQL expert...I'm a hardware guy who the client had to teach the basics of SQL so I could free up the more senior DBAs for other work. There is a department in this bank that is a perfect excrement storm: they are a self-admining department that designs and implements their own SQL jobs, queries and such but doesn't manage the equipment. Thus, if they design utterly moronic queries that are inefficient, non-indexed (yes, none of their tables have indexes, even if they have +1M registers) and just plain wrong, its us that have to deal with the endless whining about slow performance and storage problems (those assholes have gone from requiring 3 TB to 6 TB in less than a year, no, they don't know how much data they generate and cannot estimate growth). What's worse, they are the only department that whines about losing RDP sessions and getting disconnections from the database. I've had the telecoms people watching over them, I've hawked on them but the problems only happen when we are not watching.

I used to read the BoFH stories as humor...now I'm using them for inspiration. The bank would probably get more bang for their buck if I picked up a carbon monoxide cylinder and gassed them like badgers.

# ¿ Apr 3, 2015 04:13

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.

KillHour posted:

Large companies are. Big companies don't want to have to explain why they let you go because they don't want to open themselves up to lawsuits. A fortune 100 I used to work at rarely (if ever) "fired" people, they were simply "no longer employed by $company." In that case, you didn't owe any money back.

If someone called to check references, HR wouldn't say any more than the dates you worked there and what your title was/is.

I can confirm that Dell at least doesn't give a crap if they fire you after they paid for like 30 certs. This has come to bite them in the rear end time and again. They hired a guy who was sick of his previous job. The guy stays until he gets his MCSA and leaves two weeks after his MCP profile shows he had the cert. Boy was my boss angry.

Also confirming that reference check too. I had to get a damned signed letter from them saying I held position $CakeWalk and was paid $wampum. I don't know what do prospective employers expect from a reference. Do they want to know my size or whether I wear tighty whiteys or boxers?

# ¿ Apr 14, 2015 02:49

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.

Tab8715 posted:

Has anyone worked at an employer with stack ranking? How did you survive?

Assuming you did...

Yep, 8 years at Dell. Stack Rank loving sucks because it creates negative incentives...like disconnecting difficult calls, so that another sucker gets stuck with it. Your position in the stack rank controlled several things, like the possibility of getting a raise (30% of the people could get raises), your schedule (so you have classes that you were committed into and paid for? gently caress YOU, not my problem) and even the chance of getting bonuses.

I survived by focusing exactly on the metrics the company wanted. I was never in the top 10 but always kept myself in the top 20. I think its a really idiotic way of grading employees because you skew rewards towards a very narrow definition of good performance. A lot of very good employees got continuously shafted at review time just because their handle time was a bit too high or because their dispatch costs were too high.

# ¿ May 10, 2015 07:36

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.

Bigass Moth posted:

I don't know what's happening here but I am very curious and a little scared.

That laptop is Methanar's company email server.

# ¿ Jun 27, 2015 03:19

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.

myron cope posted:

Can you at your current job? I go from contractor to FTE on Monday, with a 10ish% salary increase and a nice retention bonus. Benefits are pretty good too--the health insurance is like $140 which will be nice compared to the $400 I'm paying for my exchange-bought plan (which also sucks). There's even a pension. I'm not crazy about having an HSA but it doesn't sound like the worst thing in the world and there's an employer contribution too (is that how they always work?)

Congratulations. I myself was asked if I wanted to work for the client directly, big NOPE there: the client wasn't willing to make an offer and wanted me to tell them what salary range I was looking for. Can't tell them because I have a higher base salary than my "boss" (the client's manager of the area I work at). That would have made for an uncomfortable experience to keep working for them. Also their oncall pay is poo poo, mine is considerably higher and is why they generally don't ask for outsourcers to do oncall shifts, the last time they had one of the other outsourced engineers a straight month of oncall shifts and they shat a brick when the $10K bill came later on. It doesn't help their case that I KNOW they are known for underpaying their employees.

# ¿ Sep 10, 2015 05:13

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.

Arsten posted:

So, a job offer came in from a recruiter. I normally don't even open them, but I was resting my eyes from reading through a commercial lease (yaay) and I figured "Why not?"

They told me about a job that would be perfect for me at $43,000 a year, in Denver, to be a "Desktop/Systems Admin" with two weeks a month of unpaid on-call listed in the job duties.

Gee, where do I sign up?

They probably thought you weren't in the IT business but rather in the getting hosed by them business. Just mutter "Keyser Soze" with a Hungarian accent and they'll leave you alone.

# ¿ Jul 22, 2016 23:09

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.

Judge Schnoopy posted:

MSP I worked at hired me on for my first IT job at a stupidly, ridiculously, insultingly low salary (IE barely livable sub $15 / hr). Since it was my first IT job though I worked the poo poo out of everything that came across my desk and gave the company one hell of a value. At the two year mark (making 7k in raises, still offensively cheap) I left for a real IT salary.

Last I checked (been a year since I left) they're still cycling through new lovely employees. At one point they learned their lesson that their pay isn't where it needs to be and offered me my new salary to come back. Denied it because they were always going to cheap out on pay and hide behind some awful 'altruistic value' of the job that was supposed to make it worthwhile.

So yes, if you can't retain good employees and are only getting lovely employees coming back for a second interview, you're not paying well enough.

Altruistic value? I'm working for a paycheck. The employer who pays me the most while maintaining or improving my quality of life gets me onboard. I've seen some shitshows mention in interviews that while the salary may be below market value, think of the experience you can gain!

# ¿ Aug 5, 2016 04:55

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.

oh rly posted:

You need an active MSDN subscription or the actual license for the software in order to download it for your home lab. If you have a MSDN account, there is a separate portal to download software. One great thing about MSDN is that any software you download is yours forever even if the subscription lapses.

With the only caveat that you keep the installation media AND the product keys. When I was laid off at my previous company, their MSDN subscription expired and I couldn't login anymore I was SoL.

# ¿ Aug 7, 2016 17:28

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.

CLAM DOWN posted:

Did I read this right, or did you just say you are required to work on Christmas day....

Call centers also work Christmas and New Year. It sucks balls. Particularly when you have to come home afterwards AND cook dinner.

# ¿ Oct 11, 2016 05:00

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.

Any chance they'll hit a gas line and the problem will self correct?

# ¿ Jan 14, 2017 02:40

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.

Colonial Air Force posted:

And that's expanding. Non-competes are becoming a thing of the past, thankfully.

From a non US viewpoint, how the gently caress is this even legal? Sure, confidentiality and industry secrets and whatnot but unless you are going to pay me pension for adhering to a non-compete, how are you supposed to make a living?

# ¿ Nov 28, 2017 00:10

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.

Thanks Ants posted:

Change control makes sense as a concept, but some implementations are just dumb. Like when I'm asked whether to approve my own change or not because I'm the only person who knows the subject. Or when we have a patch ready to roll out to fix a problem that's causing issues for a remote location but people insist on going through a change control process that involves waiting for a change control board to meet once every two weeks.

Or when the stupid change order submission system does not warn you that your change order is stuck because you forgot to complete the first step of the workflow so that the approvers can do their job.

# ¿ Apr 1, 2018 14:39

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.

Zorak of Michigan posted:

I've gotten the same sort of feedback before. I said, "Boss, I've got eight people on my team, and one down server. I've got one guy working directly on fixing the down server, one guy on recovering data from the last backup in case we need it, one guy working on a clean rebuild of a new server to take the place of the bad one, and I've been on the same bridge for hours except for minimal bio breaks. What else could I be doing? What more good could it do if I got excited about it? From where I sit, this feels like model incident response." He thought for a few seconds and said, "Yes, you just seemed so laid-back about it, I hadn't really processed all that you were doing."

I liked that boss, and we only needed to have that conversation once, but it was also the only time I ever thought he was lazy. Taking your cues from people's emotional state is bad practice. This should be a data-based industry.

I'm working for and used to work for, a boss that told me point blank to my face: "but you don't do nothing, all day, you can't be that busy."

I was handling DB incidents, software incidents, backups and many more things, I WAS the production department. I am very efficient. The rest of the coworkers were apparently constantly rushing to meet deadlines.

# ¿ Jun 11, 2018 14:08

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.

I really don't know why the tech industry is so poo poo in treating its workers humanely.

My current gig is back at the bank under a different third-party outsourcer.

The bank requires oncall work in a one week on, one week off basis. There are four oncall slots depending on topic (Windows, Linux/AIX, Channels and ConnectDirect). Any but CD, you can expect maybe one or two calls a week. But they'll only pay you if they call you...they don't seem to get the concept that they have to pay for the availability. This oncall work is on top of your day work, so you work, go home and maybe get called. CD? Its hell, since its responsible for file transmission for DB batch work, any hiccup/flicker/intermittence you can expect a call every night, sometimes 3 or 4. Then you have to go work the next day. As a great "concession" you can arrive two whole hours late if you are called at night. Work on a Sunday for 7 hours? What do you mean we have to give you a compensation day? We already paid you for the overtime.

The kicker is that its the best paid work I can find. :suicide101:

# ¿ Jun 25, 2018 04:27

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.

The Fool posted:

My desk phone forwards to my cell phone during business hours only.

Literally the only way I'm reachable outside of business hours is if my boss calls my cell directly or monitoring sends an outage notification.

This has happened twice in the two years I've been working here.

Once every two years? When I'm on call in the Connect Direct rotation, I can expect calls from monitoring if they forget how to wipe their asses.

# ¿ Jun 28, 2018 03:36

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.

George H.W. oval office posted:

Lol I just got a taste of that RAID 5 fuckery. Went to replace a degraded drive and somehow the controller broke the one next to it as well breaking the entire array. Coooool

This is called a punctured array. Caused by unrecoverable read errors. I've read a few articles that claim that as drive sizes increase, RAID 6 is also going to be vulnerable. This is bad as most SANs were I work use a RAID 6-II implementation.

# ¿ Jul 13, 2018 14:18

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.

Sepist posted:

Have you guys ever given less than 2 weeks? I gave a 1 week notice earlier this year. It was the first job where i didnt like most of the people I worked with or the culture. I had only been there for 2 months so I didnt really feel like 2 weeks was necessary

Before I returned to a previous job with a different outsource provider, I had to basically walk out without warning. I tried to work it out with them but the salary just wasn't there. I had to take a 60% pay cut to work there. One IT guy for a 60 people office with several D-level VPs. When I was offered the other job at essentially my previous salary it was a no brainer. I wanted to give them at least two weeks but it was a take it or leave it situation. What is embittering about this is this: it isn't a small company. Its a multinational power company with holdings all over the American continent. They can afford to drop $10K whenever the new Iphone comes out but cannot afford to pay their IT personnel well enough.

# ¿ Oct 31, 2018 11:33

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.

GnarlyCharlie4u posted:

USB-A exists in 4 dimensional space.

http://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2011-10-04

USB ports are composed of 1.5-spin particles.

# ¿ Dec 8, 2018 02:43

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.

Vulture Culture posted:

You will not fix everything. I don't mean "you will not fix everything overnight", just that you will never accomplish everything you want to accomplish. You do not need to clean house in your first 30 days. You will not clean house if given 30 years to do it. Internalize this and live it and never burn out again.

Another nugget of wisdom: you cannot please auditors. Ever. These people have their picture next to the "moving the goalposts" fallacy definition. Just seethe and hate them as the rest of us.

# ¿ Feb 1, 2019 12:17

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.

orange sky posted:

Wells Fargo's disaster recovery failed so their poo poo was down for hours lmao what a trash fire

Test your DR sites folks

WTF isn't that a SOX compliance violation?

# ¿ Feb 8, 2019 13:21

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.

Contingency posted:

My last company, we were fairly compensated for on-call--$200-$385 each week you were on rotation, depending on holidays. I got some calls on holiday break because our advanced support team didn't want to deal with the issue during their holiday break, but for an extra ~$6k a year, I gladly put up with it. I had a coworker who wasn't on call who volunteered to be on call 24x7x365 and work everyone's rotation. I'm sure there there are people working 50+ hours that just want to go home, but if people are paid fairly, I'd be surprised if there aren't enough volunteers to work the time of those who don't want it.

The thing is, fair compensation needs to be negotiated. At my current job at a bank, we have to work oncall 2 weeks per month and are supposed to rotate between 8 people. We get paid $140 per week we are oncall + overtime. The problem is our current boss is flagrantly violating labor laws by having us go work the next day after sleeping maybe 3 hours after the last call. My worst week, I ended doing 40 hours of overtime (another violation) and still had to go into work next day. poo poo like this is why people would opt out of oncall in a heartbeat.

# ¿ Feb 14, 2019 12:31

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.

Defenestrategy posted:

~~Is the kicker you're salaried so you didn't even get $texas for your time?~~

edit: Its too early didn't parse correctly

I did get overtime, I actually ended up getting more $Texas in OT than my regular pay. Down here, only director level and upwards don't get salary. People don't know their rights, though, and MANY workers just accept that they don't get overtime. It is a very specific class of employee that doesn't get overtime.

Contingency posted:

Wow, sounds like a terrible place to work. I'm not aware of a federal labor law enforcing downtime between work periods. You may have luck with management if you can cite a specific state regulation, but you'd also likely piss coworkers off if they are forced to take time off instead of coming in.

My current company does not offer on-call pay. During the interview:
"What are the expectations for on-call with my position?"
"How many calls should I expect a month?"
"What reimbursement do you offer for on-call?"
"Do you guys offer flextime if I'm up until 2 AM working on an issue?"

Forewarned is forearmed. If you are unemployed, I understand needing to take whatever you can get. If you already have a job, treat interviewing like a two way street. If on-call expectations are onerous, decline the position, or ask for enough salary to make it worthwhile. Worst case, you aren't hired at a company that treats employees poorly.

Oh, I'm not in the US. We have more protections but management has unrealistic expectations. This IS a terrible place to work, however nothing better has come up. I'm putting together a little folder documenting these issues which I'll be taking to the Work Ministry if I'm ever fired.

TerryLennox fucked around with this message at 12:37 on Feb 15, 2019

# ¿ Feb 15, 2019 12:31

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.

AnnoyBot posted:

As a US-ian, I'm curious about how common scenarios are paid (or not paid) for in other exotic lands. If you're outside the US, give the country and state if appropriate. Is the idea that employers should only be on the hook for 40 hours a week while employees are at their mercy uniquely American? No, this is not for a school project; I'm just curious how IT works when outside the wild west labor-lawless 'Murica zone.

For each scenario, I'm interested in the following:
- Are you hourly or salaried? Does "overtime exempt" exist? Are there restrictions on how many hours you can work in a day or week?
- Is this allowed? Perhaps you can't work more than 35 hours, or work can't call you off hours. Give detail.
- Is this time paid for?
- Is it overtime?
- Are the answers above because of "company policy", state, national law or other (eg EU rules)?

Scenarios:
1) Your manager is across an ocean, and likes to have 1:1s at 11pm your time.
2) Your org has teams in 3 continents. Daily status meeting is at 7am your time, which is roughly 4pm for the other primary team. Your job is theoretically 9-5.
3) You are 24/7 on call for 2 weeks. You get woken up about once a night, ranging from 15min to 3 hours. You must respond in as near to real time as possible, but can be anywhere that internet is available.
4) You work 9-5 M-F, but have 4 hour 11pm maintenance windows on 2 weekdays, and a 6 hour window on saturday starting at 7 pm.
5) You're working on a new Ansible deployment. Iterating the playbook configs and pushing new test jobs takes all day, and goes until about 9pm.

As for me:
- salaried, no hour limits, no overtime, no on call pay (though 2 of my 5 jobs in the past have paid a nominal extra flat rate bit for oncall shifts)
1) allowed, no pay
2) allowed, no pay
3) allowed, no pay
4) allowed, no pay
5) allowed, no pay (but this is the only one that's kind of fun and doesn't make me tear my hair out)

I work with a local bank purchased by a Colombian banking corporation. We are ruled by Panamanian labor law. Our contract is for 48 weekly hours + on call duty every 15 days. Which pays $300 + overtime hours. Salaried is a thing here but they only exempt employees should be director-level, the figure is called Trusted Employee and represents the interests of the company towards other employees. Most workers are ignorant and do not know ANY of the labor regulations and companies take advantage of this. Companies rarely get audited to see if they are compliant. In regard to labor laws the bank is currently violating the following regulations:

a) There is a 9 weekly hour limit for OT. Anything above this has to pay a penalty and a fine. I once worked 40 hours of OT in a week in June, last year.

b) After the last work activity in the day, the worker has the right to 12 hours of uninterrupted sleep. My boss currently lowered this to 6 hours. We are currently fighting this passively.

c) Employees that work on a Sunday have to be paid OT + get a another day off on the next week as compensation. This currently does not happen and my boss is keeping mum.

d) Training is being scheduled either after hours (which they do not pay) or on Saturdays.

If I'm fired, I putting together a file and taking it to the Ministry of Labor as I can prove this has taken place for at least 5+ years.

1) Allowed but it falls to the persons currently in the on call rotation. It is paid. This also does not happen because the Colombian HQ is in the same timezone.

2) Allowed but it falls to the persons currently in the on call rotation. It is paid. This also does not happen because the Colombian HQ is in the same timezone.

3) Allowed but it falls to the persons currently in the on call rotation. It is paid. You get VPN access and can take it on your bed if necessary.

4) Allowed but it falls to the persons currently in the on call rotation. It is paid.

5) Allowed but it falls to the persons currently in the on call rotation. It is paid.

# ¿ Mar 15, 2019 12:42

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.

Tab8715 posted:

I�m thinking of IMB Direct:Connect

ConnectDirect is a secure communication app for file transfer between domains where no trust relationships exist. It differs from an SFTP in that you can automate a lot of file transfers using scripting and rules.

It's mainly used by banks to receive input files for batch processes, it does Unix2Dos conversions and viceversa.

The problem is that the drat solution is SOOOO fragile, quirky and finicky and oh so very critical.

# ¿ Mar 23, 2019 13:38

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.

MC Fruit Stripe posted:

No, you're still missing the point. I'm not talking about money, and you still can't seem to grasp that. I am saying that this is not a difficult thing to do every 6 weeks and that people need to stop acting like being on-call is a great sacrifice.

Ha ha ha. Every 6 weeks? I work at one of the big banks in my country, I get two weeks mandatory oncall every month. We get paid $300 for those 15 days + OT. Depending on the applications that you are oncall for, ConnectDirect, Windows, Not-Windows or Channels (MQ), you might get one call per night or a nightmare of 5 calls per night for the duration which means working 40 hours of OT per week.

The bank has a massive attrition rate (gee I wonder why) which means even us contractors need to do oncall. Not to mention, legally the bank has massive liability because the Laboral Code (which covers what can an employer do and not do) does not cover the oncall figure explicitly. Only emergency services are considered to be eligible for oncall and its not well explained. Logically a company would tip toe and try not to violate labor laws you would think but NOPE, the bank is going to have a BIG problem once the wrong guy gets fired. The bank has been consistently violating several labor laws including:

1) One that explicitly limits the amount of OT you can do in a week (9 hours, you get penalized for anything above): you can routinely exceed this. This law is intended to motivate employers to either work with 2 shifts or a rotation.

2) The one that specifies that after last work activity you have performed, you are to have 12 hours of personal time. My boss whines whenever someone who is oncall arrives late the next day.

3) If you work on a Sunday, you should get OT AND a comp day...which is never given.

Thanks Ants posted:

That makes a lot more sense. I thought originally that when you were on-call you were going into the office to sit down for the night in case you got paged.

That used to be the case here previously. With the advent of VPNs you can handle oncall work from home easily...but you still have to do your regular shifts where I work. I have gotten calls: at a beach house (thank goodness for cellphone reception), during a date with an ex-gf (I hosed up and left the laptop at home, fortunately I coordinated with a buddy to cover that call for me). Don't everybody assume that just because you get one call every blue moon, that everybody works like that. Any company with 24/7 services will start leaning more and more on their workers, burning them out pretty early.

TerryLennox fucked around with this message at 13:08 on Apr 24, 2019

# ¿ Apr 24, 2019 13:02

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.

MF_James posted:

This sounds awful, at my last job we went through something like this, but a bunch of the systems/jobs were documented; people just wanted to point fingers at other groups (mostly mine) for the incidents and said we should have to look at it first, rather than take ownership and escalated to other groups as needed.

Feels like the bank I work at. They keep getting devs and not renewing their contract the moment the batch jobs they design run properly. Documentation? A half hour worth of scribbles in a notebook when the new sucker intercepted the dev as she was leaving.

We recently had a horrible failure of the automated collections job which we spent at least two weeks troubleshooting the mainframe, SQL side of the problem...fruitless. Until they found that the problem was caused by a Sybase database that the job gets data from.

The poor bastard that was troubleshooting the collections system took a permanent leave of absence when the blame game was looking at him too much.

# ¿ May 19, 2019 14:52

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.

skipdogg posted:

Banks are typically hard headed and stuck in their ways though, so it might not fly.

Goddamn are you right. I've told my boss and his boss that, with what they end up paying up in bi-weekly oncall, 24/7 schedules, he could hire, 4 extra people so we can actually have 24/7 operations in our team, so that people don't burn out.

They don't care.

I tell them that they have a hypothetical can of worms because they have been violating 4 articles of labor law for the last 10+ years and a disgruntled employee could open an audit by the Ministry of Labor.

They don't care.

They literally don't care.

This is not the US, just FYI.

# ¿ Jun 21, 2019 00:59

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.

22 Eargesplitten posted:

Seriously, what's the whistleblower reward?

Probably nothing.

The thing that's stopping me is that I live in Panama and I'm concerned that my name could somehow come out and get my rear end blacklisted.

# ¿ Jun 21, 2019 12:13

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.

bobmarleysghost posted:

Can it be submitted anonymously?

In a 200 million people country like the US, with strong institutions? Sure.

In a 4 million, glorified banana republic with institutions whose personnel and leaders change every five years, not a chance. I'm saving this in case, I get fired. That's the hosed man's switch.

# ¿ Jun 22, 2019 00:35

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.

Schadenboner posted:

Reminds me of my current boss.

You guys are accruing too much OT, my budget!!

Can I opt out of oncall?

No.

Are you going to get additional personnel to distribute the workload and oncall rotation.

Upper management says no.

So...you expect us to do what exactly?

...

# ¿ Jul 9, 2019 00:57

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.

guppy posted:

When's the last time you took a vacation? I mean a real vacation, where you went somewhere far enough away that you couldn't just "stop in at the office if something comes up" and you didn't spend it getting called by work and having to deal the callers' problems? I'm guessing it's been a while. Take a vacation and see if you feel better about things. You probably still need more staff so you can delegate some of the stuff you're doing off your plate.

Seconding this. His post reeks of perma-short-staffed. Take a vacation and start working on increasing available hands. You don't HAVE to do EVERYTHING.

# ¿ Jul 13, 2019 14:22

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 22:20

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.

ptier posted:

1. I used to do MSP, so when they say they have people who specialize in X they mean that they totally have someone with a pulse who can sit in a chair and soak up billable hours to "figure it out" and
2. I really don't want to train someone to do the job and then have them bounce out because we hosed up paying them (this happens... a lot).

1. God, I work in a bank and this is too true. I worked as an outsourced, third party sysadmin and the client always believed we had an infinite supply of engineers that were apparently mentally-clustered and cloud-synced. I know the contract says X but unless you are paying double, the company wouldn't be able to afford a second engineer.

2. We are on the verge of this happening but on the bank side. A coworker is being severely underpaid and he has threatened to go elsewhere. My boss thinks he is bluffing and will come back from vacation. My boss just dropped me in his with a 12 hour training.

I need a new workplace.

# ¿ Jul 14, 2019 16:11

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > Working in IT 3.0: xp_cmdshell

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