What Do You Do at Work? 154
mabhatter654 asks: "With all the talk of 'inefficent' and 'uncooperative' American workers, what do most Slashdot readers actually DO at work? Currently, I'm one of those 'IT' workers at a small manufacturer. Yes, I'm called the 'SysAdmin' but that changes monthly. I'm responsible for the companies network, AS/400, website, PC troubleshooting, phones, etc. But...I also get pushed into other things like ISO compliance, Quality issues, as well as babysitting the shop floor/nite QC on 'off' shifts on a regular basis. Of course, the 'SysAdmin' work suffers...when you spend more than half of your day on other tasks. But that does make me part of the inefficent IT problem that bosses like to talk so much about now days. I'm curious how many other Slashdot readers 'multitask' in non-IT rolls while officially still in that capacity. I'm looking for your 'title', company size, and both IT/non-IT tasks you perform. Also, Does 'multitasking' add more or less value to your position at the company. i.e. the IT tasks that don't ever happen versus helping management in another department? Oh yeah, how about those hours too! How much overtime do you put in and how much of that is due to the other work?"
I'm unemployed... (Score:1, Funny)
Re:I'm unemployed... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I'm unemployed... (Score:1, Interesting)
Well... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Well... (Score:2, Insightful)
First, I justify reading /. as a means of keeping up with security issues and other could-be important tech news.
But in my capacity as "Vice President, Technology" at a really small trucking company, "technology" includes fixing the fence around the yard, installing air conditioners, running and maintaining the snow plow, and explaining why italic bold underlining [slashdot.org] is really just too much formating to make a point.
Re:Well... (Score:2)
Re:Well... (Score:2)
In other words... (Score:1, Troll)
Distributed Proofreaders (Score:3, Funny)
I do my one page-a-day (or more ;O)) at Distributed Proofreaders [pgdp.net].
Oh, wait, did you mean what I'm supposed to do at work?
My role in the office (Score:5, Informative)
My primary tasks include stomping out the various fires that crop up, and making sure our systems are up and available (in spite of the Children in Redmond [microsoft.com]).
I do a lot of one-on-one support, and fix anything that's broken. I get drafted to fill in the gaps whenever something comes up that we don't have enough resources for. (I just spent a day doing forms data entry, for example).
In my spare time (which varies from 40 to -20 hours/week), I've been spending quite a bit of time trying to plan out a migration to Linux. I'm free to pursue whatever projects I think will help the company. I also hope to eventually move our in-house database from Access 97 to MySql/Apache.
I read slashdot, k5 [kuro5hin.org], and a few other sites, to keep a watch out for the newest holes from the kiddies in Redmond. Yes, it counts as work, if I didn't do it, we'd have gotten crushed by things at least 3 times in the past 2 years.
--Mike--
Re:My role in the office (Score:3, Insightful)
1) swallow his pride
2) nurture his users' tech savvy
3) do virtually anything, anytime
Tech support. Truly the foot soldier of technology. Keep up the good work, hoss. You have as big an impact or more on your company as anybody else can claim.
Office Space (Score:5, Funny)
and that 15 minutes is patching openssh
ajw1976@yahoo.com (Score:2, Funny)
Re:ajw1976@yahoo.com (Score:1, Offtopic)
2) ???
3) Profit!
4) Spend profit on Natalie Portman (petrified), grits (hot), and goats (ecx).
(And don't forget to welcome our new cliche overlords.)
Duh... (Score:3, Funny)
The Scoop for me... (Score:3, Insightful)
In addition to being a network, phone and system admin, I do custom developing for them too. I enjoy that better than the rest, and it makes me more valuable, I think. So it really depends on what things you're stuck with, how much you like it, and how good you are.
Job description? (Score:1)
My Job (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, I am quite happy when I get home to bask in the warm glow of my eMac running Mac OS X.
Inefficient hours? (Score:5, Interesting)
Interestingly, I'm having a discussion with my boss's boss who wants to know why we don't get more work done on projects. I've tracked our time and it comes out to about:
His response, predictably, was "Only 50% of time on projects? I can't believe you are only 50% efficient."
So, as a simple solution, we've started using RequestTracker [bestpractical.com] It's a simple ticketing system, and everything in the "Interrupts" list goes into the system (otherwise we don't work on it.) And then each week I give a nice list of all the "other things" we worked on. It's been very useful defending my "efficiency."
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Inefficient hours? (Score:3, Insightful)
The rest is frittered away in maintenance and the general bureaucracy of business.
Since we happen to be an XP shop, we can tell how much time we're spending on "stuff that can make them money." because it only happens when we're pairing (we do our planning, programming, scheduling, etc. in pairs. Admittedly,you also have to factor in meetings.) I personally th
Re:Inefficient hours? (Score:1)
No, you're still wrong here. Project planning IS PART OF THE PROJECT. You have to make plans before you can start working on tasks. In fact, with sufficient planning, you can reduce alot of the task time.
You can't build a building without blueprints. If you are only counting your time when you're digging holes and pouring concrete, you're not counting all
Glad I read the whole post (Score:2)
My first thought was, oh they spend most of their time cleaning up messes. The I read on and saw that he meant eXtreme Programming...
whew
Re:Inefficient hours? (Score:2)
I've heard this elsewhere, too, where about half of a workweek goes towards simply being an employee. It could be more proof of the inefficiency of bureaucracy. Businesses, knowing this, could find ways to streamline. One suggestion I have: giving employees a reason to be efficient by actually having a sound business model or by taking sufficiently interesting risks that employees will go along. Working for a company that strings itself along week-by-week is just horrendo
Re:Inefficient hours? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Inefficient hours? (Score:1)
<sarcasam> I h
Re:Inefficient hours? (Score:1)
Re:Inefficient hours? (Score:5, Interesting)
The result? In our department, the 'admin overhead' time reporting codes that had alerted higher management to the problem were promptly restricted to staff with designated administrative roles. Listening to barely-numerate line managers haltingly reading the text of their PowerPoint(tm) presentations is now being charged to projects (and so to the business sponsors who fund us). And we've achieving record highs in the proportion of time we're spending productively on those projects!
I'm not making this up: this actually happened. Interestingly, the business side of the company has just imposed a major reorganisation on the IT department. Seems they weren't so easily fooled.
Anything my client needs... (Score:5, Interesting)
...as long as it's not illegal or immoral and he's willing to pay my price. And I'm not trying to be funny.
In the last year, that has included IT security auditing, training on various office apps, database development, needs assessment, small network administration, technical writing, etc.
Title- owner. Company size - one. Being self-employed means plenty of non-IT tasks like bookkeeping and janitorial and marketing and purchasing. Hours? Depends. When business is good, I put in 80 hour weeks. When business is not so good, 40-60 hour weeks. But then I pretty much take off all of November and December and a couple of weeks in the summer.
I love my job. My boss is a bitch, but her profit-sharing plan is awesome -- I get 100% of the profits.
Re:Anything my client needs... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Anything my client needs... (Score:2)
Have to agree with the rest though.
Re:Anything my client needs... (Score:2)
We need more girls on slashdot, dammit.
Nothing much (Score:1)
That's about it.
Unemployed (Score:1, Funny)
Re:Unemployed (Score:2)
Yes, I'm on the clock too right now.
What do you think? (Score:1)
everything including making coffee (Score:3, Interesting)
Then I am a programmer / analyst / business analyst, who has to work with the systems group as well as development group. I trouble shoot hardware, release management, installations, and have to work on other projects and give advice to people who generally don't take it, and then they get upset if I don't take their advice.
Re:everything including making coffee (Score:3)
LISTEN UP: if you drink all but the last few swallows of coffee... make a new freaking POT!
-- sorry... but this has been a rant of mine for nearly 3 years.
Re:everything including making coffee (Score:3, Funny)
"You kill the Joe, you make some Mo' Baby! Whoo whooooo!"
Re:everything including making coffee (Score:2)
as for me... (Score:2)
Just about everything (Score:2, Interesting)
What I do... (Score:1)
Maintaining existing systems - this means applying patches as necessary, performing maintenance on servers, and keeping everything we use running...
Upgrading/Adding new systems - this means deploying new systems/services for our customers and/or staff to use. Usually they're feature requests our help desk asks for, and every so often we roll out new services to our customers. Most of them are home-
Push that paper (Score:5, Interesting)
Amazingly, most of my day is not spent working on software, but, on software process. There is all of the overhead involved in keeping our work instructions up to date and our software processes documented so that were are compliant with ISO 9000/1, and CMMI level 5. All of our specs and testing must be formally documented to keep up with DO-178B and contractual obligations.
Because the govt is the customer, there are bi-monthly presentations of our progress, with all the PowerPoint that that entails. The government has their own separate safety team that monitors our team, so a lot of time is spent interfacing with them.
As a consequence we are rather inefficient. To deal with that inefficiency we spend a lot of time in Six Sigma meetings tryings to come up with ways of automating work and creating reusable frameworks. These meetings are truly valuable (see, I'm not totally cynical) but they do take time and require their own documentation.
(The sad thing is that once all this process is up and running, the ISO/CMM documentation makes is so much easier for the company to treat coders like cogs in the machine or to move their jobs offsite. I am so thankful for the government security rules that make my job US citizen only. Whether or not we can keep our California site from moving to Nebraska or some such is another question...)
Re:Push that paper (Score:2)
Hey, don't knock Nebraska. You might like it there. They have a governor. Gas is probably $0.40 a gallon cheaper. No two hour commutes. And all the corn you can look at.
My case (Score:2)
20% Adding new anti-pr0n rules to our filtering proxy.
20% Working on new projects
40% Slashdot and Fark
I'd say 100% Slashdot and Fark but my boss read Slashdot occasionaly...
well.. (Score:3, Informative)
sometimes i eat lunch too
productivity & efficiency (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm used to management hating IT because it's a cost center. Here's what I wish I could tell management:
IT is hard.
You get what you pay for.
I'd like to see some of these managers try taking their car to a cheap mechanic.
IT requires acting almost compulsively, lots of obscure knowledge, and troubleshooting. Then there are the hours.
Troubleshooting is helped tremendously by natural ability, and is not easy to teach. The obscure knowledge requires being enough of a geek to keep up, and the more background you have in how stuff works, the better off you are. Compulsive behavior is a pain for most of us.
I know that the reason I got pulled onto other tasks was that they knew that I'd just Make It Work. I watched a former CIO pulling on cat5e with all his might when he was helping out on a cable run. If you pull on it too hard, it'll probably work, but you sure won't full bandwidth out of it. I often worked on nights and weekends to minimize impact on my office. Backups have to work and be tested. If you don't have backups, you might as well not have IT. I know places like that too, but what do you think of a software shop where nobody is specifically responsible for things like the FTP server, or there are no real backups?
Unfortunately, it's difficult to sell most of this on a resume. I guess that's where years of experience are suppposed to come in, but I know that in many cases that doesn't do it.
Where did you hear that American IT is inefficient? Is this some sort of specific story or rumor? Traditionally, American workers are very productive, and my experience in IT is similar. I know the network architect at one company where I worked saved them hundreds of thousands of dollars on their phone bills by redesigning their telephone system. IT has made a lot of other support staff unneccessary.
I like the mechanic analogy a lot. You can delay maintenance for a long time, and put up with little problems, but ultimately your car will require professional attention. Even for people who buy a new car every two years, maintenance is cheaper than doing none. With a few years experience, a mechanic at a dealership can make 80k.
Almost all of my coworkers in IT have worked their asses off too, even the mediocre ones.
A strange assortment of stuff (Score:5, Interesting)
Recently, in only vaguely IT-related stuff, I have worked on the renewal of our phone system support contract, figuring out if an upgrade to our phone system is really necessary, and fighting with the phone system people over incredibly bad terms in a contract. (For example, when they upgrade the system from Windows NT 4 to Windows 2000, they deliver the upgraded system unpatched (!). I told them to patch it as part of their agreement and they said NO NO NO and I said YES YES YES and they finally bent, sort of[*]).
My main job is to develop and maintain my Linux-based CRM+web ordering system that I developed myself. I want to move it to MacOS X to make security administration easier, and that's been taking a lot of my time. But so has developing new software to communicate with a new distribution partner.
We're also replacing our Exchange server (required because of the Windows-based phone system
Finally, when someone's workstation fails or gets a virus or whatever, I have to help him, her or it out. I am incredibly irritated at all the Windows problems that come up, because they distract me from productive work. If I ran the company, nobody, and I mean nobody, would be using Windows. Ugh.
When I feel overstressed, I calm down by reading and writing on a whole bunch of sites, including Slashdot. Slashdot is also work-related because it alerts me to the worst security holes, new directions in computing I should be aware of, and the like.
Recently, I'd say fully 50% of my time has been spent on supervising contractors of various types, but that's extremely unusual. Most of the time I am working on projects on our CRM system and helping users with problems. But recently there has been a lot of supervision. For the most part, I consider it an interesting change of pace, especially since management is understanding about it delaying the other projects I'm supposed to do.
Except for now, when our Exchange server is being replaced next weekend, there's relatively little overtime except during emergencies. But then again, our business is a 8-3 business, more or less.
Hope that helps.
D
[*] (Yes, our phone system runs under Windows. It's called Interactive Intelligence, and I'll give you a free clue: Don't buy it. Don't argue that it's bad because it runs Windows, even though that, too, is true. Instead, argue that it's bad because maintenance is incredibly expensive, non-responsive and our VAR maintaining it is desperate for revenues. It also appears to require a complete hardware replacement every five years or so, which is not long for something costing as much as a house in a crummy area of Southern California. Because many of the support problems, including quasi-compulsory upgrades, are thanks to the software developer and not the VAR, I cannot recommend buying this software even if you find a better VAR than we did).
Re:A strange assortment of stuff (Score:1)
I've recently been pulled into the loop on I3 at work, and they're looking to make me full time on I3 since I have a technical background...
There are some aspects about that company that I just would love to tear into
Interactive Stupidity (Score:2)
Please do drop me an email - my address is as listed in Slashdot. I doubt there are many people here who are interested.
D
Awesome efficiency! (Score:3, Funny)
When at work and not working (various good reasons, to be sure) I'm working as the infamous DeathKitten, keeping the old marsh clear of trolls and hags!
But seriously, keeping the marsh orderly is hard work at times. *nod-slash-smile*
Re:Awesome efficiency! (Score:2)
from the "got you beat" department (Score:3, Funny)
I'm supposed to read /.!
For me... (Score:2, Insightful)
QA Manager
Company Size: 130
Tasks: In addition to setting policy and managing 11 people, I
*frequently set up new systems to support ongoing development and testing
*Eval, procure, configure and maintain various types of groupware tools to support the company's internal organizations (from bug tracking to customer requirements to design docs, etc)
*Eval, procure, configure new hardware for my group
*Write new tools
*Installer development
*ClearCase adminis
what I do (Score:2)
My Day (Score:3, Interesting)
*including reading slashdot
I do the jobs of five men (Score:4, Informative)
As a result, I am responsible for the following jobs:
What's my job title, you ask? "Analyst". I don't know what an analyst is or what I'm supposed to be analyzing, but that's apparently my job title. Apparently analysts don't get paid much, either.
I like the company and the people, but the job is stressful and my todo list is always overflowing. I've brought up the question of hiring more people on several occasions, but I always just get a nod and a, "Yeah, that would be nice."
Hours-wise, I try my best not to work over 40 a week, since I'm on salary and I value my own free time a lot more than I value the company (this might have something to do with how much the company values me, as reflected in my, ahem, paycheck). I pulled an all-nighter just once, and a few late nights to meet a deadline, but that's rare.
Re:I do the jobs of five men (Score:2)
That said, here's the other half; I have some pet projects that I'm working on that get enthusiastic responses from just about everyone...till it's time to implement them across the whole company. Then, nobody want's to change a thing or *
multitasking is insane (but fun) (Score:3, Interesting)
. I write delphi code, user interface design and database design for hospital project;
. I write php/javascript/html code, user interface design and database sesign for the web project;
. Server management is up to me;
. I do the network management as well;
. MS-DOS memory optimization (!!!) for the old software (e.g. new machines on client side). I do this because I'm the only person on the company that played games on MS-DOS back in 1994...
. Internal hardware support;
I'm doing some research in colege too... All of that consumes my brain to the last drop and I end up working 60+ hours/week.
It IS insane, but if you take off presure, I like doing all this stuff... don't YOU?
sorry if I can't write good...
Missing item... (Score:1)
Programing and training the Java team to use Eclipse w/ CVS.
Re:multitasking is insane (but fun) (Score:2)
Wow, I hpoe yuor rsearceh is ginog wlel!!!
This morning, for example... (Score:2)
The marketing department has a track record of making bad ideas into "Tier 1" campaigns. Much of being called a "Tier 1" campaign involves getting anything you want on the website, regardless of how short the deadline is. Most of these projects fail and we end up adding more cruft to our web site. How can we build a system and process that easily allows us to throw away bad marketing projects after they bomb?
Job Title (Score:1)
Job title is "IT Specialist" but it should be "Bitch"
Since it's slowed down, I've had to take on other tasks
Running all the outgoing mail through the postage meter.
Checking UPS shipments
Ordering/stocking office supplies
etc etc
Yuck.
Re:Job Title (Score:2, Funny)
Seriously, I had a job once where I was told that in addition to our regular duties we would also be cleaning the bathrooms and vacuuming the office. "Be sure," they said, "to dust the chairs."
I'm the Omni-Nerd (Seriously, that's what's used) (Score:1)
Systems Administration: 10 Linux Servers, 3 Solaris and 1 Windows (Proprietary project accounting software).
Database Administrator: Oracle, Informix (for an external project), MySQL and PostgreSQL. I'm dumping Oracle and Informix and moving everything to MySQL and PostgreSQL eventually.
Developer: Mostly custom Java WebApps. Some C++. Fair amount of SAS Procedures & macros.
Network Admin: 3 T1's and about 30 Domains with associated mail and web
Data Protection Act stuff (Score:1)
It's a bit of a nightmare, really, but I'm not sure I'd trust anyone else in our department to do it!
I actually work most of the time. (Score:4, Informative)
I'd say things are spread out like this:
40% online centre IT: installing software, fixing machines, unjamming printers
20% OLC support: showing people how to use mice (literally), software, and logging people out when they forget.
20% Off-site support: you know, strolling out to one of the other sites, installing software, fixing problems (most of which I don't know about until I get there)
20% Other Stuff: Meetings, e-mail, phone calls, and keeping up with the world of IT.
Usually I do a 20 hour week, although this week I did a couple of all nighters removing some management software from the machines in the online centre, and replacing them with Win2k group policies.
Jack of all trades (Score:5, Interesting)
Unchallenged Master of None. And I love it that way. I can always hire or outsource when we do need an unchallenged Master. I get to be the one and only IT person at a small subsidiary to a large financial company. I lay out the budget, make all the decisions on purchasing, outsourcing, business recovery, etc. I do a lot of paperwork for compliance purposes which I kind of hate. I spend the rest of my time training users, acting as help desk, evaluating new products and tech, and trying to keep up with all the security alerts I get from the parent corp. It has been a wonderful position. I love being the "CIO" of a tiny company.
That was the way it used to be. Recently the parent company has taken it on themselves to pull ALL IT functions under one roof. Somebody thought it would be a Great Idea to have one group of people be all things to all business units and subsidiaries. Consolidate to save costs. What a novel idea. It has truly been a nightmare. What used to take literally 5 minutes now takes 2 weeks and requires 800 signatures. It's the most inefficient set up I can imagine. My users are forced to call a centralized help desk that is staffed by inexpensive entry-level folks that have no idea what we do, what apps we have installed, what our business model is, what constitutes a risk, etc. These people are fine, but imagine your company's help desk if they got calls from other companies in different industries. When calls get escalated we get a visit from an upper level Corporate IT person who either
A: doesn't get it anywhere close to right because they've never seen half of the software we use to do business, have not been made aware of the security model, and have never been told what functionality we need.
OR B: They swallow their pride and ask me, so then get it right but resent me for being king of my little pond.
This is true for most departments - their business systems needs are very different from each other.
So where we used to be a fast nimble outfit that took every advantage of current and emerging technologies to gain efficiencies and stay on top of the competition, now we are a slow, backward, bureaucracy driven, lawyer ridden, hack shop that can't load an MS Office template without 2 forms, a signature, a phone call, a ticket number, and a 5 day turnaround time.. And that's JUST for an Office template to print out mailing labels. You don't want to hear about adding forms to our web site or patching a SQL server, or (OMG!) upgrading apps on a desktop PC!
It's a total nightmare. We aren't saving any money. We're much less efficient. The entire dept. is beyond pulling their hair out. The parent corp's Holier-than-thou attitude leaves us with no hope. And just about anything I could do to rectify the situation is a violation of corporate policy.
I went from loving my job to hating it to the point where I'm sick to my stomach in less than 3 months. And it has nothing to do with the efficiency of workers and everything to do with incompetent power-hungry management whose main concerns are buzzword compliance, covering their asses, and of course short term stock prices over long term profitability.
I'm not used to being a bitter person so I'm putting my energies toward getting the heck out of Dodge.
Re:Jack of all trades (Score:2)
Seriously though - you just described my situation. This whole "one size fits all" centralisation thing is bizzarre. The worst thing I find, is that no one seems to be embarrased at the quotes times/costs for doing things under the new centralised system. I mean - I can see where they were aiming for: more buying clout, economies of scale, re-use of development effort, re-use of spare tech, common standards across the company, assuranc
Office Handyman (Score:1, Interesting)
Exactly the situation I used to be in (Score:1)
I became so frustrated at one of my past jobs when I spent a large portion of my day doing IT stuff when my main capacity was as a programmer. I begged and pleaded for a new IT person to assist me, but budget problems made that impossible.
Needless to say the IT stuff AND the programming stuff got behind schedule.
It wouldnt have been that bad having to watch over the IT stuff if I didnt spend 90% of that time fix
Adjusting Schedules (Score:2)
The sysadmin stuff usually falls by the wayside because we just have to have them up and running and I've got enough other things to do, what with testing interfaces and writing automated tests and proofreading documentation.
As far as a breakdown, I actually do s
Applications Developer (Score:1)
I write code, but not all the time (I don't think I could write code all the time). A lot of the rest of the time I talk to other people about the code they're writing, or the code we're going to write together. I have just a little bit of seniority, so I get to enjoy sharing what I know and being listened to respectfully by the very smart people who work with me. Sometimes there's troubleshooting work to be done, and sometimes I end up in meetings talking about business processes and requirements. It's pre
Mmmmmmmmm ... work (Score:2)
What are those, like marketing biscuits?
typical day (Score:2)
-check mail
-check for latest virus patches for windows machines
-if patches found, spend time till lunch upgrading and rebooting (yeah, windows, it's like a constant struggle); else check mrtg graphs and trouble tickets
-lunch, 1 hour at least, out of the office
-work on special projects that usually change at the drop of a hat
-fart around cleaning up stuff on the servers, like unused mail accounts, queued up junk mail, spam
-write sc
I do enough already! (Score:1)
Systems Administration: 25 Linux Servers, 7 Solaris,2 HP-UX,1 IRIX,1 VMS, 2 True64,1 OS/390,1 Unisys, 1 NCR, 2 SCO (unixware and openserver), 3 AIX, 9 Windows, and 1 OS/2.
Database Administrator: Oracle, Informix, DB2, MySQL, SQL server, dbase, and about 8 LDAP servers.
Oddball application support: We have about 35 vmware machines running all sorts of different software packages that need suppor
Boss, Is that you? (Score:5, Funny)
What an insightful question. (Score:2)
Small Manufacturing Company (Score:2)
Therefore theres a lot of stomping on problems as they flare up while I'm trying to push back the projects into the priority list. For extensions to the reports, We installed postgresql on linux and are trying to move the VPN server from windows2000 to linux or cisco pix.
Sadly, I also take care of eng
I do everyone else's work (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I do everyone else's work (Score:2)
Re:I do everyone else's work (Score:2)
Who directed you to do that work on the other salesguys' systems? What would have happened if you just stopped doing it and concentrated on your own stuff?
Re:I do everyone else's work (Score:2)
Re:I do everyone else's work (Score:2)
Re:I do everyone else's work (Score:2)
Chief Geek (Score:1)
Along w/ normal system administration duties, I am on call 24x7 as I have no backup... am the webmaster for our department as well as the engineering group... manage software development at our site... spend a ton of time doing web develo
Straight-up sysadmin (Score:2)
Actually, scratch that, I'm a Solaris sysadmin. I'm on a team of 10 people responsible for ~300 servers. I have a team of counterparts that do AIX, and another team that does OpenVMS.
*all* I do is Solaris. I'm not a network admin, I'm not a PC weenie, I'm not The Guy Who Makes The Coffee.
Solaris.
I architect & implement new systems. I build SANs. I maintain existing systems. I recommend upgrades. I implement SF15k's and E10k's.
I've go
Running a Web Hosting Company (Score:3, Interesting)
I run a Virtual Private Server hosting company [rimuhosting.com]. I'd say my most of my time was spent dealing with people.
That includes answering simple questions for potential customers. And every now and then answering 'hard' support questions which might have me googling around trying to find answers.
I spend a bit of time setting up new servers. That used to take hours per server. Now I've got a personal best of 30 minutes (and that included a fully featured kernel recompile).
Since my server setups are pretty standard and the management of them is pretty much scripted, the day to day management of a lot of servers isn't that much of a handful.
Other than the support and hardware side of things, its a bit of everything: Billing; updating the default software installs; working on the website; adding HOWTOs [rimuhosting.com]; finding cheaper/faster/better host servers and network connections; reading the wht [webhostingtalk.com] forums; new customer setups; answering 4AM in the morning pages; ...
A short list of what I do at work (Score:3, Interesting)
- I fight the company IT department to get the permissions I require to run the software I need to do my job.
- I fight again to gain ownership of the files containing the source code I have to edit to produce the company's products. (It doesn't do anyone much good if the files are set read-only and owned by some administrative function other than me as they're checked out of the revision management system, but that's what IT's default settings did.)
- I fight the undocumented and idiotic conflicts between pieces of Windoze software. For instance, today I discovered that a certain serial port chip-programmer application is completely locked out of the use of a port if I use XP's Hyperterminal on that same port, and I can only use that port with the programmer app again if I reboot Windoze. (Bill Gates, you suck dead rotting donkey cock.)
- I fight the absurd and ridiculous limitations of test software, such as a hard limit of ten messages I can pre-define to be sent on the test bus when I have come to need a minimum of 11. (Even more ironic, the test hardware I'm driving is based on Linux and ought to be way more capable than the crippled Windoze interface I must use to talk to it.)
Talk to me next month and I'll probably have a new litany of complaints. I do thank ghu that I only have to deal with the reboot monkeys of IT rather than generic Windoze lusers, though.Oh, man, where to begin (Score:3, Funny)
Everything? I don't suppose it occurred to you that developers work using tools, that those tools are often written with certain assumptions about the configuration of the system they run on, if those assumptions are not satisfied the tool will not run, and that if the tool does not run the developer cannot do his job.
If the developer cannot do his job, the company has no product and pretty soon neither
I am the *snicker* vaunted "IT Manager" (Score:2)
"IT Manager" doesn't mean a lot around here. It jus
IT is perceived as inefficient... (Score:3, Funny)
In "Dancing with bears", Tom Demarco and Tim Lister make the point that on an IT project, we're tracking costs to an ever-increasing degree - time, expenses, over-runs down to the cent - but almost never track the benefits. The feature that gets added to the project because the VP read about it in a magazine, the little switch that lets your favourite customer bypass the security system, the 87th report - they may well be hugely valuable, but we just don't know.
Efficiency is not just determined by cost, it's the ratio of cost to benefit. On the IT side, we can controll (some of) the costs, but surely it's up to the business to make sure that the benefit is managed equally professionally.
The lure of off-shore outsourcing is twofold - there's the promise of cheaper stuff, but also the reduced requirement of the business to justify the benefits of their projects and features. Instead of a partnership between the "business" and the IT team, the relationship becomes "customer/vendor", which for many business folk is a lot more comfortable.
In the long run, I believe that - unless you manage the benefits - there is no price point at which you can afford to ignore the benefit part of the equation.
A day late, but what the hell (Score:3, Insightful)
- Arranged for electrical and phone contractor visits to wire up a room in our office.
- Called local telcoms to price T1s.
- Patched W2K (2x), Office 2K, SSH (2x), and Sendmail.
- Purchased new computers and set them up with FreeBSD (2x) and W2K (2x).
- Split our NIS netgroup to get around the verdammt 1024-character limit.
- Set Nagios and MRTG to watch our stuff.
- Purchased office supplies and a new hard drive to replace one that took a walk.
- Taught one of the new managers how to use CVS (which truly was a case of the blind leading the blind).
- Fixed a bug in the build process (one particular environment variable wasn't getting set during build, but had been statically coded by Yours Truly).
- Attempted to get a handle on what software licenses we need to get, and how much that might cost us.
- Discovered that "Print to PDF" in the version of OpenOffice we have means "Print to PostScript"; made vague plans for upgrade to latest version.
- Tested OpenVPN, found it Good.
- Set up new rackmount switches to replace the zip-tied ones we had previously; half-cleaned up the rat's nest of wiring.
- Moved one guy's home directory to another computer so he wouldn't fill up the partition he was on; made vague plans to replace the old server.
And I love it all. In all honesty, I'm having the time of my life doing all this. Beats the living fuck out of helpdesk.What don't I do? (Score:2)
My official role in IT is 'Linux Administrator', but I admin Windows, Linux, and Solaris boxes, as well as making sure anything that plugs in is working (has included the coffee machine at times =P).
At one point I was also working for marketing as an 'Application Analyst', which basically meant researching and deploying software on our wireless network (as well as just being marketing's bitch).
Then I w
What do I do? I suffer, like everyone else... (Score:2)
Helpdesk for 200 or so users, with 75 of those off-site.
Making reports, and then reports on my reports.
Electronic billing.
Custom programming (VB, but it still counts)
Phone maintenance.
Fax machine maintenance.
To
Technician with slight management slant... (Score:2)
I was originally hired, fresh out of college (not university as Americans would understand it) on a short term basis because the Linux techie there had just got the sack, and word had gotten to the college that a student knew about Linux. So learning a bit about Linux got me an easy break into IT
I then became a part time worker in the short time before I was due to start university.. I did about 4 months at university
Back in school currently... (Score:2)
Up to Friday morning... (Score:2, Informative)
As of Friday, I am unemployed. My full-time job is now looking for a job. I'm also trying to help other Slashdotters who need work. See the link in my sig.
IT sabbatical (Score:2, Interesting)