Information Technology (IT)

[luckyluchiano]

There should be adequate opportunities in most major cities. I live in San Diego and there's NOT a good IT job market here (relative to cities of similar size) yet I still see plenty of opportunities. It should be a lot easier in the Bay area, LA, Seattle, Chicago, Houston, Austin, etc. Better pay to CoL ratio too.

Seeing "jr" in the title and looking at the actual job posting requirements are two different things

 

[luckyluchiano]

the CIO of the Americas where I work has a Marine Biology degree at my job but that means nothing. Leadership is all experience and at director level outside of CISO or CDO you need much less technical skills.

I was thinking of taking a sales performance role. Maybe a Technical Account Manager at MS. Made it to the second round for Aon for a consultant role for Workforce in their graduate program but got killed on their test before the final round. I sit on a lot of product demos and have interfaced with SEs from HP and random cyber security companies and their jobs don't seem that difficult.

Main reason i went the BA route is that i enjoy being a "consultant" and designing stuff opposed to doing the grunt work and coding or maintaining things

 

[unkn0wn]

Seeing "jr" in the title and looking at the actual job posting requirements are two different things

What I was trying to imply is that the more job posting there are, the more postings there will be at every experience level

 

[wrightone86]

I disagree here, I think he's somewhat correct. His priority is leading the team, but he should have some understanding of what the team does, just not as in depth as you want him to, otherwise he's not doing his job. He's management, not the technical lead. I find a lot of sysadmins jaded in that view (hell most technical folks) and it's completely illogical. That is until they get to sit in that chair for a few years and don't have the time or mental space to basically run your own organization and keep up with every new technical tidbit. Management is a different beast. A good manager knows how to delegate to the right people and understand he's no longer the technician.

After I read what I put, I was waiting for someone to comment back with this. 

No I don't expect him to know what I do day-to-day. But I feel as though he should at least have some knowledge about it. I am sure he knows what he needs to know for it at the Director level which basically just from a high-level what it will do, how much it will cost the company, and how long it will take to implement. Granted, it could be the "non-manager" part of me saying that. I know the longer you are away from the tech said and the further up go management-wise, that you do in fact lose that aspect of your profession, so you are right. Still sounds weird to me though 

 

[fantastic4our]

I'm thinking of getting back into a more technical engineer/admin role before I pursue the management realm again. It's like if you get put into leadership too early (ie help desk/support) they're hesitant to let you manage anything else without that experience. Which I don't understand how non technical dudes get in there in the first place.

When you look at it, majority of leadership got into companies in the 80s-90s when the talent pools were damn near non existent, you had guys with only HS Diplomas and a few Certs making bank. The industry has totally different needs now yet you have out of touch people calling shots. There is nothing to even develop talent nowadays besides a few companies that have Development programs, outside of that most companies just outsource the projects that would normally go to someone considered entry level.

Say it again bruh. I think we had a discussion on this before about job descriptions not matching the true responsibilities of a specific position. I think that there will be another shift in the next 10 years but hopefully we'll all have positions are in the positions to call the shots by then.

My boss was just talking about this. We had a meeting and were going over our main responsibilities in our department and after we wrote everything out, he was like this doesn't match the job's responsibilities at all anymore. So hopefully they redo that and it ends up with more money in my pocket

 

[shake]

 
Nice. I need to look into the 2012 Server stuff myself. I have the MCITP for 2008 but....we know how the gov't goes....they not moving onto 2012 platforms until accreditations have expired or something, lol. 

The Solutions Architect thing will definitely be dope and definitely net you some good pay. I was doing it at my last job, and they just were treating it as that was what I was supposed to be doing....as a Sys Admin II 

.

Customer was literally telling me "we need a system to do XYZ". I would research that area, gather various vendors and their product, have meetings with them about their products and determine the one that would work for us and our environment. I was specing out the hardware to order if we needed any, and I was installing, configuring, testing, hardening, and deploying it for us. I would even tie it back into our CommVault backup solution (with NetApp back-end) to make sure it was being backed up properly. Needless to say.....I was promoted to a level 3 Admin at least by the end of it since the guy that was in that spot finally showed that he was an idiot and didn't know anything. 

We were setting security policies for servers in our environment. He was still logging in to each individual server and setting them. I told him that he should be using GPOs for majority that and it was the whole purpose of them to set settings in one place and it takes effect on all servers in our domain. If you are the so-called 12-15 years experience guy, I shouldn't have to tell you this type of thing, lol. He ended up modifying the Domain Controller GPOs to only allow "Server Admins" to Access the Network and logon, and locked out everyone in our environment right in the middle of the day (government customers and all) 

. He was always so obvious with it too. He would come from the data center or something and ask me "Can you still log on? Is everything still up?". My reply to him would be "what did you do?" and he would just say "Oh nothing. I was just making sure everything was still good." 

Anyone asking "Is everything still up?" doesn't even deserve to be a domain admin. Setting local group policy settings on each server 

that must've been so painful!

Try having a noob IT manager you provide contracted IT services for put an ESXi host into maintenance mode and then reboot because he thought that HA was the same as fault tolerance in a 2-host cluster in the middle of the workday at a local government..... 

 

[yeah]

Anyone asking "Is everything still up?" doesn't even deserve to be a domain admin. Setting local group policy settings on each server  that must've been so painful!

Try having a noob IT manager you provide contracted IT services for put an ESXi host into maintenance mode and then reboot because he thought that HA was the same as fault tolerance in a 2-host cluster in the middle of the workday at a local government..... 

He accidentally the whole VSphere? Happy to see that the incompetent are promoted outside of my agency as well.

 

[shake]

 
After I read what I put, I was waiting for someone to comment back with this. 

No I don't expect him to know what I do day-to-day. But I feel as though he should at least have some knowledge about it. I am sure he knows what he needs to know for it at the Director level which basically just from a high-level what it will do, how much it will cost the company, and how long it will take to implement. Granted, it could be the "non-manager" part of me saying that. I know the longer you are away from the tech said and the further up go management-wise, that you do in fact lose that aspect of your profession, so you are right. Still sounds weird to me though 

It sort of depends on the size of the company as well, from my experience. Smaller businesses will most likely involve the management personnel in the technical side of IT since there just aren't enough technical resources not to and larger, enterprise type companies will not include the management personnel in any technical work at all because they have an abundance of management work that needs to be focused on.

 

[wrightone86]

Anyone asking "Is everything still up?" doesn't even deserve to be a domain admin. Setting local group policy settings on each server  that must've been so painful!

Try having a noob IT manager you provide contracted IT services for put an ESXi host into maintenance mode and then reboot because he thought that HA was the same as fault tolerance in a 2-host cluster in the middle of the workday at a local government..... 

He accidentally the whole VSphere? Happy to see that the incompetent are promoted outside of my agency as well.

No way
I can believe it though. This guy was a habitual server offline guy in the middle of the day. Dude would troubleshoot and reboot a server whenever he wanted. He did it with exchange once....our gs15 and 14s loved that

But yea he would STIG servers one by one. When he reported in a meeting he had done like 6 servers with the 2k8 r2 STIG and had 4 more to do I just had a blank look on my face :x

It sort of depends on the size of the company as well, from my experience. Smaller businesses will most likely involve the management personnel in the technical side of IT since there just aren't enough technical resources not to and larger, enterprise type companies will not include the management personnel in any technical work at all because they have an abundance of management work that needs to be focused on.

That's pretty accurate. I have always had our leads still configuring servers or switches and stuff. The only one that didn't was the main PM. Even our Deputy PM still was building out servers and doing STIGs on servers and "in the weeds" with us.

 

[unkn0wn]

To those in the workforce, what ERP does your organization use? Im worried my SAP-exclusive experience will limit me to working for bigger firms

 

[luckyluchiano]

To those in the workforce, what ERP does your organization use? Im worried my SAP-exclusive experience will limit me to working for bigger firms

I would think it would help since like 85-90% of fortune 500 depend on SAP in one way or another

 

[unkn0wn]

I would think it would help since like 85-90% of fortune 500 depend on SAP in one way or another

I dont think I want to work for a Fortune 500 company any more

 

[iDon’tRead]

any internships for computer science minor? .. trying to find one so i can get some credits in the summer for it

 

[wrod7]

where you live?

 

[iDon’tRead]

im in 82072, but I can live in san diego, fresno or tulsa/coweta ok, st paul mn , east lansing mi during the summer (may -august). ive been looking at indeed but most seems to be internships for right now

 

[sneaky]

Currently working towards my degree in IT and minor in business. Have about a semester left(still undecided which direction I want to go with my degree). My academic advisor brought up the idea of going for my masters in business.

Anyone have any thoughts on this

 

[dathbgboy]

Currently working towards my degree in IT and minor in business. Have about a semester left(still undecided which direction I want to go with my degree). My academic advisor brought up the idea of going for my masters in business.

Anyone have any thoughts on this

What would you want to get out of that? Do you think the investment is worth it? How would getting your Master's in Business compare to a Master's in an IT related field? Do you need the Master's right now?

All questions you have to ask yourself.

 

[capital sb]

Currently working towards my degree in IT and minor in business. Have about a semester left(still undecided which direction I want to go with my degree). My academic advisor brought up the idea of going for my masters in business.

Anyone have any thoughts on this

Don't go for the Masters in Business unless a company is paying for it. IMO it isn't worth it unless you get some experience under your belt.

 

[unkn0wn]

Currently working towards my degree in IT and minor in business. Have about a semester left(still undecided which direction I want to go with my degree). My academic advisor brought up the idea of going for my masters in business.

Anyone have any thoughts on this

Why not major in MIS or something so you can get both IT and business exposure in your curriculum without having to minor? I dont think a minor is worth the costs

 

[luckyluchiano]

An MBA is only worth it if you are trying to move into senior management or you majored in something useless and need to change careers

 

[datznasty]

Anybody mess with biomedical informatics? Can get the MS online in as little as 18 months.

 

[unkn0wn]

Got a senior business analyst interview coming up next week. Im underqualified in terms of the yearly requirements but Ive had experience doing everything listed in the duties/responsibilities section. Hopefully I can get it and get fat pay jump. Googled up the Sr BA salary for the company and it was averaging $125k but I dont think Im worth that much right now lol.

 

[HankHill]

Got a senior business analyst interview coming up next week. I think Im underqualified in terms of the yearly requirements but Ive had experience doing everything listed in the duties/responsibilities section. Hopefully I can get it and get fat pay jump. Googled up the Sr BA salary for the company and it was averaging $125k but I dont think Im worth that much right now lol.

Good luck.

Even without the years of experience just tell them what the projects were where you used the skills, and how involved in it you were.

Did they discuss compensation before the interview was set up? If not shoot for that average when you're done. Just tell them you see the average is 120k and you want to start from there, but you're willing to negotiate with benefits etc. They'll probably try to give you under based on years of experience though.

 

[dathbgboy]

At a crossroads where I'm debating getting an AS in Computer Information Systems from the local CC or just getting my min requirements and pushing for a Masters. Been looking at the background and curriculum and feel that I'm nowhere near what they're expecting for Master's degree candidates. Also, cost plays a major factor where I know I can swing paying for a few classes to get the AS out of pocket but can't really afford the Master's programs and don't think I'd get the loans.

 

[unkn0wn]

Good luck.

Even without the years of experience just tell them what the projects were where you used the skills, and how involved in it you were.

Did they discuss compensation before the interview was set up? If not shoot for that average when you're done. Just tell them you see the average is 120k and you want to start from there, but you're willing to negotiate with benefits etc. They'll probably try to give you under based on years of experience though.

We havent discussed compensation at all. It just a number I pulled from Glassdoor. You think I should ask for that average (120k) even if I dont think my skills or knowledge are worthy of that yet?