IT BS thread

Yes I can choose. I've yet been able to take all of my vacation time. Every year I loose some.

Being bothered, they try, I don't care. I'm on vacation my phone is off, laptop is closed, tablets are put back into their boxes and sit on the shelf. Unless they find me camping in the woods, I'm not working.

 

Yep

When I'm off, I'm OFF.

But the balance...we don't even count days off. So long as you produce and shit's getting done, we don't care where and when you do it. Sure I'm "on call"....but the majority of my users are bankers-hours types, so its a rarity anything comes up outside of normal business hours. Sure, I go in a weekend every so often, but I also leave at 330 or 4 every day to balance the time.

 

I was a one man show for years before I got an assistant... during that time it was me or nobody. I HAD to deal with whatever whenever, because some of our workers are remote and in different time zones. Luckily or skillfully (I'm sure more of the former) I had set things up solidly enough that I rarely had to worry about it. Now that I have an assistant, it's almost like all those years are paying off and I can have a normal life again because there's two of us to share the worry load. Kinda like I done paid my dues.

 

This is where I'm at and we've been talking about getting me an assistant. Just took awhile to get everything stable.

 

Hey guys I have a question for all you IT guys out there.... I'm going right now for my ccna, and want to get other certs but my question isn't cert related....

Do you guys find yourself working ALOT or work getting in the way of your free time? ? Like being able to go offroading on weekends and Vacations or weekend drives?

 

When I was a lot younger I worked a lot more. Once I got up into my 30s I started realizing the value of my free time and cut quite a ways back on my 'voluntary after-hours' work.

I still get everything done that needs to be...but there's a task that I'd LIKE to have done? That can prolly wait, I'm not burning an evening of my time to go back in and do it now unless it's specific and important.

Now that I've passed 40 and am coming up on 2 decades of IT work: I've learned that working smarter is better than working harder. Pick your battles and swing for the fences only when you have your own ass covered.

 

Hey man if you need an assistant, I can be your man!! I'll move back to AZ for an it Job instantly, and I'll work my butt off, I'm motivated, eager to learn and willing to do anything I just need me foot in the door. I'm Currently A Commercial Contractor For Schools, Government Buildings, Offices, etc. Building networks from the ground up. Large installs of building data centers/nocs, idfs, mdfs, cat 6, cat 5e, fiber optic and copper background. I can fusion splice and do anaerobic fiber. I pretty much know ALL of level one. I'm a lead technician. Willing to do anything to move up to level 2! I'll send you my resume if you want

 

Agreed. I try to behave aside from the occasional passive-aggressive email. Only truly reamed someone out once. Higher-ups didn't care at all--they just told me she had been nasty to them before too.

I was also hired basically right out of high school with no degree. Have an A.S. now, might go for more eventually but I disagree with the mere concept of student loans and it would be tough to write those checks and still do everything else comfortably right now so it can wait.

I like being salaried. If I need to take off on an "extended lunch," leave early, come in late, nobody says a word. But, like you said I make up for it plus some on weekends or evenings. I'll go in a lot then because I can get things done with no disruptions.

 

So do are you kind of saying that with experience you learn how to do your given work more easily and faster because you have the experience. Or you performed the same now as in when you were younger you just decided to be more of a "company man" and provide extra work for free?

 

Kinda both. Lemme 'splain

First, when I was younger, I knew I was all I had, so I was very, very careful and methodical in EVERYthing I did. I didn't lip off to anyone, I was WAY too soft on users, and I worked 10-15 hours a week off the books just making sure I had all my ducks in a row. I was consistently the best and it took a LOT of time from me to make it look that good.

Now, years later, I work smarter. I accomplish just as much as before, only now it's because I'm a LOT more efficient and - through trial and error and lots of blood/sweat/tears/restored backups - I know when I can skip steps, take shortcuts, and what is 'acceptable risk to save a ton of time and energy'.

Also, not to be overlooked (which I seriously did as a younger tech) is the value of political capitol. I know how much I can fuck up before anyone gets up in my grill about it. In modern business, there's a certain amount of accepted wiggle room for a LOT of things. Some time, your workstation reboots during a routine update. Sorry you happened to be logged in at the time and working on something....the good news is, I have autosaving configured on all the domain machines, so you only 'lost' about 4 minutes of typing. Bad, yea, but shit happens and people are good about it.

This is the capital you spend when you accidently powercycle the firewall during the workday. You tell your boss what you did, and the two of you send out an email to your users blaming the ISP. You can punt a server or change a critical save path for a live website depending on how much you break and how much political goodwill you have banked. Never underestimate the power of goodwill, especially among your bosses' bosses.

I still go in frequently on weekends, or remote in after dinner to twiddle with something. BUT, the other side of it is: I set my own hours, our time off isn't even tracked, and as long as shit gets done, nobody cares. So, now I work 45 or so hours a week unless something BIG happens. Then, I take the balance of that time OFF the next week as needed to even it out. My boss actually throws US out if we're at the office too much. And he's our 2nd most senior dev!

 

That sums up the quintessential self made IT person. You have to be way overboard for a few years to prove your worth, not just to your employer but also to yourself. Once you get that confidence (based on real experience, not a cocky and entitled "I have certifications" mentality) and you have honed your chops, IT can be one of the best gigs going. Great pay and you can call most of your own shots. Over 40 or so users, though, make sure you have some kind of backup like somebody said above. That number is just based on my experience and the type of work our company does, but there is definitely a threshold user-wise where things just will break more often. You will have to learn where that threshold is for your situation by just doing the shit. Your backup could just be some other employee who's not an idiot and can think on their feet.

 

You sound like my situation is and how I go about my job currently, which is how I became a lead technician bossing 40 year olds at 20 years old in 3 years lol. I get what your saying, paying your dues. I can respect that and I also like the "gaining your confidence - but yourself" part. Becoming more confident in your work like I am in my work I currently Do. Which I always go above and beyond to stay one of the best technicians I can personally be, which in turn Puts me on top of my techs. I like hard work, I just want to start putting all my hard work into layer 2 and 3 type things, I'm 95 percent confident in my work now and want to be in my future. I want to know the ENTIRE network from layer 1 all the way up to the transport layer and a little on the presentation and application layer but mostly around level 3 and 4 is where i want to do most of my work. It's just hard trying to get a decent entry level job without a college degree especially when I need it to pay like at LEAST 16 an hour at 40 hours a week, to just pay my bills and eat Ramen. Because i am also ALL I got, no wealthy family or someone to live with or pay my college. Im 21 years old, been on my own since i was 18 pay for all my things. I want to buy a house in 6 months but also move up in the IT world, so i am currently going for my A+, then either network+ and security+ and hope that will land me a job making 18-20 entry. If not then i go for my CCNA, although i may just finish my AAS at that point which is in Cisco: Network and Routing. I just really need a foot in the door, its all about who you know for me so i try to branch out and meet and talk to as many people as i can. With my background in commercial layer 1 certified systems i believe i have a very strong capabilities.


Petpeev : Building an IDF or MDF to come back in a few months and see that the network guys run there patch cords everywhere and dont use wire managers for the patchpanels or fiber links making all my pretty work look nasty with the Ratnest patching- LEARN TO DRESS CABLE lol

Now that you know alittle about me and my aspiration to move upward anyone have any recommendations on how to land a decent paying entry level job that will give me a chance and show that i work my ass off?

 

1. "Dressing cable" pisses me right the fuck off. Pretty doesn't matter when I have to be the one to come in with a set of flush-cutters and spend half an hour cutting color-coded wire-ties before I can even start diagnosing the problem that happens to be buried SOMEwhere in a bundle of 80 cat-5s. Dressing cable and making it pretty are great...assuming nobody else never, ever has to come in and change anything. Protip: someone always does, at some point.

2. Cabling is a fantastic skill to have, as most techs fucking HATE it. I love it to death, as it has saved my ass a hundred times. Knowing things like "don't EVER run cat5 over a fluourescent enclosure" have bailed me out SO many times I don't know how to say it. Cabling is a PITA, but it's also the backbone of what we do. Similarly, HVAC and power....know these, respect these, love these....they will help you at some point.

3. Go full bore into switching and routing. CCNA boot camp is tough as balls the first time you do it. Do it anyways until you pass. Then do it again every 2-3 years because it IS worth it. This is what the network IS, and how it works. Once you grok how to calculate routing tables and subnets on the fly, you never stop using it. Once you know how ACLs work, troubleshooting network problems suddenly gets a LOT easier.

 

In response to YotaGuy's previous question...

Post a CL ad for an internship. I "hired" a guy that did that 6 years ago. 10 years older than me, fully Cisco certified, but because his skills were so niche he couldn't find a local job. I had him help with setting up a few new servers, got his feet more than wet with the Windows world and all aspects of our setup. He was with me for two weeks, no pay. A month after he left, he called to tell me he got hired as the senior IT lead at a local school district. Worked out perfect for both of us.

Moral of the story: sacrifice short term gain for the big picture.

 

lol at # 1, thats a good point, BUT that is when having a toner comes in handy! Also in my work, we dont use zipties they can be tied too tight which will cause crosstalk between pairs, Velcro for days and yeah too close to power and you'll get attenuation.

So youre saying dont waste my time on the comptia certs? where can i do the CCNA boot camp? Ive been self studying other than taking a few classes at school learning binary code and subnetting.

 

But my problem with that is being able to not have work and not be able to pay bills for that long? And i dont make enough to be able to save up alot of money to just take off work for a little while

 

I find that IT recruiters are your best friends when it comes to opening doors for you. Also I think that experience is right on par with degrees. Degrees just tells employers that you have common sense and ability to learn. I'm planning on moving back home to Kansas City in a few months. Anyone here from there?

 

Frankly, even velcro is a PITA. Use the sides of the cage. Otherwise let it fucking go...IT ain't neat and pretty, and the users aren't either...don't try and make all the cables be that way.

I'm not saying comptia certs are a waste of time. What I'm saying is you're better off studying the underlying tech that makes IT function if you want to deep dive into it as a career....and that's routing and router programming. All the downstream troubleshooting becomes a LOT easier once you 'get' how the physical routing works.

As far as where to do it locally...well, literally google "CCNA boot camp <zip code>"

I got my last two refreshes at a community college and Horizon Learning Centers. Both were paid for by my employer. Right now I'm technically 'lapsed', but I've had the gorram cert enough times that if I needed to have it active, it would only be a matter of finding the nearest next test time and paying the fee to fill out the form again.

 

The guy I took on had a wife and two kids... He found a way. He had no job at all, so he didn't have the complication/luxury of a current job holding him back from whatever he needed to do. Necessity is the mother of invention.

 

I jus

I just googled CCNA boot camp.... $3000 plus.... Unless i get a loan, not happening. Plus i see that they are like 5 day trainings... Seems like cheating to me. Like they would just "teach me the exam" and how to pass it, but really not teaching me the underlying tech. I already have some CCNA books, and a Cisco Catlyst switch. I dont have an employer to pay for it, maybe ill just pay for CBT Nuggets and read the books get my CCNA and at that point should have a few thousand to live off of and try to get and get into an internship for experience like said above.