IT Professionals Thread

Hey everyone! Figured I'd start a thread for all of us IT workers as a place for us to vent and discuss our jobs. Whether you're a developer, programmer, systems admin, help desk, or any sort of other tech sector job, this is our haven!

What sort of nonsense did you have to put up with today?

 

Brought a client a new laptop that I had set up for her to use at home. Username and password for the VPN are identical to the ones she uses to sign in to her desktop every single day at work. Sat down and showed her how to enable the connection. Write down on a post-it (still sitting right next to her):

Username: Blah
Password: Blah!

At 6:02 I get an email, "Blah! isn't working." Try it (you know, just to make sure I'm not literally going insane) and it works perfectly. Email back, "Hey, this username and password are working for me:

Username: Blah
Password: Blah!

Let me know if it's still not working for you."

Response, "Sorry I thought I needed to be user DOMAINX\Blah. Thanks!"

 

I think I'm an IT professional. I wouldn't know because the IT professionals in charge of me still do not have me in their system so I still cannot work.

 

Dealing with incompetence deserves an award. Similar thing happened to me the other day...we have a "development" team for IBM applications and I was putting some files on the servers for them. Long story short, they have no testing strategy and few actual development skills so there I am trying to compare config files between environments so that it's all consistent between environments.

And then they get all pissed off when I tell them that the changes can't be escalated because it's inconsistent. And then they get even more pissed off when I tell them I really shouldn't be doing their job for them. I currently manage servers, not develop applications. They seem to not understand this...

 

Looking to transition into IT, but it's honestly such a daunting field to look into. I think I've talked to 5 different people separately who have had different opinions about what is necessary as far as certs/training/experience go. Scared shitless about investing time and energy into something that's meaningless to employers.

Interviewed for a position somewhere between Level 1 and 2 Help Desk with my current company last summer and didn't get it. Was told to get my feet wet working at a smaller computer repair company or something along those lines.

Anybody have any advice?

 

From my perspective (grain of salt always) a CompTIA A+ certification helps for an entry level help desk (even though it's information that you won't use often at L1). Once you've got experience it's smooth sailing from there on out unless you want to go deeper into the field, then I'd recommend Cisco certifications (I'm working on CCNA right now and it's kicking my ass). A good thing though is once you have your foot in the door, a LOT of employers will either fully pay or help pay for future certifications, at least in my area they have.

 

What I would do if I were you is practice as many of those "help desk" sort of skills on your free time. Treat it like a hobby, do maintenance to your own machine, mess around, and watch plenty of YouTube videos (no joke) on what exactly you would need to know to get some of that "foot wetting knowledge". I would also network the shit out of the people who already work in IT at the company. Casually ask questions about IT, show how interested you are. Then if you were to interview again, you'll have a proven record of interest and they'll know that you learned all these skills on your own which will make them more willing to hire you and take the time to train you.

You can also learn some concrete/specialized IT skills such as Linux server administration. If you can manage your way around command line tasks, that will look very good on your resume. Just do a Google search and you'll find some great tutorials and practice sites.

Best of luck!

 

Appreciate the responses here, guys. Thank you.

Yeah my best friend in the company is in IT right around the corner. Kinda got the ball rolling for me personally, being around the job as much as I am. Seeing what it is they do exactly.

 

Basically what everyone else has said, @kidwithhelmet. A+ or even a MCP (Microsoft Certified Professional) look good on a resume and can really help get you in the door.

I got really lucky and was hired by a contracting company with little to no IT experience for a massive Win 7 upgrade project for a major healthcare company in my area. They just needed people to install PC's and do basic troubleshooting. I really didn't know what I was doing, but I learned quick and worked hard, and it payed off. I'm now a full-time tech at said healthcare company. I'm not saying it's the way to go, as I still don't have any certs (yet), but don't hesitate to keep putting yourself out there, and look at contracting companies as well. You never know. Good luck!

 

That's pretty much exactly what I did. I started temping at a small computer repair business, then another one where I was actually building a lot of computers and getting really familiar with basic common tasks like malware cleanup, reinstalling operating systems, etc. and then I got a part time job at a university doing IT... eventually I was hired as full time. It took me a while, I have no idea why I'm here actually. Anyway, when it comes to hiring new people I look at experience first and how comfortable people are with what they'd be working on. Whatever way would best help you familiarize yourself with common issues would be the way to go IMO. I hope that's a little helpful.

 

Again, I'm very appreciative of the responses here.

I am waiting for a call back about interning this summer at a tech repair company right by my office. If that falls through, or even if it doesn't I suppose, I'm planning on volunteering at a local church helping run their soundboards and other equipment.

None of this directly relates to what I'm looking to do but it's something. It's comforting hearing first hand that there isn't a direct route to entry in this field.

 

Any of you guys use Vaulted admin accounts at your respective workplaces? They're rolling that out here in a few weeks for us and I'm less than hyped.

 

I'm an IT professional, butI'd be lying if I said I knew what I was doing. lol

 

IT in a nutshell!

 

Petition to have this thread allow the usage of the F-bomb....especially when discussing dns over vpns

 

TRUTH

 

Sounds reasonable

 

Anybody here use Zendesk as your company's ticketing software? Any app recommendations? We use MyndBend to create Child Tickets for our Employee Changes, like building new computers for people, setting them up in emails groups, and stuff like that.

 

Top five moment of my career so far is a guy handed me a post-it with a password on it and the password was just "poop"

I did a double take and thought for sure I was misreading his handwriting but when I entered poop into his phone it sure as hell worked.

 

We use Remedy and it's okay I guess, I only hate it a little

 

We're on Kayako. Owners are trying to force Connectwise down our throat and we're fighting tooth and nail.

 

Is anyone a JAMF user / Admin? The bullshit that ensues with that MDM is a nightmare.

 

ohhhhh i didnt even realize this thread existed, i was ranting in the programming thread the other day.

Im still technically a student (5th year, finishing up with night courses) but I ended up falling into a junior dev ops position at a company due to connections I had. Going into it I knew absolutely nothing about IT related stuff (was more a developer, dropped out of all my networking courses in uni) but through just hands on experience I've learnt a ton. When I was hired there were 2 other people in the "IT" department, both of them however were on the older end of the spectrum and never spent any time learning new technologies, so basically they were just very good with unix but had zero programming experience. At my company this meant they became kind of useless and they would have no idea how to develop new pieces of infrastructure. Anyways, long story short my company started having financial problems and fired the other 2 IT guys (one of them had been working their for 15+ years) leaving me stuck being the only source of IT in the company. First couple weeks of being alone were spent freaking the fuck out thinking I had no idea what I was doing, but im really starting to feel I have a grasp on everything.

 

I show up for day 1 of my 3am shift and realize I haven't been given a headset or the proper connection for a headset hahaha

 

Have had enough time of being able to do absolutely nothing to catch up on every single thread I'm following on this website. This is getting ridiculous.