@eddiejennings Another possible option is to use Jared as a paid resource if he is willing to do that. If we got along better I would hire him for x amount of hours for projects in my lab. That way when I ran into issues I could schedule time with him to go over why something is happening and the correct way to diagnose and solve the problem. This could be a valuable learning experience for you.

Unsure if he would be willing to do that, but I'm sure someone here would. I'd offer it myself but I would not be of much help. If you're going to hire someone, make sure it's someone who knows their stuff.

@dashrender said in Is Most IT Really Corrupt?:

@scottalanmiller said in Is Most IT Really Corrupt?:

@dashrender said in Is Most IT Really Corrupt?:

@storageninja said in Is Most IT Really Corrupt?:

@dashrender said in Is Most IT Really Corrupt?:

Then I'm lost how you say IT cares more about the business than the owner/CEO does? They don't know the IT side of things, so they more or less have to rely on others to help them, if they choose not to follow those recommendations is another matter.

Lifestyle businesses where they don't care about making money beyond xxx amount to maintain their lifestyle. Pretty common in SMB.

Is there a problem with that type of thinking?

Problem? No, not if they are the owners rather than fiduciaries. No one implied a problem. The point was that you asked how IT could care more and he was pointing out entire categories of businesses where IT often cares more.

Yeah - Coliver already beat you to that comment.

Sorry, just answer them as I go 🙂

@dustinb3403 said in Training for policies, procedures, and standards:

@irj said in Training for policies, procedures, and standards:

@dustinb3403 said in Training for policies, procedures, and standards:

@irj said in Training for policies, procedures, and standards:

@dustinb3403 said in Training for policies, procedures, and standards:

@irj said in Training for policies, procedures, and standards:

I want to create these documents for something that is not implemented yet. So basically I am starting from scratch.

You still start with the system documentation, how things are setup, the reasoning for setting them up like that, known or foreseen issues with the configuration, limitations of the system, recovery procedures etc.

It isn't setup yet. I need to create this documentation first. I am looking at best practices which give me some great ideas for implementation. However, I will need to create my own variations. I will need to have everything in place before getting the support I need and FTEs from upper management.

But as you set it up, you document it. This isnt a chicken or egg scenario. . .

Not in this case since NIST clearly defines what the program needs to be. We need to be in compliance and in an enterprise the only way these things carry any weight is having a policy signed by C level.

Then the only PPS you can create is to pull information out of your ass, if you can't see and work on a system how can you possibly draft documentation on it?

I guess you should just rip a copy of the owners manual for any solution you want to use, and have the C level sign off on that.

When it comes to compliance plagiarism is encouraged. You want to be as spot on as possible. I have all the information needed in the form of guidelines. I need to format into policy and procedure.

My question was about learning how to format and create the documentation the correct way. I want it to look as professional as possible.

@tirendir said in When Is It Okay to Say You Are a System Administrator:

@scottalanmiller You make a fair point, and I agree with your assessment that legitimate success should enable us to have more control over location and income with less risk of losing control over any of those things.

Really, we could probably boil "success" down to getting what we want out of life. More or less anyway, right? 😃

Or... the leverage to get what we want from life 🙂

Possibly due to your contributions here, which are usually great.
Thanks

@tim_g said in Thoughts on IT education - the good, bad, and the ugly:

@scottalanmiller said in Thoughts on IT education - the good, bad, and the ugly:

@worden2 said in Thoughts on IT education - the good, bad, and the ugly:

@irj said in Thoughts on IT education - the good, bad, and the ugly:

@worden2 So this is one of those get certified while getting a degree schools like WGU?

Yes and no. I don't think my college is going to start employing "course facilitators" instead of professors, and simply point students to the material and expect them to grind through it. On the other hand, as a 2 year college we're not diving too deep into theory and abstracted concepts because of the time scale we're at. Does that clarify it? I do know one of our graduates is doing the WGU thing right now as part of a BS and is getting their MCSA as part of it. Personally, I think we use the certs as external validation that we're staying relevant, but when I see the A+ and other certs not keeping up (the latest A+ cert finally eliminated floppy drive questions!) I worry we're slipping behind as well.

Certs are not in any way a validation that you are relevant and certainly not ones that are not even in the right field. Certs have a place, a good one, but they are VENDOR TOOLS, not industry ones. It's not appropriate to be using them in an academic setting in any way unless, as you had originally stated, using them as a guide to the "level" of knowledge, but never as a guide to the actual knowledge.

How do you teach IT or Systems Administration without teaching students about any technologies they would be using on the job? You can't administer a System (which is from a vendor) if you don't know anything about it.

So if a course wants to teach Linux or Windows Server administration... Well surely covering many of the things the "vendor tool" covers is a great start... Competencies, measured skills, etc.

Well the first thing is that a course in college should not be teaching Linux or Windows administration, that's a trade school's job. They should be teaching concepts of administration. Now, that said, they need operating systems to use for that. But teaching concepts instead of specifics is the core concept of academic work and is very different than teaching to a vendor cert.

Remember collegiate academic work isn't for the purpose of teaching on the job skills, but to teach someone the fundamentals and concepts so that those specific skills will make sense. You aren't teaching them which button to push, but why a button like it needs to be pushed.

Example... you don't learn details of NTFS and ReFS, but you do learn file system concepts so that when someone tells you the details of NTFS and ReFS you can immediately understand them and understand other IT concepts when the market changes.

This is a problem I see with most college grads. Instead of learning IT concepts, they just memorize the motions to go through to accomplish a task. They are only trained to follow a script, they don't understand why they do things or what they do means.

Is there an updated copy for us to see?

I signed up for the Seattle Opensource Linux meetup later this month.
One of the others is 'APIs and IPAs'. There are many listed for my region.

@wirestyle22 said in Who Has Lost Their Job to the Cloud:

@scottalanmiller said in Who Has Lost Their Job to the Cloud:

@wirestyle22 said in Who Has Lost Their Job to the Cloud:

@scottalanmiller said in Who Has Lost Their Job to the Cloud:

@wirestyle22 said in Who Has Lost Their Job to the Cloud:

@scottalanmiller said in Who Has Lost Their Job to the Cloud:

Going to cloud services doesn't sound like it would change anything. They've not moved from outsourced in insourced, they've not moved from several people to one, they've not done good management practices around IT - that they are or are not using cloud services seems irrelevant to the example case, right?

Right but the way they handle IT can change with each new mayor elected. All it takes is one yes to get things where they need to be.

And that's relevant to the conversation how? You appear to be conflating "a new mayor could change IT staffing" with "cloud makes people lose their jobs". In no case are you showing how cloud is a factor, only that people could lose jobs.

No one is questioning if jobs can be lost in IT. It's whether cloud is the thing that causes it. In your examples, cloud is always a red herring.

Cloud would make us unnecessary.

How? You keep stating how it changes nothing, but then state this. Something doesn't add up. You are either unneeded today or still needed with cloud, right? You haven't shown anything that would change that.

They need someone to do this now. You already know I don't think we are the right company--but we have the contract unfortunately. I'll be gone before it comes up for renewal though.

Exactly, that's my point. Your feeling is that the current situation doesn't work. So going to cloud (or to anything else) that wouldn't work, doesn't change anything. The cloud is a red herring. The issues are all somewhere else.

@wirestyle22 said in Feedback on Resume:

Barnabas Health: Just standard desktop support, no frills. Printers broken, internet explorer won't load this website, imaging, etc.

Garden State Foot & Ankle: I was hired to build a server for them to house X-rays. I was a resource to the owner. He would come up with things he wanted to do and then I was the one to explain how to do them. Desktop support, cabling, purchasing, etc. I honestly was not called very often, the owner was and is a friend of mine who is a podiatrist.

The Arc: I was the director of IT. I was responsible for every appliance, server, workstation, etc. All devices. I handled all of the purchasing in relation to IT. I was the sole IT person covering 33 sites all over ocean county (very large county).

Will continue to update throughout the day. I have some calls coming in

YMCA: I am the point of escalation for all of the servers and network. Not a lot has happened after my initial walk-through. I found some incorrect entries here and there which were fixed.

City of Trenton: TBD, big list.

Note: I added some of the stuff @scottalanmiller said to do in my lab to train my resume. I am in the process of doing some of that at home

@ramblingbiped I agree with this assessment. Also make sure to place the certificates on top. Yes, also make sure that you place all the time you have worked in the IT field.

@travisdh1 said in Well, that really, really sucks.:

@scottalanmiller said in Well, that really, really sucks.:

If I wasn't running on zero sleep and had four kids in tow I would have stopped in Wooster for a bit this afternoon as I drove through! I ate at your Taco Bell, though!

@scottalanmiller likes to live dangerously on road trips! Taco Bell is great for a cheap meal, but often times is a cause of distress.

Never bothers me like that. Not at all, in fact it's one of the mildest meals that I can eat.

I'm with Scott, if your company expects you to have specific skills for them and you didn't walk through the door with those skills, then they need to provide you paid time to acquire them. But your time is your time. Learn what you want to help you further your career.

And I want to keep repeating this... college has value. But this is certainly not it. Critical thinking is specifically one of the farthest things from what college does. College is far better at exposure to culture, making social connections, keeping people out of the workforce so that older workers can have lower unemployment and so forth. There is value, but it's mostly outside of education.

Those are good points.

😛

@scottalanmiller my approach would be more community driven, on higher volume products.

Come here to X organization and buy all your X products. We will go get and share the best wholesale pricing based on that volume and charge a transparent for (or membership?). Spread the word, grow the volume, etc.

One advantage I have, aside from having savings, is an in-place customer base and volume that I can keep. My previous employer isnt interested in this business and so long as I am not selling phone service or competing I can still sell to those customers.

@scottalanmiller said in Which IT role I am suitable and to which should I apply for ?:

@openit said in Which IT role I am suitable and to which should I apply for ?:

How about selecting BA or HA, isn't there anything like that here ?

No, those cause lots of confusion. Upvote thing that are helpful. You can mark something solved, but not BA. BA doesn't say that it is solved and provides for a lot of confusion.

Unless you have intentionally restricted something, the post as question plugin allows the OP to specify a specific post as the solution.