@DustinB3403 said in Why Job Titles Matter, and Don't.:

@scottalanmiller said in Why Job Titles Matter, and Don't.:

@Dashrender said in Why Job Titles Matter, and Don't.:

@dave247 said in Why Job Titles Matter, and Don't.:

@scottalanmiller said in Why Job Titles Matter, and Don't.:

@dave247 said in Why Job Titles Matter, and Don't.:

@Dashrender said in Why Job Titles Matter, and Don't.:

@dave247 said in Why Job Titles Matter, and Don't.:

I'm actually dealing with this right now. I was asked by my boss to come up with a better job title for myself since I am basically a system administrator, network administrator, server administrator, IT manager, among other things.

I think job titles are a good thing simply as a starting point descriptor of what a person's job role is. It shouldn't determine pay as much as all the line items that are listed in your actual job description.

That said, I've landed on IT Administrator since it seems to encompass everything and sounds better than "IT Generalist".

Are you actually a manager? as in you have direct reports that you manage?

What kind of reports are you referring to? I manage various things in IT, like some reports, vendors, some credit card statements & things..

Direct report = employee that reports directly to you that you can hire and fire.

oh no, I can not fire anyone. However, I have indirectly caused people to get fired, but that's another story..

OK - then like me, you're not an IT manager, because neither of us manages people for IT. At least that's my POV.

I choose IT Admin as my title as well - also didn't like the sound of IT Generalist - most people say - WTF is a generalist?

A Generalist means you cover all the bases. What the heck is an Admin?

An admin isn't forced to use the plunger.

Sadly - this isn't true.

@jmoore said in Asking Salary Starting to Be Banned:

@scottalanmiller My experience could very well be unique but I have often seen women get paid more for doing less work and most management have been women. In the school where I am there hasn't been a man in HR in 10 years and all the directors are women. In previous job both managers were women and the other 40 or so non-management were men. The women could not do any of the jobs but I guess they were good paper pushers. So in my small experience there hasn't been a gap and, in truth, its the reverse. I know its not always like that but I don't think its as bad as people make it out to be.

LOL - I grew up in a reverse discrimination situation similar to your job situation. I was one of 4 white kids in a sea of African-Americans.

As for the whole woman in power thing - Medical practices seem to be the same as your job. While the office is owned currently by all men (the owner/doctors) the office and all supervisors are women (7 of them). I am the only male non physician on staff - oh wait, nope that changed 3 months ago.. we now have a male lab tech also.

@scottalanmiller said in Relocating to Utica/Rome NY Area:

@mike-davis said in Relocating to Utica/Rome NY Area:

It's a nice area being so close to the Adirondacks. It doesn't matter if there a 100 good jobs there, you only need one. 🙂

I think you are quoting me there, lol. I say that all of the time.

Let's not forget "IT isn't local" as well.

I've been investing my time in learning Ansible and SaltStack to manage Linux and Windows. And started using the native tools available from Linux and Windows through Ansible and SaltStack.

@animal said in Soft Skills for the IT Pro:

There's been some really good conversations here (thank you all) and what I think could be really interesting is this... Maybe IT people need some soft skills, but maybe there's a need to show the users we support why we appear like we don't have soft skills at times. Maybe, just maybe, it appears that we're lacking in soft skills when really it's the users that are being condescending.

Everyone needs soft skills. Period.

The application of said skills will vary greatly depending on the job duties.

@obsolesce said in Resume Review Please:

@scottalanmiller said in Resume Review Please:

@animal said in Resume Review Please:

@scottalanmiller said in Resume Review Please:

@obsolesce said in Resume Review Please:

@animal

When you leave out unrelated jobs to a position you apply for, the potential employer will notice those gaps. What does that tell them?

This is what I wonder... there is definitely a time to include and definitely a time to exclude. Avoiding gaps is often good, at least back to a certain point. And I like having a "starting point" on there, that shows what that "first job" is. For me this is an extra big deal because my starting job was long ago (1989), a very serious one (solo software engineering intern), and for a great company (Eastman Kodak was #19 on Fortune 100 while I was there.) Lots of people say they've been in IT or whatever and their starting date is based off of "I fixed my family's computer" or working in retail or something.

When I say that I've been in IT or SE for 30 years (technically not for a few more months) lots of people immediately say "we don't count playing with computers at home" and so having a Fortune 19 engineering job on there is pretty important.

I leave off my factory engineering work from a little later, or my restaurant and hotel management experience, and other things from about the same era, those are too unrelated.

Yeah, it makes perfect sense to include jobs that you worked at for a prestigious place, but that can also be done in a cover letter. We never got into the whole cover letter question whether they're worth it or not, but my feeling is that a resume is a bumper sticker, the cover letter is your story.

I've never worked anywhere that even received cover letters. They are normally, in my experience, stripped. I don't know any manager who gets them, or would look at them if received. To me, as a hiring manager, getting a cover letter tells me..

The candidate doesn't value their own time and is spending time fruitlessly writing up a cover letter than has nearly zero chance of being seen and nearly zero chance of being read if seen. The candidate is desperate and willing to commit a lot of resources to a job before knowing if it is real at all (most posting by far are not), still open, or something that they'd even consider. It's way, way too early in the process to "care" at all about the potential job.

I don't do cover letters. It would just include the stuff at the top of my resume anyways, but in more words. I think it's pointless. I did, however, include a cover letter to explain my reason for applying to international jobs, so they don't just toss out my resume when they see I'm from a different country. That seems to have worked a couple times.

Yes, sometimes you have to point out that you KNOW where the job is.

Stupid that the opposite isn't true. Jobs from other regions reach out to me all the time and just ignore the fact that I'm not local.

@phlipelder said in Online Schools vs Traditional Universities:

But, boy oh boy, when I come across someone that shines, puts in the 115%, and makes it known that they are truly putting it in by the work they are doing I will go out of my way to compliment them.

Most of us that put in the 115% don't hear that kind of feedback very often.

In development, they are called 10xers. There is basically the productivity of a normal developer is 1x. And almost no one does 2x or 3x. But a small subset does 10x the work of a normal person. It's not a bell curve like you'd expect.

@phlipelder said in Interviewing Candidates for a Jr. IT Systems Administrator Position- Good Questions to Ask?:

@momurda said in Interviewing Candidates for a Jr. IT Systems Administrator Position- Good Questions to Ask?:

@phlipelder said in Interviewing Candidates for a Jr. IT Systems Administrator Position- Good Questions to Ask?:

In candidates watch out for this one that they may ask: "What PSA do you use?"

We avoid script jockeys at all costs.

What is PSA in this context?

Professional Services Automation software. It allows a support person to ask questions and follow a queue path through to an answer as one aspect.

I've never even seen one in real life.

@aaronstuder said in Resume Critique:

@scottalanmiller Thanks

NP

@nexzcore said in Home Lab Ideas from SAMIT Video:

@scottalanmiller

Hi Scott Am from India and starting a Startup offering Services Like Networking Support .Need some help on this.

Sure, feel free to direct message me.

one of the rental car companies, can't remember which, was Lexmark printers everywhere. Enterprise maybe?

@scottalanmiller said in Hiring infrastructure technician:

@kelly said in Hiring infrastructure technician:

@scottalanmiller said in Hiring infrastructure technician:

The Canadian government hires internationally? That's really surprising.

The posting is on a government site, but the hiring company is a private one: CSS, Inc.

OH!

That's funny. We have a national government run job site, but it's not actually very popular. I do know of one province that has a provincial government run job site though, and is it by far the standard way people search for jobs in that province.

@irj said in CISSP:

@kelly said in CISSP:

@irj said in CISSP:

@Kelly and @scottalanmiller Here is the outline for CISSP-ISSAP. What do you think I should brush up on?

https://www.isc2.org/-/media/ISC2/Certifications/Exam-Outlines/ISSAP-Exam-Outline.ashx

Without knowing more about your background and practical experience it is hard to say for certain. Logging is going to be key for most of the areas. With an eye towards Domain 3: Infrastructure Security in particular (since your questions in this thread have been about networking) I would say that you should make certain that you understand the concepts at a high level. Since this vendor agnostic and multiple choice it is likely (I've never taken a CISSP exam) that the questions are going to be aimed towards the right way to implement these things, but not the particulars of how to do it. You're going to need to understand the whys more than the hows for most of those things. Why does out of band configuration matter? What is access control segmentation, etc. If they're moving in response to the market there will probably be a number of questions on securing WiFi and VoIP.

If you're weak on PKI that could really trip you up as well. In general it doesn't sound terribly difficult so long as you have all of the basic concepts and can find your way around the various compliance laws.

So maybe I'll be OK. We covered all of that in CISSP. I'm sure this will dive in deeper, but I probably already have enough base knowledge. I'm going to order the book and read through it and see if I can understand everything

I'd think so. It would probably be worth your while to compare the stated purposes/jobs differences are for the two exams and focus your energy in those categories.

@scottalanmiller said in Anybody ever work at Microsoft? If so, how was it?:

I have a friend that started there recently and really liked it. He's more on the training side of things. But MS is well known for being a good employer. Way better than the companies famous to non-tech people for being good employers. MS is at the top end of the big software makers.

Tech companies pretty much have an arms race between each other for hiring and maintaining staff. It's not just in the pay. I have 15 weeks full pay maternity/paternity/adoption leave as an example of a benefit. I have unlimited vacation (I took ~7 weeks off last year including the entire month of June).

The biggest dig against Microsoft used to be they used stack ranking but I hear they stopped that.

In general with tech the expectation is you deliver results (high expectations) how and when you do it is really up to you.

I have seen weird/slow response with the video/hardware acceleration turned on. Try disabling it.

@wrx7m said in Where Does Intern Level Fall on the Scale?:

@scottalanmiller said in Where Does Intern Level Fall on the Scale?:

@wrx7m said in Where Does Intern Level Fall on the Scale?:

@scottalanmiller said in Where Does Intern Level Fall on the Scale?:

@wrcombs said in Where Does Intern Level Fall on the Scale?:

What would you consider to be an User? Office user? Power user?

i guess I would like to know more about the progression shown.

Users would be "anyone". Basic computer literacy. Ability to surf the web, send and receive emails, write office documents, play video games, install software (at home), etc.

Office Users would be a step up. They would know the same basic literacy, but also apply that to an office environment adding printers, domain logins, business applications, more "technical" style applications, etc.

Power Users would be a step up from that. Maybe knowing how to build computers. How to configure computers and simple network stuff. Using technical or power apps. Edging on being IT, but because it suits their end user needs rather than for the sake of being into IT itself.

An Intern should start where these leave off, because they are honestly looking into work in IT and you should research and study before being an intern. You shouldn't not know that you want to be an intern until you are used to that stuff.

According to this, over 90% of the people here, are just users. Most barely know anything about using MS Office or something that isn't related to their exact role. If they get stuck in their task sequence they have to start all the way over. Not because the systems prevent them from backtracking, but because they can't think of how to do it without going from step 1 - 10.

By "here", you mean your place of work?

Yes. LOL Sorry. Not on ML.

Lots of people at businesses are not what we'd normally consider computer users. Like obviously they are USING a computer, but not AS a computer. Like I have some users that only scan barcodes. It goes into a computer, but they are really just barcode reader operators. 🙂

@momurda said in HRU-Tech: credible?:

@brrabill Yes and Robocop will just shoot any malfunctioning equipment.

Robotic voice: Please step away from the server. You have three seconds to comply.

*whirring noises, sounds of guns cocking*