@sully93 I have a video from MangoCon 2016 where instead of talking about "what isn't IT" I talk about what it is. I have a recent SAMIT video on separating IT from SE. I'll do one soon on separating IT from Bench.

@crustachio said in The Most Needed Skills in IT:

I enjoyed this section of the article:

The second big skill needed in IT departments today is an understanding of business – both business in general and the business referring to the specific business of their own organization. As I said at the beginning of this article, IT is a business enabler. If IT professionals do not understand how IT relates to their business they will be poorly positioned to valuate IT needs and make recommendations in the context of the business. Everything that IT does it does for the business, not for technology and not for its own purposes.

With that in mind, what are some recommendations to improve one's business acumen from an IT perspective?

Hypothetical scenario: Someone has worked at a small IT shop for years and is a comfortable sysadmin, but is considering an IT administrative position at a much more "corporate" environment. Their role will involve a lot more interfacing with other departments or agencies, as well as driving "big picture" projects and purchasing decisions.

What resources could they use to improve their understanding of how to fit in in the business realm, and to develop the proper understanding of IT in such an environment? Are there any particularly good books on this subject?

This is an area where university classes can be really beneficial, if you have access to the right ones. Classes on communications, business, accounting, psychology and such can be huge. There are three main areas that I can think of that really matter:

Understanding people Understanding communications Understanding business

And you might add on the more specific "understanding THE business" as well.

The more that you have any of these, the easier things get. Even if you are a great communicator, if you don't understand the business and its needs at all, you won't have much to communicate.

I don't know of any specific books around this. Maybe things like Open University or something would have resources.

That's kind of what I meant. Either you should be watched over and not need to prove yourself... or you should be trusted and only do it when you want to.

@wirestyle22 I agree... and I like that better than the usual "you look like Anthony Michael Hall."

@antonit said:

I am referring to the following:

AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate
AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Professional
AWS Certified Developer - Associate
AWS Certified SysOps Administrator - Associate
AWS Certified DevOps Engineer - Professional

Which one of these would fit the bill better for my career?

Solutions Architect is not what you have done in the past and not where you are looking at being currently. So those are more for a change in career direction more than anything.

The Developer is not at all what you do, so that is out.

DevOps, likewise, would be a major career change. Not a bad one, but it's a very different role and would be a long term transition.

SysOps Admin would be the logical starting point as it leverages where you have been and where you have been thinking of going.

For all of them, Associate is the starting point, you would do that before considering the Professional level.

@ryanblahnik said:

If a lot of these seem to have more value from the material studied than from the cert itself, are there any others that stand out as covering important ground?

I found the process of getting my certs to be incredibly valuable. Probably on par with any of my top learning for my career. It was the late 1990s and I did every CompTIA exam at the time and the hardest, longest Microsoft track and a huge number of Brainbench certs all over just like two or three years. I never once attended a class, I bought loads of books, got an ancient Pentium server (yes the original 586 single proc box!) and about five old desktops mostly 486, one Pentium and two PPros and built everything from scratch and did every lab and tested every configuration. No virtualization back then. And MS trials were 90 days, not 180. And an NT4 install could take two days!! And 33Kb/s dial up Internet access at best.

Reading the books, cover to cover, doing every example as I went forced me to learn the material including the concepts. Doing the actual certs forced me to not skip over details that seemed unimportant. It made me work to completeness and many of the concepts that I would have ignored when I was young turned out to be very important and the people writing the books had a good idea of what I needed to know 🙂

Had a spare laptop laying around. Installing CentOS now. Also planning on installing NextCloud here soon as well. Creating a repository/shared calendar for the family with this machine.

Added ZFS page: https://mangolassi.it/topic/19669

@ryanblahnik said:

I wasn't sure whether you were referring to a lot of learning starting to move toward Googling and boards, or any change in what's available in books, or maybe if your experience just got to a point where that wasn't as necessary.

Oh no, I think that learning has gotten harder. Google is good for fixing things, it is not good for learning. There are many fewer IT books today and the lack of physical book stores has made learning about and sampling IT books much harder.

Very good points. Thanks all

@Dashrender said:

@scottalanmiller said:

@Dashrender said:

@scottalanmiller said:

@Dashrender said:

@scottalanmiller said:

@Dashrender said:

I think that whole, seniority doesn't have to work on days off, etc thing really depends on the position. For example, if you're the senior person on a platform, say O365 hosted Exchange - I'm willing to bet that guy gets called in on his vacation when there is a problem that reaches a certain point. Granted you hope that the people below you can handle 99.99% of things, but there is always that 0.01% that bites you.

I've been that guy, final level of support for a bank with tens of thousands of machines under me. Yes, I was on call 24x7, but I also got three hours days, able to drink on the job, could work from home any time I wanted, could work from any country in which we had an office, had a staff of people just to screen my calls and connect me only when needed, no normal workload except for the escalations. Once you get to that level, you get to pick how you take your benefits. Yeah, I was always on call, but the benefits more than made up for it.

I have to ask, what was your job in that position?

Work three hours a day? doing? when not in an escalation.

Yeah, in the office like three hours a day. I'd spread it out with time at the bar in the middle. Position was Linux Technology Chief. I didn't get assigned projects, but I had to always be available for escalation, 24x7x365. I was there for guidance, to authorize things that no one else could, to be a bypass for SVP approval (when the "staff" couldn't get their hands dirty) or to handle the technical issues that didn't get caught by the staff before me.

Nice - but really, how man of those types of jobs are there? a dozen? Even if we say there is one at every Fortune 1000, that's only 1000 of those jobs, so they are pretty impractical to aspire to.
Sure, everyone wants to be President some day (ok not really, but you get my point), it's just not a realistic goal for 99.9999%.

Why does it matter how many there are of that kind? The point isn't that I had some special job, the point is that as you get more senior, the jobs generally get better and better. Think about it, who has the worst jobs, the entry level people. If they had better jobs than the people above them, they would refuse to take promotions. Each level of seniority has to bring enough benefits for people to want to do it. It's a gradual scale. Keep moving up, it keeps getting better (on average.)

I haven't seen this be the case. I suppose if I take helpdesk out of the equation, then maybe I see it.

You start as an IT Admin in a medium + sized company and move up to Admin II, Admin III, from there you either change to engineering or management generally.

I'm unclear how you are saying that this does not support what I said. You are saying it as if you feel it disputes what I said, but it sounds to me like it agrees. So there is some disconnect between us here.