Network Enginer

[Draige]

im looking at getting my B.S. in information tech. was thinking about either network enginer or information security technol. anyone here in that field that might give me some advice?

[Valentine]

Yeah....don't waste your time.

Unless you enjoy whiney people and office work, that is...

[Draige]

whats the money like and what kinda stuff do you?

[The Crazy Animal]

Warning Rant.....

Money can be good but you have to put up with people that think that their problems are the only thing that matters and they don't care how many other problems you have to fix.

Its fun for a while but the problems after a while begin to be repetitive and quickly begin to get boring. By all means its not an exciting job to be in. Some days you might have a stack of 50 problems to check over a large office building and not have time for lunch. Now if your lucky you can spend the low problem days picking out the lint from a mouse and surf the web but to many of those days and you might kiss your job good bye.

You will tend to have the oldest computer in the building because they will claim that they don't have it in the budget to get you a new one. While that may have been true when they bought the servers it wasn't true when your boss decided he need to buy himself 10 new dual xeon ibm servers to work on a database that never seems to be finished but is rumored to be linked to every dataset that the buisness office uses.

A large amount of the problems will be due to people getting viruses and spy-ware on their computers. A larger percent of the problems will also be due to people doing things that you tell them not to do. Stuff like don't open attachments from people you don't know or look at porn site while in the office.

The most dangerous problems will be due to people not getting their OS updates. Their general reply will be I'm to busy to do it while you watch them play solitaire on the computer. Now you can try to get to their computer at lunch time but normally they have left 4 or 5 unsaved documents open and will at some point be calling you to find them because their computer crashed and they didn't save a copy. All this will happen while the next big worm is spreading around.

The most frequent problems will be due to driver errors. They will call you and tell you the computer crashed but they didn't read any of the error messages so they can't tell you what went wrong. You can tell them 100 times that you need to know what the error messages say but they will never write them down. They will also call and tell you it crashed and hang up with out giving you their office number and then get mad when you don't come to fix the problem.

If the network goes down for 10 minutes everyone will call you every 5 minutes saying they can't get their mail. when you tell them the network is down they don't get it. 10 minutes later they will call you back and say they can't get to a web page. Now if your lucky you will have found out about this first and can inform them they can't surf the web at the moment or get mail or check their networked files. Now as this is all happening and your trying to fix the problem they will continue to call in until word gets around the office.

You will at least get one person that hits the power switch on a power strip and then calls you because they can't turn their computer on.

Now by far the most annoying problem will be if you have have a IT department account on each computer in the building. At some point that account will get hacked into and someone will have to go from each computer to change the password. If your lucky it won't be a 16 digit alpha-numeric strong password that can't be a found in a dictionary.

Most of them will call you if a paper jam happens in their printer.

Now from the networking side just remember you'll be on 24/7 tech support it doesn't matter if its 2am if the company is international and the CEO happens to be on a trip to china they will call you if they can't get a file they need. If you are luck to live near your job then you might not have to drive far to reboot the server...

If you are fortunate enough to work in a university you will at some point encounter the sobbing grad who's hard drive died and lost their 500 page thesis paper that they never backed up and worked for the last 4 years on.

If you are very unluckly you will end up with a boss that knows to little and likes to tweak settings in the server.. Then when everyone can't get to their files you get to fix the single setting in each network account.

When something goes wrong and a office worker looses an important file they will blame you if you can't recover the file. It doesn't matter if the file was never saved to begin with.. Just as long as they can pass the blame onto someone other than themselves.

I could go on but you probably get the idea...

[Valentine]

Oh my god I just had flashbacks....no...make the bad man stop...

Don't forget that when you are on vacation (and you have sent half a dozen memos, a company-wide email AND voicemail, and set your Auto-reply to state that you are indeed out of the office for the next week and a half), you will return to not only 200 voicemails from people freaking that they couldn't access their email for 30 seconds (and then leaving another message that "oh, it's better now...I fixed it"), but you will also have at least as many emails, of which 10% will be full-on conversations with your AUTO-REPLY...everything from "Oh I forgot you were on vacation! I hope you're having fun!" to "How can I reach you? I need [insert something most definitely not life-threatening] in the next 2 hours, and I don't have long distance so you'll have to call me."

...and people wonder why I drink....still....two years out of that hell hole.

You know what, just watch Office Space. It explains it all.

[DeathCow]

Office space.lolzorz

[Draige]

i own that movie lol.

[The Crazy Animal]

well how would you feel about being stuck in that movie...

[Valentine]

...without the sex with Jennifer Aniston, I might add.

There are no O-faces in IT.

[Draige]

i just want to work in a computer field that will give me a good living that i might enjoy doing.

[Vitoc]

TCA sounds like he's got some pent up agression.? ;)

I can tell you a bit about a programmer's life.? In my experience, the better the programmer you are, the more shit work you are handed to work on because you're probably the only one in the company capable of doing it in any reasonable amount of time.? You get handed half-assed databases designed by incompetent programmers who never bothered to learn about data integrity.? You're handed an even more half-assed front-end application thrown together by several incompetent web programmers using a variety of improper coding techniques and told to "fix it."? It can never throw a single error, no matter what bonehead things people do, oh and by the way it was due yesterday.? While you're working on fixing other people's mistakes, those same people are out designing more screwed up databases and creating more front end code that you will undoubtedly be working on later.? By the way, there's a name for these people: lead developers.?

You don't want to lose your job so you do your very best to make things work properly with the belief that your talents and hard work will be recognized.? After months of working on a complex web project, you hear the news that it launched.? Guess who's getting the credit??
1.? The people that designed the database improperly in the first place.
2.? The people who created jacked up web pages that were half-finished and then realized they were too incompetent to finish it so they handed it off to "lower" level programmers.
3.? The project managers who read E-mails and handle calls from clients, and then give you a cryptic (read: wrong) explanation of what the client wanted along with their own twists.

Think you'll get any credit for developing that elegant solution to a problem after doing research for hours on your own time?? The sad thing is, the people who are responsible for signing your paychecks will probably never see the code you write, and even if they did see it they wouldn't know the difference elegant code and the crap that is produced by everyone else.

How could I have forgotten the IT department?? No matter what the problem is, even if the server is physically shut down sitting in front of them, it's undoubtedly a "code issue" and not their problem.? Programmers have to learn 90% of what IT knows just to get their applications up and running, but you politely ask IT to work with you to develop a coding solution that works and they again tell you, it's not their job.? If a useful program came out 2 or 3 years ago, IT might have gotten around to learning the basics so you might just be lucky enough to be able to use it, but when new programs come out (VS 2005 or SQL Server 2005 for instance), don't expect to be able to use them until three months before they're obsolete.? I can honestly say, the hardware and software I'm using here at my house is far superior to what I use at work... and I work at a "development" shop.

I could go on as well, but I believe that should suffice in giving you a glimpse into the wonderful world of web programming through my eyes. ;)

[Draige]

and then you come home and code a new program that only like a couple hundred people will know that you programed. but i will be one of those few hundred that appreciate it. Thanks for the feed back guys.

[DeathCow]

:p

If it means anything to anyone I actually got around to inputing about 400 rooms ish.  so I'm up to 1400 the ive made for this game...and some 20,000 that i made for another game that i'm hoping to be able to use.

[The Crazy Animal]

Don't forget the incompetence of end-users that try to push 15gb of data over a 100mb/sec line and then complain that they can't surf the web while doing it.

Seriously, though I work in networking and IT for 5 years and it is an ungodly job to do. I worked for another 2 years doing multimedia/graphic design and directing and coding educational DVDs and interactive admissions CDs and I'll tell you there isn't any glory in that either. As soon as you have a hit its not you that gets the credit but the people above you that handed you the project.

If you want to work in computers and enjoy it, get a degree in business and start your own company because the only people that get to have fun working with computers are the people paying the bills. Freelancing pays better anyway when I was doing network installs, I made around $50-75/hr and that?s after its been split with the other people I was working with.

[scratacorn]

hahahaa god this brings back memories. I went to school for networking, ending up running the school network because they're all retards. school full of students with laptops and don't know anything. what a waste of 25k after 2 years i never wanted to work with people like that so i just stayed being a mechanic, at least i don't have to deal with people.
good times