Limited challenges in IT 6

[screwloose]

I have been in IT for about 10 years. For the past 5 years I have been strictly a Unix Sys Admin for a Fortune 400 company and for a gov’t contractor.

My first 5 years in IT was varied working as a general IT specialist and doing anything from networking to programming to PC repair to installing phone equipment and a voice mail system to operations.

Now all I do is Unix. For 5 years. Nothing else. Others do networking and everything is departmentalized.

I am not sure if I would be happier in IT if I was doing more like my first job where I was always busy and had my hands in everything, or if I am just tired of 10 years of IT in general.

I think about changing careers which would probably require going back to school.

One thing that doesn’t help in my current job is some big-headed, ego-inflated, ass that I have to work with. If you bring something up she has no clue about, her standard reply is, “Exactly, that is just what I was going to say.” A perfect example is something I brought up to my boss who said we would discuss it in the weekly meeting (it was about users home directories), and then miss ego, in a conference call brings it up to the big bosses (users home directory issue) and makes it sound as if she thought about it. She tried to get into a MBA program and couldn’t make it so enrolled to an online school, and then after one semester quit to announce that she was now in law school. Though she again tried to get into a real law school, she couldn’t make it, so now she is doing the online law school thing. Every time you hear her say, “well according to tort law” because she read something, or rather heard it, she doesn’t read she does her studying for her online schooling via books-on-tape . I have worked with difficult people before but she takes the cake. A few months ago she wanted to go to HR to complain about our boss. Now he treats her like a golden girl, and she is the most two-faced, untrustworthy person I have ever met. She literally calls her boss “an idiot” and has made other sarcastic remarks. I wouldn’t – and don’t – trust her any farther than I could throw a tank. He constantly fuels her big head, too. He said he “promoted” her. To what I have no idea, because as far as I am aware there is no position to be moved up into. There is a project going on and she may be the “Unix Lead” but she has no authority but believes she does. But the word “promotion” bothers me because there was never any position before to move into. But this has definitely gone to her big head and increased the size threefold!! You constantly hear her exhale a deep breath – three times a minute! Like she is so overwhelmed.

I either need to get completely out of IT and into something else, but would not like a large pay cut that would come with it. Though if I was happier then it probably would be worth it. But then it would probably require going back to school, and I am not sure I want to do that. Although a class or two a semester would be okay, but not a full-time student again. I have a Master’s in education and I like different things, but I also like challenges and like changes. Unlike what I have been doing for 5 years.
Because it does and would continue giving me the best pay and wouldn’t require the deep cut that a new career would, what area of IT would offer more challenges are variety than being a Unix admin?

Thanks.

 

[DoubleD]

I think the first question you need to ask yourself is, "Do I enjoy being a Unix Sys Admin and what career options do I have on this track?". Take an assessment of where you're at and where you want to be 5 years from now.
You must separate the poor work environment issue from the type of work you want to be doing. Do you enjoy administering Unix, but your current work environment has soiled that? Maybe you need a new job, or maybe you just need a new company. (maybe both)

Pain is stress leaving the body.

DoubleD

 

[screwloose]

What is the next step for a Unix Sys Admin?

 

[jtb]

screwloose:

Think of "The Matrix". There is no spoon. The scewdriver is within your reach if you can but visualize it and believe...

Okay. You've got a handle on where you are. That's difficult for some. You're 1/3 of the way along your new journey.

Think about these questions as rhetorical, as in don't answer out loud.

1. Where do you want to be when you retire? What job do you want to be doing? (for the purposes of illustration, let's assume your retire date is 20 years from now.)

2. Having developed a rough idea of where you want to be in 20 years, now draw out a high level plan of where you will need to be 10 years from now, and 5, 4, 3, 2, 1...

3. Revise and extend your plans to make them fit reality. For example, look to your hobbies, the people you like to associate with, your favorite vacation spots, etc... what do you actually want to be doing?

4. Buy and read "What Color Is Your Parachute?" and do all of the silly little exercises. No, really. I'm serious. It will help...

5. Revise and extend your plans again to make them fit reality. What do you actually want to be doing next year?

6. Review your plans with a spouse, parent, other trusted adult of known wisdom (employed/retired, not heavily in debt, not given to strong drink, etc.)--note that I said "review"... it's your life, your choice...

7. Remember life is not all about money... TV just makes us feel that way...

JTB
Have Certs, Will Travel
"A knight without armour in a [cyber] land."

 

[blutekhnd]

You have a master's degree in education? Have you thought about teaching? I know the pay may not be what you are used to but many colleges would love to have you teach in the IT department.

 

[screwloose]

Yes, I actually have thought about teaching. But not sure of the openings. Actually, outside of IT there doesn’t seem to be anything that interests me as much as teaching. I was a graduate teaching assistant and was an adjunct instructor teaching IS classes.

Teaching would keep me in the field of IT so the constant learning would still be there and there would be new challenges and variety having a different classroom each semester.

Of all the classes I had in undergrad and grad school, my graduate education program was the most interesting and something I truly loved and really cared about.

 

[Terpsfan]

It sounds to me you are more fed up with the people you are dealing with at work than the actual job. It also sounds like you need a challenge. I have run across such individuals in the workplace. Fortunately I never had to work directly with them. I once came across a very arrogant Unix administrator who felt she knew it all. She sounds like the one you are dealing with. She said she only referenced computer books to "prove she was right". She was "Miss Know it All". Apparently she had to be proven right on many occasions because I noticed she had dozens of books.

More often than not most of the people with this attitude are incompetent to begin with. Only a moron would think that they know it all. Dealing with people like that on a daily basis can make anyone start to dislike their career no matter what you were doing. If you were in a different environment, you may begin to recapture how much you used to enjoy it. It also sounds like they are boxing you in career wise. Another environment may give you the freedom to do a variety of tasks.

Perhaps a change of venue would do. Continue as a Unix admin somewhere else. Are there other areas of computers that you enjoy or fascinated with, such as web designing or database administration?

 

[GlenJohnson]

I have a freind who went to college and got into programming. The second time his job was outsourced to India, he gave up programming and got into teaching. Definitely something to think about.

Good luck.

Glen A. Johnson
If you're from Northern Illinois/Southern Wisconsin feel free to join the Tek-Tips in Chicago, Illinois Forum.

TTinChicago
Johnson Computers

 

[screwloose]

She really does top everything I have ever seen. In my last job there was one difficult person to work with, but even he was reasonable, and not a complete control freak.

There are consultants in doing some server setups for a new environment, and a couple of weeks ago I noticed some of the internal SCSI drives were in an inconsistent state so I told them and sent an email to my manager and coworkers. Her reply was, “I was already looking at that and mentioned it to them (consultants) and they said you had already told them.” So I asked the consultant if she happened to mention the disks to them and he said, “no.” But she let EVERYONE know that she was on top of it and was already working on the problem. She does this EVERY time. Or she will say something to which someone will correct and she says, “Exactly, that is what I meant…”

In one meeting there was a discussion of inet services and what should be turned off. It was recommended to turn off echo. To which she replied, “no, the DBA’s use that in all of their scripts.” I so wanted to make her look the fool she is, but I didn’t. Her DBA shell scripts use the echo shell command that writes to standard out, not the ICMP echo broadcast.

She always tries to know what she is talking about, too. And I have corrected her before to which she says, “whatever.” The first thing she does is look up the correct answer so she can prove me wrong – or rather, her right – and she ends up relenting that I was right.

Another example was when she was trying to explain how to create new filesystems in Solaris and I mentioned to use the –N with newfs and save the file so you know where the superblocks are. She said, “yeah, I have used the –N before but you don’t have to.” I replied, “no, you don’t have to use it but then you have a list to correct from if you have to.” A little while later an email goes out to everyone, “the newfs –N command does not (not was italicized) create filesystems.” Uh, yeah, and that wasn’t what I said either. Later her document for creating filesystems has the –N option listed.

Oh, and I found out today the guy who was doing the SAN management for the last 4 years no longer has those duties. The manager gave that job to wonder woman, too, who wanted it.

Talk about unbearable and ridiculous.

And I do enjoy being a Unix admin and like the Web side, too (Apache, WebSphere, etc.)

 

[SQLSister]

screwloose will it make you feel better to know our project manager has no programming experience (She even had to ask what language we were programming in two years into the project) and was a secretary 3 years ago. She got the job by the simple expedient fo sleeping withthe CEO. Try disagreeing with someone like that! We lose every time no matter how right we are.

Questions about posting. See faq183-874

 

[Tarwn]

Screwloose, it's a good thing I am not in your position, I used to have a bad attitude when I was younger (heh, who didn't). Now it only shows up when I run into my worst pet peeves. Of course my worst work pet peeve is incompetence (especially where due to self-induced ignoranced), so I would probably have already sat down with HR, explained exactly what was going on (with documentation of the idiocy) as well as explain exactly why their IT infrastsructure was going fail in 2 months. Why 2 months they ask? Because I have worked here for some time and I am willing to give them a month to try and turn things around, at that point I will give my notice and start considering which offers to accept from the last several I received. Implying of course that these were all recent and I get better offers all the time, but stay because I love the company and so on and so forth. And o course the IT infrastructure wouldn't necessaraly fail right away, you would hae to give er a few weeks on her own before she drastically destroyed something, blaming it of course either on me (after I'm gone) or whoever the next victim is, like perhaps the HR department for accessingtheir email to often or whatever other nonsense she can come up with to justify her own perfection and inability to make an error.

Not that I would expect HR to do their jobs, in my experience they are generally pretty clueless about the difference between being able to throw around enough terms to confuse someone and actually doing the job, so big-head would probably get another raise/promotion/whatever and I would be gone.

Sorry, like I said, this is a pet peeve of mine, gets me worked up everytime...I'll be thinking about this the rest of the day now

[sub]01000111 01101111 01110100 00100000 01000011 01101111 01100110 01100110 01100101 01100101 00111111[/sub]
The never-completed website:

http://www.tiernok.com/

 

[screwloose]

I guess the manager created a new position for her. My other coworker told me that today and asked if I was shown it. Me: “shown what?” Coworker: “the new job descriptions.” Me: “never heard anything about it.”

Seems the manager just created this out of thin air without telling anyone or even showing descriptions to everyone.

My comment to my coworker (the displaced SAN manager) was, “I have never worked anyplace quite like this. This is ridiculous, nothing was ever posted, nothing ever said. It just materializes. Amazing.”

And yet again this morning I have heard nothing but, “sighhhh,” “sighhhhh,” “sighhhh,” all morning. If I hear one more exhale from her I think I am going to lose it .
She has no qualifications for it, other than a brown nose. Someone who claims a few months ago she want to be a CPA and can’t get into a genuine MBA program because she didn’t pass the entrance qualifications, so begins an online MBA program. Then after that quarter (or whatever they use in an online program) is over, she announces one day to everyone, “I am now in law school!” She said before she always wanted to go to law school but couldn’t get in (imagine that). So she found – online law school – and makes it known to everyone that she is in “law school.” Yet, she neglects to inform them that it is online. And she said last week she studies for “law school” by “books-on-tape” . Another “sighhh.” Then she makes rude, snide, mean comments about her boss – who treats her like a prima donna – and she acts like his best buddy.

Manager took us to lunch last week and she started spouting something, to which the manager said, “I thought you said…” And her (common) reply, “Yeah, but then….” Always has a “bigger and better” rebuttal if someone calls her on something she previously said.

A while back she claimed her husband hit a deer and totaled his car. A week later she claimed that SHE hit the deer and totaled her car, but he hit one too, but didn’t have much damage. And they hit deer frequently but never call the Sheriff to investigate or file a report; they just turn it into the insurance company who just pay!

Yep, sounds qualified to me. Seems to be an intellectual giant! Future leader in the making (me laughing hard).

 

[GlenJohnson]

[highlight red]How long before she becomes president of the company?[/highlight] I know this has to be hard for you to deal with, but it's starting to be some really good reading. (Keep in mind, you have a job. My past albitrose boss knew only Novell 4.0 in a W2K network, and my job was eliminated by him, leaving only him to deal with 250+ clients, not to mention pc's running equipment and such.) I'm on the verge of getting back into Nursing, (Thought I had already gotten my CNA, but found out I have one more test mid July before I have it,) so for me it's onward and upward. Hang in there, and if worse comes to worse, try a voodoo doll.


Glen A. Johnson
If you're from Northern Illinois/Southern Wisconsin feel free to join the Tek-Tips in Chicago, Illinois Forum.

TTinChicago
Johnson Computers

 

[ecobb]

You could just keep a small tape recorder in your pocket...let you boss find out what she really thinks of him...

Hope This Helps!

Ecobb

"My work is a game, a very serious game." - M.C. Escher

 

[screwloose]

One of the best from golden girl is this.

In the last few months of 2003 she told everyone that her husband was quitting his professional job to become the manager of a country store. He would be making about $1500/mo. before taxes. Well, after a month or so she told everyone that he hated the job because nobody would listen to him and would do whatever they wanted. So he wanted to go back to his old job but couldn’t because he signed a 6 month contract and would have to pay the owner thousands of dollars if he broke it. So after some months she said he was back to his old job. I said he was lucky there was an opening since he had been gone for so long. Well… wouldn’t it be the luck that just when he wanted to return, someone had just left!

And who is going to sign a contract for a job? Much less for a small store in BFE?

And last night as I was preparing to leave I overheard her tell a couple of people, “I hate politics, I am no good at politics and don’t want anything to do with it. All I want is to come in and do my job.” Yeah!! Right!!

And it appears now she is able to set her own hours.

 

[GlenJohnson]

All I want is to come in and do my job

[highlight red]and everybody elses it seems.[/highlight]

Glen A. Johnson
If you're from Northern Illinois/Southern Wisconsin feel free to join the Tek-Tips in Chicago, Illinois Forum.

TTinChicago
Johnson Computers

 

[screwloose]

Well, today I noticed that EMC and Oracle have different values for semaphore settings and told everyone of the problem.

Glamour girl just sent an email letting everyone know that an onsite consultant (whom I asked first about the difference) found the EMC values were conflicting with Oracle and that she looked up the values that EMC set and what Oracle needs and verified they are wrong.

I was also in the act of sending an email to inform all parties involved but lo-and-behold I was beat to it. I feel like most days I am going 10 rounds with Mike Tyson .

 

[GlenJohnson]

I feel like most days I am going 10 rounds with Mike Tyson

What have you got against Tyson?

Glen A. Johnson
If you're from Northern Illinois/Southern Wisconsin feel free to join the Tek-Tips in Chicago, Illinois Forum.

TTinChicago
Johnson Computers

 

[ecobb]

Next time, send the email out before you tell anyone about it. Or, at least already have the email written before you say anything. Don't give her the chance to beat you to it.



Hope This Helps!

Ecobb

"My work is a game, a very serious game." - M.C. Escher

 

[screwloose]

And yesterday afternoon I told her if you see warning XXX in /var/adm/messages, I was given this reply: "I never look in /var/adm I always look in /usr/adm."

It is a link! She never looks at anything, but she says she was already looking into it. Imagine that when she doesn't even know what she is looking at.

Every day! And the manager even sent an email yesterday afternoon after her "beat-me-to-the-punch" email, that said that she and he decided that "this" has to be consistent. I was the one who said that to both of them. Yet, he gives her all this praise!

I don't want the pats on the back and glory, but I don't want her getting all this praise and everyone thinking that she is so wonderful and grand when she actually doesn't do it.