What “new” IT Professions are not told.

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What “new” IT Professions are not told.

Companies with serious IT departments want people with anywhere from 3 to 5 or more base level certifications. CompTIA A+, Network +, Security +, Server +, PMP or IT Project +, and then some OS level certifications for the desktops and/or servers you will have to maintain. Usually CCNA to.( For an entry level position.) That’s what they want you to believe. That It’s an entry level position. Maybe it is, but it still brutal and hard to get. Like an entry level doctor. One serious mistake can cost you your career. You do not have to make that mistake, someone else can, and blame you. You still lose your career.

This is just the basic entry level certifications you will eventually need to get just to get a decent job. You can look at and download pdf versions of the various CompTIA certification objectives here. Not that the person that interviews you will care.

certification.comptia.org/training/exam-objective

They want to pretend it’s not hard to get good marks on these tests. Just passing means you are pretty good. They want to pretend that what you do is easy and not super important. Maybe what you do is easy to you. So is surgery to a really good doctor. You keep critical infrastructure up and running. You will most likely be on call without pay 24 hours a day. (no social life.) You will not be paid like a person who keeps critical infrastructure running like other engineers get paid. They build something, and then charge absolutely huge amounts of money for the maintenance and upkeep of that infrastructure. They can take weeks to months or ever years to fix some problems, you fix your infrasture quickly when possible or the company you work for might go out of business.

As you know CompTIA A + has 2 tests. The 220-901 exam objectives list from CompTIA that you have to learn is 25 pages long. The 220-902 list is 26 pages long. Network + N10-005 is 25 pages long. Security + SY0-401 is 24 pages long. Server + SK0-003 is 16 pages long. Project + PK0-003 is 9 pages long. Cloud + CV0-001 is 19 pages long. Then there’s Cisco, Microsoft, maybe Apple too and almost certainly database servers and email and messaging too eventually. Or you will be replaced in most companies with an administrator and not an engineer and some contractor to do those other services.

They will probably keep up and running for years too afterwards without any serious problems since you have fixed so many problems for them, and increased profits for them so much, probably in the million to the 10s of millions of dollars. But you will not get any of that money really; someone else will, even if you are a contractor, and get 50 times what that IT person gets or got. That’s millions to 10 of millions per a year in extra profits because of you.

Seen this documentary on TV before and I know some sales people. They were making commercials for TV to sell some bobble on TV. Sales when up by about 4 percent instead to the usual 2 or so percent or whatever. This was a one-time increase in sales for a short period of time. They got to stay at the best hotels, drink the best wine and eat caviar and fly around in Lear jets. Didn’t even really cut into their bonus they got, that’s the impression I got from that documentary.

You will be subject to verbal abuse, and sometimes extreme verbal abuse, especially from department managers, and high level managers. At least at first anyway. Eventually, everybody hates your guts, and takes out all their frustrations that they can get away with, on you. I believe it’s called “herding cats.”

In extremely stressful situation’s this will become very noticeable to you. Balling, screaming, remarks that can be taken multiple ways, out and out called stupid, as you are leaving, because you can’t fix one trivial thing. It might not even be fixable; it needs a patch that does not exist. That doesn’t matter, and they do not care, they just want to complain about you. You see, you have fixed the company up, and things are must better now for the company. That means no more overtime for most employees. That means, maybe less than a full-time job for them, and they hate your guts. Management, after you fix thing up for them, might ever encourage them to hate your guts (through not stopping the abuse) to defect, who’ s really at fault for employees loosing there overtime. (It was a management/owner decision).

All the employees really have to do is more work, like you do, and learn new things, like you do. But they don’t want to, so they have less work to do now. Maybe management, even keeps them full time, for unexpected problems, like delivery problems via plane, or train, or truck, or whatever, to still meet deadlines. Now they have free time to gossip, and they hate you guts still. Even though you told management to do this to meet and keep deadlines. After your boss (the owner) finishes screaming at you, you explain to him you are just trying to make sure deadlines are meet so everyone get paid, and it’s just a suggestion.

When you first start working as a IT professional, you are expected to work for low pay and “show a good work ethic” let’s call it, and put in lots of hours, including hours at home studying like mad to get these certifications. Stack those books you are required to learn and know and have hands on experience with, and study, on top of each other, and see how many feet high that stack is. Each page new material for the most part. Your social life, eventually, will be you hand. If you have a family or get one eventually, it’s out the door for you.

You will most likely be required to report on employees who do things like install illegal software or other things that violate company policy in the IT department. You will quickly learn what will happen is, they will tell you, to deal with that person, and tell you, to tell that person, to stop. That person just does it again and again, because there is no real punishment for them, because you do not have the power or authority to fire them, or even discipline them. That company gets sued or threatened to get sued by another company, it will be your fault, and they get rid of you.

What is happening is human resources and management, who have received the proper training to deal with this situation, and have access to legal advice, want you to deal with this situation. That way, if the company gets sued, or is threated to be sued, they get to blame you (patsy). They might, and probably will, want you to fix some type or electrical work, that an electrician is supposed to only do. The same thing again, if someone gets hurt or killed, with that power outlet for example, you get to get sued and probably go to prison or jail.

No increase in insurance rates or jail time for that company and the people who forced you to do that. What about if you fix a broken wire on a power switch on a desktop computer, and a year from now that person gets hurt because someone else, an unskilled employee, was forced to fix that power outlet. You may be called into court still by that person’s lawyer or maybe the company’s lawyer(s) to deflect blame to you, if the company is charged. Your name is mud now regardless and your career is over. Would you take the chance and hire someone so “stupid” as to get someone killed maybe after you do a name search on a search engine about them? (court trial)

Anyway, here is a list of a certification roadmap for what supposed branch of IT you will need to get to be employable somewhere else, from your current employer. certification.comptia.org/why-certify/roadmap Remember, this is just the “current” industry standard certifications you need, not the future ones. You need to always keep getting new certifications too, and doing continuing education or you lose your certifications in many cases. Just like you never had them. One more company or companies taking advantage of you, to keep the money rolling in.

Remember, many employers want you to have university education to work for them also.(why not? That person is in debt.) You always have to keep learning and doing the latest thing too. Eventually the company you work for, if they even both to offer you any training what so ever, will stop offering to pay for that education/training. Especially certification level training. You are really good, and hard to replace, especially in little communities and isolated communities, no matter how big those places are.

Nobody wants to move to the middle or nowhere if you’re smart or have a choice. If you are a good worker, they do not want you to leave, and a ruthless business person (all of them) will make it as difficult as possible for you to leave. For example, by not paying you what you are worth, and cutting back your hours, when you start to get certifications, you are trapped there. All they got to do is unofficially give you a bad reference, and no one will hire you, and they will trash your reputation and pretend they are doing you a favor, by keep you on, when other business people ask them, why he/she is still working there then? At first anyway. It’s the good old boys club in these places, and they will all fall in line back to back, not to keep just you, but all hard working people down and dependent on them.

Remember all of Canada, because of the distances involved is “in the middle of nowhere.” Once other people start joining in on the fun of verbally abusing you, because the company you work for encourages other people to, to “teach you a lesson” for wanting to be treated like a human being, and then it gets out of control. because these places are full of drunks and drug users. It becomes a major scandal and the government(s) (all layers) don’t want people really knowing what places “in the middle of nowhere” are really like.

The government falls in line too, back to back too with you bosses, to pretend the things you see on TV are real, even though you kinda know it’s not. What you experience yourself or will, is common everywhere and not just around you (abuse.) By being a good hard worker you will get used up and throw away, if you make trouble they (everybody with a vested interest) will do their best to destroy you. Just one more homeless person with the crazy eyes, and the crazy hair, frozen to death on the streets, or a drug addict dead on the streets, who has learned not to trust people and wants to look “crazy” to keep people away from him or her. Not all but some, maybe one out of a 100 will be you, or a person like you, if you are a good worker. The government, does this to people, as needed, one at a time, all over the country. (police don’t care, ignore it, not you though, stand up get hammered down “psych ward”. Crazy people have no right’s really, there just crazy. All they got to do is say you are crazy or do thing to drive you crazy and pretend nothing is being done to you. Especially if you are alone and away from family, as many IT professional are forced to move and are generally hated.

If you think I am lying about Canada, look at how communities are laid out. You cannot really go anywhere inside a community without a vehicle. Let alone cross the country. Also try to do anything without photo ID or money. Losing your ID and you have money is a nightmare in Canada. Hard working people never get paid well enough to get a vehicle also, especially women. Hard working people never have perfect resumes, so no government job for them, because they work and make mistakes and learn from their mistakes. Only people who do not work and blames other people for their mistakes have perfect resumes.

For example; an employee or manager may not have done a good enough job on a government contract proposal, and so, says they have placed the proposal work (data) of their proposal on the network to get it backed up. That night, before it’s backed up, because they have access to the IT department, and it has other material, he or she accesses, they may purposely crash the backup server, or the backup software on that server and maybe crash other servers too. They delete all kinds of files and folders off various drives/folders to save their career. All kinds of problems the next day, and anyway that person hates you guts, and you deserve it, as far as they are concerned. These are the only backups you got, hard drive backup on a actual backup server because there’s too must dust for tape drive backups and management doesn’t want to spend 40 to 50 thousand dollars doing all the work necessary to use smaller tape backup drives that are also slower too. Millions (lots) of dollars of work and hundreds of thousands of man hours of work needs backing up, and they do not care. Not my problem and you tell them still. Too busy screaming at you to listen to you or to let you speak.

That person gets to keep their perfect resume, gets more overtime, make you look like you are not doing your job, and maybe his wife or uncle gets that contract instead now. You have logs, but what’s the point, people don’t even log out when they leave for lunch for example, and no one gets in trouble anyway, except for you, because they want you gone anyway, for wanting to be treated like a human being. Now you have to listen to people including managing/owners have discussion in front of you, when you are called out, to fix some problem, about what to do about you, since you’re a problem.

George Albert Collins

A must be human rights activist. When you point out the human rights abuses of your own country, you realize, you are treated like the human rights activists in other countries are. Like in Asian countries for example. Whatever your government can get away with, is done to people, on a per-a-person basis. Prove me wrong, hope I am wrong. By reading this you are a threat to your government now, and will be treated like one. They are patient, and cruel, and heartless. They just pretend not to be I public and on TV. How they treat homeless people, is how they will treat you, because they can get away with treating one person like a mad dog, they will make you a mad dog, and treat you like one, if they can. Ever try to get help from you government. That’s how they really are at best. They are your government to you and the only people other than police you get to deal with. Remember red tape is make work for them and they want lots of work.

One person, a thousand people, reading this, and it’s all your problems, millions of people reading this, and being told about this, and it’s the government’s problems. Knowledge is power, and letting people know the truth, well it’s all you got and it’s a lot. Keep your head bowed, and say nothing, and maybe nothing will happen to you, like getting a good job or having a good life.

 

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Maybe you should look for a new job dude.

 

This was an amusing read, when you say "your social life will be you(r?) hand" are you suggesting what I think you're suggesting? Dunno why but lately all I've heard is people complaining about their IT jobs.. I won't lie and say you're wrong as I've no experience of the industry and tbh what you are saying is pretty much what others have said.

 

"herding cats" is related to trying to get a team of software developers to agree and work as a team, generally because they are intelligent, and self opinionated its a hard thing to do. Its not an excuse for bullying.

Comptia certifications are introductory and are not so hard to get, I averaged 1-2 weeks for each of mine. Outside the US, you can probably have a perfectly decent career without them.

I don't like much about US government and towns, but then I don't live there, simple solution, I'd have thought Canada was better but not spent long enough there to comment. If you live in the US / Canada you must have a car, its not an option, you should price this into your job negotiation from the start. There are a few major cities with mass transport that are the exception.

There are certainly downsides to IT and you seem to have hit most of them, the trick is if you are good enough to find a way to make it work for you.

Yeah I'd look for a new job.

 

...Oh, that was a serious post from a genuine poster?

Where's the TL;DR summary? "Life is hard. You have to work hard, and sometimes others will still get ahead of your hard work"

 

In all seriousness though, there will be good and bad places to work in any industry. I love my job and the company I work for and get along very well with all of my colleagues. I've not once been verbally abused or made a scapegoat. I'm not forced into doing certs. I choose to do them because I enjoy learning and want to build on my knowledge and increase my earning potential. This problem isn't IT specific. It's company specific. You need to find a new job whether it's IT based or not.

 

Sounds like a rant....

 

live and learn.

 

It's OK to have all kinds of self denial or "I don't want to think or deal with this right now" type attitude. Eventually you will have to deal with reality becauae it will deal with you. It's quite the shock I know. Took me a long to to accept how things really are. Well as I believe anyway. I hope your home and country is better. It's older and been through more.

 

Yeah but realistically your experience seems to be of one company, you've obviously not worked for them all..

 

Watched this one episode on TV about gold mining here in Canada I think or Alaska. Just one of many shows like this here. There was this old man who knew how to fix a lot of thier heavy equipment among other things. All kinds of worker safety regulations arebeing broken on that and other similar TV shows all the time. So he's working on a piece on heavy equipment, to fix it. He's not wearing his safety helmet, because he has to crawl into some tight spot. Can't even be bothered to move it for him, to make it easier and safer to fix. He gets whipped across the head by a steel chain powered by that piece on heavy machinery. That blow would have layed me flat out, and I would have been on the ground screaming in pain, and curled up lie a ball, if I took a hit like that, if it did not kill me. They show him with his scalp torn open and bleeding. There is so much blood you can't see his scale "skin" torn open.

Management makes a big deal about his safety now and calls for a media-vac helicopter flight or some contract medical service. So then management talks about now, how he's with them getting checked out. Then later on during this episode they say he's basically OK. Then at the end of the episode they send him home in a boat instead of on the media-vac flight. That would have cost 10 of thousands of dollars and there insurance rates would have gone up for sure. They also say, just before he leaves, basically don't call us we will call you, and so sorry, shook his hand and said I see you later or something. That man talked to the camera person about what a nice person he is basically. BLA BLA BLA.

This old man should have been told by those medical specialists and his bosses to file for workmans comp. He might, and probably will, later on in life, suffer some type of brain problems, like a blood clot or something. Why wasn't he brought to a hospital and cat scanned and had a actual doctor look at him? Some half trained uncaring people told him he was OK. What do they really know. He might already be experiencing problems other than no more job and taking a long time to heal and pain and suffering. He might have some type of low grade infection and as soon as he get somewhat sick, his body can no longer fight the infection off.

He got hurt, and then he got dumped. Might be living off his life saving now, getting poorer and poorer. Eventually forced out into the cold, if he even owns a home. At his age why is he still working. He worked all his life and must still work. Instead of getting richer and richer, he has more and more taken from him, by all kinds of people, just taking advantage of him, and now he is all used up.

Never watched this show again, maybe he's back and not staying in some homeless shelter with no way out. If so, he's lucky. This kind of thing is common, and no one notices, unless they experience it themselves, and are not scared to death to talk about it, because they are so poor to.

 

I believe the show is called Ax Men. According to wikipedia "Northwestern Oregon, Washington and Montana and the rivers of Louisiana and Florida."

I suspect it was Oregon. In the US they don't believe in workers rights, people get treated horrifically, and yet they call it "the land of the free". Anyone sustaining a head injury should get a CAT scan.

These are issues that affect real trades and manual labor jobs, they largely don't affect IT, our job risks are largely RSI and carpal tunnel.

The real crimes of Canada's mining companies are largely committed overseas in places like Bolivia.

 

One more thing you, may want to ask your management if up-to-date backups of everything, are required, in order for them to collect insurance for like a fire of flooding, from like a sprinkler going off inside the IT department. I have actually seem myself a sprinkler system go off by itself right across from me, in the room in was in. So much water so fast. Might want to get one of those dry normally sprinkler systems to protect corporate and/or share holder assets Same with making sure you have reliable backup software and hardware.

It boggles my mind, that lots of corporate people, think it good practice to put old and not so reliable equipment in some cases anyway, like during a backup, that sometimes starts acting quirky, and putting share holder assets in danger of not being properly protected. Same with not encrypting the backup medium, just in case it get lots or thrown away. Like for example when I was in IT, the tapes I used, no had no longer had a warranty after using then 7 times, from end to end if I remember correctly. Need to have a policy too for lost tapes, or IT personnel who may be coerced into handing over millions to billions of dollars worth of data (password or 3rd party). Also in preventing this from happening. Like having security personnel be hired to place these tapes for example in your local bank vault (safety deposit box). Where it requires a warrant for example, for anyone outside the owner to access that data (encrypted).

Remember insurance companies do not want to pay out a insurance claims and management will want to blame you. It's there fault though, they just want to save there careers and destroy yours. They are not doing there job by making it difficult at the very least, to do your job. No one will ever hire you again unless this type of knowledge becomes common place it IT, and blame is placed on board members for example because it has to be there ultimate responsibility in the end to protect the shareholders interests and investments in the company. They need to be informed where the blame lays before it happens. Same with loosing customer info onto the web.

They get the big bucks and have the perfect resumes or whatever they are called now. Make sure shareholders know they are ultimately responsible as captains of that ship. Blaming the guy with the hammer and welder needs to stop,

 

Server rooms commonly have halon gas systems, not sprinklers, only a completely bonkers company would have sprinklers in their server room.

There is normally a policy for safe disposal of old medium. Enterprise wide encryption wasn't really feasible until recently.

Management culture wont change any time soon, and there is a particularly distasteful version of it in the US. Should you not wish to leave the country, your only real hope is to move into management or start up your own company.