What part of your role is strenuous?

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I for one fortunately have been working in IT for the past four and half years now started on helpdesk 1st line support.

At present I work as an IT infrastructure 2nd line support engineer covering desktop, laptop, PDA's and server support issues on a daily basis including administering AD 2000. This all encompasses administering user accounts, permissions, e-mails and department folder access and the lists goes on if I tell you about our Citrix farm and BlackBerry servers.

To be honest I love my job as I count myself as fortunate have a job in IT something I cherish as I also love computers. Well love my wife more, enough of all the goodies.

At work lately we have been receiving a lot of new HP Compaq DC7800 SFF desktops and we have to carry I mean literally hundreds off these boxes into the secure storage room including 17 inch flat screen monitors.

We also have to lift up Dell PowerEdge servers and PowerVaults onto the rack, trapped my finger once luckily weren't serious but was a wake up call. On the other hand the killers are the Power Supply Units even with a two man assistance is still tasking and we use auto aids - i.e. jack up type trolleys but still

This am sure as you probably might have figured out can be strenuous and if you're not careful end up hurting your back or even injuring yourself if fallen over. Again, must say it helps to break a sweat sometimes so most of those staff who think all you do is browse the Internet can learn no so really - hopefully.

Apart from this tasking aspect of the job everything else is sweet as we recently started configuring and setting up BlackBerry Pearl 8100 device handsets, its a bit fiddly with the buttons especially if you have big fingers

So what are some of your strenuous parts of your job role in your current IT position. Thanks in advance for sharing

 

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I write software, so walking to the coffee machine and back is about as hard was it gets

 

Mine is dealing with the biggest dumbass of a boss that I have ever known!!!

Spent a lot of years working in shoe factories before getting educated and moving to office work. Seriously, my boss is by far the worst human being that I have ever met in my life!!!!!!!

/end rant

Well, you did ask

 

Wow! is he or she that bad? Well sometimes in situations like this then the best option is to move on to a different company. I must also say as we all know the grass is certainly not always greener on the other side. Best wishes

 

I spend a fair bit of time moving furniture, phones, and desktops!

 

Yep! that as well, as I do the same as well and almost forget to add that as well. I suppose its all part of IT support that involves end users directly and not just over the phone

 

Im known to move alot of desks and machines as part of the job, which I dont mind, but it can be tough on the body when your moving 8-10 people in a day, to then the following week have to move a couple of them back for various reasons which Im yet to realise! I think bosses just like a good office move

 

In most support job, physically moving equipment, getting under desks, unpacking obscenely large printers, is all part of the business (don't forget taking out the garbage after the unpacking and setting up is done).

These days, I don't get strenuous until I go to the gym on my lunch hour. Other than that, I'm reading, keyboarding, talking/listening, and such.

 

tbh, all of it and none of it!

I'm a little bit senior to most on here (don't all start taking the **** at once now), which brings with it different kinds of stress. In my last role I wasn't senior enough to be able to just shout at people so that problems got resolved, but was senior enough to have people expect me to be able to fix everything. This could be frustrating in an environment where truly skilled colleague were, to put it mildly, thin on the ground - but it brought its own rewards, notably experience, exposure to a lot of stuff I'd never seen or used before and the satisfaction of knoking I was 'the go to guy'.

In my new job I am a little more senior again, and have a decent team of people working with me. Its going to take some time to bed in and the **** hasn't truly hit the fan over anything yet, so I can honestly say I've not been stressed at all so far.

But all of that doesn't mean a thing to me - it doesn't matter how stressful it is, I love what I do so, provided I'm remunerated sufficiently, I'll pretty much put up with anything

 

Come on now Arroryn, now that I would not count as being strenuous on the job but a norm

 

How does your current role relate to the initial post? I guess the higher you progress in your career the less strenuous it becomes

 

Mentally strenuous or physically strenuous?

Physically, I get most of my work activity by going to the fridge for a Coke or taking my coffee cup to Josh's office for a fill. My body is a virtual carbonation filtering and caffeine processing facility.

I really enjoy the mental activity. It's a joy to learn new things, and then impart that knowledge in my writing. Being technically precise when writing is not as easy as it seems. Trying to find a balance between quality and output is probably the most difficult for me. I don't want to produce 1000 crappy questions a week... nor do I want to produce 1 perfect question a week. Neither extreme will do the company any good.

In my last job as a network admin, I dealt with every server and piece of network equipment in the company... I'd occasionally have to heave a heavy switch into a wall-mounted rack, then hold it in place with one hand while screwing it into the rack with the other hand. Ouch.

Mentally, the hardest thing was juggling all of the tasks that had to be done. Everything needed to be done yesterday, and there was plenty of work to go around. Assist the first line techs when they have problems... transition the transcriptionists off the old client-based VPN system to the new SSL-VPN solution, and explain to them how to use it... get the VPN tunnel set up for the vendor's consultants... transition the routers to the new IP addressing scheme and, oh, by the way, migrate all the statically assigned printers to the new addresses... configure and test a new Websense solution and, if it works, make recommendations as to security policies for each level of staff... troubleshoot why the remote offices can't shove 4 Mbps through a 1721 router... figure out why users are having trouble with their Exchange boxes, though each of them have between 1.8 and 2 GB of data... create group policies to lock down the users - but not so much that they can't do what they need to do... get the new office going in Clarksville... and did we mention that we HAVE to have redundant servers and an EMC SAN set up in 2 months?

 

Thanks Michael, as you mentioned an important aspect which is mentally as there are days when all needs to have been done now.

On the other hand I was concentrating on the physical aspects of IT support and must say don't know how you did your admin role all alone. I suppose at that point in time you didn't need the gym after work

 

Before I was hired, they used a contracted IT services company on an hourly basis to do their senior admin tasks! In fact, that's how I ended up there... I increasingly worked for them over the course 10 months while I was employed at the IT services company, then they hired me outright (paid the services company a "buy-out" fee) where I worked for them another 10 months.

It was hectic, but quite enjoyable. I wouldn't have left had the Boson opportunity not come along. Things had just been left undone for so long that there was far too much stuff to get caught up on. I had an *excellent* help desk coordinator/level 1 tech and one level 1 tech who was learning. Between them, they handled all the "normal stuff", which allowed me to focus on the higher-level stuff. The IT manager came from the trenches, so he helped out wherever he could. He didn't know the super-high-level tech stuff... but he could be quite handy.

For all you guys looking to advance... I helped that company interview for my replacement. We hired an ex-Air Force guy who had been working his way up, and got stuck in a server admin job where he could no longer advance. He seemed to have the knowledge and experience that was needed to take that next step (he worked with quite a bit of stuff in the USAF), so I recommended that we hire him for my position. I check back with them from time to time... and he's doing just fine. The list of "to-do" stuff is still full, and some of the "old stuff" that needed fixing is still there... but he's doing a great job staying on top of it all.

 

Strenuous

I think the word strenuous can also apply to mental experience as well as physical.

I guess it depends on the situation. My job is similar to what trip had typed

"physically moving equipment, getting under desks, unpacking obscenely large printers, is all part of the business (don't forget taking out the garbage after the unpacking and setting up is done"

But also unpacking cases for Hubs (about 6 foot tall and weighs a ton) and PC bases, TFT and getting rid of the rubbish. Unpacking the stuff is not strenuous but moving it to the location. The location could be in a theatre or a controlled area whereby you can not get directly to and have to rely on lifts and other people letting you into the area.

Sometimes I have to drop everything and go to a main theatre, but I can't walk in I have to sign a book then get changed into scrubs and walk around like George Clooney from ER When I get into the theatre I have to move fast, open a metal case and unlocking the harness to remove the equipment. Of course as you’re doing this a surgeon can walk in and demand you leave the area immediately. You have to wait outside of the theatre until the patient operation is finished and then you are allowed back in to complete your job. Of course this could mean you are waiting around 15 to 40 minutes in a corridor in your scrubs.

Majority of time we are shouted at to move a whole dept or ward at a moments notice, usually first thing on Monday morning or on Sunday. This means moving PC bases, cables, mini hubs, printers, TFT and making sure you put the exact keyboard and mouse with the correct PC otherwise the user will not be happy. Normally the new area does not have patched network points and once again you have to go to the Hub only to find all the points on the switched are being used! The worse I had was when people don't tell us they move and just move the equipment and then ring us that their PC does not work! Of course you can’t go to that hub and start pulling out network cables. You have to use a tracer or a pinger to find if the port is live and try and trace the network cable! Some of the hub cabinets are in such a tight area like under the stairs in a cupboard it's difficult to patch. It's hot and dirty, but you put up with it!

Mentally - strenuous I would say users often ring up saying how urgent a job is, that the network is slow or computer has crashed and your given 4 hours to do this job in. So how annoying is it when go to the location 10 minutes after they have rung to find out the door is locked, the persons gone home or gone for lunch!

from a software point:-

As an IT Dept we should be able to stop users from buying their own s/w but they often hold meetings and without IT acknowledgement buy the product. However they do not go to the s/w house for backup when things go wrong instead they pass the job to IT Dept and we have to make it work on out network. We have no rights or source code or even a testing account setup and yet because they have requested we package the s/w so it can be deployed the various computers within their dept. We offer that service so we don’t have to use CD’s in the location. Software can be deployed over the network! Department mangers believe it is not their responsibility when something goes wrong. So sometimes days can be quite demanding because you are dumped in the deep end and have to think like a programmer!

We don't have the power to say no! The s/w sucks we are not putting on our net

I do get hacked off walking up 5 or 6 flight of stairs to install a PC in wards because the lifts are out of order. the equipemnts is bulky and most people do not give way when your struggling up the stairs with it!

I think the most damage I have every done through physical movement is trapped fingers, electrocuted myself with a PSU and scraped some skin off my knuckles while moving Hubs cabinets!

 

Well, if I was to tell you that a month before I left my last role I went round the entire country (Glasgow to London) installing 26 DL380s on my own into racks of various sizes and states of disrepair... on my todd!

 

The most strenuous part of my job.... the monotony and boredom of doing the job. WHAT?! I hear some of you shout! Yes, I love IT and am snapping at the heals of whatever is going, but after a while (15 months now) of doing the same limited desktop support is starting to drive my seriously up the wall - so much so, I've decided to add this job to my CV and start looking for a new job

My job sometime entails replacing workstations as they're nackered for whatever reason, but when you do that and nothing else for weeks at a time, or perhaps building laptops (pre-built image) for weeks, or my current trick upgrading 1200 laptops to SP2 by hand - ie, no automation.

I enjoy using my head, I enjoy thinking and learning - the last time I thought in my job was how much of my pay cheque I should give to a counsellor to stop me cracking up! If anyone wants a job, you can have mine, I need a new one!

 

Man now that was some task there and not to even mention the traveling aspect. It's nice to hear how others get on with regards to the daily workloads, mentally and physically. Who said IT was only for couch potatoes