Whats your typical day....?

Oh man! Ad-blocking software has been detected! :'(

This website is run by the community, for the community... and it needs advertisements in order to keep running. Blocking our ads means your killing our stats!
Please disable your ad-block, or become a premium member to hide all advertisements and this notice.

Hello all,

Just a quick question, aimed at all of you IT guys currently working in the field....

I (and many others i should imagine) would find it of great interest to hear about a typical day in your job. Being someone who will be looking to get an entry level job relatively soon, i've no real idea what to expect !

If you're willing, everyone who has a job in It, please let me know your current role and what your usual daily procedures would be...

Big thanks in advance....

 

Oh man! Ad-blocking software has been detected! :'(

This website is run by the community, for the community... and it needs advertisements in order to keep running. Blocking our ads means your killing our stats!
Please disable your ad-block, or become a premium member to hide all advertisements and this notice.

Not much has changed on a regullar basis, except that I'm currently non stop doing different things far to annoying to discuss.

Here

 

Hmmm not sure what a typical day at work is?

It's so varied

I work for NHS in small IT Department. We repair or replace desktop PC's and Monitors and Printers. The PC's are
Min. Specs 1100MHZ Pentium CPU with 512 SDRAM or DDR and 20GB. HD with Realtek LAN Cards.
Max Specs Pentium 4 3.0 CPU with 1GB DDR 80 GB SATA HD with onboard Realtek LAN cards
The newer PC's have PXE's boots which makes RIS so simple and you can install the software under 3 hours otherwise your looking at 5 Hours.

We build on Cat5e cables with 100mbps, they should be using optical cables, but always comes back to money.

Rather than installing the software from CD's the Images of each machine is saved onto the server.
This called RIS Building

A normal day would be starting at 8 AM, switching the computer, taking off my coat, just about to sit in my chair when someone from Help Desk enters the room and says there's an emergency in Day threates or A & E or Ward Desk.
Finishing at 6 PM.

We use an old database called Sunrise for logging jobs and making notes of what was done. Each engineer has 20 to 48 Jobs on their list. Sometimes you find you can't do the job because the Customer is on Holiday or hasn't given you all the information. Approxiamtely there are 220 jobs each day taken by help desk some are simple with passwords problem some are not!

Each computer has a Identification number. Whcih lets the Technician Know the location, the specs of the PC and the history.
Some Users out there are still on the old network and use Windows 2K.

The problem that arises is everyone wants a TFT
They also want very fast computers and they forget to tell you what their telephone is, what software they require, the office number or department it's going into and the purchase Number for the new TFT screens.

Typical day:-

Pinging Network points
Rebuilding PC's Installing Memory, CPU's, HD, PSU, MOBO, LAN Cards.
Installing TFT, Drilling holes into the desk to fit brackets for Locks. (It's amazing how many people steal TFT in a Hospital.)
Patching & Unpatching HUBs.
Repairing or installing Network printers,
Setting up software on 10 address networks and 128 address networks.

Installing, sync IPAQ
Setting up User Profiles, email accounts
General House work, cleaning PC's defragging.
Drinking lot's of coffee and eating Doughnuts in the Help Desk.

Rebuilding LAP tops and slipstreaming.
Perks of the job are having your bum felt by a fit nurse while installing a PC equipment

 

Cheeky,

Thats just about a perfect reply to my question..

Thanks for that bud.

 

Your welcome mate, good luck with your studies and job hunting!

 

im not allowed to comment

 

WTF?

What's up with Cheeks?

 

Note this one I hope

 

No thank god!

More like this one:-

 

Thats sorted it, job in the NHS for me.

 

Me too lol

Excellent idea for a thread!

It's good to be prepared (the only thing i can remember from the scouts lol)

 

I work nights in 1st line support atm

log onto call management software, fire up outlook, read handover and check if any calls need chasing/escalating

follow up anything passed over from day shift. Answer phones if as and when they ring, try and fix if trivial if not assign to desktops/ES/NOC etc etc

clear company spam, check backups, rerun if required. Pull off reports from call software for management

watch dvd's, a bit of study and eat pizza or kebabs

job done

obviously there are numerous other things involved depending on what issues occur.

 

Day for me starts at 5am, view a few webcasts online at home whilst enjoying some breakfast and orange juice

head out at 7, check emails recieved late yesturday and overnight from overseas on my blackberry, reply to those i can, flag other ones so they show up in outlook when i get to the office

arrive at the office at 8, finish off any of the more detailed responses in email and pepper down my plan for the day

08.30, day officially starts, start checking the blogs on anything from sharepoint to esx server, keeping upto date is key in my line of the work and research is a pivitol part of that, if i learn anything really exciting i go and play around with it on our ESX Lab and learn a bit more about it, we have a almost finished setting up the complete lap with rapid deployment of infrastructure for sandboxing and proof of concepts, so it only takes a few mins to fire up an entire fresh domain to play with Exchange 2007 or something on, very useful resource!

10, teabreak with the boys, catch up on the goings on, whos in whos out, whats on the cards, this doesnt happen every day as were pretty self sufficient, but we need to know whos doing what really, then go back to what i was doing before

somewhere lunch happens

14.00, hit the forums a bit, vmtn, isaserver, msexchange, some news groups, cf (ofcourse) and plenty of others to keep me busy for days not minutes!
push forward with the overhaul of our internal team system, including file storage structure, lab material, study material, im trying to get everything organised at the moment as its kind of organically grown over the years, its messy!

16.00, a few final phone calls to clients if any issues are outstanding and are going to run into tomorrow, if not just to let them know were on the case and something will be done by c.o.b

17.30, home time, although I often dont get out of the place till atleast 18.00

19.00 - 20.00 depending on traffic and public transport, get home, what a day, just enough time for a bit more research or a bit of wow/bf2142 before a movie and bed

rinse and repeat

ofcourse this doesnt look like that every day, if we have a project or proposal to do that comes first and everything else gets bumped, we are gradually building up alot of IP so proposals and such are not taking as long as they used to

 

Cheers Ryan, thats an interesting read.

Sounds like you have one hell of a busy time, not sure if i could do that though even if i wanted to - somewhere i have to fit my two little kids in.

Thanks bud, its great to have a little insight into the world i'm trying to get into.

 

7am - get up and spend time with the kids...

8am - housework, breakfast and getting ready "flurry"

8.25am leave for work

8.30am get to work, setup caffeine inufusion policy for the day.

8.35am review any error messages and look for red lights on the hardware.

8.40am check in at MCSEworld.com - the g33k site I admin

8.45am Browse g33k forums like CF and T-U, check main tech sites for further reading later.

9.00am do half an hours IT study - the mobile is off and the office door is closed...

9.30am run daily check lists locally and via TS to servers for performance issues, logged errors, email checks, web breaches, DTS etc and load backup tape etc

10.00am check vendor status of outstanding purchase orders etc.

10.30am handle a couple of desktop support issues...

11am More study, some reading of latest interesting posts at forums and tech sites.
[currently Exchange deployment guides and exam testing software supplied by work in lue of unpaid overtime]
- lunch happens in here somewhere at the pc....

2pm further checks of site services as per 9.30am.

4pm Last study and information session at work - mixed with inane user requests for assistance...

6pm. Last minute check over of logs and emails, flag any jobs for the morning

6.30pm Go home

7pm. Dinner and time with the kids....

8pm kids are asleep... spend time with my wife.

9pm work or read from home on tech issues - or go online for MCSEworld admin...

11pm or later...go to bed.

This is an ideal quiet day - for really busy work days remove the study periods, add hours of frenetic activity as the sole IT bloke, and then add 2 or 3 hours to the going home time..which is how I have accrued 12 weeks holidays and 8 weeks unpaid leave AFTER they bought the training software for me...

 

Currently, I'm a contractor with a major DRAM manufacturer. I work as the technical writer for the group that writes and supports the software applications and libraries for the company as a whole. I'm responsible for administrating their SharePoint Intranet site which is the main repository for all of their documentation.

I am also a freelance technical writer and at any point in time can be writing or reviewing computer related books and articles.

5:30 a.m. Get up, make and swill coffee. Check emails and forums. Update news at http://www.linux-tutorial.info.

7 a.m to 7:30 a.m. Depending on what kind of morning I'm having, I'm out the door to work. Commute takes about 30 minutes.

7:30 to 8 a.m. Arrive at work. Check work email for any tasks that might have floated my way. Often the software engineers will have a brilliant idea for some type of documentation they'd like to see on their SharePoint site.

It varies wildly from there depending on whether or not I have any ongoing documentation projects or not. I'm also involved in the PVCS to SVN project, converting software from one repository to the other. This is a worldwide project so I could be working with software stored in a server in Virginia, Italy, Singapore or half a dozen other location around the world.

Any changes in documentation get posted on the SharePoint site as a web, word, excel or other document. Often I'll see email traffic between customers and our group that can be turned into a tutorial or an FAQ and I'll make the appropriate changes to the site.

When things are slow, I'll surf the web or study.

I go for a walk most lunchtimes. About three miles in 45 minutes.

Every other Thursday morning, we have a staff meeting. That's where I get a lot of my information regarding documentation needs.

Any software engineer at any time can come to me with a request which can include documentation or just a change in SharePoint that they don't know how to make themselves.

Historically "documentation" has been based on "tribal knowledge" (word of mouth and memory), I've been tasked with changing all of that. My range is as broad as any of the documentation needs of my group including best practices, admin only data, customer driven data and anything else you might imagine.

In the evening, I go home and work on whatever freelance project I happen to be involved in at the time. I find frequent breaks helpful, especially since my brain is starting to get tired by this time.

Usually it's only the missus and me at home these days so we take dinner together. Many times she has work or other activities in the evening as well, so I'll grab a quick bite and back to the keyboard.

Around 9 p.m. or so, I'll knock off and unwind with a DVD or a book and make it to bed by 10 p.m.

 

Hi all, keep 'em coming - these make for a great read.

Tripwire, you sound like you have yourself a job i'd really enjoy myself - it's nice to know that these sort of roles are out there to aspire to! Thanks for the insight.

Carl

 

I work shifts either starting at 7am or 10.30am, and finishing at 3.30pm or 7pm (like tonight - at work while writing this!)

6am - up and out of bed.
7am - in work, check services are running on 30 NT4 servers, and to make sure backups were successful over night.
8am - log onto call system. Normally have 5/6 calls per engineer running at once. Update any, check any new calls that have come in over night and assign to engineers if they can't be fixed over the phone.
8am - 3pm - support 2000 users on 5 MoD sites on NT4 or XP - mostly desktop work, some server work. Visiting users with application problems, doing swap-outs or rebuilds for problems that can't be fixed on site. Somewhere have lunch for 1 hr, drink tea and surf the net.

If I start at 10.30am, its straight into the calls until 5pm when we set up the backups for the night, secure the premises and clear off.
7pm - lock the place up!
7.30pm - at home

 

'I can't login. There's something wrong with my PC!'

x

100