Working abroad - thoughts?

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Yes, and the chances that she's blonde and her name is Helga are pretty good.

From personal experience, if they are loud and sound angry then you're doing something right.
Most of them will be able to speak English anyway.

 

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Do it!

I moved from England to work in NYC for a year, 7 weeks left : ' ( then back to small-medium town life. It was awesome.

 

Definitely do it. And make sure you register for the hotel fidelity points plan. You'll get some free nights (or upgrades) depending on the chain.

For a period of about 4 years, I spent some 6 months a year out of Switzerland, travelling to various offices from N and S. America, to Asia and everything between. It was an experience I will never forget and definitely worth doing.

3 months will go by very quickly as well, and who knows, you might pick up the language a bit, maybe meet some local lasses and discover new cultural experiences which will shape your view on the world and enrichen your life.

 

First update

So i flew in at 9pm last night, new chief took me out for a drink and some food, and seen where the office was, and my apartment aswell, which is actually fairly nice and only 5 mins walk from the office with lots of shops and bars around.

Got into the office this morning at half 9 as instructed, for the last 2 hours i've been looking at their setup and server infrastructure, familiarising myself with all the equipment.

Task list so far:

There are 150 outstanding service desk calls that need to be completed, plus there are around about 25-30 coming in each day.

I've been asked to setup and reconfigure iLO on all HP ProLiant series servers. they're all shot away, some of the iLO IP's are locating to a site in amsterdam, so no wonder they aren't working!

Come up with a suitable plan to install a new UPS system for the main server room

Transfer over 3 servers into the floor below for staff transferring into new office.

Implement a sharepoint site

Create a standard shared network drive structure to make it easier to navigate through folders and find specific files.

Shrink users personal network folders size/quota (100 users = 550gb!!!)

Got a 2 hour meeting over lunch, then I think the work shall start tomorrow, looking forward to it!

 

Ok sounds like fun hehehe

 

People are starting to dislike me, i must be doing my job properly - i isntalled nightwatchman last week to schedule any machines running to shutdown at 7pm. all users warned, and told how to keep the session active if necessary.

 

To be honest, I'd dislike you too, warning or no warning. Put my PC in power-saving mode, if you must (that is, if you can get hibernate to work correctly )... but shutting it down every night (especially when you have workers working after 7pm) is over the top, in my opinion.

 

Unfortuantely not my choice, been told from up above we're to use this system, like it or not lol. I agree it's a bit extreme, but i can see where the company is coming from, there's over 10,000 machines globally - and if you've got even 10% of those running overnight with no reason, it's alot of money on the bill i guess

I think it's come from the Green Police who are trying to save electricity, and save the world etc. either way he oughta be saving throughout the day, and if it does need to stay on there's a warning before the machine shuts down, or they can set it via the icon is taskbar

 

They will learn eventually mate. Once there cries fall on death ears a dozen time and a dozen times they have to explain they lost their work by leaving it on over night, then they will stop doing it.

Prats

On another note, try and find out exactly how much it saves on the bill, or a rough amount and bang it on your CV, looks a lot better if you can say "created quantifiable cost savings of £XYZ through blah blah".

 

Good call! shall update that on next CV update!

Will find out about the energy savings aswell, just be interesting to see how much it does x amount of pc's overnight

 

Then that's exactly the response you should give to those who complain. Then they won't be hating you... and some might even be understanding towards the company's position.

Don't get me started on the Green Police.

 

lol i won't! i'll turn this thread into a 5 page rant if i get going on it aswell!

haha i am telling them, it's always the local departments fault though, goes without saying!

 

Right.

Assuming that out of 10,000 workstations half of them is left on overnight, and that each PC uses 250 Watts on average (although less while idling so not completely accurate), and that electricity price is 12 pence per kWh (it's actually more for residential addresses but I'm not sure what the business rates are), and "overnight" means 12 hours, switching them all off would save you £1,800 per month.

Source:
Electricity Running Cost Calculator:
http://www.ukpower.co.uk/tools/running_costs_electricity/

 

All you got to do is setup SCCM with the R3 update, deploy the power management hotfix to all PCs and you'll have graphs and numbers representing all the money/energy you've saved. I am sure even management will appreciate it. You can even setup hibernate scheme through GPOs instead of shutting down...

Ohh and don't forget to enable power management option.

 

I made it out to be 30k! lol not sure if thats right or not or i've probably filled the field in wrong

Would of thought it would be higher than £1,800 a month to run 5,000 machines for 12 hours x 20 days a month

 

I'd say that's about right, it's close enough to £1 a day per machine if you left it on for 24.

 

Small update -

I've come to the conclusion that working abroad rocks!

Out here so far i've been working in Berlin, travelled to Frankfurt and Dusseldorf, it's basically a great free way to travel around and see places you wouldn't normally get the chance to! also off to Amsterdam to meet a friend who runs IT over there in two weeks, which should be a good weekend

In terms of work, it's quietened down quite a bit now, and everything is flowing smoothly compared to the chaos when i first arrived.

Definately going to look to do it again after i get back to england in April!

Only gripe i have is it's way too easy to stay out on a weeknight when you're on your own - i went to the pub to watch the man city game last night, and ended up talking to some spanish girls - i got in at half 6 this morning after going to other bars, and i'm sat in work staring at my screen like this guy ->

Pubs over here refuse to close any earlier than 3am, on a weeknight!

 

Glad it's going well mate!
Dusseldorf is great fun, especially the old town, the nightlife is fantastic.

 

Glad you enjoy it mate, I never got the chance to go out of UK, but did a contract few yrs back were I travelled to few cities in UK & enjoyed it very much it was awesome exploring different places, bars, restaurants & cuisine, etc .. & I found one of my now x-girlfriends on that very job & we travelled to some work sites & places together.. of course stayed in different hotel rooms…
I can imagine how good it can be to be able to travel to different countries and explore a bit of their land and other things.. you know.. anyway I’m also looking for jobs which could offer such opportunities and am definitely up for it anytime

 

get me a job right now!!!!