I.T. Confidential, A Humorous Look at Work Life through the Eyes of an Info Tech Insider

Introduction

There are all types of jobs, situations, and people out there in the I.T. world. Most combinations involve a variety of personalities and people who, for the most part, shouldn’t be working together. Once in a while, something productive gets done, but many times it doesn’t—and that’s where the entertainment value is. This is a short tour of the side of business most people don’t experience.

Behind the scenes, there are battles between personalities, technology problems galore, wild goose chases, and a lot of long nights and weekends. Be on the lookout for opportunities, and be ready to take a long lunch when they start recruiting for a special project.

Because taking inventory of the Ethernet cables, oiling the mainframe, and attending the all-day session on improving productivity may keep you busy, but won’t enhance your career.

Enjoy this carnival ride of companies, characters, and technology—and remember to avoid anyone wearing his lunch on his shirt.

Chapter 1

So You Want to Be in I.T.

Whether you’re a seasoned I.T. professional or just breaking into the field, sooner or later you’re going to be looking for a job. Here are some tips on what to look for, what to look out for, and what to absolutely avoid if you want to keep your sanity (which is questionable considering you’re deciding to go into I.T. in the first place).

The Greatest Story Ever Told

Naturally when you are seeking a job, you want to know what the job actually is. The way you’re supposed to find out is by reading something called a job description.

Job descriptions are actually works of fiction composed of cute euphemisms to make the position sound good. Look for terms such as fast-paced (hectic), constantly changing priorities (disorganized), and self-starter (skeleton crew—everybody quit, so you had better be prepared to take responsibility for everything).

What you’ll often find connected to such a job description is a company desperate to run a series of poorly-chosen technology solutions championed by a now long-gone manager. The tank to kill a mosquito technology footprint requires an army of nerds to keep it functioning week to week with constant patches, upgrades, and restarts. You can be the head nerd.

There are also job descriptions that sound like four jobs put together: you have to organize, implement, travel to other countries, write code, and be a project manager and Unix system administrator while keeping all the databases running.

If the description of a job you’re considering is broken up into chapters, you may want to reconsider, even though the job comes with a high salary. Remember, it’s really four jobs, so that salary is basically paying one person ninety thousand dollars a year to do the jobs of four salaried employees. If you’ve dreamed of working eighty-hour weeks for forty-hour pay, here’s your chance.

The Wonderful World of Potential Jobs

The reason for the job description as fiction situation is that there are plenty of junk jobs out there. However, you can spot them pretty easily. Usually the first sign is that there is one person managing the department who has a limited technology background, perhaps as a programmer for six months about nine years ago.

Under his employ is a guy with technical aptitude but no social skills, who has documented nothing and over time has become the only living human being who knows how all the systems interact. He serves two purposes: (1) to allow the manager to make catastrophically bad software and hardware purchases and (2) to permit the manager to get away with running the information technology functions of the company like a chicken coop. This can mean anything from questionable hiring decisions, to servers plugged directly into the wall, to having boxes of parts lying around.

The number one sign of this type of situation is a dependence on this technical guru whose departure would cause the I.T. function of the company to unravel.

Here’s how an interview can go if this is the situation with a major retail chain. The manager may bring up that every time they have to make a change to their accounting software, they call someone from the vendor, and one of their technicians will make the change remotely. The customer (them) has no administrative access to their own accounting systems. Don’t jeopardize your chances of employment at this dream job by saying, Glad I’m not the guy who made the decision to buy that software.

Another job that will make your career take off like a North Korean rocket is the company that needs a network administrator to manage their server, which is sitting in a tiny storage room plugged directly into the wall just waiting for a lightning strike or power surge. The pay scale resembles the compensation at Clucky’s Chicken and Waffles.

If that doesn’t get your heart racing, try the small company needing support on an awful desktop application written in some crappy tool for what may seem to be an overly generous salary.

Or you could explore the opportunity at a small consulting company in a really nice facility in a technology center. No one really does anything, however. They sit around all day waiting for someone to tell them what to do and when to do it.

However, if none of these options appeals to you, there are a few jobs out there that you might actually want. Here are a few tips to help you get a good job.

Write a Resume

To get a good job, you want a good resume. But don’t overdo it, Sparky. Keep it under twelve pages because the shredder in HR is warmed up and hungry. And don’t put your picture on it, especially if your normal look is a mix of disheveled, America’s Most Wanted, and Larry the Cable Guy.

Once in a while, a company will get a resume from someone that goes way overboard in the technology section. He lists about thirty-five different software products, databases, stuff he’s heard about or seen, and tools that he just picked up last week on his lunch break. It’s understandable to think that if you cast a wide enough net, someone is bound to have used this stuff in the last five years somewhere.

But it doesn’t really help you to list old technologies, like something from 1982, unless you want to sit next to a crusty lifer who will tell you war stories about the infamous batch job that ran too long during a snowstorm, and he had to replace a vacuum tube to make it start again. You don’t want to land a job at a company with a data center that looks like a museum exhibit.

The Interview

Once your resume has paved the way for you, the next step is getting invited for an interview. Beware