Discussion on:

10 signs that you aren't cut out for IT

About multitasking - I agree that the inability to multitask indicates trouble working in IT, but there are several debates on whether this is good practice or not - as for myself, I think that the need for multitasking is close to unavoidable, but shouldn't be encouraged for each and every IT professional, trying as hard as possible to stay within the boundaries of one determined task at a given time.

TR is a joke, all it's for is consultants now. This describes most full time IT staff I know. We're usually there to deal with machines, there's helpdesk and desktop support for face-to-face issues.

And, please remove the clickable ad sidebars. What, does EVERYTHING need to be an advertising billboard now? It's worse than porn sites.

But feel free to go back to the porn sites.

Hello. I'm here to fix your PC trouble.

Can we work out some kind of trade?

because as far as I can tell, they don't sell anything. Advertising doesn't pay the bills, sales pay the bills! No one I know has ever bought anything from an online ad. Anyone who advertises this way is throwing money out the window.

On the bright side, some of those ads do link to some very nice drive by downloads!

BTW: leave my porn sites out of this...

It's actually the clicking, not so much the buying that pays the bills...at least for the site displaying the ads.

With all the "10 signs..." articles out there surely the time has come for an article about how to write a bad articles. We have all seen examples. To start I will list a few obvious ones:

1. Your article rehashes material that has already been said before in the same forum.

2. Your article is one of a series that only caters to a specific group (for example consultants).

3. You are obviously a lackey for Windows / Apple / Cloud Computing / (insert sell-out point here) and have lost your objectivity.

We're almost 1/3 of the way there. Help me with this. What to you think makes a bad article?

This article made me a bit apprehensive about joining the IT industry. I love IT and am a final year Information Systems student. Because I'm female and family oriented, I'm not too keen about being on call 24/7. But, I'm sticking with IT. Thanks for the tips though.

There are some sectors where the off-hours demands aren't as great.

I think he is exaggerating a little... Will you have to work nights and weekends? In most IT jobs, yes. But especially when you are part of a larger team you are not on call 24/7 and your colleagues can help out as well. In the end it comes down to one thing... If you and the team are doing a good job your IT systems will run smoothly, and unexpected calls at night and the weekends are going to be rare. It will happen though, that is just the nature of the task.

So it all depends on the circumstances, and if you constantly get called at nights and weekends and that doesn't fit your lifestyle it may be time to look for a new job, but it doesn't mean you have to get out of IT altogether. I'd suggest a larger company, they often have well-established support processes and maybe even a on-call rotation, this way you can plan ahead.

You're spot on. Run your system properly, and you might get that 12am call maybe 3 times a year. Last year I got that call once, and it wasn't due to anything related with our network. It was due to a crappy water pipe in our office building bursting all over a dmarc extension in a utility room.

A lot of it also has to do with where you're at in your career. Level 1 with no exp? Yea, you're probably going to take a lot of crap, because it rolls down hill my friend. You need to learn to live with that for a while. However, if you're working your way up into a level 3 or management type role pushing around 10-12 years of experience, you damn well better act like it. I think a lot of IT folks have trouble making that transition sometimes. They're so used to "just being support", that it's all they know.

This is my personal experience and what i've seen in the companies I've worked for.

You could work in IT for a school district. Most school employees will never expect you to work beyond your standard hours, simply because they wouldn't do it themselves. In addition, it would be EXTREMELY rare to work on weekends.

+1 I highly agree with working with school districts !!!

I was going to be a little broader on this topic. Working for a company that doesn't operate 24/7 usually indicates that after hours work should be minimal (updates, reboots, hardware changes) and long as things run properly. This is especially true if the position is hourly because it costs the business more money to have an hourly employee working extra hours. Personally I try to flex my time so if I have to miss time with family one evening then I can spend more time with them a different day.

Bill

That's the problem with many companies - they hire IT people as salaried employees even though they don't manage anyone and then they abuse the heck out of them in off hours claiming needs for 24x7 support.

I don't care if I am salaried - after hours needs to be arranged - not abused.

Say blarman, here is what most companies do and I know because I have been there, seen it, and experienced it. A lot of people working in the IT industry don't even have Junior College; they just took some goofy seminars with Windows and they became engineers by De Facto; then companies hires them as "salary" employees but here is the catch: Companies do that so they do not pay the overtime those guys put in, and I know most of them do, but the guys are happy because they are engineers of the finger and not because they took the super difficult subjects in a full 5 years University; they do not know a darn thing about subjects such as Physics, Mathematics, Electronics, Systems Design, etc. They also learn probably some Linux and then they are engineers; but ask them to design a complete Computer Center and they do not even know where to begin. One thing most people working in any industry don't know is a bit of Labor Law; under Labor Law even "salary employees" most get paid overtime if working more than 8 hours, which should include time off for lunch and two ten minutes brakes, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. Even if the employee has a PhD he/she has to be recognized for over time. How do I know that? I sue the company I was working for on basis of unpaid overtime and I won the case and by the way I have an advance degree in Electrical Engineering with specialties in electronics, power design, systems design, and IT besides my double BS in Physics and Mathematics. In order to do that I researched the "Labor Law, Federal and of California which is more stringent than the Federal Labor Law, and also hired a Law firm which specializes in Labor Law in California. So, even if the employee is salary he/she must get over time paid under the Labor Law. The problem with most people is that they are afraid and keep on taking it and the company is the one making the profits. One thing I would advise to any one is to keep detailed track of the time worked and well documented, always scan the badge when taking a break and going for a walk or lunch. Why? Because the lawyers always subpoena the log from the company as proof that the employee has worked over time and did not get paid for it. Also the employee must save all the bank deposits done by the company so that is also proof that he/she did not get compensated for over-time. So you know, the employee must be recognized time and half if working more than 8 hours till midnight and double time after midnight. Also for Saturday is time and a half, Sunday and Holidays are double time. If you need some advice for free just let me know.

Cicuta

I'm not exactly a newbie in IT, either, and while I grew up hacking autoexec.bat files so I could play MechWarrior or LHX on my dad's HP RS-20 workstation, I have 15+ years in fulltime IT to go with my undergrad in IS and an MBA on top of that.

Yes, employment laws clearly state that you are not "exempt" unless you actually manage other employees - regardless of your title. However, it is State law - not Federal law - here in the US which dictates the rules of overtime provisions, so one should carefully examine those respective laws before doing anything. Federal laws only dictate minimum wages and discrimination practices. Individual states vary widely in whether it is the employer or the employee who has to prove their case, so I recommend legal counsel.

The Fair Labor Standards Act defines national minimum wage and overtime provisions, who may work, who must be paid the minimum wage, who is exempt or non-exempt from overtime pay provisions, and other labor-related issues. http://www.dol.gov/whd/flsa/

State laws only supercede the FLSA if the state law is more advantageous to the employee.

Not true. There are several classifications of exempt employees in FLSA and managing other employees is not the sole determining factor. In fact there is a specific computer employee exemption which does not list managing other employees as a requirement.

my husband has the certs on the wall from educational institutions to prove otherwise (he works in the IT industry)....along with those, he had to get his physics before he could take them and had his electonics for years beforehand as well.

The more I reread your post, the more I think you work in a union environment. And the labour laws may apply that way where you live, but not necessarily apply the same as where I live in Canada. Overtime here (Nova Scotia) is a standard time and a half I believe. A lot of companies do time in lieu, which works great for us, we'd rather have the time off instead; money isn't everything. Grant you, I do believe in a fair wage for a fair days work.

And even then, they are not blanket statements; there are exemptions.

my company culture is very family-friendly - on-call is rotated and people rarely work > 40 or 45 hrs / week. That said, the pay isn't as high as other places. You might have to put up with being on-call more, work longer hours when you first start out. I did, but I had no IT college work, just built my career on experience. Had to put in my dues, so to speak.

I work shifts in a 24/7 environment. I f am gone some other poor sucker has to fill in. The show must go on. What we do is "business critical".
That said, I can take days off at no notice to take my sick wife to hospital. They just call in the most available substitute. Over the years, that has often been me. And it has been me being covered for.
Yes, I can be called in at any time. I've done the birthday and Christmas thing, but my colleagues have done it for me, too.
So don't fret over being "on call" all the time. If you get the right employer it can still give you a family life.
In February, I did many more hours than I was "contracted" for. In March my schedule has me doing far fewer. It might not work out that way, but that's the job.
On the whole, I manage to fit in some hugs at home.
I hope this helps.

In my five years in IT, I have had to come in after hours or early hours like three or four times, and a just a hand full of times I was remoting in to perform an update or upgrade on a server, of course I live 10 minutes from the office.

iLO for blade servers allow you to view the servers through a web browser, and if things are set in place to access them, some things can be done in your PJ's.

There is the rule that if you are in a front line support that 10% of the users will take up 90% of your time, and this is generally true. I have just a handful of users that I ever get calls from on regular basis, and they are the ones that generally cause fustration because they don't pay attention. I like to call them my Dora users, the little blue fish from Finding Nemo.

If you like new and interesting challenges, Education is a fun industry in which to work, although smaller institutions have little to no money so it can be interesting from that standpoint.

The thing about IT is, if you want to advance, you are probably going to be changing jobs about every 2 or 3 years, but even there CIO is as high as you can go, but if you are entering like Desktop Support or something, make your way into Systems Admin, as I believe the Desktop Support role will be disappearing over the next decade, due to the mobile revolution and BYOD (Bring your own device).

may have been a tad exaggerated! I have worked places where we had rotating on-call, but you might be talking three weeks out of the year that would qualify as "24/7". That didn't mean working beyond a typical 8hr day, just that the possibility could arise where you would be needed...

And while it is true one doesn't do production server upgrades during peak hours, you get quite a bit of flexibility in your comings and goings! Thus "odd hours" do not equate to "no life".

families are excellent practice forbeing on call 24/7!

Do not be concerned about these signs, they are not exclusively an IT issue. Every single job position has considerable similar issues due to the modern way of business administration. I would say that any person can have a particular moment in his life where tolerance and fatigue must to be carefully watched regardless the industry you are working on.

I have been working in the IT industry for about 25 years (my entire life) and I can say that technology is still an exciting subject for me. If you like or enjoy technology, that is a very good starting point to join the IT industry. There are plenty of areas of specialization, choose one, get yourself prepared and enjoy! No concerns at all.

You will be crapped upon as much as you allow yourself to be. There are plenty of jobs that are not 24/7. Especially entry level jobs, Depending on your career track, there are plenty of jobs that are higher up that are also not 24/7.
If you are answering your blackberry all night when your contract does not require you to do so, then you are poorly managing your time, burning yourself out unnecessarily, damaging your personal life, and setting unreasonable expectations for yourself, your team, and your successors.
Friends don't let friends work for free.

Well put

IT is ideal for you. Some sectors and jobs in IT are better than others. I would say that you might prefer a programmer's or a project management post since you can re-enter the sector after a year break for each child. Don't forget that while you are taking a break, telecommuting may be available. I have a friend who has worked from home as a project manager for the last 15 years. If you are organized then you will get few calls during unsociable hours. The only time when my calls were in unsociable hours was when we were establishing a new company. After that I only had them once in a while. However, if you are not well organized then you will have problems. However, in your case, i would never be an IT administrator or a hardware administrator, this might cause problems.

Please don't be discouraged. I'm female and have been working in IT for over 10 years. There are plenty of jobs in IT where you can work almost exclusively 9-5. Like ANY job there will be times where a critical project is overrunning and you have to put in a few extra hours, or if you are dealing with hardware you can't always do things within standard office hours because you can't disrupt the users, but for me (primarily application development with a side order of consultancy and general IT support) I mainly work standard office hours. I have also managed to have a child and am now working part time so be assured that it is possible to have a family too!

Best of luck. You'll never be bored, that's for sure. I spent about 4 years on 24/7 support for US and 5 overseas sites - lots of different time zones. I wouldn't recommend doing that. It's an interesting field, but everything you learned today will border on obsolete in six months. Make sure that your employer offers paid training and education!

Well what can I say overall I dislike People Intensely they drive me nuts and expect way too much while telling you next to nothing.

I'm not here to support people I'm here to keep their machines working and I do support the Companies that the End Users work for, however having said that there are some Interesting People out there. One guy who got more than slightly peeved off with a computer who parked a excavator track on it and asked could it be repaired.

Another who "borrowed" my NB and parked an excavator on it and then wondered if he had to pay for a replacement. One expensive lesson when you are interrogating the Computer Control System of anything it's a very bad idea to leave the NB that you are using on a Track. It's even worse if you didn't ask if you could borrow the NB in the first place and just took it.

Or a guy who dropped a NB out the door when he was flying his Helicopter and wanted me to locate the NB and then repair it. Now how can you fly a Helicopter and Browse the Web at the same time?

Then you have the Home Users who are really nasty to deal with and I generally try to avoid them whenever possible. Unfortunately the wife and her children Volunteer me to do some of this work and other than Overwhelming Grounds for Divorce and Justifiable Homicide you just have to suck it up and do it. Not to bad if you just get the hardware and don't have to deal with the user but a real nightmare when you have to deal with the users.

I had one recently who said that the computer didn't turn on for 45 minutes every morning. Not being one to accept that description as useful I asked what they meant. They insisted that they had to push the Power Button for 45 minutes every morning to get the computer to turn on. Turns out that they pushed the Power Button once and waited for 45 minutes for the thing to be usable. I'm not sure what hitting the On Switch so often did but it more than pointed me in the wrong direction for quite a while. Started out by removing a lot of Fluff that had built up from the carper from behind the on Switch which may have been stopping it from turning on. I also refitted the switch which had moved out the back of the plastic Front Panel of the Desktop so it was quite possible that the unit wasn't turning on to begin with. Then I replaced the Power Supply which had a broken Main Power Switch on it and while it was in the On Position it may not have been working correctly and could have caused the problem.

Then still with no solution I started looking at the Mains Power and fitted a UPS which not only filters but provides stable Mains Power at the right Voltage and Frequency. At that point I insisted that they not turn it on of a morning and allow me to be the first to turn it on as apparently after it was working you could turn it off and on easily. They insisted that they turn it on every time I was going over there as it was difficult and it saved me "Time." This of course meant that I never saw the problem and wasted a lot of time trying to fix it.

Anyway the real problem was that the HDD was so badly fragmented and the OS so messed up generally that it did take 45 Minutes to be usable after being turned on but the Power Switch that they insisted that they where pushing all of that 45 minutes was in fact the Power Switch for the Monitor.

People who mislead you and don't let you do your job are the ones who drive me crazy and I always get them when I'm forced to do Freebies most likely because they are so silly and incapable of explaining what they are doing that they get feedup with being charged for their Time Wasting Explanations and complain to She Who Must Be Obeyed demanding that she have some form of solution for them.

Why is it that Otherwise Intelligent Sensible People turn into Blithering Idiots who can not answer a direct question when it comes to computers?

So should I stop doing IT now? I would love to but I'm sure that SWMBO would find equally silly people for me to Help with anything else I was to start doing.

Col

How about dealing with the Doctor who quit, stealing his laptop in the process, moved to another state, left the laptop outside, plugged in and turned on in the rain, and had the nerve to call our tech support to have it fixed, and then got mad when we refused to ship him a replacement.

If you can't deal with stuff like that, then IT is not the place for you.

The one that I loved was getting dragged into the PC side of the business when PC's where new because someone shot the unit and was demanding it be replaced Under Guarantee.

The Accountant appointed to run the PC Side had upset the guy with the Shot Gun and was hiding, the PC Staff demanded that a Tech be brought in to fix up the complaint. Probably feeling that a Tech was more disposable than an Accountant or any of them.

OH and I nearly forgot Trust me I'm a Doctor! So I know what I'm doing.

Col

That's what Etch-a-Sketches are for.

That's customer relations!

Your user with the "power switch" problem has a clone. That clone just kept holding down the power button on the PC. What was more frustrating was that she was only holding down the switch on one computer, her regular work computer with the same make, model, and color, she turned on normally.

I do not know how much of the issue is that the users misunderstand technology or actually believe that the computers are operated by "magic smoke ". I encourage technical staff to come up with short briefings for new applications and devices to explain common terms and usage. As a result, we reduced the time wasted on easily remedied issues and wild, inaccurate descriptions. If it had not worked, the support manager that reported to me suggested a "Clean Your Gun at Work Day" might help.

Good job, Educate the User

and keep the gun cleaning supplies around!

Attitudes like this are why IT perpetually struggles to shed its negative image amongst businesspeople. I have news for you. In the 21st century, the value of pure technologists is limited. It is all about customer service. This stuff is far easier to stitch together at the most basic levels than it used to be. The business can pick up a phone and have 10 bids to do your job in an hour. The only thing that differentiates you from them is that you understand the business and know how to apply your knowledge of technology to best solve their specific problems. It isn't about technology anymore, it's about adding value by providing a service no one else can. If you can't (or don't want) to engage your company at that level (as evidenced by your apparent disdain for the trivialities of corporate IT), there's always a spatula someplace that needs turning.

Wrong, wrong.... mmmm.... wrong, wrong, wrong and... Yes, WRONG!

Computer systems mimic business processes. Every business has slightly different ways to do things, so the idea that anyone can come in and take up right where you left off is ridiculous. I've been on both the consultant and employee end and that notion comes from people who don't have a clue what they are talking about.

Every employee in the company has to provide value or their job doesn't exist. Your familiarity with a company's systems and how they fit in the context of company operations is incredibly valuable and non-transferable. It doesn't matter how good an IT person is, each company's IT environment is a little different than others. Learning these ins and outs is part of the job and not to be so cavalierly dismissed.

You need to take a little vacation - that's a lot of anger you got stored up there.

IT is always about People - if it was not for people we would not need IT. When I hire for Support Tech positions 'People Skills' are just as important as IT skills! It is all Customer Service.