Anonymous's blog

An IT wannabe tries to pass the hiring gauntlet

Anonymous — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 11:00:00 +0000

Applying for my first IT job gave me some practical reminders. First, to succeed in life sometimes you have to step out of your comfort zone to realize your goals. And second, don't discount skill sets acquired in other career experiences. I've worked in IT for about seven years, and it has certainly been the right career choice for me.

Your past IT performance may come back to reward you

Anonymous — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 11:00:00 +0000

Near the start of my IT career, I was looking for a short-term contract position of three to four weeks to fill the gap between my previous gig and a pending relocation to another state. This was around the time when Mac OS 8 was introduced and when the Macintosh user community was well in to making the transition to the Power PC architecture. Having worked with and being quite familiar with the Macintosh operating system, I landed a contract at a media company assisting with some backed-up help desk tickets.

The Windows server migration that wouldn't go away

Anonymous — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 11:00:00 +0000

At the time of this story, I was involved with a huge datacenter consolidation project. With only a handful of people, we were condensing datacenters, combining three major networks on four continents, and integrating five different carriers. As the multiyear project was winding down, one lone server at a closing datacenter remained an enigma -- and became my headache.

Who's doing the backups? Even IT guys get it wrong

Anonymous — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 11:00:00 +0000

A question often asked is, "how could anyone be so stupid as to not back up data?" Reflecting on my own experience, I see how it could happen. Sometimes a series of events can interfere with important and seemingly basic IT tasks, such as backups.

I work as a software engineer for a small company that was formed over 10 years ago when our founding CEO, "Ed," got fed up working for an employer who thought that paying the employees was optional. One of our biggest problems from the beginning has been backups.

An icy hard drive and the pending payroll

Anonymous — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 10:00:00 +0000

We are a vendor of time and attendance systems, and our customers use the data to process payroll. Our help desk takes many calls from customers, mainly about training issues, rule changes, or errors that occur.

The worst call we can get is from a client who "cannot process payroll." It means the customer cannot produce a file to feed the payroll data, and unless it is fixed quickly, the employees will not be paid on time. Needless to say, tensions run high while troubleshooting such calls.

Surviving a tough IT project

Anonymous — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 10:00:00 +0000

Above my desk is a plaque that reads "Amidst Difficulty Lies Opportunity." I found the words particularly inspirational during an IT project when my technical skills were constantly questioned and my role undermined.

I was assigned to a major project with my associate director and project manager. I was the technical lead for upgrading an application used to document our HMO's medical bill reviews, insert inquiries from customers, and approve/deny medical appeals.

A tale of finding one's niche in IT

Anonymous — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 10:00:00 +0000

Do what makes you happy. In my IT career, I've learned that it takes trial and error, the right opportunities, and some tough decision making to find a niche that works for your life at a given time.

Back in the mid-1990s, the health care company I worked for merged with another local health care company to become one rather large health care organization. At the time, I was doing desktop support and PC programming.

IT customer support dos and don'ts

Anonymous — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 10:00:00 +0000

I have been working in computer support since about 1995 -- online, over the phones, and on-site. Here are a few gems from some of the customer service encounters.

Watch your language: My very first tech support job was working in customer service for an Internet services provider. The last day of training, we were all assigned to a floor agent for "buddy jacking," where we listened to both sides of the call but said nothing.

A tale of an ISP service call and the poor response time

Anonymous — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 10:00:00 +0000

As the senior programmer and network admin for a large mortuary (yes, mortuary), it was my duty to discover why our Internet connection to the outside world went down one day -- and to get it fixed quickly.

This was back in the days before point-to-point T1 lines were even close to being within our IT budget, and so the Internet over 56K modems was the most affordable method for our remote locations to communicate with the main branch.

Heartbreak at the help desk

Anonymous — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 10:00:00 +0000

I started my IT career as a help desk analyst working the phone queue, and over a five-year period started moving up the ranks. The last position I applied for at that company was for senior analyst of the help desk -- and ended up as a network technician. Here's what happened.