support monkey

[pmeswani]

unfortunatly the companies i have worked for have not stayed with the times, last company was still using windows NT ffs.

how can you get a better job, if you cannot get the experience ? expensive courses seem to be worthless

Have you not heard of Technet and Virtual PC / VMWARE? Make the investment in yourself and it will pay off. I am hoping to upgrade my system to 16GB of system memory soon and will hopefully be playing around with different MS OS's so that I can improve on my Windows Security knowledge.

[northernladuk]

At the end of the day you are in charge of your own career, particularly when permie. If you want to sit comfortably in a long term role and rot that is your choice I am afraid. If you are not willing to chase the work it isn't going to chase you. If you do decide to go contracting you are going to have to up your game and be a lot more flexible and fast moving IMO.

[Sausage Surprise]

You need to move with the times. I was an Analyst Programmer in 1997 but by jumping on the next big thing (in my case ITIL, but I'm doing other stuff as well now )I'm still in IT but higher up the food chain.

You're 10 years behind everyone else.

(And expensive courses are not worthless - certificates get you interviews, networking gets you contracts. I'm sitting in a flash office now because I sat next to the PM in a course in January...)

The fishnets and short skirt did no harm either

[lukemg]

Played this game, had a good 10 year contracting run but in 03 the game was up and I couldn't buy a support job. Managed to score a piss-poor perm job miles away on half the money and still floundered until I got sent on an ITIL course. Lied and cheated to get a perm SDM role and then went contract doing anything that says service or ITIL.
Old tech skills still useful to talk to the propellor heads and I was never really IT stock so personality deals with the business side. If you've got the chat to go customer facing and can deal with the grief (same as support except someone else has to fix it !) then this might be an option.
Not expecting it to be the whole answer but it works for now and I am chucking money at the warchest to cover next career earthquake.
Just been hired as PM on part of a very high profile project almost entirely based on fitting in with the team during earlier work.....
Good luck.

[unemployed]

cheers for the feedback guys.

couple of phone calls today with permanant jobs for the insurance sector, half decent base with a few perks bonus etc.
so think i am going to go this route , long term i want to go into the other broken world of property development , doing one already to keep me busy so a cushy job to keep my fingers dipped in the water is key.

Just soul destroying though knowing you have to keep learning learning learning just to keep a job, what other profession needs constant upkeep like bloody IT , should of become a plumber

[doomage]

cheers for the feedback guys.

couple of phone calls today with permanant jobs for the insurance sector, half decent base with a few perks bonus etc.
so think i am going to go this route , long term i want to go into the other broken world of property development , doing one already to keep me busy so a cushy job to keep my fingers dipped in the water is key.

Just soul destroying though knowing you have to keep learning learning learning just to keep a job, what other profession needs constant upkeep like bloody IT , should of become a plumber

It's not soul destroying. Unblocking toilets for 40 years is soul destroying. Your problem is you are not in IT, you are in IT support.

Lot's of good advice in this thread. Long story short, if you don't like it, GTFO.

[Scoobos]

You need to move with the times. I was an Analyst Programmer in 1997 but by jumping on the next big thing (in my case ITIL, but I'm doing other stuff as well now )I'm still in IT but higher up the food chain.

You're 10 years behind everyone else.

First ever disagreement with the higher power ! Sorry Cojak, can't agree with this - it's negative towards support - Britain has some of the best technicians in support worldwide - Microsoft Reading is not full of idjits who just haven't taken the next step, but many Subject Matter Experts - and we have some first rate guys in 3rd line in every major corporation in the country, Britian has big Infrastructures that are very much alive and kicking.

Some Architects work BAU and Project with the project funding the contractor, its been abig thing in cutting costs (I thought)

(yup, you guessed it, I'm 3rd line).

Times have been EXCEPTIONALLY tough, I've struggled so badly this year - and in the past I've avoided it by going abroad.


My advice -
Either:

1. Go abroad and seek work - I did this in both big busts in the past years (dont know about your ties) - but its well worth it and you get a lot of exposure as life is generally a bit more planned and slower.

2. Get downloading some training and get learning it. The certificates are pieces of paper, its down to you whether you go that way, but I generally do CD based training and some test cert downloadable exam generator.

3. Forgive me if I'm writing you down here - 3rd line has evolved though into areas you do need to learn though and the only way of learning is by doing or simulating then jumping in.

The datacentre is the present now - not inhouse servers, its inhouse datacentres if at all.
Virtualisation - Power Management (HVAC)
Cabling / Networking "new" basics (seriously! especially LCAP and multimodes , VLANs, MAC address filtering )
Whatever flavour of OS you like , you hardly use it in a virtualised world, less can go wrong with uniformed images on unified hardware.
Citrix / RDP / Terminal Services
Storage and iScsi / NFS / FC

OR

4. Specialise - Pick a product or technology, like Sharepoint, Netapp, EMC, System Centre Configuration Manager, Symantec Backup Exec + Good SAN Storage etc ...

4. There just aren't many contracts out there, but I've had a number of firm offers in the past week and its been a nightmare beating them off - pm me and I'll send you agent details as I'm not filling them )

Trust me, this years been hell - took 9 months , everyone telling me not to sweat it and if you're good it will come ...

I think they were right , and probably are above too.. <end wall of text>

[Scoobos]

Have you not heard of Technet and Virtual PC / VMWARE? Make the investment in yourself and it will pay off. I am hoping to upgrade my system to 16GB of system memory soon and will hopefully be playing around with different MS OS's so that I can improve on my Windows Security knowledge.

Says in 1 line what took me paragraphs... sorry.



16GB is crap, try 32gb on i7 3820 -- oooo yeah... 2xESX in HA , With dual Netapp NAS's , 16 virtual machines, including HA Exchange, Client PC's, NLB Forefront TMG, Edge Transport, Symantec Backup Exec, AD, --- MSDN Subscription (expenses of course) + VMWare FTW!

[unemployed]

It's not soul destroying. Unblocking toilets for 40 years is soul destroying. Your problem is you are not in IT, you are in IT support.

Lot's of good advice in this thread. Long story short, if you don't like it, GTFO.

what`s IT then coding ? No thanks.

My point is everything under a system architect is considered a talented helpdesk monkey.
jobs paying no better than working in tesco`s. i Understand niece skills will be more in demand but come on , the agencies are really destroying things.
Take away support and your business is fooked when things go wrong.

server support dead , as discussed all running on vmware on standard images and hardware , a bloke in india can restore a duff server etc.

i would rather unblock toilets and paid a rate that has risen with everthing else than deal with some of the Aholes given technology to use badly.

[northernladuk]

what`s IT then coding ? No thanks.

My point is everything under a system architect is considered a talented helpdesk monkey.
jobs paying no better than working in tesco`s. i Understand niece skills will be more in demand but come on , the agencies are really destroying things.
Take away support and your business is fooked when things go wrong.

server support dead , as discussed all running on vmware on standard images and hardware , a bloke in india can restore a duff server etc.

i would rather unblock toilets and paid a rate that has risen with everthing else than deal with some of the Aholes given technology to use badly.

I think the biggest problem here is your total lack of understanding of your industry (which is staggering) and your attitude IMO. I can't even begin to start unpicking the rubbish you have just type above.