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GeekNights 20110630 - Supermarkets

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  • For example, if you are in a suburb, any economic hiccup will instantly lock off most service industry jobs, as I have discovered to my displeasure.
  • If you apply to those low-level jobs, don't admit to having a degree. They'll see you as a high turnover risk. Male up a story if you have to.
  • So what's this about IT begging for people? Shit I do IT. I do programming too, networking and other. I even did help desk back in the day. I'm the fucking package. Oh, wait, I don't touch Windows. Shit, well there goes all the moneys and opportunities. Fuck you business world! I'll keep living off my savings not doing any real work comfortably.

    Seriously though, I haven't heard about companies hurting for employees with the following exception: some companies are trying to squeeze out tons of work without paying appropriately to compensate; this can cause a high enough turnover that these companies are left hurting for "talent." Then again Scrym mentioned negotiating and making the moneys. So I'm confused. Anyone actually have these anecdotes?

    I might shoot for a job at Starbucks someday. Benefits for part time work and lots of interesting people. They also don't try to lay claim to owning all of your intellectual property as any sort of academia work does.
  • Oh, wait, I don't touch Windows. Shit, well there goes all the moneys and opportunities. Fuck you business world!
    The money isn't in Windows. It's in proprietary support on Linux or high level network design and system administration. You have to do production system administration, production engineering, production operations, or really just production anything. There's little money in entry-to-mid level corporate IT (e.g., helpdesk, desktop support, non-server Windows support, pulling cables, rack-and-stack, etc...).

    If you actually know your way around the Linux command line, can easily and fully administer a production server (e.g., Tomcat running the revenue-generating portion of a business), can read and write SQL and basic Perl or Python, are articulate, and can learn quickly, you can get a production IT job (in a major city).
    Then again Scrym mentioned negotiating and making the moneys. So I'm confused. Anyone actually have these anecdotes?
    My company needed to hire production IT. Almost without exception, the people who applied were patently unqualified for even entry-level corporate IT, let alone production-level work. We simply weren't able to find anyone qualified for a surprisingly long time despite constant interviewing.

    Don't confuse production IT with corporate IT. They're effectively completely separate realms.
  • edited July 2011
    Don't confuse production IT with corporate IT. They're effectively completely separate realms.
    I have a number of friends who's job is in "IT", but I'm not sure I have ever heard of this distinction. You sort of touched on it in your post, but is it something easy to elaborate upon?

    My guess is that corporate IT basically means meeting the IT needs of a business that is in any other industry than IT, while production IT means meeting the service needs of a company that provides IT solutions.

    EDIT: e.g. administrating servers at a research laboratory for the use by the employees of said workplace might be corporate IT while administrating the publicly exposed Amazon servers for customers/clients would be production IT?
    Post edited by Byron on
  • but is it something easy to elaborate upon?
    There are IT guys who take care of all the Windows desktops in the office. They deal with things like setting up Microsoft Exchange and Domain servers and that sort of thing. If your computer breaks at work, they come over and replace it.

    Then there are IT guys who work in the data center. They make sure that Facebook.com is always working. They make the real moneys.
  • edited July 2011
    So it is really a distinction of inward facing IT vs outward facing IT.

    Production IT == dealing with security nightmares 24/7.

    To clarify my original post about knowing IT, I have zero interest in production IT, but I quite enjoy and have experience with corporate IT. So not much moneys to be made there it seems.
    Post edited by Byron on
  • Ahh, this reminded me of how much I miss Wegmans. It was the only supermarket I would go to when I lived in Fairfax, truly a king of supermarkets. Man, I even miss a Whole Foods, I would never buy a whole lot there but it always smelled nice. Now, I have to deal with over priced sub-par supermarkets. I live between two Wegmans but both are about an hour away. I guess it's cool I live near a ton of Farmer's Markets. If I wanted German sausage, it would be great, but I don't.

    It's interesting to see how living near a different super has changed my cooking. I cooked a lot more when I was near a Wegmans (and a Hmart) and had access to pretty much anything I wanted. Now, I kind of just have to make due and so my interest in cooking has gone way down. I went to make my fresh salsa and I couldn't find a grocery store near me that just had some fresh cut cilantro. I had to buy a cilantro plant (which sadly, promptly died after use) because I couldn't find it any other way. I still sometimes pick up Asian stuff at the Hmart near my parents but that is still over an hour away so I can't really pick up any frozen stuff. Man, I would love a bag of gyoza right now!

    I'll live you with this:
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