Active Directory admin - hire q1'10
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I'm not sure I follow what you are suggesting sickmint.
Infrastructure projects to me are completely different than "support type work." "Infrastructure" where I come from is core network equipment. Most places haven't spent money on this stuff (for the purpose of upgrading) in a couple years. Give it one more year and a slight recovery and businesses will have to tend to replacing their old equipment.
Not sure what you mean by support work either. There is ALWAYS the need for the proverbial "IT guy" or helpdesk staff at any company of decent size. Many companies will be looking to upgrade to Windows 7 and all the server 2008/2010 product line soon as well.
It's a great time to get certifications while its still a little slow.
Infrastructure projects to me are completely different than "support type work." "Infrastructure" where I come from is core network equipment. Most places haven't spent money on this stuff (for the purpose of upgrading) in a couple years. Give it one more year and a slight recovery and businesses will have to tend to replacing their old equipment.
Not sure what you mean by support work either. There is ALWAYS the need for the proverbial "IT guy" or helpdesk staff at any company of decent size. Many companies will be looking to upgrade to Windows 7 and all the server 2008/2010 product line soon as well.
It's a great time to get certifications while its still a little slow.
my comment was on IT in general and especially for those in school.
a lot of the infrastructure work doesn't necessarily need to be updated that often either though. whereas the project work is constant. if you stop that you are dead because your competition will start stabbing you. the infrastructure work is a lot better than the basic support work, i kind of consider it the high end of support work though.
there always is and always will be a need for the "IT guy" but support is a fairly commoditized position. even a lot of the high level infrastructure stuff is often that way. which is more valuable, the guy who sets up the web server or the guy who builds the web site? unless it's a real serious site, the server part is not that challenging. same with other things, who sets up the database server vs. who actually knows how to use the database?
as storage has become cheap it is even easier to store data now, easily way more than companies know what to do with. if you can help store it in a sensible way and pull value out of it then that should set you up for very solid growth in the industry over upcoming years. it is much better to be "the answer guy" than "the IT guy" and the fundamental skills people start with when they begin working in computers are pretty much the same.
a lot of the infrastructure work doesn't necessarily need to be updated that often either though. whereas the project work is constant. if you stop that you are dead because your competition will start stabbing you. the infrastructure work is a lot better than the basic support work, i kind of consider it the high end of support work though.
there always is and always will be a need for the "IT guy" but support is a fairly commoditized position. even a lot of the high level infrastructure stuff is often that way. which is more valuable, the guy who sets up the web server or the guy who builds the web site? unless it's a real serious site, the server part is not that challenging. same with other things, who sets up the database server vs. who actually knows how to use the database?
as storage has become cheap it is even easier to store data now, easily way more than companies know what to do with. if you can help store it in a sensible way and pull value out of it then that should set you up for very solid growth in the industry over upcoming years. it is much better to be "the answer guy" than "the IT guy" and the fundamental skills people start with when they begin working in computers are pretty much the same.
Seriously tho...
PS - do you write essays for a living?
my comment was on IT in general and especially for those in school.
a lot of the infrastructure work doesn't necessarily need to be updated that often either though. whereas the project work is constant. if you stop that you are dead because your competition will start stabbing you. the infrastructure work is a lot better than the basic support work, i kind of consider it the high end of support work though.
You need to consider admin ppl vs engineer people. admins maintain, engineers design... that applies to helpdesk systems all the way up to LAN/WAN design as well as application design.
there always is and always will be a need for the "IT guy" but support is a fairly commoditized position. even a lot of the high level infrastructure stuff is often that way. which is more valuable, the guy who sets up the web server or the guy who builds the web site?
You need both to be successful, and you'd be surprised how hard it is to find quality people to fill either of those seats.
unless it's a real serious site, the server part is not that challenging.
Define serious site? Any business site still alive in this economy is taking on massive traffic every day. Rest assured, maintaining SLAs to such an environment is not as simple as clicking NEXT NEXT NEXT 100x.
same with other things, who sets up the database server vs. who actually knows how to use the database?
I setup DB servers!Again, you need BOTH. Most guys who can write insane queries don't have a grasp on what it takes to install/configure SQL, let alone configure a cluster or configure the SAN access required... I work very closely with our DBA almost on a daily basis.
as storage has become cheap it is even easier to store data now, easily way more than companies know what to do with. if you can help store it in a sensible way and pull value out of it then that should set you up for very solid growth in the industry over upcoming years.
So all I need to know is how to store data and get it back when its needed? That's basically what a DB does! Storage might be getting "easier" to implement, but again, any site of decent size will require more than the basic SAN setup that a monkey might be able to follow.
it is much better to be "the answer guy" than "the IT guy" and the fundamental skills people start with when they begin working in computers are pretty much the same.
"The IT guy" is the guy just starting off. Most "IT guys" transition to bigger roles (aka: "the answer guy" as you call them or the engineer as I call them) as their career progresses. If you're a career "IT guy" you probably picked the wrong career!
PS - do you write essays for a living?
agreed, and that is a better position to be in, but it is still a toppy and limited kind of space. even if you make it to top level engineer guy, that's great, but you probably aren't going to go anywhere else. and you're still enough of a commodity that you are replaceable. i'm not saying this is a bad place to be in either if it's something you like. i'm just saying for anybody still figuring out what they want to do, that there's going to be a lot of money out there available for the project and idea work. it is going to be a hot area for growth.
you do need both guys, but one is a commoditized skill. it's easier to learn and again as a commodity, it's not that difficult to find a replacement. i just read things about people getting certs in this and that and to me it sounds like setting a goal to be someone replaceable. -plick- i pull one out -plop- i put in another one. oh the old one was a super badass? -plop plop- fine there's two. suresh and yang. 2 for 1 special and they are still cheaper.
some site (or application, or whatever) with actual challenges, like a myspace number of users. or an application that has to consolidate a lot of info or rip through a lot of data. something where there is an actual technical challenge. even then after these are sorted out, a lot of these jobs involve babysitting.
you do need both, but again one of these is a pretty commodity job. DBAs are not necessarily guys that are that good at using a database. that is why companies have data modelers, etl developers, sql developers, data analysts, etc. smaller company may have one guy wearing every hat of course, but which of these skills alone or conjuction with others adds the most value to a business, and makes them unique? it's not adding disk to a server. give someone technical a few days and google and they can probably do that without having any clue how to do it at the start. can the same be said about designing a solution to answer some business questions?
i've worked only fortune 500 and 100 companies, the guys that actually do have lumps of data to move around. and that's rarely what the DBA does. the DBA does basic admin stuff, some table building, user creation, backup stuff, babysitting, VERY occasional taps for tuning. there are a slew of other people that do the other work involved in the above. and often they are not very hot, or only understand their only little piece in the world, and often when someone else dictates to them what they should do. it is an area poised for growth, and is short on bodies, let alone talented ones. you are over simplifying what i stated, because it's not just getting data in and getting data out. it is getting data in efficiently and well enough to pull VALUE out. there are entire companies dedicated to this - look at ac nielsen. jewel, kmart, dominicks, etc. everyone sends their data to nielsen. all nielsen does is play with it and SELL it back to jewel, kmart, dominicks, coke and nabisco. that added value isn't coming from the IT guys or the DBAs, no matter how good they are.
mook pays me on a nickel per line basis for my posts which elevates the site's google ranking for vbulletin forum content.
From a technical skill level standpoint, most fortune 500 companies have less RAW talent in most cases than smaller start ups. F500 businesses rely on rooms full of people to make decisions, where in start ups, its going to be a single person or a very small number of people. I have more respect for the little guy who makes things work on his own with troubleshooting and trial and error.
Jewel, kmart, dominicks, coke, nabisco etc are not IT businesses at their cores either... so one would expect that they need someone else to really pull value from their data. But guess how that data was collected in the first place? "The IT guy" did it!
At the end of the day, all technical roles play a part in businesses getting real value out of their data. But being that this thread is about a opening at my employer, I can tell you that we run the full spectrum in house. Infrastructure design, application design, data mining/storage/reporting... and we do it all with less than 120 people! Business is good too!
So whatever I did to get where I am, I'd do it again - and I started off as the little IT guy doing whatever the big man told me. Now the roles are reversed and I need to hire someone onto my team that can assist in my department being successful at delivering the business what it needs to continue in its success.
Jewel, kmart, dominicks, coke, nabisco etc are not IT businesses at their cores either... so one would expect that they need someone else to really pull value from their data. But guess how that data was collected in the first place? "The IT guy" did it!
At the end of the day, all technical roles play a part in businesses getting real value out of their data. But being that this thread is about a opening at my employer, I can tell you that we run the full spectrum in house. Infrastructure design, application design, data mining/storage/reporting... and we do it all with less than 120 people! Business is good too!
So whatever I did to get where I am, I'd do it again - and I started off as the little IT guy doing whatever the big man told me. Now the roles are reversed and I need to hire someone onto my team that can assist in my department being successful at delivering the business what it needs to continue in its success.
I believe that one of your conditions was making well above what the role will pay, unfortunately I can't do much about that.
Guess everyone in this kind of job is just a commodity anyways
well, you have only dipped your toe into the tcg talent pool here.
HAHA! Don't forget IT dept lunch every Friday, which is expensed and usually about $250 for the 5-6 guys that generally attend.
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