Random Chit Chat

[kmanmx]

Yea you went into territory I refuse to go into. Over here DevOps guys can earn 150k+ easily if you know what the employer is looking for. That's great and all, but I'm an SA/Server/infrastructure engineer, not a fucking software guy. I have dipped in a lot of those things, but one of the reason I stick to Windows based jobs is because I don't have to deal with 80% of that. I will only have to deal with Kubernetes if I stick with this job the next 5ish years because our top management was convinced to go container. That's fair, it's a much more viable solution for our environment than Hyper-V which keeps fucking up. Thing is as somebody IMO in the upper echelon of my skillset and position I don't really want to learn a completely new environment and retain the pay I'm in which was granted to me for my ability in Windows based environments. Usually I'd say I'm just being stubborn but I'm in the majority with my coworkers, none of us want to start from scratch like we just picked up a new career and job. I would say the deepest thing we go into in that list is Shell and Azure. Hell I'm even learning SQL because we let go our Sr DBA and I'm over here like I'm not a DBA. I do it because I like my job and it helps my coworker, but if I learned enough DBA stuff just make me a DBA and pay me DBA money. I could look at it like "well I'm being paid Sr money to be a noob and learn something I could move to another job and get paid more" but man I really don't want to. At that point it'd make more sense to just ramp up my business and take on managed contracts so I could be my own boss and do the work I want to do. Maybe I'm just being naive and stubborn, but honestly after all the trauma I got from Lockheed I'm enjoying being comfortable and liking my job.

Yeah i'm not dead set staying in DevOps. I like Cloud based roles, so i'll want to stick to DevOps, SRA, Cloud Infra Engineer but don't mind too much which. I kind of like DevOps because it's very rewarding, and the salaries are high for the UK. Most IT jobs here are bad pay, but DevOps is an exception (though I am underpaid by 20 to 30% compared to going market rate atm, gonna fix that this year). Still noway near US salaries but if you are a senior or lead devops engineer then earning £70k to £90k would be good, but those roles advertising that salary are frequent enough that I see them on a daily basis even if they are in the upper pay bracket. And that is damn good pay for the UK, hard to think of many higher paying non management level jobs.

I do find DevOps quite nice as it's very rewarding when you set up an entire pipeline that will automate the entire process from someone doing a git commit, right the way from building their csproj to unit testing and deploying into an azure web app or whatever in production. Its nice to see that work reliably and benefit everyone. But yeah my issue is I don't consider myself a talented coder, I can do some intermediate level powershell like working with API requests, hash tables, JSON object manipulation and all the kind of stuff you need to accomplish 90% of requirements. But when it gets to C# and "proper" software i'm out of my depth, and it can be a problem in the DevOps world i've found as people just expect you to also know software development (because what I listed isn't enough to learn already ffs... ?)

Fair play on the DBA stuff but I personally absolutely hate SQL and anything to do with databases I want nothing to do with them beyond provisioning the resources they require! same for networking in a way... as soon as people start saying things like SSL offload and header injection, I shrug my shoulders and defer to the CCNA/CCNP qualified people.

 

[PP Mguire]

Fair play on the DBA stuff but I personally absolutely hate SQL and anything to do with databases I want nothing to do with them beyond provisioning the resources they require! same for networking in a way... as soon as people start saying things like SSL offload and header injection, I shrug my shoulders and defer to the CCNA/CCNP qualified people.

Bingo and fucking bingo. I absolutely LOVE doing big fast networks but the instant you start tossing the words "web" and "compliance" around I say nope I'm out. Doing my own RDS remoteapp environment I was getting pissed at dealing with certs ONLY to be able to use a fucking Remote Desktop Gateway so I can use port 443. Literally got a small open source app off Github to do the same exact thing without all the extra MS enabled hassle but still locked out of the port 443 because it requires a damn gateway. Our current SQL guy is a Jr DBA and honestly 90% of the work that's sent to us is from the dev teams wanting quick queries being ran against the DB. It's either a copy paste or run the .sql file. Easy enough, but when most of my workload during the day is now running queries I start to wonder why am I not being paid Jr DBA money. Hell I know a lot about the infrastructure requirements for our massive DBs and I'd love to just consult on building those up properly. Any time I deep dive into our environment I'm like y'all did this and this right, but this doesn't make sense. Our sales DB is running on the same kind of machines as our loan processing environment (which is all automated and scaled beyond 200 servers). It's pretty basic knowledge to know SQL needs fast cores and lots of RAM, and it saves on per core licensing. But nope, same Xeon Golds as the rest. Currently we're fighting a .net garbage collection issue which came up after an environment update. We're not looking at rolling back to see why it caused it, just trying to brute force it and fix it with MORE servers. What??

 

[MemRefreshABC]

Yea you went into territory I refuse to go into. Over here DevOps guys can earn 150k+ easily if you know what the employer is looking for. That's great and all, but I'm an SA/Server/infrastructure engineer, not a fucking software guy. I have dipped in a lot of those things, but one of the reason I stick to Windows based jobs is because I don't have to deal with 80% of that. I will only have to deal with Kubernetes if I stick with this job the next 5ish years because our top management was convinced to go container. That's fair, it's a much more viable solution for our environment than Hyper-V which keeps fucking up. Thing is as somebody IMO in the upper echelon of my skillset and position I don't really want to learn a completely new environment and retain the pay I'm in which was granted to me for my ability in Windows based environments. Usually I'd say I'm just being stubborn but I'm in the majority with my coworkers, none of us want to start from scratch like we just picked up a new career and job. I would say the deepest thing we go into in that list is Shell and Azure. Hell I'm even learning SQL because we let go our Sr DBA and I'm over here like I'm not a DBA. I do it because I like my job and it helps my coworker, but if I learned enough DBA stuff just make me a DBA and pay me DBA money. I could look at it like "well I'm being paid Sr money to be a noob and learn something I could move to another job and get paid more" but man I really don't want to. At that point it'd make more sense to just ramp up my business and take on managed contracts so I could be my own boss and do the work I want to do. Maybe I'm just being naive and stubborn, but honestly after all the trauma I got from Lockheed I'm enjoying being comfortable and liking my job.

I can certainly understand your frusteration PP. Your not alone. I know what its like to be forced to enjoy an activity you dont feel comfortable with. Employers seem to think we are robots without feelings and treat us like machines instead of humans. I observed that from many work places. I would hate the idea of a employer steering me away from my true interests. I remember back in collage when I was forced to complete hardware labs and programming which was very frusterating to me, especially when attempting to trace the mistake you made in coding. It was like trying to find a needle in a hay stack. I hollered at the screen; "I'm not a damn software engineer and i'm not a damn bench technician!!! I'm a Windows and network Technician! Please give me what I want ext. That was my true interest as well. I could care less about software programming or hardware.

 

[kmanmx]

Bingo and fucking bingo. I absolutely LOVE doing big fast networks but the instant you start tossing the words "web" and "compliance" around I say nope I'm out. Doing my own RDS remoteapp environment I was getting pissed at dealing with certs ONLY to be able to use a fucking Remote Desktop Gateway so I can use port 443. Literally got a small open source app off Github to do the same exact thing without all the extra MS enabled hassle but still locked out of the port 443 because it requires a damn gateway. Our current SQL guy is a Jr DBA and honestly 90% of the work that's sent to us is from the dev teams wanting quick queries being ran against the DB. It's either a copy paste or run the .sql file. Easy enough, but when most of my workload during the day is now running queries I start to wonder why am I not being paid Jr DBA money. Hell I know a lot about the infrastructure requirements for our massive DBs and I'd love to just consult on building those up properly. Any time I deep dive into our environment I'm like y'all did this and this right, but this doesn't make sense. Our sales DB is running on the same kind of machines as our loan processing environment (which is all automated and scaled beyond 200 servers). It's pretty basic knowledge to know SQL needs fast cores and lots of RAM, and it saves on per core licensing. But nope, same Xeon Golds as the rest. Currently we're fighting a .net garbage collection issue which came up after an environment update. We're not looking at rolling back to see why it caused it, just trying to brute force it and fix it with MORE servers. What??

This is why I like Azure SQL Database as a PaaS offering. You can basically just select the SKU / performance you want and everything under the hood is already optimized for SQL databases. And it will pretty much tell you with built in alerting and analytics if you need to select a higher performance tier. Spec'ing hardware is cool for my own personal life, but when i'm responsible for it at a corporate level I like to take as much responsibility out of my hands as possible. I will choose PaaS everything if it fits the requirement, which it normally does. Scale up and scale out are just 20 seconds worth of clicks or Azure CLI away.

As a side note, I read a blog from a MS Employee yesterday on what the actual Azure Hosts run software wise. You'll be unsurprised to know it's a custom Windows SKU called 'Windows Cloud Host', super stripped down, less than 300MB as a a .wim file. Was quite an interesting read..

 

[PP Mguire]

I can certainly understand your frusteration PP. Your not alone. I know what its like to be forced to enjoy an activity you dont feel comfortable with. Employers seem to think we are robots without feelings and treat us like machines instead of humans. I observed that from many work places. I would hate the idea of a employer steering me away from my true interests. I remember back in collage when I was forced to complete hardware labs and programming which was very frusterating to me, especially when attempting to trace the mistake you made in coding. It was like trying to find a needle in a hay stack. I hollered at the screen; "I'm not a damn software engineer and i'm not a damn bench technician!!! I'm a Windows and network Technician! Please give me what I want ext. That was my true interest as well. I could care less about software programming or hardware.

Oh no I much prefer hardware, but being a Windows SA is rather easy when you learn server side stuff. If I could make my salary building servers I'd do that instead.

This is why I like Azure SQL Database as a PaaS offering. You can basically just select the SKU / performance you want and everything under the hood is already optimized for SQL databases. And it will pretty much tell you with built in alerting and analytics if you need to select a higher performance tier. Spec'ing hardware is cool for my own personal life, but when i'm responsible for it at a corporate level I like to take as much responsibility out of my hands as possible. I will choose PaaS everything if it fits the requirement, which it normally does. Scale up and scale out are just 20 seconds worth of clicks or Azure CLI away.

As a side note, I read a blog from a MS Employee yesterday on what the actual Azure Hosts run software wise. You'll be unsurprised to know it's a custom Windows SKU called 'Windows Cloud Host', super stripped down, less than 300MB as a a .wim file. Was quite an interesting read..

Considering we built a 3rd multi-million datacenter behind our corporate office, I'd say they are very much going to stay on prem for anything they can. We just very recently (couple months ago) went active/active for Exchange. Even then we still have 8 Exchange clusters.
Also I'm the opposite. I'd much rather do what I do for free for people on a corporate level getting paid my salary or higher as a consultant. I was trying to do that at Lockheed but gave up when I realized they spend almost nothing on actual IT.

 

[MemRefreshABC]

Oh no I much prefer hardware, but being a Windows SA is rather easy when you learn server side stuff. If I could make my salary building servers I'd do that instead.


Considering we built a 3rd multi-million datacenter behind our corporate office, I'd say they are very much going to stay on prem for anything they can. We just very recently (couple months ago) went active/active for Exchange. Even then we still have 8 Exchange clusters.
Also I'm the opposite. I'd much rather do what I do for free for people on a corporate level getting paid my salary or higher as a consultant. I was trying to do that at Lockheed but gave up when I realized they spend almost nothing on actual IT.

I know how much you enjoy hardware. It shows in this forum. I think hardware is a guy thing. Most men in computer tech training prefer hardware training.

 

[PP Mguire]

I know how much you enjoy hardware. It shows in this forum. I think hardware is a guy thing. Most men in computer tech training prefer hardware training.

My theory/opinion, it's because the field was predominantly men before it became "ok" and not looked at as so nerdy. People used to get straight up bullied for liking video games, cartoons, D&D, or anything that seemed nerdy. Most of it coming from girls. Getting into this stuff wasn't as easily accessible as it is today, and software based things are way easier to get into than hardware. You can learn any language, HTML, whatever from at home without dealing with the social aspect of being in the field. Outside of gaming where women tend to use it and their bodies to make a quick buck on camera that is. And gaming in itself is usually why men like the hardware aspect, outside of the "tinker with things" tick we have. I don't think I would have ever seen a girl my age in the early 2000s using the public library to browse this forum, check reviews, or to see what new hardware was coming out. Hell I got made fun of for looking at the new Maximum PC and PC Gamer magazines on the bus every month. Since women tend to lean more on the "I want to be socially acceptable" side of things, hard to get into something that was predominantly globally accepted as "uncool". The past decade has slowly changed that though.

 

[MemRefreshABC]

My theory/opinion, it's because the field was predominantly men before it became "ok" and not looked at as so nerdy. People used to get straight up bullied for liking video games, cartoons, D&D, or anything that seemed nerdy. Most of it coming from girls. Getting into this stuff wasn't as easily accessible as it is today, and software based things are way easier to get into than hardware. You can learn any language, HTML, whatever from at home without dealing with the social aspect of being in the field. Outside of gaming where women tend to use it and their bodies to make a quick buck on camera that is. And gaming in itself is usually why men like the hardware aspect, outside of the "tinker with things" tick we have. I don't think I would have ever seen a girl my age in the early 2000s using the public library to browse this forum, check reviews, or to see what new hardware was coming out. Hell I got made fun of for looking at the new Maximum PC and PC Gamer magazines on the bus every month. Since women tend to lean more on the "I want to be socially acceptable" side of things, hard to get into something that was predominantly globally accepted as "uncool". The past decade has slowly changed that though.

I absalutely enjoy girly type gaming such as cooking fever, Bingo Blitz, Bejeweled Blitz ext even though i'm a women and i'm not ashamed of it. I just dont care to tinker with hardware but I feel that I still need to learn about hardware to be able to get accepted into the profression I chose. I am more of a Windows, cybersecurity and network troublshooting type women. I visit this forum because I have a diffacult time remembering hardware configurations and types. I believe its because i'm not trully interested in hardware. I am concerned that I will be given an in person test to gain employment and that is very diffacult to pass. I took an exam in TestOut labs back in collage and I failed it numerous times because you had to answer 100 or more questions plus work on labs within a hour. I mean timed tests. There is no way I or anyone for that matter could have completed these labs within an hour. That was rediculously unrealistic expectations of the students. None of my classmates ever passed the exam. Employers expect too much from potential employees these days and thats why there was such a shortage of technicians. Why can't we go back to "Not neccissary to pass exam to get hired days as long as you have the skills and have a degree?" I persued an AS in computer information science with the concentration of networking and a BA in Cybersecurity. Somewhere during midterm while studying as a freshman in collage I was suddenly informed by my adviser that you now have to pass an exam and be certified before employers will consider you for hire. I chose this profession during the time when you didn't need certification because it was easier to get accepted by employers without having to take a nightmare exam! I was crushed when I was informed that employers suddenly required exams to be passed and certifications! CompTIA Security+ CCNA CompTIA+ and many more certifacations are required to become employed these days.

 

[PP Mguire]

I absalutely enjoy girly type gaming such as cooking fever, Bingo Blitz, Bejeweled Blitz ext even though i'm a women and i'm not ashamed of it.

Well, I don't think I have to point out how stereotypical that is lol.

Why can't we go back to "Not neccissary to pass exam to get hired days as long as you have the skills and have a degree?" I persued an AS in computer information science with the concentration of networking and a BA in Cybersecurity. Somewhere during midterm while studying as a freshman in collage I was suddenly informed by my adviser that you now have to pass an exam and be certified before employers will consider you for hire. I chose this profession during the time when you didn't need certification because it was easier to get accepted by employers without having to take a nightmare exam! I was crushed when I was informed that employers suddenly required exams to be passed and certifications! CompTIA Security+ CCNA CompTIA+ and many more certifacations are required to become employed these days.

I have held solid positions without certs or a degree. In fact my last SA position required Security+ and I worked in that position 2 years without it. It was DoD as well.

 

[MemRefreshABC]

Well, I don't think I have to point out how stereotypical that is lol.

I have held solid positions without certs or a degree. In fact my last SA position required Security+ and I worked in that position 2 years without it. It was DoD as well.

Really? I wasn't aware that you can gain employment in an intermediate or upper level position without certifications. My husband told me that I could probably persue an entry level position without certifications because he spoke to a few employees at work who were currently employed at the entry level positions but I never knew you could with advanced positions.