Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
*raises hand* Thank you! That would be me. You can all have the bozo with the troubleshooting manual and I'll take the motivated entry level IT person who can solve my problems. I was on the phone with our IT helpdesk just today. They can log into my terminal and take over, doing what they do so well and giving me the shortest downtime.
Tell that to the last 4 companies I have worked for that they are fully automated. obviously you have not worked in IT.
I happened to work at one of the biggest financial company in the world and worked as a consultant for many other firms. Clearly your IT experience is limited. You better update your IT skills or else prepare to be outsourced in a few years.
I occasionally need to call Verizon to have them reset their end. If I could do so from home I would. I know for a fact the idiots in whatever foreign land are reading from a prompt - I know what they are going to say before they actually do so. I end up telling them what to do at times which frustrates them. I have asked for a level 5 supervisor at times to get an English speaking American on the line.
I have seen too many on help desks here in the USA who are not much better - deal with a sales clerk in your local cell phone provider's store. Now you know why it is an entry level position.
In the places I have worked as a tech and admin, including Daimler, a large hotel group, and currently a mid to large size supplier to the auto industry there is no move away from local IT. There is outsourcing but it is outsourcing to local companys and not offshoring. There is some centralizaton and services are spread out around the world, most of the local IT have other roles as well (exchange admin, network, SCCM Admin, purchasing... ) This will not change anytime soon.
I worked 1 year as a tech in the SAP datacenter. I was working for another company as a service provider to SAP.
While many of the admins were sitting in India there was no shortage of local admins and the helpdesk and datacenter tech jobs are not in any danger of going anywhere in the near future.
wow what IT world do you live in? I have been doing IT for 15 years and have yet to see anything start up and take over in fractions of a second. Virtual servers still run on hardware it does break you know?Every job I have worked at the number 1 call is password resets.... so much for automation.
I've written a program that will text YOUR (already-registered) cell phone with a password reset link. Click it on your mobile device. It launches a secure browser page where you enter your new password and enter it again to confirm and submit.
The program takes the new password and updates Active Directory with it. After several minutes, you go back to your workstation/laptop, and you can login with the new password.
Wrote that program over a weekend.
There are such products that you can purchase which will do the same thing: PhoneFactor being one of them.
If password resets are your number 1 call to your helpdesk, then your organization should be working to eliminate your number 1 calls, then work down the list to where cost/benefit dictates a negligible payoff.
This solution also greatly reduces the "social hack" of having a human on the other end asking you questions that can easily be found or guessed at.
wow what IT world do you live in? I have been doing IT for 15 years and have yet to see anything start up and take over in fractions of a second. Virtual servers still run on hardware it does break you know?Every job I have worked at the number 1 call is password resets.... so much for automation.
Our virtual servers are "mirrored", both the VMware Hypervisor AND each individual virtual server on the virtual host, running on the large PHYSICAL box (which is also mirrored).
If an individual virtual server goes down, its "mirror" is already running and the Hypervisor senses that and points all incoming traffic to the already-running mirror.
If the large PHYSICAL box on which these virtual servers goes down, its hot-backup (with already running and loaded virtual servers) picks up--literally in fractions of a second.
What I/T world do I live in? A cutting-edge financial institution where fractions of seconds could mean several hundred-thousand dollars.
Ya need to get outta your mom's basement, start reading trade publications, take online seminars from vendors. There's a whole lot going on as far as redundancy and fail-over.
wow what IT world do you live in? I have been doing IT for 15 years and have yet to see anything start up and take over in fractions of a second. Virtual servers still run on hardware it does break you know?Every job I have worked at the number 1 call is password resets.... so much for automation.
And virtual servers still hafta be on real servers. they don't just exist in the ether and suddenly remanifest.
Our virtual servers are "mirrored", both the VMware Hypervisor AND each individual virtual server on the virtual host, running on the large PHYSICAL box (which is also mirrored).
If an individual virtual server goes down, its "mirror" is already running and the Hypervisor senses that and points all incoming traffic to the already-running mirror.
If the large PHYSICAL box on which these virtual servers goes down, its hot-backup (with already running and loaded virtual servers) picks up--literally in fractions of a second.
What I/T world do I live in? A cutting-edge financial institution where fractions of seconds could mean several hundred-thousand dollars.
Ya need to get outta your mom's basement, start reading trade publications, take online seminars from vendors. There's a whole lot going on as far as redundancy and fail-over.
Not every business has the resources of your "cutting edge financial institution". Many - including the thousands of pcs I support struggle to make do with modest desktop infrastructure. Most people don't know their client from their server. No matter how many high tech mirrors exist, if the weekend cleaning lade trips over the ethernet cable, machines will go down.
Okay something that makes me curious is why the jobs I love are considered entry level?
Why is something like the help desk and desktop support seen as entry level?
I went to school to get my CIS degree and did always wanted to do somethin in computer repair and helpin people out with their technical problems however.
Helping people isnt always bad now I know customer service for some people is not easy but it doesnt have too much responsibility and stress compare to system administrators and network security admins and pay and hours are a bit lower and sane but it still pays decent.
I think its still a good job overall.
There are technical problems and software that can be learned only in a company and some technical details that should provide Computer Techs with decent job security. If things break we should always have a job.
Why are these jobs entry level?
I seen some of these jobs that require BA degrees some of them even have better pay and hours in some places.
There is AN entry level help desk position - but then there is a hierarchy that goes up - level two, then three, then engineering etc. You start off with general basic stuff, then as your experience and knowledge grows you move up to non-entry level jobs.
I've written a program that will text YOUR (already-registered) cell phone with a password reset link. Click it on your mobile device. It launches a secure browser page where you enter your new password and enter it again to confirm and submit.
The program takes the new password and updates Active Directory with it. After several minutes, you go back to your workstation/laptop, and you can login with the new password.
Wrote that program over a weekend.
There are such products that you can purchase which will do the same thing: PhoneFactor being one of them.
If password resets are your number 1 call to your helpdesk, then your organization should be working to eliminate your number 1 calls, then work down the list to where cost/benefit dictates a negligible payoff.
This solution also greatly reduces the "social hack" of having a human on the other end asking you questions that can easily be found or guessed at.
Faster, more secure, cheaper.
But you'll still need to have someone on the help desk to reset passwords in case your program doesn't work. Or someone's phone battery runs out. Or they didn't get the text. Or they don't know how to do it.
One of my companies spent a zillion dollars to make a robot to automate delivering things around the office. But you still needed a human to oil it's wheels. You can't automate everything.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.