I am defeated
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I wonder if the non-profit world might be a good place to connect with other shoe-string IT folks. I know techsoup has some forums, although I don't know how active they are.
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I have too made my career to date by being able to do not only just the impressive, but the ridiculous with little to no IT budget. Not just running ESXi in production, but multiples, and putting backup images on external Hard Drives that are salvages put into enclosures purchased on new egg so when my 2nd hand hardware failed, I could get business back up and running. As far as others looking down on that, let 'em. So what, at the end of the day business was back up and running, I'm happy, boss is happy, and I have some good resume material for the next job. Shoe string IT stories are just a great excuse for a beer and a laugh, don't let it bring you down. If you think respect from peers, bigger budgets, and nice equipment will bring you happiness in your career, you are mistaken. Happiness comes from honestly doing the best with what you have and a sense of accomplishment in seeing a project come to completion and seeing it work.
TLDR: Haters ganna hate.
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@cakeis_not_alie , I know what you mean. It seems like IT Pros who work in bigger shops often play this game of "look at the toys I have that you should have but don't". They forget that not everyone has huge budgets for IT, or even budgets at all, and if you are choosing to work at a place like that, they look down on you. I agree this attitude needs to change, but it's the "boys club" mentality. No matter what field you work in, I'm sure this is true to a degree. You're a welder? Don't have certain equipment, or a certain brand? Carpenter? Plumber? I've seen this attitude in all these fields, where guys who work small jobs with older equipment and do a great job don't get respected because the truck they drive is 15-years-old and obviously well-used. I, on the other hand, have MORE respect for people who make something from nothing because it's simply all they have.
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@cakeis_not_alie said:
@scottalanmiller Sir, you say "I don't see anyone looking down on IT practitioners who live without a good amount of resources". Then I submit that you are blind. Spiceworks is chok ablock full of this, and the VMware community is too. There's less of it here on MangoLassi...but the overwhelming majority of our industry not only looks down on these types, they actively persecute them.
I know I can be guilty of this at times. Occasionally I see people taking what I consider insane risks; is it wrong to point it out? Clearly not, but I think I will be even more careful how I do it.
Your post struck me right to the core, I remember being there too.
I think if you left any of the communities you mentioned they would be the poorer.
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Someone buy the domain, I'd love to go back and blog some of my old horror stories & tips for budget IT. It'd also be somewhere to vent. I could finally post pics of the 6 usb hdd's I have running backups (ntbackup) and not be heckled
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You ask "what is it that I am looking for"? That's a really fair question, I think.
I guess the reality of it is that I ma hoping there's a place to go with our issues where the default solution isn't "spend money you don't have". Where the people assume that new stuf cannot be bought. That the solutions have to be found with what's to hand. Now, the OP may say "hey, I'm looking to buy a solution"...but I get a lot of people messaging me looking for help with what they have.
Other sysadmins seem to have come to the conclusion that I am all about working with what's to hand. That's cool. But the demand for help is more than I can handle on my own. And hey, sometimes I need help too!
That's the sort of community I'm looking for. One where the default isn't about /selling/. Where it's not about making sure that everyone has the latest, greatest, most whitepapered install.
I do get the natural instinct on behalf of others to say "look, your job is to convince management to spend money". But the problem here is that it presumes that management has money, and are just cheap. Or that just because they are spending money over time they have the ability to make a big up front capital purchase to stem the bleeding. (If that were the case, cloud computing wouldn't exist in it's current form.)
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@Nic said:
I wonder if the non-profit world might be a good place to connect with other shoe-string IT folks. I know techsoup has some forums, although I don't know how active they are.
I think that a natural problem is that a community of "shoe string" IT would have high turnover (most people in there are trying to get out) and very low participation because the same things that make people work in places with no budgets or resources probably also have a high tendency towards lacking regular participation in forums. There would be some, of course, but if you try to isolate that group I think that you would find it to be a not very talkative one.
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@cakeis_not_alie said:
I guess the reality of it is that I ma hoping there's a place to go with our issues where the default solution isn't "spend money you don't have". Where the people assume that new stuf cannot be bought. That the solutions have to be found with what's to hand. Now, the OP may say "hey, I'm looking to buy a solution"...but I get a lot of people messaging me looking for help with what they have.
My guess is that any community will quickly gather a group of people who will always promote buying things. Why? One, because it is an easy answer. But moreso, two, because that's what a lot of people resort to because they didn't know how to make what they had work and they want to promote that mentality because it makes their own decision making look good.
It's a common thread that I see. I did X and can't produce good logic as to why I did it. So I'm going to pressure you to do it too. If everyone does it, my decision must have been a good one, right?
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@scottalanmiller I just spent 11.5 years as the systems administrator for a shoestring company. I run a consultancy that helps companies that need this kind of IT. I pay for my mortgage with tech journalism and commercial content generation.
So what you're saying is that I'm basically it. Alone. Everyone else just "tries to get out". Nobody else loves the thrill of doing the impossible, or feels that the "little guy" needs some expertise too.
So I am a freak. Or broken. Or just plain odd...and the chances of finding a place with people who are like me so that I can just feel like I don't have to walk around with sheilds up all the time is nil.
Lovely. I think I'm going to go do this next briefing and then drunk out of my mind.
HURRAY INTERNETS!
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@cakeis_not_alie said:
Other sysadmins seem to have come to the conclusion that I am all about working with what's to hand. That's cool. But the demand for help is more than I can handle on my own. And hey, sometimes I need help too!
Maybe a trick here, and this is tough, is to coach posters (OPs) that they need to state requirements or constraints up front. And be willing to accept that some people are just always going to suggest buying something, even when they know that you can't. But also be open to maybe there is something to buy that you didn't know about.
For example, a lot of people assume that to do X they need to spend Y and they know that they can't do that because Y is say $1,000. But maybe there is a $20 solution that they didn't know about. It would be good if we didn't avoid that just because they assumed that they couldn't afford to purchase anything.
But leading a discussion with "Given the constraints of working with this existing gear...." or "I have no way to spend over $350 and need to get as close to zero as possibly while meeting goals..." would help a lot, I think. It gives a framework for answering low budget questions.
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It's one thing when you dig deep trying to find a solution to a problem for yourself, it's completely different when you're trying to find a solution for a company which provide income and support for employees - why would a company want to put themselves at such risk? Because they don't know any better? There's a bit of that I'm sure, but I'm guessing more because the owners don't really care about their employees - they only care that the business makes enough to keep them at an acceptable level. With that in mind, why do YOU want to help them continue to make life so hard for those around them when they are not willing to do what it takes to make the business run better?
I know my response doesn't have polish of Scott's, but I'm guessing this is why a lot of IT admins want out of those situations - they want to work for people/companies that care about the business and the employees stability.
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Scott, you've mentioned that posters need to be more responsible with their postings before - though I have no clue how we as a community can help encourage that.
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@cakeis_not_alie said:
I do get the natural instinct on behalf of others to say "look, your job is to convince management to spend money". But the problem here is that it presumes that management has money, and are just cheap. Or that just because they are spending money over time they have the ability to make a big up front capital purchase to stem the bleeding. (If that were the case, cloud computing wouldn't exist in it's current form.)
Like the other constraints that I mentioned, those things are important factors in a projected solution. Include those with posts to give a context for the question. Knowing that opex is possible but capex is not, knowing that spend can be X, knowing what the value of the investment could be - those are all factors that we need to know.
Like most post where people are asking "design" questions versus "break / fix" questions... I tell the OP that we need the business goals up front. Without the business context, nearly anything that we propose is meaningless. It might "work" if you define work by some arbitrary IT guideline but whether or not it meets the goals of the business we would have no idea. And often neither would the person asking the question.
IT commonly forgets that it exists within a business context. ALL IT decisions need to be made with a view towards what makes sense for the company. Even a company loaded with cash should not spend it foolishly.
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@cakeis_not_alie said:
So what you're saying is that I'm basically it. Alone. Everyone else just "tries to get out". Nobody else loves the thrill of doing the impossible, or feels that the "little guy" needs some expertise too.
Mostly, yes. Other IT people can't pay their mortgages with journalism and content generation. I do a bit of that and couldn't possibly keep the lights on with it. You are at the extreme high end of IT, you are very much alone, sadly. IT people, normally, do IT both because they love it but also because they want to earn a living, generally a decent one.
You are basically volunteering your time to companies to provide IT that they can't afford otherwise, it sounds like. You are subsidizing them. If you were charging what you were worth, would anyone on a shoestring budget be able to afford you? If you aren't charging what you are worth, you are at least partially giving your services away.
If that's what you like to do, that's great. Nothing wrong with that. But yes, that makes you very unique. I've done that, given my services away, but only to non-profits and only local ones. I don't do it for "for profit" companies.
Normal IT people don't have that kind of option like you do. They need their IT careers to pay the bills.
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@Dashrender said:
I know my response doesn't have polish of Scott's, but I'm guessing this is why a lot of IT admins want out of those situations - they want to work for people/companies that care about the business and the employees stability.
That's a factor. But so is the IT that they get to do. If a company can't afford good equipment then they probably aren't doing interesting IT either. I say probably, it's not hard and fast. But think about this... if the company you work for can't afford AD, are they going to spend time doing other cool IT projects? Or will you likely spend your time fixing dying hard drives on old desktops? Even for the same pay, nearly all IT folks will opt for a job that provides them more opportunities and more growth. We choose IT because we like doing IT. Companies without budgets for IT do very little IT.
If you were a car mechanic and did it because you love working on cars and got offered two jobs, same town, same pay and one was working on five old Chevy trucks that they keep making run with used parts because they won't invest in new ones and you know there will never be anything but fixing those five old trucks and the other is a big auto shop where you get to work on lots of different cars and trucks every day, see the latest stuff, work with other mechanics that you will learn from, etc. Which would you choose? The love of being a mechanic would drive (ha ha) you to choose the exciting, second shop.
Remember, we are in IT because we love IT, not because we love helping out businesses that aren't making it. If a business is struggling but has really interesting IT, that's an exception and a very rare one.
Also there is income. If I'm working for a company that can't afford gear, that means that they can't afford me either. Computers are cheap, even top ends SANs are cheap, compared to employees. If a company is paying for people rather than products things are messed up.
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Don't get me wrong, there is a reason that I work for "cheap" doing SMB tasks, because there are challenges in that space that are really fun and interesting. It's great working for a place and actually making an impact, making real peoples' lives better, making a business far better than it was before, doing a great job with very few resources, being creative and not just buying your way out of a problem. I love that stuff. But I need to be paid for it.
When I do high level consulting, I average something like $20K USD per hour in reduced cost for the customer. I literally ask them to drop their budgets by numbers like that (after analysis of needs, of course.) Most businesses that bring me in are, in my opinion, over spending dramatically for their needs. Their money could better be spent elsewhere.
But that still leaves me with plenty of IT challenges to tackle. Just not "as many" per customer. And I can't just tell people not to buy things and to pay me to do the work instead, I have to balance buying solutions versus paying consulting hours. I can do some pretty amazing stuff with no capex budget, but there needs to be a lot of consulting budget (which amounts to the same thing) to offset it in most cases. That's not what businesses need. They need something that costs neither, and that is what I strive to provide.
There is a right balance for every business, but at some point the business has to attract the IT talent to be willing to tackle their problems. The IT market, at least in the US, is so short of people that there is no need to give away work. There are lots of tough problems for companies willing to pay moderately well out there to be tackled.
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So the big question for @cakeis_not_alie .... why do you choose the types of clients that you do? This is an honest question. One that I think you need a solid answer for.
Do you do it because you love that particular type of challenge?
Do you do it because it makes tons of money (I suspect not.)
Do you do it because you love getting to help companies that otherwise could not get IT services, at least not at your level?
Something makes you work with these particular customers when you don't have to. You choose to. Define that and I think that you will have some of your answers.
Sure, that doesn't solve the fact that IT communities will always have a bunch of people that want to buy their way out of problems, want to force their decisions on your to reverse justify their own decision making processes or simply will refuse to take into account your specific business requirements. That will never change, that's humanity. We can maybe improve it, but the problem will always remain to some degree.
But, I feel, that if you do some soul searching and define why you choose a lower income, harder struggle rather than a the same set of paths that most IT practitioners choose that maybe you would not feel so bad about the struggles and appreciate them for what they are - just part of the challenge.
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I should also point out, a TON of the people pushing specific brand solutions in any community are almost always either with vendors or, far more often, with resellers. Many do not announce this, but it is very common.
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@scottalanmiller said:
Keep in mind that while much of my time is spent with ten digit IT budgets,
$1,000,000,000? That's some IT budget
