If LAN is legacy, what is the UN-legacy...?
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@wirestyle22 said:
My question would be if we migrate to something like this what will our jobs consist of in the future? We are just going to work directly with servers at a cloud provider or read EULA's and managing permissions and licensing?
Ah, I gave an awesome (so I like to say) talk on this at the MangoGuild meet up in NYC last year... the "moving commodity line of IT". I'll do a video about it sometime "soon". Stuff like this, eliminating the pointless parts of our jobs, is good, not bad, for us. It allows us to focus on adding value to the business and doing things that can't be automated. It lets us spend our time thinking, learning, being creative and solving tough problems that humans are good at and computers are bad at. The last thing that we want to do is spend our time doing "busy work" handling inefficient systems because we have little way to have serious business value if we do that.
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Basically I had a couple of key points in the talk:
- IT is an career of embracing change and the greater the rate of change the bigger the benefit to IT (on average) compared to other job categories.
- All IT falls on a spectrum and over time more and more tasks fall on the "other side" of what I call the "commodity line." Anything that is commodity, you should not be touching (as an IT pro.)
- The more things that become commodity, the more IT can focus on value rather than boilerplate.
- Jobs change and move but do not diminish. Traditionally IT jobs have mostly focused around server farms and network gear - very "tech gear" oriented. As the commodity line moves the "center" jobs like systems administration & engineering, DBA and the like will decline while the jobs far to the right like DevOps and massive scale cloud computing will take over with more and more jobs and the jobs far to the left that are heavily hands on with users and the business itself will increase as people need business-aware guidance to navigate services, providers and local integration.
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@scottalanmiller said:
Basically I had a couple of key points in the talk:
- IT is an career of embracing change and the greater the rate of change the bigger the benefit to IT (on average) compared to other job categories.
- All IT falls on a spectrum and over time more and more tasks fall on the "other side" of what I call the "commodity line." Anything that is commodity, you should not be touching (as an IT pro.)
- The more things that become commodity, the more IT can focus on value rather than boilerplate.
- Jobs change and move but do not diminish. Traditionally IT jobs have mostly focused around server farms and network gear - very "tech gear" oriented. As the commodity line moves the "center" jobs like systems administration & engineering, DBA and the like will decline while the jobs far to the right like DevOps and massive scale cloud computing will take over with more and more jobs and the jobs far to the left that are heavily hands on with users and the business itself will increase as people need business-aware guidance to navigate services, providers and local integration.
I was setting up a 10,000 sq ft building alone--I'm the sole IT tech/sysadmin/network admin etc. When my company approached me about cost and what hardware was necessary I gave them estimates and in a detail oriented way, explained why each were necessary. Now keep in mind I have no idea how much money we have and I do NOT have an IT budget. I'm just at the mercy of my executive director who is extremely frugal. The absolute minimum for this building was a Sonicwall and two managed switches with the maximum adding a domain server. Not a huge cost difference. I was told we would only be purchasing the switches which I didn't give them as an option. I explained that we have over 50 PC's connected to the network and that a small comcast business router cannot possibly handle the throughput and they ignored me. 2 months later my executive director comes to me and says "What is the issue? How can we fix this?" to which I replied "We need to purchase a Sonicwall." It took 2 months of the network being unable to retain a connection to our terminal server (and this is our second biggest site) for them to spend a few thousand dollars which fixed their issue and gave me MUCH needed content filtering. The reason I bring this up is even with me managing 550+ employees, all of the servers, all of the network, all of the devices including scanners and printers over the entire county (which some of my sites are an hour one-way) I still cannot convince them of anything. Even though I've been right 100% of the time.
How can I justify my worth to people like this in a system that from their standpoint is mostly managed by other companies? Azure/Pertino/ZeroTier/Windows 10
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If the culture around you is not changing and despite your best efforts you cannot improve it, find a culture who will value and embrace you.
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@Breffni-Potter said:
If the culture around you is not changing and despite your best efforts you cannot improve it, find a culture who will value and embrace you.
I did this.
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@wirestyle22 said:
How can I justify my worth to people like this in a system that from their standpoint is mostly managed by other companies?
Easy answer (that no one likes to hear is) .... you don't. IT is in demand, successful companies need it. IT isn't justifiable in a small environment. It just doesn't make sense. And especially not in companies that struggle with the basics and keep IT from being valuable.
The problem is you are trying to make people perceive value that doesn't exist. Both because the environment is too small (an MSP could manage that in its sleep) and doesn't have a means of leveraging a full time IT staffer even if they appreciated what you could offer. The very idea that you need to justify your existence should be a red flag, that's not how it should work. We should not be at work trying to sell the idea of being there. Does bookkeepers do that? Does HR? Does the operations department? No, then IT doesn't either.
The SMB is not a place where IT has much place as a full time, in house role. Everyone needs IT, but too often the SMB IT departments lean on doing IT inefficiently and poorly in order to maintain their positions. This is never a good strategy. It does two things - one it simply stops you from growing and being prepared to move onto a more valuable role and two it proves to the company that you are not a good investment. The best option, in general, is to do an amazing job, save the company a lot of money, provide them the best possible environment, get a happy recommendation and part ways to move on to something more challenging. Staying put is not a long term strategy, no matter what.
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@Breffni-Potter said:
If the culture around you is not changing and despite your best efforts you cannot improve it, find a culture who will value and embrace you.
the problem is that there aren't nearly as many companies out there looking as their are workers looking.
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@Dashrender said:
@Breffni-Potter said:
If the culture around you is not changing and despite your best efforts you cannot improve it, find a culture who will value and embrace you.
the problem is that there aren't nearly as many companies out there looking as their are workers looking.
True, but are you one of the workers looking or are you staying put in the current culture?
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@Breffni-Potter said:
@Dashrender said:
@Breffni-Potter said:
If the culture around you is not changing and despite your best efforts you cannot improve it, find a culture who will value and embrace you.
the problem is that there aren't nearly as many companies out there looking as their are workers looking.
True, but are you one of the workers looking or are you staying put in the current culture?
I'm not sure the point of your question?
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@wirestyle22 said:
Even though I've been right 100% of the time.
Another thing to understand is that bad business is bad business. If business people don't run their business well, that's not something that IT can fix, never try. Offer advice, do a good job, etc. Of course. But don't take it on yourself to fix things that are the owner's / investor's / CEO's job. It's their company. They run it as they see fit. If they are good and/or you match them ideologically, great. If not, part ways. Don't burn bridges, don't run out the door, but start thinking and keep thinking that it is not a long term place for you and you need to find a place that is run well and can both leverage your skills and cares to do so.
Ancillary departments can work really hard and tweak a business, at best. They cannot steer the ship and fundamentally change what a company is. The best tires won't turn a Pinto into a Ferrari.
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@Dashrender said:
@Breffni-Potter said:
@Dashrender said:
@Breffni-Potter said:
If the culture around you is not changing and despite your best efforts you cannot improve it, find a culture who will value and embrace you.
the problem is that there aren't nearly as many companies out there looking as their are workers looking.
True, but are you one of the workers looking or are you staying put in the current culture?
I'm not sure the point of your question?
As in.
Are we throwing our hands in the air going "I'm trapped, this will never get better"
Or, are you learning, training yourself, advertising yourself, polishing CV, learning how to pitch yourself to new employers, Getting references/reconsiderations, Trying to network yourself.
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@Dashrender said:
the problem is that there aren't nearly as many companies out there looking as their are workers looking.
Is that true? Having been on both sides of the fence, I can tell you that companies feel the opposite.
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@Dashrender said:
@Breffni-Potter said:
If the culture around you is not changing and despite your best efforts you cannot improve it, find a culture who will value and embrace you.
the problem is that there aren't nearly as many companies out there looking as their are workers looking.
I'm not convinced this is true. In areas like I am in the demand is low... but if I were to move to a more metropolitan area the demand is extremely high.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
the problem is that there aren't nearly as many companies out there looking as their are workers looking.
Is that true? Having been on both sides of the fence, I can tell you that companies feel the opposite.
As @coliver jsut said, it is most certainly regionally true.
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One major issue with the job disparity issue is keeping up with current technologies or making sure that we offer the skills that are needed.
IT Pro says "I do X" and no one is hiring.
Company says "We need Y and no one is looking."
It is the IT Pro's job, if they want to work, to make sure that they adjust their skills to be sure that they can service the companies that they want to work with.
So we tend to end up with IT Pros who think that there is no work and companies that think that there are no IT Pros. It's not like accounting where everyone who does accounting is visible to everyone that hires accountants.
If we look at IT as a whole, there are nearly a million unfillable jobs in the US alone. If we look at "SonicWall Level 2 Administration is Topeka" we might think that there are no jobs at all. There is a lot of perspective issues there.
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@scottalanmiller said:
Easy answer (that no one likes to hear is) .... you don't. IT is in demand, successful companies need it. IT isn't justifiable in a small environment. It just doesn't make sense. And especially not in companies that struggle with the basics and keep IT from being valuable.
The problem is you are trying to make people perceive value that doesn't exist. Both because the environment is too small (an MSP could manage that in its sleep) and doesn't have a means of leveraging a full time IT staffer even if they appreciated what you could offer. The very idea that you need to justify your existence should be a red flag, that's not how it should work. We should not be at work trying to sell the idea of being there. Does bookkeepers do that? Does HR? Does the operations department? No, then IT doesn't either.
The SMB is not a place where IT has much place as a full time, in house role. Everyone needs IT, but too often the SMB IT departments lean on doing IT inefficiently and poorly in order to maintain their positions.
Have you seen any published material stating this type of thing? I say it often when meeting potential clients, and remind existing clients about it on occasion. Would be nice to reference some published material though also.
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@JaredBusch said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
the problem is that there aren't nearly as many companies out there looking as their are workers looking.
Is that true? Having been on both sides of the fence, I can tell you that companies feel the opposite.
As @coliver jsut said, it is most certainly regionally true.
I totally believe that it is regional, but are there really regions where companies are like "So many IT Pros to choose from, we don't know what to do with ourselves?" I'm sure some town is like that somewhere, but in general, are there companies getting flooded with viable CVs in any quantity? I know that they get flooded, but generally with spammer-like stuff that isn't serious and doesn't match the person at all.
Maybe there are, but even in the places where IT Pros feel that there is no work, I often talk to companies that still can't find people.
Beyond market volume, there is also the problem of matchmaking. Dashrender could be two blocks from ten companies that all need him and exactly him and yet they never make contact or find out about each other. So there is that issue, as well.
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I don't know what it would look like, but I really believe that there needs to be some kind of highly visible IT skills market. Something with way, way more info and matchmaking than anything out there today. The ability for companies and IT Pros who need each other to find one another is horrific. If the best job for me was next door, and I was the best candidate for them, the chances that we would find each other is near zero, even if we were both seeking each other at the same time.
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@JaredBusch said:
@scottalanmiller said:
Easy answer (that no one likes to hear is) .... you don't. IT is in demand, successful companies need it. IT isn't justifiable in a small environment. It just doesn't make sense. And especially not in companies that struggle with the basics and keep IT from being valuable.
The problem is you are trying to make people perceive value that doesn't exist. Both because the environment is too small (an MSP could manage that in its sleep) and doesn't have a means of leveraging a full time IT staffer even if they appreciated what you could offer. The very idea that you need to justify your existence should be a red flag, that's not how it should work. We should not be at work trying to sell the idea of being there. Does bookkeepers do that? Does HR? Does the operations department? No, then IT doesn't either.
The SMB is not a place where IT has much place as a full time, in house role. Everyone needs IT, but too often the SMB IT departments lean on doing IT inefficiently and poorly in order to maintain their positions.
Have you seen any published material stating this type of thing? I say it often when meeting potential clients, and remind existing clients about it on occasion. Would be nice to reference some published material though also.
Do you mean about the size of the company, MSP vs. in house and that aspect?
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@JaredBusch said:
@Breffni-Potter said:
If the culture around you is not changing and despite your best efforts you cannot improve it, find a culture who will value and embrace you.
I did this.
My next step has to be making myself marketable if that is the case. Any advice? I have the experience on paper but I definitely need to tighten my knowledge for sure.
