Its bad timing that gets me, on Monday we get the servers that are replacing these and have been on order for a while, and we had approval to replace the UPS a while back but couldn't due to COVID-19 with the office closed! Oh well, will survive it

Have a good weekend folks!

Fighting a large outage we have been having all week! Bad timing!

I did not even know this was possible, but our UPS had a large failure on Monday and sent a surge to back end hardware. I thought the point of UPS was to protect end hardware from network surges, but hey... it happened.

We lost the UPS, two switch stacks (core and edge) each having three switches, two old blade chassis with 16 servers in each and a load of old fc and iscsi SANs, and one new server host. We have gone from 35 servers (32 blade servers and 3 standalone servers) to only 2 standalone servers. Luckily though our backups are rock solid.

We have been planning to remove the blades for about 3 months and get a new UPS for 3 months! Really bad timing. The hardware that replaces everything that failed...... is due for delivery on Monday!

Getting there though. Currently fighting one host of the three newer ones to spread the load.

But yeah, fun week!

New version uploaded. Link in the original post will take you to the new document. How are those changes?

I have tried to remove all the terminology like DR/BCP. I have put the promotions together so hopefully that will make more sense too...

@IRJ said in My resume rewrite 2020 - pointers appreciated...:

The first thing that sticks out to anyone looking at his resume is the fact that you list 4 jobs over the last 4 years. Once I look a littler close, I notice that one is a promotion, but I would combine those into one role (the one with higher title) and maybe make the promotion the first bullet point. I would also do that with the next job that also seems like you were quickly promoted. I know it sounds silly but at first glance it really looks like you dont have any job stability, when in fact you are getting promotions quickly which is awesome!

I also agree with everyone else. Take the dollar amounts out, as they dont matter to any company as every environment and budget is different. I also agree to leave version numbers out with products.

Holy abbreviations, batman! You use more abbreviations than the US government. Spell some of those out when you have a line that says DR and BCP but the entire space after is empty, you surely should be spelling it out.

Points taken, I am working on a revised copy now taking the other points on too. I am not sure how to distinguish the promotion, but I will make an edit and hope it works and will put the revision online.

@scottalanmiller said in My resume rewrite 2020 - pointers appreciated...:

@Jimmy9008 said in My resume rewrite 2020 - pointers appreciated...:

@scottalanmiller said in My resume rewrite 2020 - pointers appreciated...:

I feel the use of "circa" for budgets on a resume is odd. Maybe it's common in the UK, but for the US, if makes it feel like you are saying that because you are just guessing at the budget. If I said "Harold invaded Springfield circa 1821" it implies that I don't know the date but have a general idea. Saying a budget of circa $300K sounds like you weren't told what your budget was and you are guessing at the size of it.

Ok, understood. My thinking there was to show I had direct control over what was purchased and the total spent. I will edit that.

That I get. The "circa" makes it feel like the opposite

How else could I reword it that would actually make sense?

@scottalanmiller said in My resume rewrite 2020 - pointers appreciated...:

The US and UK vary a lot on their cultural view of education, so take this from an American perspective, but here you never list things significantly below your highest education (if you even list that, which typically you do, because typically people don't get promoted far enough beyond it.)

So for example, once you have any college or university degree at all, your high school and vocational credentials would never be listed. It makes it look, to an American, that you feel your teenage years education is still significant and impactful to your career - which to a hiring manager (here at least) makes me think that you feel you are ready for an internship. Once you've worked in your field at all or been to university we would always drop anything less than university here.

And personally even in the US, I recommend dropping the university credentials once you are established in your career. Even they only denote being ready for an entry level position so touting them once you are working makes you feel more junior subconsciously to an employer. Especially when the degree is not directly related to your profession.

Ok, this makes sense. In the UK you will only be able to do a degree if you have suitable qualifications to be able to get on to the course. So yes, I can see having lower qualifications on the resume as a little pointless. I'll remove other than the degree. Cheers.

@scottalanmiller said in My resume rewrite 2020 - pointers appreciated...:

I feel the use of "circa" for budgets on a resume is odd. Maybe it's common in the UK, but for the US, if makes it feel like you are saying that because you are just guessing at the budget. If I said "Harold invaded Springfield circa 1821" it implies that I don't know the date but have a general idea. Saying a budget of circa $300K sounds like you weren't told what your budget was and you are guessing at the size of it.

Ok, understood. My thinking there was to show I had direct control over what was purchased and the total spent. I will edit that.

@Pete-S said in My resume rewrite 2020 - pointers appreciated...:

A few notes:

• Hard to figure out if you are a manager or a specialist.
• Maybe separate job responsibilities from notable projects.
• I'm not sure about putting £ on projects. If you do, it has to be an impressive number and you would have to be in control of the project & budget. Sometime it's probably better to use some other metric, like the number of users, locations for instance.
• I'm not sure about having version numbers on things such as Veeam. Aren't we getting into tech details then?
• I didn't see any information about the number of users or the size of the your team (if you're a manager). If it's of value you might want to put it in the resume. Being in charge of IT support for 100 users in different offices or 100K users is not the same.
• Also the resume is a sales document so it makes sense to gear it towards the kind of jobs you are looking for. And you didn't say.

I would like to push towards management going forward with technical knowledge. In the last year or so I have lead my team by managing our technical projects based on staff ability, how each employee can and wants to develop, and their own career goals. We have done a lot, but I am at the point where I am managing the work being done, not so much doing the work myself. For example, the Veeam work is work I directly did. However, there are lots of projects I oversee by being the manager without actually doing the work, such as for example our global SCCM roll out... not quite sure how to get that on the CV. Where I am responsible for the work getting done, planning, staffing, budgeting, but have not had to do the work myself... Its a strange position, but one I am happy to keep.

Worldwide, we are a team of 10, including me. I directly have complete control of the EMEA/APAC IT staff, of which there are 4, but have seniority over the NALA regions too, however no line management of those folk. Things like approving pay increases, holiday, training and such for folks in that region goes to somebody else, but what they are doing, the projects and timelines, that is all me.

With that in mind, should I remove anything technical from my resume at this point? I am not sure if that will be a negative as I do have technical knowledge...

I will take the other points on board and edit what I have.
Ok, I can take on board the other points.

Hi folks,

I work in IT in the Oil & Gas industry, due to the globally issues I want to update my resume and start considering a job change before I am given any bad news...

All feedback helpful, I have no idea when it comes to resumes and I hope some good advice. I have read other posts about this before and hope to get similar focused help on my particular CV.

I have tried to keep technology names off the document as I can learn whatever I need to get a project done. My reasoning is that I have learned whatever I need so far and will of course continue to do so. I am not sure if I should add specific technology names which could limit me to those technologies listed when looking for a job. Is that poor thinking though? Should I add specific names to the document? For example, I am not sure if listing RedHat and CentOS would limit me to anywhere using Ubuntu as I did not write Ubuntu (example only).

Anyway, here is the doc: Document

Best,
Jim

@stacksofplates said in Microsoft plans on retiring the MCSA,MCSD,MCSE certifications in June 30,2020:

@scottalanmiller said in Microsoft plans on retiring the MCSA,MCSD,MCSE certifications in June 30,2020:

@stacksofplates said in Microsoft plans on retiring the MCSA,MCSD,MCSE certifications in June 30,2020:

Containerization and FaaS have made development and deployments insanely easier and less costly.

True for non-cloud installs as well, though. And only true for cloud when you have completely reliable networking. Hosted FaaS is a real challenge if your ISP drops.

No it's not. Because you can just go somewhere else. It's a real problem when it's locally hosted and your ISP drops and no customers can access it.

That 'somewhere else' is also more expensive though... Doesnt mattwr if its AWS, Azure, Google Compute, or another... It costs a more. Local hosted doesn't mean one bad ISP will destroy service for customers. We have out infrastructure in our facilities in London, Aberdeen, Barcelona, Middle East, Singapore, Houston, Calgary, Toronto and Singapore. I can lose any site and that will have no impact to customers. Still a lot cheaper than cloud.

Last time I looked, a single one of my calculation servers came to around 80k GBP. High core count, multiple TB of RAM. In Azure, over 6 years, MS were coming back with something in the range of £450k ex VAT. Insane difference.