Oh, there's a "introduce yourself, noob" thread! Hi all =D

I'm among those who started down the "Higher Education" path at the unyielding behest of my parents (especially my dad) who demanded that either I pay rent, or go to college and I would not be charged rent. So I went to junior college, because unfortunately, while reaping the immense benefits of being home-schooled from Kindergarten all the way through completing High School, there's very minimal support for the transition into College that all public high schools and basically all private high schools have dedicated staff for.

I started off majoring in Accounting, because accountants make good money and would be a totally certain necessity for my career right? Well, Accounting bored me practically to tears, so naturally once I finished my courses in Accounting, I changed majors lol. Since I've always loved math, Accounting actually suited me well enough.. but the actual work of accounting just chilled my soul and tore all excitement from me to do it for decades as a career. So I switched to business management, because I was already managing full time at my job in the real world in the meantime, struggling to work full time and go to college full time simultaneously.

Just shy of two years into that field, I came to the frustrating realization that there will almost always be some shmuck higher on the totem pole that will cause me problems and make things difficult for me. The thought of surpassing them all was statistically improbable, I already knew that. Not that it couldn't be done, but how long would it take for me to do so, and would how much better it would be if and when I finally made it to the top be worth how much it would likely suck until I got there? I decided that going exclusively into management was going to drive me kind of crazy, but thankfully I was working in management as high-volume bench IT, doing ungodly amounts of consumer support and service... and I loved it! So my journey into IT began , switching to studying basically every IT related course I could.

About a year and a half into that, and 2/3 of the way through the CCNA courses being provided at the institution I had been attending (I would finish the courses with my CCNA), I realized that Networking wasn't really my thing either, but I loved Systems.. I loved Virtualization (this was the mid/late 2000s btw), I loved security, and I loved being able to put it all together myself. Since I couldn't afford anything to build a home lab, I actually sold people my pet projects at Circuit City for a while when the idea of a Computer-controlled Home Theater didn't exist in the mainstream yet. There was no Roku, Facebook was only just a new startup with Myspace still being the dominant social media, YouTube wasn't owned by Google, streaming was still a novel idea, and Blu-Ray was ultra-high tech and still a new, groundbreaking quality technology for home use, 40" was still considered your average big-screen, and 1080P TVs still cost no less than $1500. I was the guy who sold a couple a $40,000 home entertainment and computer solution as their retirement gift to one another. Nobody any of us had ever heard of had ever setup anything like that before.. but I created the solution and sold it, we put it together, we made it work, and we gave them what most people waited more than half a decade to get. The guy found me at my next job some years later, basically doing the same thing as I was when I sold him his solution but with less official management responsibilities, and thanked me for getting them what they got. It was still better than everything else available, and what I sold him years ago was still working pretty much exactly how we set it up.

I didn't learn to sell from College, I actually learned while working and attending college, that I could do a lot more and learn a lot more working than at college. I'm sure Scott would agree that that's probably not uncommon. I was attending a community college where ALL of the faculty teaching anything IT related were industry veterans with around 7-10 years minimum experience in IT, so they weren't career academicians. I'll never forget the Cisco instructor I had who would constantly be saying "the book says X, but this is what you actually need to know". Also, she had a surprisingly heavy piece of foam painted like a brick that she threw at inattentive students... it was awesome, but I digress, lol. I was paying out of pocket, and even with the obnoxiously cheap CC rates I was paying (think about 2K/semester), I still ended up realizing that it wasn't worthwhile. Had I realized before it was too late that my extremely desirable ACT score could have taken me to any college in America for free, things might have gone differently for me... but it didn't, and I'm frankly not upset that it didn't.

@quixoticjeremy Only for one, relatively brief period over the entire time I played MMOs was I ever in a guild that was pushing world-firsts. It was brutal, and part of what burned me out on Everquest, even though I up to that point had loved it.

Little-known fact - The lore and story for Everquest was actually pretty bloody good! It's the biggest reason I also played WoW for as long as I did too. Yeah, I was kind of a serial-MMO-player for a while... including dual-boxing Everquest on two separate characters, often in different raids while playing WoW simultaneously. I was pretty nuts back in the day lol. =P

edit: Also though no, I didn't bot.. I was just crazy lol

I'de been involved in a discussion on another thread about SMBs and IT, and wanted to follow up with the thread about good moves SMB IT should make when they're expected to carry the load themselves rather than being allowed to push the bulk of the day-to-day operations over to MSPs, per recommendation by a few others in the community.

Please discuss.

@scottalanmiller MSPs do not provide great opportunity for advancement near as appealing as a solid SMB does for Internal IT. As you stated, and it is the same for Enterprise, both are very focused upon efficiency and staying active. Neither of those anywhere leaves much room for anything else but repetition. The argument is back-asswards, because Enterprise IT is concerned with efficiency and repeatability, not creativity. MSPs are concerned with efficiency and customer density, not creativity or versatility unless they are pretty explicitly to improve efficiency or density. Both are cold places for anyone who doesn't already know what they want to specialize in, because both are all about specialists, and people who like them only care about specializations. Enterprises suffer from their size, because while they might be efficient, they're very rarely particularly creative, because doing anything quickly or with a high amount of change is increasingly difficult the larger the scale becomes.

The problem is very similar to what my father often remarks about college degrees in the fields where they're actually important like engineering, and polymer science. The statement goes a bit like this: People with Bachelors Degrees know a little about a lot of things. People with Masters Degrees know a lot about a few things. People with PHD's know so much about one thing that they can hardly understand anything else. Specialization is generally at the expense of versatility, not in any way an automatic compliment. Generalists make better specialists than the inverse, because Generalists already know a broad variety of things. Specialists can do one thing very well, and the more specialized they are, the more they are likely to know about their specialty, and typically the less they know about what is outside of it unless they have to directly interact on a frequent basis. Take them outside of their specialty, and ask them to do something unrelated..... good luck, because the longer they operate in their specialty, the more likely they will forget more and more outside of it, no differently than IT generalists doing highly specialized work.

For task that span a variety of disciplines with IT takes one decent guy a few hours to do by themselves in an SMB, you may end up having to get multiple individuals to accomplish it through an MSP who has to share every single individual in the organization with multiple other organizations, which actually means that the whole process gets done far faster, for a lot less money, and arguably no less effectively by your generic SMB IT admin in many cases. Sure, the SMB Admin may have to spend more time researching before doing the job... but between Google, Youtube, and a handful of IT support sites, there's extremely little that an Admin for an SMB can't do just as well or better for their organization than an MSP can. The thing is, most SMBs don't need any great level of specialization to do what they need to do... so... why hire an industrial, high-voltage substation maintenance technician to wire up some regular old electrical outlets and light switches? Most SMBs don't need a specialist, which is why most SMBs don't hire them. MSPs are absolutely valuable, but it's arrogant to suggest that SMBs shouldn't hire their own IT or they're bad businesses where IT is concerned. Maybe you just don't understand their IT needs well enough to understand why your opinion is incorrect?

MSP infrastructure is only a benefit if the SMB's needs actually align with the MSPs configuration. A specialist by definition doesn't get variety lol, if they get variety, then they're not specialists.. so no, your statement about MSP specialists getting variety is absolutely false unless you're talking about the capacity to change specialties within the organization, which every IT Generalist in every SMB does already, so not a pro there. There's a variety of specializations available in an MSP, but no different than in an Enterprise.. there's absolutely zero guarantee you will ever get to switch out of the specialization you are in. As previously stated, Enterprises and MSPs are focused on efficiency, not what their staff want to do so much. If you're good at what you do, they are all going to weigh the loss of your good job at what you do, with what you might be able to accomplish in another role. Whether or not you are allowed to move isn't going to be much different either way, where in an SMB, there was never even a question there... the IT staff does it, period. So I'm not really certain how it is that MSP laborers somehow get to do more as specialists than SMB as generalists. A Specialist by definition will never see as much variety as a generalist.

It feels to me like the problem is a lack of appreciation for generalists. I'de point out, that most of the best folks in an organization aren't specialists, but generalists. They tend to know a little about a lot, which also includes knowing when to talk to specialists about specialized things. The two both have their places, which interestingly enough seem to be with generalists either being near the top of the totem pole, or near the bottom (with pay to match) while specialists fill in most everything in between.

Before I got my current role in IT, I used to work on my feet, walking all the time, so I maintained a very healthy weight and BMI. I ate what I wanted and basically enjoyed being young and invincible since I had also previously worked as the chief engineer for a startup sports broadcasting company while also managing a fitness center that allowed me free access to workout whenever I pleased.

Then I got married, and got happy lol. On top of that, I was no longer managing a fitness center, and I quit the job that had me on my feet walking for 6-8 hour shifts 2-4 days a week in favor of a vastly better paying desk-job. I went from 6'2", about 180lbs (I'm a pretty large-framed guy, so my fat content was actually REALLY low at that weight) to peaking at around 260 just after my kiddo was born. I'm classified as just overweight based upon my actual BMI, because eating anything remotely healthy by choice is hard when you've never had to even try before. The wife and I are starting to work on that a bit, and I'm hoping to get back down around 220 by early next year (we'll be moving or have moved by then, so automatic exercise for me, lol).

We've been working on just cooking more meals at home (we were eating out a LOT) in part just because eating out is WAY more expensive than eating at home, but also of course because eating our own meals is healthier and generally tastier. I've had questionable knees ever since I started putting on much of any weight... but thankfully, I've always been a roller skater/blader, which isn't too different from elliptical in terms of the motions and joint impact (except for ankles). I'll try and post periodically as I have notable updates.

@scottalanmiller My take is that while many IT seem to give power away, I don't think it's so much just trying giving away power, but trying to reduce responsibility in most of those cases. They're not about trying to grab power so much as trying to shirk responsibility in my experience with people in general, I don't see that being much different with IT than anywhere else. Maybe that's just me though?

@scottalanmiller I first played Seiken Densetsu 3 on a translated ROM about 15 years ago, and it's still one of the best RPGs I've ever played.

Another RPG series I'd love to see them port/remake is the original Phantasy Star games, which are not to be confused with the Phantasy Star Online games that blow goats. =P

@dustinb3403 I wish I could work from home more, but one step at a time.

Been playing some Total War: Warhammer II, game is fantastic! Even better now that they've released the first free DLC that includes all of the races/legendary lords from the first game, and added a reduced version of the map from Total War: Warhammer I to the existing Warhammer II map, making it absolutely gargantuan!

Only downside, is that I can tell they're pushing the limits of the game engine, because they reduced the texture quality of the champion porthole (probably to accommodate for the insane levels of environmental effects on such an enormous map). Starting count of factions is now 198 different factions to conquer and/or parley with.

Yeah.. and the term "politics" is often so poorly defined that an aweful lot of things are dumped under that umbrella, whether actually political or not, so I suppose I'll just refrain.

I kind of want to comment about McCain... but it would be rather harsh, and I don't know that peeps want to see/hear it. >.>

Been playing some Total War: Warhammer II, game is fantastic! Even better now that they've released the first free DLC that includes all of the races/legendary lords from the first game, and added a reduced version of the map from Total War: Warhammer I to the existing Warhammer II map, making it absolutely gargantuan!

Only downside, is that I can tell they're pushing the limits of the game engine, because they reduced the texture quality of the champion porthole (probably to accommodate for the insane levels of environmental effects on such an enormous map). Starting count of factions is now 198 different factions to conquer and/or parley with.

@travisdh1 Hats off to you travis, you can keep the trophy, the cake, and all that lol. I was working food service at the time, no way I was ever going to afford another computer (I did have a laptop and desktop at the time though). Hell, I got into playing MMOs because it was SOOO much cheaper to play them at the time than it was to play consoles or other PC games at $30-$50 apiece, and I would blow through 2/month or so.

@scottalanmiller said in Business thinking - PC replacements:

If the company can't utilize that time, they should seriously rethink employees.

FTFY

The further you take things out in terms of considering what employees cost to employ versus the cost of hardware, it's extremely difficult to justify keeping hardware that causes unnecessary labor waste. It's the same exact phenomenon that explains why executives get to be driven around rather than drive themselves at a certain level for instance. It's got nothing to do with their capacity to drive or not, and everything to do with it's more profitable for the organization to hire someone extra to drive them around and such so they can work during transit times, than it is to have them spend that time focusing on driving or whatever.

@quixoticjeremy Only for one, relatively brief period over the entire time I played MMOs was I ever in a guild that was pushing world-firsts. It was brutal, and part of what burned me out on Everquest, even though I up to that point had loved it.

Little-known fact - The lore and story for Everquest was actually pretty bloody good! It's the biggest reason I also played WoW for as long as I did too. Yeah, I was kind of a serial-MMO-player for a while... including dual-boxing Everquest on two separate characters, often in different raids while playing WoW simultaneously. I was pretty nuts back in the day lol. =P

edit: Also though no, I didn't bot.. I was just crazy lol

Scott's assessment is pretty much exactly what I'm suggesting, although a significant majority of users aren't likely to be getting paid anything nearly as low as $12/hr in most organizations, which skews the numbers far more in favor of replacing hardware versus not. My subordinate makes approximately equivalent to $16/hr. However I only used that number to make the math simple/easy.

@quixoticjeremy Nice! I got up to being the top Ranger for about 6 weeks in Everquest, but since we operated with a loot council in my guild, I got bumped down due to others being more favored. I still hovered around top 10-15 for a few months, but I just got burnt out with the brutal 4-6 hours raiding 5 days a week after working 80+ hour weeks at work at the time.

@scottalanmiller I see what you did there, lol