It has been 6ish weeks since I started at Logik and I'm finally getting my arms around the special problems this particular workplace offers.
It has been hard, no bones about that. Moving from an organization with 4000+ employees to one with well under 100 means that I'm moving from a pretty well siloed IT department to a one-gun setup. I'm doing things I've never had to do before, or haven't had to do for 7+ years and am therefore rusty.
My horizons, see them broaden.
Even though this is exactly the kind of thing I needed, it's still making me grumpy.
Grumpy? Me? Yes, it happens. It happens more often when I feel like I'm being held to unreasonable expectations. And at my old job, what I'm doing right now would be unreasonable expectations. But, you know what? I did this on purpose, so I should just buck the !%$!^$ up. I have to keep reminding myself of that lest I snarl at people.
Like most geeks I know, I get, ahem, testy when my ignorance is underscored. We have pride in Knowing Things You Don't, and finding areas where there are vast fields of unknown things.... well, defensive strategies start getting deployed. The well socialized among us hit the books, figure it out, and come out the other side educated and competent with a minimum of fuss. That's what I'm trying to do.
So what kinds of "unreasonable expectations" am I running into?
OS X support.
We have Mac users, quite a few of 'em, actually. Part of our recruitment package includes a choice of PC or Mac for doing your daily work. So long as you can get your job done, who cares what you run? These users rightly come to me when things go wrong and their own google-fu has failed, and so far I've been mostly useless at this. Unfortunately, mac users are used to this from professional IT. I still hate being mostly useless.
Laptop rebuilds.
I haven't done straight up desktop support since 2003, and even then it was very occasional, so this kind of thing simply takes getting used to. I can do it, no worries there, but still. Part of me is convinced it is a step backwards, but then I club it with the "on purpose" line I mentioned earlier and it sulks back into its cave to mutter darkly.
Network hardware configuration
The last time I was routinely in the cli of switches was in 2003, and even then all I was doing was setting up span ports for sniffing. I set up a ProCurve switch for iSCSI at WWU late last year, but that was a pretty simple config. Actual VLANs and stuff? Never. I know how it all works in theory, but converting theory into command sequences is another thing entirely. The fact that our wireless controller is no longer broadcasting anything even though the interface says it is still has me stumped, and I hate that. Happily, we had exactly one wireless user and we got a cable to her, but it's still annoying not to have in-office mobility.
I'll get there. I went through a similar grumpy-WTF period when I started at WWU, so this is all part of the process.
It has been hard, no bones about that. Moving from an organization with 4000+ employees to one with well under 100 means that I'm moving from a pretty well siloed IT department to a one-gun setup. I'm doing things I've never had to do before, or haven't had to do for 7+ years and am therefore rusty.
My horizons, see them broaden.
Even though this is exactly the kind of thing I needed, it's still making me grumpy.
Grumpy? Me? Yes, it happens. It happens more often when I feel like I'm being held to unreasonable expectations. And at my old job, what I'm doing right now would be unreasonable expectations. But, you know what? I did this on purpose, so I should just buck the !%$!^$ up. I have to keep reminding myself of that lest I snarl at people.
Like most geeks I know, I get, ahem, testy when my ignorance is underscored. We have pride in Knowing Things You Don't, and finding areas where there are vast fields of unknown things.... well, defensive strategies start getting deployed. The well socialized among us hit the books, figure it out, and come out the other side educated and competent with a minimum of fuss. That's what I'm trying to do.
So what kinds of "unreasonable expectations" am I running into?
OS X support.
We have Mac users, quite a few of 'em, actually. Part of our recruitment package includes a choice of PC or Mac for doing your daily work. So long as you can get your job done, who cares what you run? These users rightly come to me when things go wrong and their own google-fu has failed, and so far I've been mostly useless at this. Unfortunately, mac users are used to this from professional IT. I still hate being mostly useless.
Laptop rebuilds.
I haven't done straight up desktop support since 2003, and even then it was very occasional, so this kind of thing simply takes getting used to. I can do it, no worries there, but still. Part of me is convinced it is a step backwards, but then I club it with the "on purpose" line I mentioned earlier and it sulks back into its cave to mutter darkly.
Network hardware configuration
The last time I was routinely in the cli of switches was in 2003, and even then all I was doing was setting up span ports for sniffing. I set up a ProCurve switch for iSCSI at WWU late last year, but that was a pretty simple config. Actual VLANs and stuff? Never. I know how it all works in theory, but converting theory into command sequences is another thing entirely. The fact that our wireless controller is no longer broadcasting anything even though the interface says it is still has me stumped, and I hate that. Happily, we had exactly one wireless user and we got a cable to her, but it's still annoying not to have in-office mobility.
I'll get there. I went through a similar grumpy-WTF period when I started at WWU, so this is all part of the process.