re: Do you work in I.T.? If yes, what capacity?

I've been kind of a jack of all trades IT guy. Kind of an I.T. generalist.

Did help desk and desktop support my whole career. More and more has just been added on.

I have dealt with PC hardware and multitudes of software installation/troubleshooting/maintenance. Install/troubleshoot/maintain mainly windows OS'. I have installed/troubleshoot/repaired laser jet printers.

I've created and set up back ups and schedules on-site/off-site/cloud based.

I have done all the cable pulling/terminating in several new constructions and remodels of car dealerships. That includes low voltage/data/audio. I've drilled in concrete and installed racks, put in and terminated the wiring in the patch panels. I also installed motion detectors, maglocks, alarm sensors, card/fob readers, and push to exit buttons.

I have had to troubleshoot network issues. Set up access points. Maintained a firewall and web filter.

I've maintained active directory users/groups and file permissions.

I have created images and handled imaging.

I have managed anti-virus servers.

I have set up and supported cell phones/tablets of all kinds of flavors.

I've helped set up phone servers. Maintained several different flavors of phones servers and cloud based systems. I've set up users, phones, in bound routing tables, call groups. Both on VOIP and analog systems.

I've taken apart key inventory machines and repaired them. Both the PC (head unit) and the drawers, boards, rails, power supplies.

I have managed users and permissions on all kinds of websites and enterprise software.

I have even had to troubleshoot a network issue with fords diagnostic software not programming a car. Wound up being a bad ECM in the car. I told the mechanic he owed me his time on that one.

Basically if it had electricity to it or ran on a PC I had to take care of it.

Train end users.
Create and destroy accounts
Evaluate people’s stupidity. People love open unknown emails.

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You need to stop talking son. Indian "consulting" companies fricking up our client's infrastructure daily...and I'm not kidding...it really is daily...is part of my job security.

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They have been literally for decades, and some American companies still have not learned their lesson.

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KPMG and TCS are well known SAP/Ariba headhunters. They go from corporation to corporation to absorb their SAP operations, successfully. They'll initially be called in for a SOX audit, or some other formal routine audit, and one of the audit findings is "we noticed you are spending X million a year in your SAP operations, we can take that over for half the price, and improve your systems, and remove your audit liability for all of these operations" and next thing you know.... all your SAP people are looking up COBRA benefits.

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You aren't wrong. We rely heavily on outside consultants to do the grunt work in SAP on projects. Usually Contax, Cybertech, or Accenture. One of my roles is overseeing them on projects. We've gotten burned hard by some of the cheaper firms we've worked with in the past.

We're currently laying the groundwork for migrating from ECC6 to S/4 HANA in 2024. I can't see myself being let go before that completes and stabilizes just because of my knowledge of our operations and structure. We'll see after that, but I feel pretty heavily relied upon for business knowledge more more than just IMG work.

Work in IT for the state. It’s ok, I don’t really do anything exciting. Sometimes I think I’d like to jump to something more exciting.

Just retired as an IT Manager for a P/L company.

Really loved working with customers and leading teams to implement their requirements.

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I assume you’re being facetious here.

5-7 Direct reports is my sweet spot, 10 is too many.

Obviously it can be different with scale and diversity of the enterprise but there is a finite number that a CEO can effectively interact with.

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Only partially facetious. I know a guy in my company, after a re-org, he (network director) literally had over 100 direct reports. It took months to get them reassigned and re-delegated through the HR "processes". In the meantime, he was having to personally handle all their HR shite. This was less than 5 years ago.

So to answer your question, is 96 typical? No. Does it happen? Yes.

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It’s not for everyone, I have techs and code monkeys who would rather stay in their comfortable positions vs taking on the role/responsibility of dealing with the rest of the executives, departments, and employees.

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I'm a gen x slacker. Got 23 years in Manufacturing IT as an analyst/DBA. In the last 7 years I've noticed my bosses are now younger than me. I don't mind at all. I'm not ambitious. I do my job well enough and avoid taking any initiative or new projects.

I do about 6-8 hours of real work every week for a six figure salary. No reason to rock the boat.

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You need to stop talking son. Indian "consulting" companies fricking up our client's infrastructure daily...and I'm not kidding...it really is daily...is part of my job security.

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You should have seen the email I sent last night about using our internal systems to enter my time... For a technical example of ineptitude, the company portal cannot be accessed unless you explicitly specify HTTPS Colon FarkedcompanyPortal Dot com. How to force connections to default to HTTPS was something I learned more than 20 years ago (it was a single line in an IOS config). But our infrastructure team can't manage to figure it out, and they also don't think it's a usability problem for hundreds of thousands of employees.

I sat in a prep meeting for orals at a potential client, and pointed out that the team had a list on a slide that switched between numbers and bullets *in the same list* and that they needed to change it before we showed it to the client (energy sector, heavily regulated.) They ignored me. We won the bid anyway.