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

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In the last 7 years I've noticed my bosses are now younger than me.

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My last 2 bosses have been younger than me. I don't give a shite. Let them deal with it. I know what that job pays and it's not that much more than a SR architect/engineer

20% more pay for 300% more headache

Don’t use vEdges!!!

I guess we can’t make fun of customers that let certs expire anymore…LOL

I am a Sr IT Manager for a major airline. I support a product portfolio that deals with all pilot technology and training. We have 22 different applications in the portfolio which range from old mainframe TFS, to java MS Azure cloud applications, to COTS apps. I got my degree in M.I.S. from La Tech and have been in this my entire career. I've changed industries from Insurance, to O&G to airline, but the job has remained basically the same. Also enjoy the free flights.

Network engineer here. Been doing this for about almost two years but been in OT for about 12 years or so. I like networking the best out of everything I’ve done.

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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.

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This has to be either TCS or Atos.

I've been in IT for over 30 years. I've done a little of everything. Started with MS-DOS connecting PCs to Novell Netware and IBM AS/400s. The people I worked for realized that I could make them all talk to each other, sorta (not really, but I moved the network to TCP/IP when the world was running flavors of IPX/SPX, twinax/balun, and token ring). I was working for a TPA firm in insurance when I started right out of college. Lucked into my first real IT gig, really. I was a PC kid who got exposed to midrange systems at the enterprise level in the early 90's.

I got fairly good at adhoc reporting when the canned reports baked into mid-range software packages really sucked, and commissioning reports from software vendors would cost thousands of dollars. I would download the data into FoxPro (which was acquired by Microsoft for the database engine and shortly thereafter adapted for MS Access) and deliver report data exported to Excel or Lotus 1-2-3. The finance and accounting teams could work directly with real data in spreadsheets for themselves. They loved this. Seriously. At the time, reports were delivered on reams of greenbar paper printed on noisy dot-matrix printers that took up half the room. I gave them something they could actually use.

I got two bachelors degrees in the early 90's, pre-Internet: one in Management (IS Concentration); the other in what was a precursor to what is now called ISDS or CIS (called BADCS, short for Business Administration/Computer Science Option). Plenty of core business classes and plenty of coding. I was a young computer kid who could speak fairly authoritatively to accountants and actuaries. I understood statistics, at least at the undergraduate level, so I could deliver financial data and actuarial models in a fraction of the time it took them to pay outside firms to develop the data themselves.

I hated every minute of the actual work, but I was getting paid to play with technology, which I actually loved.

After four years, I'd had enough of working for a company that had run into problems with the insurance funds it managed. I quit and went to work for a startup that didn't last. I then got lucky and fell into a gig in hospitality. (I actually fired off a cover letter and resume to an ad in the newspaper and got a call to interview.) Same sort of technology, different gig. Plenty of awesome and talented people. Grew with it for two decades. Learned more networking, guest facing technology, and wireless, wireless, wireless. Everything wireless. Cellular, DAS deployments, zigby, microwave, satellite, and, of course, WiFi. I also ran the teams supporting several states. I loved it, but the pandemic decimated the industry, and my job went with it.

Found myself working for an energy services company. Operation Technology and IT, though I'm not an industrial controls guy by training, I understand the fundamentals. In IT, we do our best to move data securely and keep out the riff raff. I've risen to VP, but likely because I am steeped in vendor management and running teams--not because I'm still a hotshot kid on the bleeding edge.

I've consulted here and there. Did some work for Entergy, for an auto dealership group, attorneys. Whoever needed some help when I had the time.

I have no regrets about IT. I still like to tinker with stuff. My home network is the tits. Gear overkill. I ran fiber between switches because why not, with real wireless access points, not the horseshite you buy at Best Buy.

I don't like writing code because I don't do it often enough to maintain speed and proficiency, but I still surprise myself sometimes. I never wanted to be a programmer.

I may or may not have worked for IBM

We talking IBM AS/400, or IBM QRadar?

There is a massive difference.

Oh, the stories I can tell you my pal Centinel

Systems integrator. Started off learning fiber termination while attempting a Computer Science degree. Blew off college and immersed myself in the broad branch of low voltage systems. Now I design and maintain A/V, surveillance, access control, and pure data systems, with an extremely flexible schedule. I’m comfortable with my living and the accommodation has been great, given I am currently a single parent.