Even Dirtier IT Jobs 175
snydeq writes "InfoWorld's Dan Tynan offers up 7 'even dirtier IT jobs' in a follow-up of last year's 7 dirtiest jobs in IT. Number four? Zombie console monkey.
'Wanted: Individuals with low self-esteem and high boredom threshold willing to spend long hours poring over server logs and watching blinking lights on a network console.'"
ironic... (Score:5, Interesting)
Why can't it become routine to (also) link to a cached copy?
If the
Data Miner? (Score:3, Interesting)
Data miner?
Sounds awfully like data mining except for the blinking lights on the console but rather the status output of your data mining software.
I did this (Score:5, Interesting)
For a month or so, I did this as a temp job. My job consisted of manually logging into a server every two hours and manually running a command to gather log files, and then another to send those files to a second server. I honestly have no idea what kind of system I was logging into, I just know that I was told they were unable to automate the process, so there needed to be a warm body to run the commands. For that, I got to sit in a windowless basement data closet with no access to TV, radio, or open Internet. At least it was a paycheck, and I got to catch up on some reading, writing, and sleep.
Truly Dirty IT Job (Score:5, Interesting)
-One abattoir had the intake for the server room on the roof... directly under the exhaust tower for rendering. Even when we moved the equipment into the new offices, I turned on the disk array and got a face full of rendered pork from the fans.
-One place in Texas was a nightmare. Imagine extension cords stapled to the wall for systems, where they were wired so the pronged end was the, "hot," side. Yep, it could double as a cattle prod if needed.
-Communicating with the people at these places was impossible. One night crew person sounded exactly like Boomhauer. It was always fun trying to understand her.
-Other people didn't like the fact that we in IT were generally smarter than them. I got one woman who liked making up big words to sound more intelligent than she was. On one occasion, she said that her screen was, "tricating." I had to ask her a few times to repeat the word to understand it. After I found out that she meant that the column size for her green screen console was wrong, causing the lines to wrap improperly, I told her I had never heard of that word before. "Oh, you're young," she said, "that's why you don't know it." Yeah, neither did Merriam and Webster, and they're pretty old, too.
-Another plant in the south had an adjacent, "smoking room," in someone's office, so the fans were sucking in both slaughterhouse smell and nicotine. Lovely.
-And it was always fun walking on the floors when we had to check out the equipment, since we in IT stuck out like sore thumbs. I remember going to check an electronic scale once and watching these workers with sharp knives cutting things and staring at me. I was thinking, "Why don't you look down at what you're doing with that sharp blade instead of me? You know, that piece of meat that has... an... eyeball looking back at me... oh, boy...."
Wimps (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Bad jobs? Maybe. But some people will take them (Score:4, Interesting)
A statement which further reinforces my view that having children signals the end of happy life, and the beginning of some kind of badgered and miserable existence, regurgitating the dregs of ones own aspirations into the insatiable beaks of thankless offspring.
Of course, if nobody cares about you or depends on you then noone will miss you. It's so simple to do, just not establish those deep bonds and your life is carefree. If you got run over by the bus, a few friends, relatives and coworkers would attend the funeral, shrug and say "terrible shame" and get on with their lives. Noone would cry for you, noone would call out your name, noone would reach out for you in the dark wishing you were there. No kids means you can just split up, take out a divorce if necessary, and go your separate ways- You never have to worry about my kids and your kids and our kids, you've never got commitments deeper than those you can just break away from. It's also an empty life. I want my life to have mattered to someone other than just my selfish self. Not like go down in history but having deeply touched the people closest to me.
If I ask a girl out on a date I could become happy or sad, but if I don't my heart is just empty. They come in equal measure, if I didn't care much about the date it'd be small and if I was madly in love with her it'd be great. If your boss asked you to write a big and important piece of a business critical software you'd feel pride - and worry. Your solution is say "Can't I just work on this little insignificant piece? That way anything I do won't really matter". and of course you can. Here's what you're missing about most parents I know - they're full of love and full of worry. They wouldn't worry unless they loved their kids, it's the positive love that is the source and the worry is just a reflection. I would surely like to have someone that would have such a special place in my heart, including the rough times.