The Dirty Jobs of IT 162
dantwood writes "In an Infoworld article, Dan Tynan writes about the '7 Dirtiest Jobs' in IT. Number three? Enterprise espionage engineer (black ops). 'Seeking slippery individuals comfortable with lying, cheating, stealing, breaking, and entering for penetration testing of enterprise networks. Requirements include familiarity with hacking, malware, and forgery; must be able to plausibly impersonate a pest control specialist or a fire marshal. Please submit rap sheet along with resume.'" Paging Mike Rowe, Mike Rowe to the IT desk.
Link covers several pages (Score:5, Informative)
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A script has tried to read private data (Score:2, Offtopic)
Uhm... (Score:5, Funny)
Sounds like fun.
Hey You! (Score:2)
Re:Uhm... (Score:5, Funny)
Nothing gives you plausible deniability for your data heists like being paid to try stealing it in the first place...
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And I actually think that a really dirty IT job is when management enforces the implementation of a hack that may not only be insecure but also possibly illegal.
Mike Rowe? (Score:5, Funny)
Jus' wonderin'...
But.... (Score:2)
On TV? (Score:3, Funny)
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Never, because only one of these jobs actually involved dirt in the sense that Mike Rowe deals with. The rest were just trials and tribulations of a typical IT person, and one or two about IT workers with questionable ethics.
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And my post was supposed to be a criticism of the article.
Mike Rowe! (Score:2, Funny)
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/01/19/133233&tid=109 [slashdot.org]
Now that's a dirty job.
Re:Mike Rowe! (Score:5, Informative)
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What about the guy (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What about the guy (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:What about the guy (Score:5, Funny)
I, for one, welcome our new dirty, spelling-challenged, sensationalizing user-submitted story-posting editor overlords!
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But yeah, those multiple page things annoy me too.
qz
Depends what you mean by "dirty" (Score:3, Insightful)
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Left out ecommerce (Score:5, Interesting)
Left out Multi-Level Marketing (Score:5, Insightful)
The company makes multi-millions, and I was personally in charge of the systems that calculates, tallies, and print out "reward" cheques every month. I had to be intimately familiar with all the details and clauses and sub-clauses and secret definitions of obvious words like "one week" or heck even what "50" means. I knew first hand that what our marketing people said was very different from what our sales people said, which is different from when people call our customer service, and which in turn is many miles away from how the system actually works.
They never lie, because you get sued when you lie.
But ever since, I have been convinced that it is dirtier to speak in half-truths and equivocations than out-right lies.
[confession]
I was young and dismissed my disgust at the company as my being too "picky" about jobs. I convined myself to tough it out. Eventually I found out the company was stealing from ME, and only then did I quit. So I already got what I deserved. [/confession]
sorry about posting as AC, but I have a rather unique handle I've been using for quite a few years.
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Again with the Wikipedia!! (Score:5, Insightful)
What is the point of linking to the Dirty Jobs entry on Wikipedia? What's wrong with the actual Discovery Channel site [discovery.com] ??
Re:Again with the Wikipedia!! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Again with the Wikipedia!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, I looked at your link [discovery.com] and I see some ads and a big Flash thingy. (I'm using FlashBlock [mozdev.org] so I have to click to view Flash. Wonderful!) If I load the Flash, I see some fancily designed animated cruft with a bunch of buttons that may or may not lead to actual information. Much of text is at slightly random skewed angles, and there's no obvious place to find basic facts.
When I look a the Wikipedia article [wikipedia.org], on the other hand, I see no ads, no Flash, and some nicely formatted text, written to give quick answers, laid out in tidy sections, all using a standard format that I'm familiar with from a bunch of previous visits.
Other than that, no reason.
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Well, I looked at your link and I see some ads and a big Flash thingy. (I'm using FlashBlock so I have to click to view Flash. Wonderful!) If I load the Flash, I see some fancily designed animated cruft with a bunch of buttons that may or may not lead to actual information. Much of text is at slightly random skewed angles, and there's no obvious place to find basic facts.
I am deeply sorry you needed an additional click to see the content; you obviously didn't click any of the links or you would have got
Re:Again with the Wikipedia!! (Score:5, Insightful)
No, my point is that Wikipedia is easier to get information out of. That's because they understand that fancy design reduces utility [useit.com]. Further, their only reason for existence is to provide answers, whereas the Discovery Channel has different purposes, like promoting their show, reinforcing the fan base, and selling my attention to advertisers.
And suggesting that it's somehow more efficient to become familiar with every primary-source site on the web rather than just one? You can't expect to be taken seriously with statements like that, can you?
it is silly to use Wikipedia when there are better/more direct sources. Basic critical thinking skills will allow you to see that.
Basic critical thinking skills? Yes, please use them before posting. It will save us all some time.
More direct sources are very rarely better for a quick overview, which is why I have shelves of dictionaries, almanacs, concordances, indexes, encyclopedias, guides, maps, analyses, abstracts, and literature surveys. I also have plenty of primary sources, and go to them when needed. But the whole point of an encyclopedia, on-line or off-, is to make basic info more conveniently available than primary sources. Which is what 99% of people want as a starting point. If you don't, fine. Post your little link and move along.
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I don't know. Maybe I'm not in the US and don't know WTF the Discovery Channel is all about? Or maybe it's that getting comprehensive information from an independent source is preferable to searching it out from a business trying to promote something?
I'm a big fan of The Discovery Channel and especially Mike Rowe. But if I really wanted to know something about either, I would need to m
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Re:Again with the Wikipedia!! (Score:5, Funny)
dirty job? (Score:2, Funny)
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And hope your next employer doesn't hear about what you did...
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Re:dirty job? (Score:4, Informative)
The company that you're breaking into hired your firm to test their security.
Enterprise espionage engineer? (Score:2)
Finally (Score:4, Funny)
Dirty IT job No. 7: Legacy systems archaeologist WANTED: INDIVIDUALS FAMILIAR WITH 3270
#7 seems pretty sweet (Score:5, Insightful)
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Servicing equipment neglected for years (Score:3, Insightful)
Risking your life to test security (Score:5, Interesting)
My teacher stayed in a nearby motel and hacked in over the telephone, but a military officer with expertise in security parachuted into the base at night - it's a big base, with lots of wide open space.
He started breaking into computer rooms. Interestingly, he was detected but not caught. My teacher intercepted emails from the base staff warning that an intruder had been seen in the area.
Eventually they went public, and submitted a report to the staff as to how they could improve security.
They emphasized that this sort of thing is meant to help, and not to cost anyone their jobs.
Re:Risking your life to test security (Score:5, Interesting)
Number 8 BSA guy (Score:2)
#0 dirtiest IT job (Score:5, Funny)
Re:#0 dirtiest IT job (Score:5, Funny)
Why does the link go to the end page of the story? (Score:2)
Penetration Testing? (Score:2)
Like any
The real list (Score:5, Funny)
2) Keyboard cleaner (cheetos and pepsi and genetic splatter, oh my!)
3) Floating point wrangler
4) Monochrome wire detangler
5) Witnessing <body bgcolor="#FFFF00">
6) rpm dependency arbitrator
7) "Cowboy Neal option" writer
I don't think so... (Score:5, Insightful)
Having done both, I completely disagree. In fact, I have yet to meet a help desk zombie who hasn't dreamed of becoming an on-site reboot specialist. It doesn't take long for a help desk zombie to wish they could simply get the person on the other end of the phone to do what they tell them and nothing else, or even just understand what they have told them. Getting to be an on-site reboot specialist allows one to work directly on a machine without the person who has no idea playing a literal game of telephone with your instructions to mess things up. In addition, on-site rebooters usually get paid more for doing less and can get rid of angry customers at least for a time by telling them to go get coffee. The only real exception I've seen to this would be the Graveyard Support Vampire who have other priorities than more money or getting the job done ASAP to meet quota.
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Re:I don't think so... (Score:5, Interesting)
One of the first thing that any IT support person needs to know is that "USERS LIE". With people on the other end of the phone, they are certain there is some secret "fixed" button and if they stall and are a pain long enough, you'll tell them where it is so they make stuff up in an effort to speed things along. Sometimes, you even do tell them where the "fixed" button is (for their problem anyway) and they'll keep on lying because they don't recognise it as being the instructions for pushing the "fixed" button. They may not even know they are lying, but they still lie. Many times, they'll try and describe what is happening, and do so in a way that either offers no information or wrong information who actually knows what the terms they are using actually mean. Then there are the people who simply call the help desk but are still trying to solve the problem on their own. The number of times I've told people to click one button or open a window and not to do anything else, and could hear frantic typing over the phone drives is non-trivial. When I repeat "do not do anything" they'll tell me they aren't. Then when I ask them to do something like read the error message that appears or follow a set of steps that has to be done in order without doing anything else, they tell me to hold on and reboot the machine to return to the state I told them to get in. This in one of the main reasons help desk zombies want to get their hands on the machine, users lie and when the person who is actually trying to fix the machine can't see the machine and must rely upon a lier to tell them what is going in, it makes things really hard.
On the other side of things, the on-site reboot specialists have to deal with the users who give them no information and still expect results.
Dr. House said it best (Score:2, Insightful)
Rule #1: Patients lie
Is a user lying? - Use the 2 Second Rule! (Score:2, Interesting)
Ask the user your question. E.g. "Did you do {insert something the user may have done}". If the user takes longer than 2 seconds to reply to a simple yes/no question, they are lying. No one takes 3 seconds to say yes or no.
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You know, it could very well be that the poor tech support monkey on the other end of the line has a list of things to check before submitting a ticket and if that list says "#23 - Has the computer been rebooted? [Y/N]" then they know they have to get the user to reboot the computer or the ticket will be sent back to them and they'll have to call the user and ask the user to reboot even though they know the problem couldn't possibly be solved by a reboot. And one of the things you learn in tech support is t
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Yeah, of course when it comes to the router/VoIP box issue there's a very good reason to disconnect it whenever the problem isn't sync-related, and yet 90% or so of the customers will immediatly go into "But it worked yesterday waaaaaah!!"-mode the moment you ask them to disconnect their five year-old DLink DSL router. And amazingly that's also pretty close to the percentage of non sync-related connection issues that are resolved by disconnecting the router (and if the user doesn't have a NAT router or VoIP
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Yes, because within seconds, there will be a host of entirely new problems that prevent the network stack from working at all.
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Of course there will be but that's not tech support's problem, that's for customer services when the customer gets shut down for running a spam zombie...
This is how things would play out:
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Your first point of call in supporting anything is to start from a fresh reboot. The first task in doing any troubleshooting is to show that the problem is reproducible. If you can't recreate the problem, then there's no real way to troubleshoot it because you can't tell if anything you've done has fixed it or not. If rebooting the p
#2 isn't dirty in the least (Score:5, Insightful)
You are always in demand, unlike several other IT fields
Pays well
Stable work
Stable code.
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It's been awhile since I wrote any COBOL (and I never wrote that much), but I still have a fondness for it.
Not as good as it could have been. (Score:2)
As far as Dirty IT job No. 2: Datacenter migration specialist [infoworld.com]goes... *yawn*. Move a bunch of boxes, cable 'em up and hit the on button. Big Deal. Come talk to me when you've moved an entire printing plant three blocks across three weeks - without interrupting production or missing a deadline.
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A few years back there was a picture in the local paper of a first grader at a computer. It was a II+ !
Real Dirt (Score:2)
Upgrading a 256mb to 1 gb takes maybe 5 mins. The last one took over an hour, It was so bad I took photos.
The dust was so thick that I had to dismantle everything, vacuum, use artist brushes and compressed air, reassemble after oiling the fans! I even replaced the power supply as it was too stuffed with dust to be safe.
By the time I finished, my workspace was filled with dust, crap everywhere.
Next time
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Any mentions of carousel type color laser printers? Any printer that moves toner cartridges on purpose will always be a mess inside. Met
I really didn't think I was special... (Score:4, Funny)
No, I haven't had #1, but the wet end of a paper making machine is very close. It's amazing what will grow in warm pulp, if you leave it there a while. And how your shoes literally fall apart when you walk through the stuff they use to clean it off. Literally. In minutes. Leather is no match for DuStrip.
Cat Herder is the worst of them. Being a rebootnik isn't quite as much fun as a third-party field tech, driving back and forto from the airport 3 miles away in a driving snowstorm to get *another* part to make that ^&*) Alpha server run again, so people can rent porn. Yeah.
Shenanigans (Score:2, Interesting)
Forensics Responder (Score:4, Funny)
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"Help Desk" is customer service (Score:2)
Regarding the Undead of #6...
Help Desk is a Customer Service position requiring a basic level of technical competence & teachability, NOT a tech position requiring only a basic level of people skills. This is especially true when the Help Desk person is dealing primarily with people with minimal to no technical skills.
The job should go to someone who likes people-- and who may not want an IT career per se, but does enjoy tinkering around with the stuff a little and learning a little bit about it. It
Re:"Help Desk" is customer service (Score:4, Insightful)
You're right, Help Desk is a horrible place to expect qualified techies to hang out. It's more of a litmus test than anything else. If you've got some level of skill, you advance out of the help desk and into something useful. If you suck...well...at least you're unlikely to be fired.
Every place I've worked that had a decent sized IT department had two types of people; Help Desk / Operators that had been there 10+ years, and help desk staff that got promoted or moved on within six months.
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Every place I've worked that had a decent sized IT department had two types of people; Help Desk / Operators that had been there 10+ years, and help desk staff that got promoted or moved on within six months.
at the ISP (Sasktel) help desk job i had last summer, the average lifespan of a consumer-side help desk tech was 12 months. from there they'd be sorted by their skills. some to level 2, some to testing, some to business support, some to 611, some become "hat racks" (someone with the skillsets for all of the above), some to field techs, some become central office techs, etc.
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Due Diligence Blows (Score:2)
Chemical Plant (Score:4, Interesting)
I was expecting dirty (Score:2, Funny)
Who are they talking about? (Score:5, Funny)
Is that you, Steve?
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Sounds like written by a 15 year old (Score:2)
Of course COBOL is still around. There currently is virtually no other language beeing able to replace it because they lack BCD arithmetics for easy to predict precision.
Also there is another one missing. "Developer for organically grown commercial computing enviroments". If you ever had to programm something serious under Windows, and then later tried another OS you will know what I mean. You have Interfaces which are borderline bizarre, partly undocumented, and only
Rap sheet??? (Score:3, Insightful)
Something wrong with that (Score:5, Informative)
WANTED: INDIVIDUALS FAMILIAR WITH 3270, VAX/VMS, COBOL, AS/400, AND OTHER LEGACY SYSTEMS
I have to disagree: It may not be the very best idea to try to connect AS/400 applications to webbrowsers, but an AS/400 is certainly NOT a legacy system. The system architecture of the AS/400 is actually much more modern than that of most other systems. Do you know any other system with a persistent single-level-storage, that continues working exactly where it stopped before the power was lost, after you boot it up again - I mean, it does not RESTART processes, it CONTINUES them. Or do you know another system, where you can plug in a completely different main processor, just recompile the OS kernel, and every application on the system will be AUTOMATICALLY ported to the new processor architecture upon first start - as if they were Java programs? Ever heard of the "technology independent machine interface" (TIMI)?
Reimplementing your old applications on an AS/400 is much LESS of a risk than trying to migrate those applications to so-called modern systems like PC-servers, because an AS/400 is orders of magnitudes more secure (you DO know it has hardware-supported pointer protection, don't you?) and more realiable than a PC-server.
No IP lawyer? No marketing type? (Score:2)
Dirty IT job No. 7: Legacy systems archaeologist (Score:2)
Vinge [wikipedia.org] thought that "Programmer-archaeologist" might be a growth career area [wikipedia.org].
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In any case, software archeology presents no risk of death-- despite what Vernor Vinge's novels might imply.
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Win! Wait, no, the other thing - Fail! No, hold on...... (Head kerplodes)