Affective Today my job has been outsourced!

Deathmage

So the new gig just isn't giving me the hours consistently, the first week I did make 1700 so that was nice. But the last few weeks it's only been like 22 to 26 hours at 55 an hour that's decent but I'm getting exposure to so much but it's just not a long-term job. I want something with benefits and 40 hours. Never thought I'd say I miss working 40 hours....

So Today I went on another interview and it went pretty well. It was for a law firm.

Needless to say I spoke with the HR director and he seemed to like my personality and calm personality but said I was quite energetic. He asked me to wait a bit and see if the IT guys were free. (I got a feeling he didn't think I'd make it that far)

in came the Network Engineer and we spoke for about 30 minutes, he started off by telling me about the network and stuff and then he said a word and I just took off, and he started talking about OSPF, BGP, vLANs and QOS (I showed him a picture of my home lab and what it all did, that's all it took for him to open up..) and he started talking about his discontent with the ISP he had and I made some recommendations on other ISP's in the area from the job at President Container and he was intrigued. Needless to say he was so impressed by how much I knew he went to the end of table and got the phone and called the System Admin, he came down and we started talking about VMware and Server 2008 and it just flowed since this stuff I did on a daily basis (being that I've been studying for VCP lately as you all know the terminology was so fresh in my mind), networking/system administration for 3 years and you could see he opened up once he realized I understood the lingo....

Then they told me the job was a Tier 3 engineer that mediates between 4 help desk techs and themselves; I would be the person that fix the issues that help desk couldn't. They told me the job wouldn't be a design role and I said that's perfect since I'm not helpdesk anymore but I'm not a MCSE/CCNP quite yet and they were quite happy by that remark and the fact that I was technical enough that I bridge the gap between themselves or could talk on the same level as they could...

they actually told me they just upgraded to 10 Gbit backbone and how it was perfect timing, they said they had network issues at the time and they seemed to go away. I asked them a question "so I imagine the network was a 1 Gbit backbone prior to the upgrade and you were experiencing network issues, correct? [yes they replied], how can you know for a fact that upgrading to 10gibt didn't just mask the problem instead of fixing it; they both said that was a really good question" ... you could see the twinkle of "thank god we found him"....

They said they want to hire someone by the 1st and the job posting has been on Monster since October so I got a feeling they were holding out to find someone and they both seemed to like my technical knowledge since when they both came in we talked for about 40 additional minutes, all-in-all it was a 3 hour 1st interview...

afterward I went to a customer site and reconnection a Equalogic SAN that had a bad iSCSI uplink and then I had to remount the LUN into their vCenter cluster, took me about 50 minutes, 30 minutes just to wait for the bloody SAN to turn off and 10 to do a datastore migration to test the LUN...

I shall know in a few days....

njfaisal

If you can ace CCNA Security, PM me, I will hire a network/firewall engineer role in 2015. If you know the stuff, money is not a problem. Can sit in NYC or PA.

anhtran35

I'm going to follow this post. You seem like a great guy. Have you considered contracting work overseas? Iraq/Afghanistan/Africa? This is where I was allowed to touch stuff. Additionally, it provided me with a clearance. Please continue to post your journey.

gorebrush

Deathmage wrote: »

I shall know in a few days....

What, for the LUN or for the job?

Either way, that's the kind of interview I love - where it all just flows out so nicely... I am quietly confident for you.

Good luck!

Magmadragoon

Deathmage, I am looking at your home topology and am astonish with the devices you have just in your home. Just a question what type of HP procurve switch layer 3 are you using on to separate your cisco lab from the esxi lab?

Deathmage

Hey all,

So a recap.

The job above didn't pan out I asked for 65k and there probably was a guy that asked for lower and got it. Meh no worries...

Went on a Interview last Monday at a system administrator for a manufacturing company. I'd be working with another person whom is a programmer/developer, we'd flip roles if one of went on vacation/etc (like this a ton actually). The interview went well, you could tell we 'clicked', he told me the previous system administrator just didn't know his stuff, like he didn't know the difference between a VPN and RDC and said he thought you could have a RDC to make multiple VPN's (I just chuckled) - my job role would be a windows/network/VMware adminstrator. They want to go to VMware so I have a few things already in my mind, I saw there network it's got a few obvious issues. They don't have solid backups, or redundancy so right there that's something that will be fixed day one!

Needless to say I gave 5 strong references, Ed Tittel being one of them. And 2 of them are MCSE's I meet in the area at the gym and a CCNP from highschool.

They just offered me the job tonight. I'm probably going to start next week. The job had bennies and is full-time. I'll probably still work weekends as a contractor doing VMware deployments. Plus it's 20 minutes from my current residence.

I'm so excited!

Essendon

BIG congrats there Trev!

Deathmage

Magmadragoon wrote: »

Deathmage, I am looking at your home topology and am astonish with the devices you have just in your home. Just a question what type of HP procurve switch layer 3 are you using on to separate your cisco lab from the esxi lab?

HP Procurve 2910al 48 PoE+ is my MDF.

Deathmage

Essendon wrote: »

BIG congrats there Trev!

Thanks Manny.

kohr-ah

I just wanted to say way to keep plugging away and moving forward!

Hopefully all smooth sailing from here.

Deathmage

Thanks man. Ya I'm pretty luck to get offers quickly, most of the time.

I'm convinced it's my experience, certifications, and personality plus the wisdom this forum has provided me that continues to excel my career forward.

JoJoCal19

Congrats on the new role! I agree, a combination of knowledge/experience, certs, and personality will get you far.

Deathmage

It's legit now. I start Feb 2nd. - put in my notice with my current employer, like working for his company so I don't want to burn the bridge, just 1099 is a tad too different for me and bloody insurance is EXPENSIVE! ... never again will I ***** about a $3 medical hike annually...

Deathmage

Whelp I start the new job on Monday. Kind of excited about the new gig and also about the upcoming projects that I'll need to design to fix preexisting issues.

Any pointers for taking on a lead system administrator role from other administrator(s) in this kind of role that would be insightful?

Deathmage

Whelp 1st day on the job:

Arrived at the job at 8:10 (snow storm made roads 'fun')

Immediately dove into servers and switches and by 5 pm has a full IP scheme. Made a few suggestions and I feel myself getting along with my colleague. Already made a few dozen changes to the domain, just a few best practices that were eking me...

The rest of the week seems fun.

Will probably be ordering another 720xd and a few Procurves and a small SAN asap.

I'm really kind of excited!!!

anhtran35

Congrats. Do you have people working under you?

Deathmage

Just me and one other guy. 2 man IT department.

Deathmage

So I've been busy the last few days P2V'in 16 servers to two Dell R720's that I recently got for work along with a HP Procurve 2910al switch for vMotion/svMotion....

Having to do this project in phases, so in a few months well get a SAN and move the datastores to the SAN for now there locally stored. Easier for the company to absorb the costs, kind of surprised in I got a ESXi 5.5 bundle with vCops Standard and vCenter Standard for 6 CPU's for $8100 (gotta love that VCP discount)

although I found out a 1st for me, a forest that was still server 2000!!!!! .... adprep'd that **** to 2008 R2 ASAP! - gotta love GPO and better forest stability.

nster

God damn how do you market yourself so well?! Is it weird that I wish I worked for you? lol I feel like I'd learn a ton

Congratz on your path so far, quite inspiring!

JBrown

Deathmage wrote: »

snip
kind of surprised in I got a ESXi 5.5 bundle with vCops Standard and vCenter Standard for 6 CPU's for $8100 (gotta love that VCP discount)
snip

are you saying you got your company a discount on VMware licenses due to your VCP status?

Deathmage

JBrown wrote: »

are you saying you got your company a discount on VMware licenses due to your VCP status?

Indeedio

Deathmage

nster wrote: »

God damn how do you market yourself so well?! Is it weird that I wish I worked for you? lol I feel like I'd learn a ton

Congratz on your path so far, quite inspiring!

Well I can talk the lingo and perform it. it's the one benefit of being a jack-of-all-trades at my last long stint, I was exposed to everything. I'm like a learning sponge. Plus I tried to make a very impressing Linkedin profile with a few large network, many of the guys on here are connected on it.

www.linkedin.com/in/midhudsonit

NetworkNewb

That is a nice linkedin page Deathmage. I might have to steal a few ideas from that!!

Deathmage

NetworkNewb wrote: »

That is a nice linkedin page Deathmage. I might have to steal a few ideas from that!!

Thanks man, I'm always editing it to refine the layout.

I actually just bought two 24 port punchdowns that I've been wiring up so that I can make my Cat5e runs for the Skeletek rack placed into the husk of the rack and then just use 1 ft color coded cat5e's into the the two switches so I know exactly where stuff is going...

But also now that I can have a 3rd host that is licensed, going to snag another Dell R610 and run a 3 host cluster.

Once I'm doing going to make another picture of the rack and post it on my wall.

But sure if you find inspiration, by all means.

Essendon

I suggest you flip your certs around. List the higher certs first, so the VCP first, followed by the rest. You want someone to notice it, dont ya?! When I read the page, I went - hey, Trev hasnt listed his VCP, then I saw it languishing near the bottom hidden away under those insignificant CompTIA's (I call them so because they dont matter to you as much at this stage of your career).

Deathmage

Essendon wrote: »

I suggest you flip your certs around. List the higher certs first, so the VCP first, followed by the rest. You want someone to notice it, dont ya?! When I read the page, I went - hey, Trev hasnt listed his VCP, then I saw it languishing near the bottom hidden away under those insignificant CompTIA's (I call them so because they dont matter to you as much at this stage of your career).

Koodos! - will make the change.

hurricane1091

Deathmage wrote: »

Whelp 1st day on the job:

Arrived at the job at 8:10 (snow storm made roads 'fun')

Immediately dove into servers and switches and by 5 pm has a full IP scheme. Made a few suggestions and I feel myself getting along with my colleague. Already made a few dozen changes to the domain, just a few best practices that were eking me...

The rest of the week seems fun.

Will probably be ordering another 720xd and a few Procurves and a small SAN asap.

I'm really kind of excited!!!

So they didn't have a network diagram or VLAN/IP scheme spreadsheet? Should probably step back and document that stuff.

Deathmage

hurricane1091 wrote: »

So they didn't have a network diagram or VLAN/IP scheme spreadsheet? Should probably step back and document that stuff.

they had a document that was 3 years old! .... I found out more with ping and looking into DNS than I did with that sheet of paper.

everything is documented now and a few hours of cracking passwords and then resetting passwords and documenting them as-well.

I'll probably spend about 5 or 6 months just fixing the network and then getting it were I want it and be as best practice, bear in mind the forest was Server 2000 so it was a bit dated; none of the feature of Server 2003/2008/2008 R2 were being used like GPO's for example; basically completely ad hoc..

But I added a Sonicwall NSA 240 on day 3 that was ordered but never fully configured and fixed the security flaws with the network in a few hours...

ninjaturtle

Deathmage wrote: »

they had a document that was 3 years old! .... I found out more with ping and looking into DNS than I did with that sheet of paper.

everything is documented now and a few hours of cracking passwords and then resetting passwords and documenting them as-well.

I'll probably spend about 5 or 6 months just fixing the network and then getting it were I want it and be as best practice, bear in mind the forest was Server 2000 so it was a bit dated; none of the feature of Server 2003/2008/2008 R2 were being used like GPO's for example; basically completely ad hoc..

But I added a Sonicwall NSA 240 on day 3 that was ordered but never fully configured and fixed the security flaws with the network in a few hours...

I've been out of town for work, so and just came across this thread. Congrats on the new job mate!! Super stoked for you. I really think you made the right decision in bailing. I'm happy you like the new job and already getting you feet wet. Keep at it man ...senior level is just around the corner for you.

hurricane1091

Deathmage wrote: »

they had a document that was 3 years old! .... I found out more with ping and looking into DNS than I did with that sheet of paper.

everything is documented now and a few hours of cracking passwords and then resetting passwords and documenting them as-well.

I'll probably spend about 5 or 6 months just fixing the network and then getting it were I want it and be as best practice, bear in mind the forest was Server 2000 so it was a bit dated; none of the feature of Server 2003/2008/2008 R2 were being used like GPO's for example; basically completely ad hoc..

But I added a Sonicwall NSA 240 on day 3 that was ordered but never fully configured and fixed the security flaws with the network in a few hours...

I've updated our VLAN scheme spreadsheet. It's a pain honestly if it's not kept up with. Like I was doing some stuff in vSphere SRM and it wasn't really that technical, it was trying to figure out available IP addresses and trying to match the DR server IPs with the IPs of the servers here at the office that was frustrating. We're still on 2003 in some areas which is going to lose support this year. I've been pushing for a 2012 upgrade to get some more experience but I don't think it will happen.