What was the hardest challenge you came across in your job?

Snow.bros

What is the hardest day to day challenge a tech could come across in this career?

What can be done to get it resolved?

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mishy

People are the hardest challenge in my tech career and the way to fix it is kill them all. In all honesty in terms of IT Support which I am in, people are the hardest challenge and you meet individuals with special characters from company to company. The best way to resolve it is learn from mistakes, tactical approach and always being professional in your job. Sometimes a problem might be easy to resolve but if the person you are helping is difficult to work with it complicates things and sometimes can prove to be an obstacle to actually doing your job properly.

jibbajabba

Preparing for an interview

Snow.bros

mishy wrote: »

People are the hardest challenge in my tech career and the way to fix it is kill them all. In all honesty in terms of IT Support which I am in, people are the hardest challenge and you meet individuals with special characters from company to company. The best way to resolve it is learn from mistakes, tactical approach and always being professional in your job. Sometimes a problem might be easy to resolve but if the person you are helping is difficult to work with it complicates things and sometimes can prove to be an obstacle to actually doing your job properly.

Guess that would be very difficult for me, i would like to be relaxed when i am working so i can stay focused and having someone behind me putting some unnecessary pressure can make me panic a bit at times and that makes my job sloppy.

jibbajabba wrote: »

Preparing for an interview ?

Lol, well if preparing for an interview is the hardest challenge in this career, then you must be an expert at your job which makes you the perfect candidate for the job so no worries mate.

TechGuy215

For me....migrating a Data Center from one location to another. Over 200 servers and Petabytes of Data, along with racks of tape libraries, switches, routers, ASAs and pretty enourmous UPSs! The beauty of it was we went from approximately 180 physical servers to only 10 at the new facility. Oh how I love you vSphere!

It was a daunting project, but I was glad to be a part of it.

dave330i

Finding a competent SAN admin. At this point, I don't think they exist.

TechGuy215

They are out there! Just hard to find...

I manage our compellant SAN.

jibbajabba

dave330i wrote: »

Finding a competent SAN admin. At this point, I don't think they exist.

Depends on your requirements and the associated salary

Snow.bros

dave330i wrote: »

Finding a competent SAN admin. At this point, I don't think they exist.

Sorry man if i may ask, what is a SAN?

TechGuy215

Snow.bros wrote: »

Sorry man if i may ask, what is a SAN?

Storage Area Network

Snow.bros

TechGuy215 wrote: »

Storage Area Network

TechGuy215

Mishra

Work politics. It's draining, stressful, confusing, and hard to solve.

shodown

Dealing with non techical PM's. I will send a email saying a task is complete. They will reply a few hours later asking if the same task is complete. They just follow there charts and have no idea what in the he11 is going on. I had one issue recently about a remote site being brought up. I explain to her in clear English that they have to use the site in this manner. They reply with a email asking why Im deviating from the SOW, and CC's our managers and sells manager asking why I'm doing this. They could have easily sent me an email asking why I was doing this, but instead decided to send a email blast. I deal with issues like this all the time, but when they 1st started they would make me want to scream!!!

Chitownjedi

People.

J_86

Chitownjedi wrote: »

People.

+1000

dmoore44

Finding ways to get information from a MS system when they don't properly expose said information to you through one of their many interfaces.

SharkDiver

I'm going to say people, as well.

I saw this sign on a wall,

I had to stop asking people, "How stupid can you be?"
Too many of them were taking it as a personal challenge!

whatthehell

People can make the job horrible, but there are people that can make the job great.

My major complaint is idiots and politics.

cyberguypr

Following the people line: my old boss. Micromanager manchild impossible to talk to.

Akaricloud

Touch decisions that affect others. Best example, when I worked for a small health insurance company and one of our systems was down I got a panicked call from a hospital administrator explaining that if they weren't able to get approval from our system for a procedure within the next 5 minutes that a patient wasn't going to be able to qualify for the surgery required to save one of their limbs.

kohr-ah

Snow.bros wrote: »

What is the hardest day to day challenge a tech could come across in this career?

What can be done to get it resolved?

A boss that micro manages.
I try to perform what he is asking but do it my own way and let most of what he says blow over. (This doesn't always work)

instant000

dave330i wrote: »

Finding a competent SAN admin. At this point, I don't think they exist.

They do exist.

My anecdotal evidence: We had a really good SAN admin when I was working an Air Force contract. The military gave him compliments all the time. The guy left in a month or so for more money.

I wouldn't call my self "superb" as a SAN admin, but I was able to keep ours running and do moves/adds/changes and a SAN migration while being one of those "do everything" guys a couple years ago.

So, I believe that competence would be easy to achieve, if you only had to do SAN admin. I didn't, so I wouldn't sell myself as one.

This is how I would attack it, if I were to try:
Get well-versed in the protocols for data transfer and storage. (theoretical foundation)
Pick a couple vendors, and figure out how they implement storage. (vendor-specific)
Join up on a forum that was focused on storage networking. (community knowledge)
Figure out the most common things that are done in the organization, and know those cold (I consider this basic job competence)
Research to know better the users, applications and data that rely on the storage (business enhancement)

I consider competence to be knowing how to do basic tasks, and having the wherewithal to look up how to do one-off tasks. Of course, I don't like to stop at that point. I like to understand the other pieces to the puzzle, and it always makes my job easier, as I can contribute more to the team.

Hope this helps.

Snow.bros

Chitownjedi wrote: »

People.

I am with you 110%, that's the best summary, honestly i also find it very hard to work with people, they have different attitude, different personality, it's worse when different personalities clash, and some people's attitude stink i just cant stand them sometimes.

darkerz

I'll be honest with myself on this one;

My inability to avoid getting comfortable in a role.

There, I said it.

I found one of those "Lifer" companies. Nice, high income / low crime city. I live across the street. Work life balance is strictly enforced. A good mixtures of tickets, projects, training and advancement. Above average pay and great benefits (401k is 8% matching with really good low management fee options!) 30 minutes late? NO problem! Dentist from 10 to 12? Not a wince from anyone!

But it's not the high end, big involvement, ground breaking IT challenge it could be. It just isn't. It was for the first 6 months, now my scripts run all the menial tasks and I've learned the expectation of the culture for infrastructure projects. It's hard when your friends in the area work for Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Megapath, Verizon, TMobile, etc. and are all embarking on really amazing projects.

Qord

Patience, not just with people and machines, but with situations as well.

Living in an area with a very small and tough job market, absolutely loving your job (really/seriously; look forward to going to work every day) but knowing you're well underpaid and have at least 5-7 more years before there is an opening to move up in to. It's tough to live with that, especially when the bills pile up. It makes your work a little harder to do, you lose interest and motivation, and something that you really love suddenly becomes a burden.

I keep telling myself the money isn't everything, and to be patient. Someday someone here will retire or someone else will be hiring with less than a 2 hour commute...

vanquish23

Telling System Admins that its not the network and they need to restart there crappy Windows Server boxes.

thenjduke

Actually I like telling the network team it is usually there crappy routers they have to reboot

I agree it usually is the Windows Boxes.