How I managed to get into IT, system administrator – born, backed up, laid to rest
All this probably contributed to the technical mindset and the choice of the appropriate college for admission after the 9th grade; in a small town with a population of 100 thousand, there was not much choice.
Four years spent in college were fun and useless. No one was in a hurry to answer simple questions of a technical nature. After four years of life and tests, I receive a diploma of “Engineer” with a beautiful wording (Software for Computer Engineering and Automated Systems) without ever having disassembled a computer, without setting up a network, without even understanding what it is and under what sauce it is best to cook.
The schedule of classes was extremely simple, receiving 5 classes per week of philosophy, 3 economics, 2 social studies, 3 conversational English, no technical classes, of course, only 2 classes of programming language. Delphi in 2012 it was relevant, but not practical, 2 pairs of “technical” training including only theory, and how could it be without 5 pairs a week of higher mathematics, I could not imagine a field where I would need it Matrices It is probably very difficult to imagine such a qualified computer technician.
Can this college be called technical? In my opinion, practically no!
In the last year, they added OOP, basic study of SQL, as it turned out later, one teacher was offered another position and she agreed, having bought textbooks on SQL for dummies, she simply retold us what was written there.
What is the problem with most modern Russian colleges and universities, from the point of view of my experience today?
As for me, everything is simple, the student is not shown who he can become and how much he can earn if he thoroughly studies this or that field. Simple and clear, learn SQL and the first couple of years you will have a salary of 30 thousand, from the 3rd to the 5th year of experience already 70 thousand, and you will reach the professional level from 100+. And this is 2014. I did not have a chance to see living examples of successhow can you fully enjoy knowledge, understanding that the person who possesses it makes ends meet, he teaches in college, at school and also works part-time as a tutor.
In defense, I will say, there was still one teacher who said that programming in PHP in the evenings brings him x3 of the teacher's salary. Naturally, he chose the programmer's money, there is nothing to blame him for, we often meet with him in the city and communicate well.
Then a diploma with the minimum possible set of skills, which are surely striving for absolute zero. The lack of funding for a higher education and the desire to spend another 4 years studying at an institute under the full guidance of a college and the same set of “useful” knowledge in combination with work, played a good joke and awarded a year in the army.
For good people army native mother, and for the bad ones – mother-in-law .
film DMB (2000).
As for me, the army trains and hardens, but you only begin to understand all this after you return home and at first you still jump up at 6 in the morning out of muscle memory of the spell COMPANY. RAISE, but that’s just a light introduction.
With 4 years of college, the army and zero technical experience behind us, we apply the debuffs “small town” and “lack of self-confidence” and go to a company known to everyone in the Russian Federation with a green alien and hope for contact with the beautiful, assembling computers and at least some understanding of our life path. The first PC assemblies, understanding why Windows won't install, how to partition a disk into sectors and other technical joys coupled with a good salary from 35 to 70 thousand depending on the month, come there.
Having worked for about four years, we gain an understanding of what is included in a PC, how a printer differs from an MFP, how one router differs from another, a high level of communication skills with pumped-up charisma. By a completely strange coincidence, talking to a buyer about computers, I receive the first offer of an incomprehensible job of a system administrator with an income level of 40k for the “start”. Having thought over such a generous offer and having a good safety cushion of five salaries, we accept it.
No boring interviews, HRs or technical assignments. Your job responsibilities are such, your salary is such, here is your boss, here is an experienced colleague, here is a bunch of written-off PCs for a reason that has sunk into oblivion. The task is simple: collect everything that works, try to fix printers or take them to a service center, figure out networks and services, understand and learn how to work in specialized programs.
No more sales, almost free schedule and all the advantages of a five-day week, the first entry in the work record related to IT, a fairly large sanatorium with a weak level of technology, a terrible network topology on a piece of paper and a huge amount of outdated equipment, serves as the initial level of anykey master.
After some time I can ask my past self
Was the job change worth it? Of course it was! Any experience in an interesting field brings pleasure and motivates, although often not for long.
As a salesperson, consultant, or sales manager in one field or another, you can instantly earn much more than the average system administrator, I can say with confidence.
Everyone chooses for themselves what attracts them to IT, I went there solely because I wanted a dust-free job. As it turned out later, at first you have to collect a lot of dust on the technical floors, work in unusual positions and overtime when others are already resting, but then, for me, it paid off doubly.
The principle is simple, a system administrator is one of the few professions where you can don't work while everything around you workshaving spent half a year – a year in the office, you can put the whole process on rails, jump into the trolley and with sufficient acceleration it moves forward perfectly well. Many acquaintances in my city went to work as administrators, because of the stability, as in the Soviet system, the richer and better your sanatorium, the less often the staff changes and the more perks. Working now in St. Petersburg, I understand that these advantages are available in many companies, but in small towns of our vast country it is akin to a blessing.
Let's summarize what we have: a small town, a large sanatorium, a system administrator at the level of anykey master, a colleague network engineer from an Internet operator, after being laid off, who understands nothing about hardware. The previous admins left with scandals, leaving a dozen passwords in a notepad and wishes “Welcome to hell” in blood on the wall. I look at microtik routers as magic, not yet delving into the understanding of OSI.
Over time, I delve deeper into the technical equipment of the workspace, a server room according to all the canons of wooden IT, with one rack and a server for two indispensable programs for the sanatorium. A couple of incomprehensible PCs on wooden tables, which in the process turn out to be 1C server platforms and a controller for Ubiquiti points. And also here are shared folders with almost unlimited access. Air conditioning is a luxury, household fans are the best. And the most amazing thing is that each server has its own UPS next to it, but only one is connected, the rest just stand on the table plugged into a socket without consumers. It turns out that everything is simple, at a minimum load of 300-500 watts they begin to beep miserably, signaling the death of the batteries inside. In one of the secret security rooms we find five video recorders, for analog cameras. That's the whole list of wonders in this place.
Wake up Neo…
You got into reality…
Questions arise about the domain, or rather about its absence. The reason remains unknown, there is no one to ask, there are about 70 PCs for the entire sanatorium, the printers are all different, as are the cartridges, the reason is also unclear, the budget is allocated monthly in the amount of 40-50k, for consumables and purchases of anything needed.
The first year, having succumbed to titanic efforts and obscene spells, the admins make a treasure map, temporarily in Visio, but we know, there is nothing more permanent than something temporary.
They put the warehouse in order, take stock of where and why the switching equipment is lying around, its condition and in what century it was serviced, start buying modern routers, partially re-pulling the network, where it was impossible to understand the crazy logic of the ancestors. Since the sanatorium consists of two buildings and each has several floors, the network is expectedly choked with requests over a twisted pair, converging at one server point. Microtic routers and SFP cables between them come to the rescue, at least from floor to floor. On each residential floor we have 10-15 Ubiquiti UniFi Ac LR points.
Bringing passwords to a common master password in Keepas. A separate file in Keepas is created for the accounting department, which is delighted, now there is no need to transfer a notebook with hundreds of passwords from all sorts of services and accounts.
We raise a virtual machine on an almost empty server, deploy a Domain, face the horrors of transferring all desktops to the domain with full preservation, everything was easy and simple on the test stand, but in fact, reality laughs in the face. Users start to pour in hundreds of complaints that now they have to enter some passwords every time.
It turns out to be a great success that the chief engineer is super adequate, with his help it is possible to make many edits and suggestions, it turns out that it is difficult to explain even the basic concept of security and access restrictions to people far from IT and computers. (Especially if you yourself have not long studied the concept of security).
Replacing PCs and printers increases the admin's influence in society, “users” begin to guess that the one who is not rude and does not yell into the phone for some reason gets a new job first. The admin undergoes quick self-training on working with access cards to rooms, with minor repairs of electronic locks, with changes in rights and unloading who entered, left.
A new stage begins when everything is in working order and there is a lot of free time to study what can be improved with a limited budget, or better yet, for free.
I would like to touch on the administrator’s salary; it is not planned to grow more than 5–10% per year and that bonus has to be fought for.
The only one white official exit in this place, take on an additional rate. Since the sanatorium of the Soviet system, most vacancies are heavily fragmented into points, it was impossible to work at one rate, it was officially impossible to combine more than two, according to the law of the Russian Federation and points of the Labor Code, but no one prevented you from writing a service note and making allowances for free rates, but you have to sweat every month.
Or use gray scheme with monthly purchases, although small but pleasant amounts, it is possible to receive, buying the same “new computers” and printers through a friend with an individual entrepreneur, at the price of DNS and other chain stores, the friend basically does not care, he does not have additional taxes because of the patent, the limit of which he is unlikely to exceed.
At the moment of recalculating rubles, the question arises: how else can you increase your income?
A plan is being developed for additional enrichment due to the large amount of free time in the workplace.
The plan was simple:
Task exchanges (Buxes)
1.1 Pros: You don't need to do anything physically or invest money, you can register on 10-20 exchanges, perform simple tasks like click, go, look, write a review, etc. When you achieve a good reputation, you are given profitable tasks.
1.2 Cons: Very low cost of payment, from 10 kopecks, for clicks, to 100 rubles, for a review, long pumping of rating and level, after registration any exchange gives the cheapest tasks, a month, and sometimes two have to be spent to achieve a good reputation and full opening of the service. And on each exchange anew.
Computer equipment repair and setup.
2.1 Pros: Lots of employees in the sanatorium and their relatives who first of all turn to those they know first for repairs of their home PCs and other malfunctions. Small sanatoriums and rest homes that turn to a friend who won't screw you over.
2.2 Cons: The price for services is average market or often lower, since you do it yourself. People can contact you for the most trivial stupidities. Forgot to plug it into the socket, forgot to put paper in the printer.
Resales on Avito.
3.1 Pros: Technical literacy allows you to quickly estimate the profit from buying equipment with Avito delivery from another region and selling it in your own. The price in a city with a million people and any provincial town is significantly different.
3.2 Cons: Delivery is not always smooth, sellers sometimes lie. To get a normal profit, you need to invest a certain amount in the start. Clean, reassemble, repair, wash, photograph and communicate with strange buyers.
All three points can be combined without interfering with each other, you just need to set the right priorities in relation to the time spent and the profit at the end.
After a couple of years, the admins were able to set up the equipment so that it worked and didn't break down, the salary, although not big, is stable, and sometimes with bonuses and additional earnings, it comes to the card without delays, and living in your own apartment it is enough to go on vacation 1-2 times a year. Of the global changes, the network is now divided into guest and working, the hot spot is in development, although it should have been working for a couple of years already, there are no more problems with network storms, loops and smart guys plugging their routers into sockets in rooms, starting to distribute their dhcp, killing the network.
The server equipment is all taken into account, is in good working order and, if possible, has been replaced with a managed one. The servers are connected to the UPS, the batteries in the UPS have been replaced, the RAM capacity has been expanded where the budget allowed. Users have gone through all the stages Kübler-Rosswhen working in a domain, appreciated the convenience and control in network folders, now accountants do not walk to the doctors and back. Proposals for large purchases of new servers to replace the one that has been working for 7 years and clearly does not meet the necessary requirements are rejected. To be more precise, they are simply postponed from year to year. The proposal to deploy Exchange is rejected, users are satisfied with Yandex and 30 mailboxes for everyone.
Don't touch it while it works, don't work while they don't touch it.
D. Statham.
Conclusion
What I would like to add is that the author described his life situation with adventures, mistakes and the torment of righteous choice.
There are a lot of interesting and convenient services that could be slowly put into operation, but without server capacity and capabilities, is it worth changing the world for the better. The admins who worked there before us for 10 years would have sat there without having a bite with the management about the salary and additional workload that they rejected. No one promised a big salary, but a large amount of free time allows you to earn money yourself, the main thing is not to be lazy and plan your actions, at least a week in advance.
Having worked like this for three years, I begin to understand that this place sucks in its silence and inevitability, I decide to go to work and live in St. Petersburg, where I have been working for several years now, but these adventures in a big city are for another article. I will write the second part, about the adventures of an ordinary admin in the world of HR, AD.GPO.Hyper-V. Linux.TCP/IP. Overtime and other things…
