Advice- -What's the route to become a Network Systems Administrator - MSCE or ITT Other?

http://www.freerepublic.com ^ | July 18 2011 | NLZ

[Minn]

If it's not too late, stress to your kids to BE ON TIME to any interviews, dress appropriately and behave appropriately (no cursing, no gum chewing, and so on)

I once had a phone interview on a cell phone standing outside of my office on a hot windy day. I wasn't happy about this arrangement since I requested the interview be around lunch time so I could be somewhere outside of the office to take the call. But these people didn't actually phone me until 2:00 pm, after I was forced to be back at the office, so I had nowhere to take this interview other than outside in the heat.

About 20 minutes into boiler plate technical questions, some drone on the other end of the line asked me what polymorphism was. Sigh. Growing tired of the whole thing, I mouthed "you gotta be f@$%king kidding me", thinking it was just to myself.

A short time later the head hunter called me and told me the interview didn't go very well. They told him they could hardly hear me because of the wind. But the one thing they did hear was me dropping an f-bomb on them while mocking their stupid polymorphism question. Never got that job.

[wbill]

LOL! Well, if they were 2 hours late to an interview that they set up, you likely didn't want the job anyway.

Interviewing, IMHO, is a two way street. The applicant is checking me out just as hard (likely harder) than I'm checking out them.

And I'll be honest with you, I needed to go look up "polymorphism". Figured that it was "having many forms", but in relation to what? :-)

[wbill]

A sysadmin can't easily open a business and sell his product - he has no product, he has a service, and it's hard to sell it in the age of "clouds."

I had a conversation with a friend who is a small business owner just the other day, regarding clouds.

He said, (regarding the app we were discussing) "We'll just put it in the cloud."

I replied, "Good idea. How are you going to do that?"

He didn't have an answer. Sez me, that might be an interesting niche to fill. "Cloud technology" is great, but someone still needs to know how to use it AND be able to explain to businesses how they can safely and effectively leverage it.

[Greysard]

Sez me, that might be an interesting niche to fill. "Cloud technology" is great, but someone still needs to know how to use it AND be able to explain to businesses how they can safely and effectively leverage it.

Sure you can do that. However you will be building a business that is in decline from day zero. All your business will be derived from the belief that Amazon, Google, Dropbox and every other cloud provider are too stupid to offer neatly packaged solutions to small businesses.

Perhaps they don't have it sorted out yet - but they will have it done in a year. This is a simple thing to do, it's just marketing - slick sheets, good choice of words, and very little of coding. MS did that with their Small Business Server, for example - bundled together what most small businesses need and sells it as a "business in a box." Amazon can do that too, and you will find it hard to compete with them. Why will a customer want your advice if they can take it, for free probably, directly from the horse's mouth? If you are at Home Depot and have a question about a pipe fitting do you hire a contractor on the spot or simply ask the nearest Home Depot worker?

Admittedly, not every business depends on unique offerings. You can open a pizza joint and be profitable, even though most pizzas are alike. But you will find very few pizza places that are valued in billions of dollars. If you want that level of valuation you have to look for businesses that offer unique services or products.

You can decide which way to go - the commodity path (pizza) or the unique path (whatever you can invent.) There is about the same amount of effort on either path; but the commodity venture has a ceiling that is hard to break. On the other hand, it requires no inventor's abilities; a tradesman's skill is all that one needs to bake pizza.

[CommieCutter]

BM