Ick. Sorry to hear about that. Ah, well, such is life under the new economy. Job security not unlike the early 90's, and higher bills to boot. Well, there's always the 40-million-to-1 or so odds of winning the lottery.

-- Sean --

"Imagination is more important than knowledge." -- Albert Einstein

"It's not easy being green." -- Kermit the Frog

No big deal, I knew it was coming and basically asked to be cut. I'd probably have left in a few more weeks anyway, and this way I got severance. Truss too. (We worked at the same place.)

Today the client I was working for asked me to come back to consult directly at more than 2x my old salary... but I'm holding off because I'm trying to get a permanent gig with Akamai.

-MegaZone, megazone@megazone.org
Personal Homepage http://www.megazone.org/
Eyrie Productions FanFic http://www.eyrie-productions.com/

Ah. Not too shabby.

>Today the client I was working for asked me to come back to consult
>directly at more than 2x my old salary... but I'm holding off because
>I'm trying to get a permanent gig with Akamai.

I am in the wrong line of work... I *knew* I should have finished that CS degree. Well, I was planning on looking for tech work after I moved anyway.

-- Sean --

"Imagination is more important than knowledge." -- Albert Einstein

"It's not easy being green." -- Kermit the Frog

CS degree? ;-) I have a BS in Technical Writing and a BS in History. No CS degree.

I taught myself that stuff.

-MegaZone, megazone@megazone.org
Personal Homepage http://www.megazone.org/
Eyrie Productions FanFic http://www.eyrie-productions.com/

You'd be amazed how much money you can make by knowing things like networking and UNIX sysadminning...my sister works for UUNet and makes something like 50K a year--and her degree is in genetics, of all things. I have another friend who works at Digex, and makes just a hair more. She has never stepped foot in college. If you can scrape together the right skills, and have the talent for that kind of work, you can make plenty of money in those sorts of tech support jobs. Expect painful hours, though...

--"I invoke the rites of fiery Muspelheim, and give thy soul up to the inferno's embrace..."

Of course, the idea is to do your time in support and learn - then get the hell out of there and get a higher level position.

I did my time in tech support back in 94-96 or so. Won't do it again.

-MegaZone, megazone@megazone.org
Personal Homepage http://www.megazone.org/
Eyrie Productions FanFic http://www.eyrie-productions.com/

NEVER AGAIN :)

Of course, being a net admin I still handle the occasional support call, but only after everyone else gives up...

Offsides

P.S. Good luck getting a job with Snakamai (I don't work for them (yet), but I know waaaaay to many people who do...)

#include <stdsig.h>

You have a Digex-working friend? What department?

Ard
also a Digex-working person, but on the other coast, in Unix Technical Operations.

Ard Sumhenner
Ronin Research, Silicon Valley, CA

I'm not sure in which department she works...she told me, but I'm afraid I forgot. Obviously I can't give names or such. =)

--"I invoke the rites of fiery Muspelheim, and give thy soul up to the inferno's embrace..."

Several other relatives as well are working in fields that have nothing do do with their degree, such as a music major who is now in QA for a major areospace firm, and 2! chemists, one who now works for Customs and the other does Net.support for Kinko's.

So, how many of you help desk dawgs have had to deal with the infamous "My Coffee holder broke" style of call? ^_^

___________________

Vaughn doesn't know I exist. I guess this explains why the rest of reality keeps ignoring me as well. >_<

Well I'm
a) not on helpdesk
b) last person anyone sane would as about anything*

and I still get the daftest queries. Just today, someone asked me "I'm looking at this and I think the last person on it got the wrong number. Could you check?"
After a full 2 secs I advised them that if you deducted everything after the date it was last worked on, everything matched perfectly.
Why does no one understand the concept of a dynamic system?**

* because my answers don't stop until I've answered EVERY pertinent point, whether or not they already know this***

** admittedly, what we have is only a very poor imitation of one, but still...

*** in the hope that they'll stop asking me and figure out the blatantlyobvious on their own****

**** fat chance!

drakensisthered
the calm serenity of Yosho combined with the resposnibility of Mihoshi...

a) I trained them
b) they'd left
c) the replacement is totally clueless at this point

And they wonder why I think I'm the only competent person in the building?

drakensisthered
the calm serenity of Yosho combined with the responsibility of Mihoshi...

My favorite story would be when I worked for Flashnet Communications (No bad jokes on that one please). A user calls me up and says:

'I just bought your service, now what do I do?'

This is my second day on the job, and I think about this one for a minute. I then ask the most obvious question that comes to mind.

'What OS are you running?'

I get the verbal equivalent of a blank stare over the phone. I decide to clarify.

'What operating system do you run on your computer?'

'Computer? What are you talking about?' He says back, in his best HUH? voice.

'Yes, sir. Do you have Windows?'

His voice brightens up at this one. 'Yes I do! And they're open too!'

I'm not catching on yet, and I ask him to close all his windows so he's at his desktop. He asks me to wait a minute and then I hear a slamming noise and the phone moving.

'Okay, all the windows are closed, and I'm sitting at my desk.'

My jaw hits the floor at this point, because I've just realised what is wrong.

'Sir, do you own a computer?'

'No, your sales people asked me if I had windows and I said yes.'

I ask him to hold for a minute while I'm stifiling laughter. The rest of the helpdesk is staring at me (all fifteen of them). I called my supervisor over and told him about this. I then got back on the phone and told the user that you needed to own a computer to use the service, and to call and get his money back.

Most memorable moment aside from my first call there. That's another story if you guys wanna hear.

Tom 'Dreamshadow' Tjarks
------------------------
Tech support? *shrug*

You know, I didn't really believe that anybody out there was that dumb.

I still don't.

--Zenigame, in denial