There is nothing worse than being interviewed by people who know less than you and believe they know the correct answer to their own questions. While working as an administrator for many years you hopefully learn a few things along the way. While I believe every tech should be humble as I certainly know I do not know everything but when you do know your job you know it. Aside NJ is poisoned with extremely bad technical management at least a lot of the places where I have worked.
As a brief example of my technical ability when I worked for one pharma company I had a 2.5+ year 100% uptime on all servers. 40+ The only belmish was a redundant compaq power supply that did not kick over like it should. I migrated thousands of people across every type of scenario. Handled every type of virus. Managed everything from active directory to wins. While I am stronger in some areas and weaker in others I credit myself on not knowing what to do but more importantly what NOT to do. Too many admins are button happy without knowing the concequences of their actions. Try 10 things to fix a problem and on number 10 never go back to undo the 9 other potential future problems they just created. Ugghh.
There is also nothing worse than interviews where you know they just want to probe your head on how you completed something they didnt know where to start on.
Bell Labs in NJ: Probed me for a long time on Migration from Windows 3.1 to Windows NT migration. To the point in the interview when I realized they didnt know how to do it and were asking me questions to figure out how we did it at another company. Finally I stopped answering their questions and stated you will have to hire me before I answer another technical question on migrating to NT 4.0. This was after about 2.5 hours of technical questioning.
Pfizer: Shudder Shudder. I was interviewed by a guy who I know was full of crap because I worked with him once before and he was one of those guys who is what we called a Sh*t tech. One that when around management implies he knows more and attempts to discredit others when the others are not around to defend themselves. So management is mislead. The sh*t that is pulled over the eyes of management is unreal. The funny part is that the top level staff are overbilling on hours but they all play poker together so its not big deal. You want to see land of the dead just work in their IT departments. The lack of communication between groups is astounding. Instead it becomes a blame game from one group to the next. Dont work there despite the pay rates.
Lucent: True Story head exchange admin from IBM GS was walking around the office turning off desktop PC's. When we asked him what he was doing he replied freeing up the bandwidth on the network. To which a buddy and I looked at each other and replied TCP/IP? He now works for Microsoft. Many more jokes on that guy. They have a good group now but are located in Illinois.
Phillip Morris: CHEAPASSES. About once a month I had a server go down simply because it has like 192megs of ram and processes tons of mail. When I asked for a $30.00 stick of ram that would greatly help it out I was denied. I tried twice. NO. My Bill rate was certainly a lot higher than that stick of ram and I realized by getting it I would cost myself 2-3 hours a month in overtime. But the problem is managements bonuses are based upon savings on prior years so why spend any money on hardware when it will only mean you will get a bad bonus.
TekSystems. While every recruiting agency is slime this one takes the cake. Get everything in writing ahead of time and confirm. Oh the promises of training definately dont fall for it. The office in parsippany will lie their arses off. Also heavily interview the people you get from them they will throw anyone with a pulse into a position. But if you want some side dinners, golfing, and other freebies hire those techs and give a wink. If you have a manager that insists on hiring guys from there you might want to question that manager on why.
Johnson and Johnson has a screwy tech recruiting agency that when I gave them my 2 references they called them and asked if they were willing to take the position I was applying for but were attempting to negotiate a lower rate with them. Wish I could recall the name.
Any manager that says lets contract IBM. FIRE IMMEDIATELY.
IBM guys there are a handfull of you who have talent. Quit IBM before they outsource you and replace you with someone from another country. Those who cant work for IBM those who can Self Contract.
Respected companies
Schering-Plough: Resonse during the interview. Wow you know a lot more than me. I would love to work with you because thats a great way I can learn more about the things you know. Great people to work with there. Sadly they dont pay their technical staff enough and have lost a lot of them.
Merck: There is a great bunch of people to work with there out of Rahway and White house station. Work there by all means if you get the opportunity.
Aventis: Aka Nabisco South. Hear great things from there except that france will screw everything up if not IBM will. Fire the guy who brought in IBM. Certainly didnt save any cash did you?
Good Luck.
As a brief example of my technical ability when I worked for one pharma company I had a 2.5+ year 100% uptime on all servers. 40+ The only belmish was a redundant compaq power supply that did not kick over like it should. I migrated thousands of people across every type of scenario. Handled every type of virus. Managed everything from active directory to wins. While I am stronger in some areas and weaker in others I credit myself on not knowing what to do but more importantly what NOT to do. Too many admins are button happy without knowing the concequences of their actions. Try 10 things to fix a problem and on number 10 never go back to undo the 9 other potential future problems they just created. Ugghh.
There is also nothing worse than interviews where you know they just want to probe your head on how you completed something they didnt know where to start on.
Bell Labs in NJ: Probed me for a long time on Migration from Windows 3.1 to Windows NT migration. To the point in the interview when I realized they didnt know how to do it and were asking me questions to figure out how we did it at another company. Finally I stopped answering their questions and stated you will have to hire me before I answer another technical question on migrating to NT 4.0. This was after about 2.5 hours of technical questioning.
Pfizer: Shudder Shudder. I was interviewed by a guy who I know was full of crap because I worked with him once before and he was one of those guys who is what we called a Sh*t tech. One that when around management implies he knows more and attempts to discredit others when the others are not around to defend themselves. So management is mislead. The sh*t that is pulled over the eyes of management is unreal. The funny part is that the top level staff are overbilling on hours but they all play poker together so its not big deal. You want to see land of the dead just work in their IT departments. The lack of communication between groups is astounding. Instead it becomes a blame game from one group to the next. Dont work there despite the pay rates.
Lucent: True Story head exchange admin from IBM GS was walking around the office turning off desktop PC's. When we asked him what he was doing he replied freeing up the bandwidth on the network. To which a buddy and I looked at each other and replied TCP/IP? He now works for Microsoft. Many more jokes on that guy. They have a good group now but are located in Illinois.
Phillip Morris: CHEAPASSES. About once a month I had a server go down simply because it has like 192megs of ram and processes tons of mail. When I asked for a $30.00 stick of ram that would greatly help it out I was denied. I tried twice. NO. My Bill rate was certainly a lot higher than that stick of ram and I realized by getting it I would cost myself 2-3 hours a month in overtime. But the problem is managements bonuses are based upon savings on prior years so why spend any money on hardware when it will only mean you will get a bad bonus.
TekSystems. While every recruiting agency is slime this one takes the cake. Get everything in writing ahead of time and confirm. Oh the promises of training definately dont fall for it. The office in parsippany will lie their arses off. Also heavily interview the people you get from them they will throw anyone with a pulse into a position. But if you want some side dinners, golfing, and other freebies hire those techs and give a wink. If you have a manager that insists on hiring guys from there you might want to question that manager on why.
Johnson and Johnson has a screwy tech recruiting agency that when I gave them my 2 references they called them and asked if they were willing to take the position I was applying for but were attempting to negotiate a lower rate with them. Wish I could recall the name.
Any manager that says lets contract IBM. FIRE IMMEDIATELY.
IBM guys there are a handfull of you who have talent. Quit IBM before they outsource you and replace you with someone from another country. Those who cant work for IBM those who can Self Contract.
Respected companies
Schering-Plough: Resonse during the interview. Wow you know a lot more than me. I would love to work with you because thats a great way I can learn more about the things you know. Great people to work with there. Sadly they dont pay their technical staff enough and have lost a lot of them.
Merck: There is a great bunch of people to work with there out of Rahway and White house station. Work there by all means if you get the opportunity.
Aventis: Aka Nabisco South. Hear great things from there except that france will screw everything up if not IBM will. Fire the guy who brought in IBM. Certainly didnt save any cash did you?
Good Luck.
