I'm not saying all IT workers are stupid but...

[SpatiallyAware]

Who said I don't help those users.. or direct them to the proper people?
who is generalizing now..
Like i said above I am NEVER rude to my users..
Do we laugh at them behind your backs.. hell yes we do.

you already classified me as a loser that has a miserable attitude.. and if that was true how would I still have a job? Or be even functional at life?
NOWHERE did i say I was rude or didn't help my users.. YOU said that.
I merely said I don't have time for that kinda BS and that we laugh at stupid users on a daily basis..

What I say here among peers that I don't work with is 1 thing.. I' am being honest and candid. How I present myself and my work ethic in real life keeps me employed and awarded.

anyone can hate a job and still be damn good at it.. and also put on one hell of a show for 8-12 hours a day for the employer.. and still LOATHE what they do..
I know very few people except a few type A personality workaholics that really "like" what they do.. most are like me just counting the hours till offtime or weekend.

FWIW I don't think you're a loser at all. I have no doubt that you're respected in your field and know a lot (more than most) about your job.

That really isn't the issue... As a network admin, many people look up to you. Your terrible attitude is inherited by the desktop staff, the users, and anyone else who interacts with you. This negative mindset is contagious and spreads through a company very quickly. Maybe the problem is your manager, or the company your work for, but it is very very clear that you are a toxic employee.


I'm serious... if you hate your job, if you hate what you do, you need to find something else. Do you really want to be at your desk, glaring at anyone who approaches you, at 50 years old?

 

[Zargon]

You have my sympathy.

I don't think that I would ever be happy with a job where I provided service to "freaking morons".

Best of luck with that,
Uno

sadly thats most jobs, you find some real computer illiterate morons everywhere and sometimes wonder how they tie their own shoes, but these people also think computers are magic boxes that can read their mind so good luck with that. but its not everyone, thats for sure

Every single company I've known who has gone to hosted exchange services have severely regretted it after about a year. My industry consists of ~20 to ~2000 employee companies, these are businesses that are supposed to be prime candidates for hosted exch setups.

Long story short, they are always sold on how amazing it is... and it's fine until the moment you need ANYTHING other than a simple user added. I'm doing business with a company where we've formed a partnership.. The other company uses hosted exchange services and was supposed to handle all email junk of said partnership corp. After ~6 weeks of dicking around with their service provider they completely gave up trying to have this second domain added and asked if our IT staff could do it, which took all of 2 hours.

Everything is just such a HUGE deal and not 'part of the package you paid for'.

I have seen this over, and over, and over.. I've heard of at least 5-6 very serious situations where the hosted service company wouldn't provide a 'regular' service without huge charges. I've heard of everything from aliases costing $50 per month to someone having their email backups hijacked for what was essentially ransom money.

I have been convinced that hosted services are not a great fit for a 'decent' business. If you run a sweatshop and don't care about CS then fine... save yourself $500 a year and farm it out.


What IT Admin doesn't know exchange?? Even a small shop should have an IT guy who can handle this stuff internally, in my opinion.

this. Do i know exchange very well? nope. Have I set up an AD/exchange environment from scratch? yup.

You can find a slew of books for under 50 bucks each that will hold your hand through the whole process and actualyl explain alot of the options and indusrty best practice(IE what MS says)

Sure its a rough week when you set it up, but if your hardware and environment are good you wont be touching much save to setup new accounts

I LOL when I see consults tell places their 600 employee business will cost 200 grand to get into exchange

Sorry no such position exists.. work is work.. it is not enjoyable. there are 19000000 other things in this world I'd rather be doing than slaving my life away.
I put on my smile at work and nod happily like a good little soldier.. and do my job well.. but that's all it is a job to earn money to have a real life..

ROFL,
"Service Provider" does not include me as a Senior Network Admin getting calls on " how do I take a screen shot?" or "can you fix my home network or computer?"
or "How do I add a signature to my email?"
"Why do I have this popup that says I am infected with a virus?"

I'm sorry I have much better things to do with my time.
I provide a service.. I keep the network up and running and the servers and SQL databases properly maintained.

just because I am an "IT guy" does not make me your helpdesk.

Been in the gig for over 20 years now..
and I have yet to meet an "IT person" that didn't laugh at his users behind their backs.

We share "dumb user" stories between each other like others tell war stories..


That's ok though.. we hear the "IT Dept sucks" stories as well.. it's a vicious circle.

sure, but sounds like thats a function of your job. if you were really that position those calls shouldnt even get to you.


you sound pretty synical and grumpy

I generally like coming to work, even though I dont like the job THAT much.

I just posted the results of an Educause Survey. There are no generalisations in my post only facts supported by external links to the original survey.

While you are entitled to own opinions, you are not entitled to your own facts.

Uno

fact. as of 2010 there are 4,495 higher ed institutions in the US

surverying 319(not 391 typos happen) is a significant portion, but it still doesn't set a trend, especially with such general terms. one mans significant cut is anothers minor cut(and it didnt even have those as separate answer)

hell I can cherry pick out of that study too

cliffs: budget falls directly related to overall budget falls not just IT cuts

53% said they are getting a budget cut and MOST said it will be minor

so it doesnt exactly paint a grim picture at all.




saw this today which reminded me of this thread:
GM Vows to insource most of its IT jobs/

 

[yllus]

Every single company I've known who has gone to hosted exchange services have severely regretted it after about a year. My industry consists of ~20 to ~2000 employee companies, these are businesses that are supposed to be prime candidates for hosted exch setups.

Long story short, they are always sold on how amazing it is... and it's fine until the moment you need ANYTHING other than a simple user added. I'm doing business with a company where we've formed a partnership.. The other company uses hosted exchange services and was supposed to handle all email junk of said partnership corp. After ~6 weeks of dicking around with their service provider they completely gave up trying to have this second domain added and asked if our IT staff could do it, which took all of 2 hours.

Everything is just such a HUGE deal and not 'part of the package you paid for'.

I have seen this over, and over, and over.. I've heard of at least 5-6 very serious situations where the hosted service company wouldn't provide a 'regular' service without huge charges. I've heard of everything from aliases costing $50 per month to someone having their email backups hijacked for what was essentially ransom money.

I have been convinced that hosted services are not a great fit for a 'decent' business. If you run a sweatshop and don't care about CS then fine... save yourself $500 a year and farm it out.


What IT Admin doesn't know exchange?? Even a small shop should have an IT guy who can handle this stuff internally, in my opinion.

You'd save at least in the high five figures a year by having Exchange hosted externally. However, what you say is true - anything other than basic requests will either incur a high service charge in money and/or time, or isn't possible at all.

This is by design, though: Exchange providers should take great pains to explain that they've optimized their equipment and staff to provide vanilla hosting, not "we are your IT department in a box". One generally smallish company cannot possibly handle being IT for multiple clients - there aren't enough hours in the day to pull that off, and adding the necessary qualified staff would quickly destroy their margins. So this is in essence a marketing/communication issue.

 

[Zargon]

You'd save at least in the high five figures a year by having Exchange hosted externally. However, what you say is true - anything other than basic requests will either incur a high service charge in money and/or time, or isn't possible at all.

This is by design, though: Exchange providers should take great pains to explain that they've optimized their equipment and staff to provide vanilla hosting, not "we are your IT department in a box". One generally smallish company cannot possibly handle being IT for multiple clients - there aren't enough hours in the day to pull that off, and adding the necessary qualified staff would quickly destroy their margins. So this is in essence a marketing/communication issue.

how can you save more in a year than exchange costs? that doesnt even make sense

if you are spending 5 figures on exhange annually you are HUGE

 

[SpatiallyAware]

You'd save at least in the high five figures a year by having Exchange hosted externally. However, what you say is true - anything other than basic requests will either incur a high service charge in money and/or time, or isn't possible at all.

This is by design, though: Exchange providers should take great pains to explain that they've optimized their equipment and staff to provide vanilla hosting, not "we are your IT department in a box". One generally smallish company cannot possibly handle being IT for multiple clients - there aren't enough hours in the day to pull that off, and adding the necessary qualified staff would quickly destroy their margins. So this is in essence a marketing/communication issue.

While I was exaggerating at saving only $500 per year, 'high five figures' is also way out there, in my experience.

Exchange licenses aren't that expensive. Your 'main' network guy for most 20-2000 employee companies better damn well know exchange. Moving to hosted exchange doesn't (or shouldn't) mean you can now let your main net admin go.

The only legitimate situation for hosted exchange, in my opinion, is a very small less than 40 employee company where you can't afford to hire a proper netadmin or a HUGE megacorp that is trying to "add up pennies saved" at the end of every year without any regard for quality.

Granted I'm not an exchange admin, but from what I understand it has gotten incredibly simple to admin for anything 2007 and newer.

 

[OutHouse]

You're free to think differently... But I still wouldn't bet against the cloud.

not everything can go in "the cloud"

 

[OutHouse]

Exchange licenses aren't that expensive

Granted I'm not an exchange admin, but from what I understand it has gotten incredibly simple to admin for anything 2007 and newer.

Bwhahahahhahah, gasp gasp Bwhahahahhahhahahahhahah

do us a favor and just sit in your corner and shut-up.

 

[OutHouse]

I LOL when I see consults tell places their 600 employee business will cost 200 grand to get into exchange

we brought in a consultant to migrate from 2003 exchange to 2010 and im glad we did. our old 2003 environment was so fucked up that they did shit that i and the other guys had no clue on how to do especially when email for a multi-national company can not go down period. and it did not cost 200K either, not even close to 100K. best money i have ever begged for.

 

[Zargon]

Bwhahahahhahah, gasp gasp Bwhahahahhahhahahahhahah

do us a favor and just sit in your corner and shut-up.

they arent.

50 bucks per cal is alot?

200 employees, 10 g'd

throw in 3 servers for redundancy in case of failure to ensure 100% load handling

oh my gosh thats 12 grand a year with software assurance

so under 25's add in some hardware every 5 years maybe at 20 grand so 4 a year

26K a year, hardly a huge cost. esp compared to paying over 3 times as much which was the lowest bid our RFP got, and the initial buyin was much higher

spatiallyaware pretty specifically mentioned the SMB are, not multinational corporation like you are talking about as well.

we brought in a consultant to migrate from 2003 exchange to 2010 and im glad we did. our old 2003 environment was so fucked up that they did shit that i and the other guys had no clue on how to do especially when email for a multi-national company can not go down period. and it did not cost 200K either, not even close to 100K. best money i have ever begged for.

well uh...who let it get all fucked up?

Im not joking when I am say that we got a quote for almost 300K for migrating from groupwise to exchange

the recuring fee annually for 500 employees was over 70K.

if the support was anything like the google apps for gov support is, it was going to be utter trash

its still better than groupwise, but doenst hold a candle to a decent exchange setup like I had at my last job

 

[OutHouse]

they arent.

50 bucks per cal is alot?

200 employees, 10 g'd

throw in 3 servers for redundancy in case of failure to ensure 100% load handling

oh my gosh thats 12 grand a year with software assurance

so under 25's add in some hardware every 5 years maybe at 20 grand so 4 a year

26K a year, hardly a huge cost. esp compared to paying over 3 times as much which was the lowest bid our RFP got, and the initial buyin was much higher

spatiallyaware pretty specifically mentioned the SMB are, not multinational corporation like you are talking about as well.

enterprise cals are a bit more than 50 bucks. this is what i have and what i was focused on when i posted. our servers alone were 20K then factor in the storage cost of the terabytes of storage taken on the fiber disk on the SAN, the cost is significant.

 

[OutHouse]

well uh...who let it get all fucked up?

too many fingers int he porridge... the FES server was a mother to un-screwup.

 

[Zargon]

enterprise cals are a bit more than 50 bucks. this is what i have and what i was focused on when i posted. our servers alone were 20K then factor in the storage cost of the terabytes of storage taken on the fiber disk on the SAN, the cost is significant.

yes that size its gets rough when you need SAN space ETC

I got quoted 47 on enterprise, thats gov select pricing, its more like 100 or so for private sector right?

too many fingers int he porridge... the FES server was a mother to un-screwup.

that will happen

 

[OutHouse]

yes that size its gets rough when you need SAN space ETC

I got quoted 47 on enterprise, thats gov select pricing, its more like 100 or so for private sector right?



that will happen

yea 110 or so per cal.

 

[Zargon]

yeah that hurts a bit more, the server licenses are closer to 7k too right?

 

[Schfifty Five]

After reading the title, the first thing that popped up in my head was:

I'm not saying all IT workers are stupid but...

 

[torpid]

I tried to focus on everything after the OP but I can't get past the fact that the database goes down frequently enough for the OP to complain about this. I don't care how gracefully they handle it when it happens... it's not acceptable.

 

[SpatiallyAware]

Bwhahahahhahah, gasp gasp Bwhahahahhahhahahahhahah

do us a favor and just sit in your corner and shut-up.

You very clearly know about an extremely small portion of how IT functions within a business. There is so much more to something than pure license costs, past the fact that they really AREN'T that expensive. $100 / user (even if you need and ent license) is pure peanuts compared to the costs involved in migrating to a hosted solution.

Aside from all this, I love how you are the admin of some completely screwed up situation, and use YOUR specific costs of 'fixing' this as some justification for hosted setups.

How about you back up from your short-sided server room view of this and go back to arguing with your boss over whether or not a $50k consultant is needed to fix the things you don't know about.

 

[OutHouse]

You very clearly know about an extremely small portion of how IT functions within a business. There is so much more to something than pure license costs, past the fact that they really AREN'T that expensive. $100 / user (even if you need and ent license) is pure peanuts compared to the costs involved in migrating to a hosted solution.

Aside from all this, I love how you are the admin of some completely screwed up situation, and use YOUR specific costs of 'fixing' this as some justification for hosted setups.

How about you back up from your short-sided server room view of this and go back to arguing with your boss over whether or not a $50k consultant is needed to fix the things you don't know about.

not that expensive? holy crap and you say i know very little. I guess the $300,000.00 check we write to Microsoft every year for licensing is just pocket change to you. or the $120,000.00 check we write to our ERP software provider just for licensing is just chump change to you. i could go on but i think i made my point that licensing cost are FUCKING EXPENSIVE!!!! i guess working for geek squad explains your ignorance.

let me repeat.

Bwhahahahhahah, gasp gasp Bwhahahahhahhahahahhahah

do us a favor and just sit in your corner and shut-up.

 

[SpatiallyAware]

not that expensive? holy crap and you say i know very little. I guess the $300,000.00 check we write to Microsoft every year for licensing is just pocket change to you. or the $120,000.00 check we write to our ERP software provider just for licensing is just chump change to you. i could go on but i think i made my point that licensing cost are FUCKING EXPENSIVE!!!! i guess working for geek squad explains your ignorance.

let me repeat.

Bwhahahahhahah, gasp gasp Bwhahahahhahhahahahhahah

do us a favor and just sit in your corner and shut-up.

If you have enough users to require that many licenses then that is simply part of the cost of doing business. You can't say "omg $300k is so much money we have to go with hosted setups and ignore every detail" like you're implying... This is exactly why you aren't making business decisions. There is much more to something like this than pure license vs hosting costs like you so shortsightedly see.

Aside from that, I VERY clearly said that hosted exchange setups can make sense for large corps but are very rarely the best solution for small/med orgs.

Your reading comprehension skills are about in line with your maturity level.