You're Hired: Network Administrator at a Sprint PCS partner

[Winchester]

I am going to be one of 3 network administrators for the largest Sprint PCS partners. I start tomorrow. Supposedly there are 110ish servers in data centers etc. They have a large IT department so all I will have to worry about are the servers, no more help desk, or ID10T questions,just pretty much exchange, group policies, and active directory AFAIK but on a large scale, they even have people who do other networking stuff. The most amount of servers I have had previously is 3. Only downside I see so far is being on call 24/7.

What other duties do you guys think I will have? Just want to be prepared mentally.


Wage: ~$40,000 after first 3 months.


BTW: For those looking for IT jobs, my knowledge of linux, no certs or anything, just knowledge of distros etc got me the job. I have no other certs or anything. During the interview they were extremely curious about my linux knowledge etc since they want to move in that direction in the near future. I do not even have a computer science degree. I do have lots of experience though.

 

[DaWhim]

wage?

 

[NikPreviousAcct]

Congrats on the job!

 

[saxophonoia]

Nice job.

 

[RossMAN]

Congratulations!!!

 

[Specop 007]

I can tell you from experience Sprint is very interested in *nix abilities. I've had to forego transfers within because of lack of *nix experience.

 

[LikeLinus]

a large partner of Sprint wants to move towards linux based on someone with no real background, knowledge or career in the field.

Time to change to Cingular or something.

Nothing against you..but thats a bit sad on their part. You might be awesome...but you don't sound qualified for the job.

Regardless..congrats!

 

[wheresmybacon]

Backups and restores are always fun, but sometimes for an org like that they'll have a seperate person or group that does that. Just be glad they're out of Exchange 5.5 - I had to do that back in the day and mailbox restores required you to restore the ENTIRE priv.edb....what a nightmare. 3-4hours per. Ugh.

Grats on the job. :beer:

 

[BustaBust]

40k per 3 months? or am I just intoxicated

Good fortunes!

 

[trmiv]

Originally posted by: BustaBust
40k per 3 months? or am I just intoxicated

Good fortunes!

I think he's trying to say he's on some probationary period for 3 months at a lower salary, and then it increases to the full 40K after that time. Or I'm drunk.

 

[Specop 007]

Originally posted by: LikeLinus
a large partner of Sprint wants to move towards linux based on someone with no real background, knowledge or career in the field.

Time to change to Cingular or something.

Nothing against you..but thats a bit sad on their part. You might be awesome...but you don't sound qualified for the job.

Regardless..congrats!

Hes one of three, and most likely the other two are experienced.

 

[tomstevens26]

Originally posted by: Winchester
I am going to be one of 3 network administrators for the largest Sprint PCS partners. I start tomorrow. Supposedly there are 110ish servers in data centers etc. They have a large IT department so all I will have to worry about are the servers, no more help desk, or ID10T questions,just pretty much exchange, group policies, and active directory AFAIK but on a large scale, they even have people who do other networking stuff. The most amount of servers I have had previously is 3. Only downside I see so far is being on call 24/7.

What other duties do you guys think I will have? Just want to be prepared mentally.

Congrats on the job!! I may be wrong, but don't expect to be done dealing with the Helpdesk and ID10T questions. You'll probably find that you'll just now have to answer those questions from your superiors. I'm on a team that supports close to 250 Windows (NT4 -> W2K3) servers split between 2 data centers. You'd be surprised (maybe not) at some of the questions we get asked. We've got about 140 IT employees, including a 7 person Helpdesk, an entire networking team that handles the networking infrastructure, and we still get to handle the most asinine stuff from time to time.

As for things you might have to support ...

- backups/restores: are you going to have responsibilities for the backup operations?
- disaster recovery: do you have to plan for redundancy? catastrophic failures?
- patch mgmt. and other maintenance?
- security: will you have to perform any security scans and handle things like intrustion detection?
- antivirus: will you be handling the AV side of things for the servers? I'm assuming since you say they have a large IT dept. then they may have a PC client team to handle workstations, but they still need someone to handle the servers.
- any remote data centers? Will you be responsible for them or do they have onsite admins?

These are all the things that come to mind right now, and things that I have to deal with on a daily basis.

Good luck!

Tom

 

[Winchester]

Originally posted by: LikeLinus
a large partner of Sprint wants to move towards linux based on someone with no real background, knowledge or career in the field.

Time to change to Cingular or something.

Nothing against you..but thats a bit sad on their part. You might be awesome...but you don't sound qualified for the job.

Regardless..congrats!

I have tons of experience, Ive been a Network Admin for a non-profit institution for the past 18 months and have been working on computers since DOS days and have a IT business on the side. I have 2 BA degrees and am working on my Masters.

Originally posted by: trmiv

Originally posted by: BustaBust
40k per 3 months? or am I just intoxicated

Good fortunes!

I think he's trying to say he's on some probationary period for 3 months at a lower salary, and then it increases to the full 40K after that time. Or I'm drunk.

You are sober.

 

[CVSiN]

Originally posted by: Winchester
I am going to be one of 3 network administrators for the largest Sprint PCS partners. I start tomorrow. Supposedly there are 110ish servers in data centers etc. They have a large IT department so all I will have to worry about are the servers, no more help desk, or ID10T questions,just pretty much exchange, group policies, and active directory AFAIK but on a large scale, they even have people who do other networking stuff. The most amount of servers I have had previously is 3. Only downside I see so far is being on call 24/7.

What other duties do you guys think I will have? Just want to be prepared mentally.


Wage: ~$40,000 after first 3 months.


BTW: For those looking for IT jobs, my knowledge of linux, no certs or anything, just knowledge of distros etc got me the job. I have no other certs or anything. During the interview they were extremely curious about my linux knowledge etc since they want to move in that direction in the near future. I do not even have a computer science degree.

40k... I make 38 doing Helpdesk (Account Admin team kinda a mini admin)
seems like that job would pay alot more for a Net Admin...
unless the cost of living where you are at is very low...

either way grats.. but just wondering did you negotiate your salary or have a requirement on your resume...or just take what was offered?

 

[Winchester]

In Lubbock, TX you are lucky to get a job that pays more than $8.50 /hr. It is saturated with college kids that graduate and never leave.

 

[her209]

Congratulations Winchester. :beer:

 

[CVSiN]

Originally posted by: LikeLinus
a large partner of Sprint wants to move towards linux based on someone with no real background, knowledge or career in the field.

Time to change to Cingular or something.

Nothing against you..but thats a bit sad on their part. You might be awesome...but you don't sound qualified for the job.

Regardless..congrats!

meh...
you dont need certs or a degree ... just experience.... In my personal experience I have met more people in IT without degrees but craploads of exp that can do the job way better than any college nerd with certs and no exp...

Most companies do put on thier ad... Degree or appropriate experience only...which means either or...

Until recently I had 0 certs.. but over 7 years exp... + US Navy Electronics school and 10 more years of exp there....

I had no problems getting positions till recently so I used my Educational benefits and took a 14 day cert prep school for MCSE 2003 and went and blasted A+ and Net+ without any prep and now with my exp and certs Im having no problems getting decent IT positions in Texas...

 

[trmiv]

Originally posted by: Winchester

Originally posted by: LikeLinus
a large partner of Sprint wants to move towards linux based on someone with no real background, knowledge or career in the field.

Time to change to Cingular or something.

Nothing against you..but thats a bit sad on their part. You might be awesome...but you don't sound qualified for the job.

Regardless..congrats!

I have tons of experience, Ive been a Network Admin for a non-profit institution for the past 18 months and have been working on computers since DOS days and have a IT business on the side. I have 2 BA degrees and am working on my Masters.

Originally posted by: trmiv

Originally posted by: BustaBust
40k per 3 months? or am I just intoxicated

Good fortunes!

I think he's trying to say he's on some probationary period for 3 months at a lower salary, and then it increases to the full 40K after that time. Or I'm drunk.

You are sober.

No, I really am drunk.

 

[CVSiN]

Originally posted by: Winchester
In Lubbock, TX you are lucky to get a job that pays more than $8.50 /hr. It is saturated with college kids that graduate and never leave.

Im in Houston bro =)

 

[Chrono]

woo hoo! I start my new JOB on the 14th as well. I'm a system administrator for a mortgage company now. I start off at a lower salary too (36k) and it'll be up to 40k after three months as well. Hmm....

 

[aplefka]

That's awesome man, congrats.

40k does seem a bit low for such a job. They could've at least given you 50.

 

[Winchester]

Originally posted by: CVSiN

Originally posted by: Winchester
In Lubbock, TX you are lucky to get a job that pays more than $8.50 /hr. It is saturated with college kids that graduate and never leave.

Im in Houston bro =)

Im in Lubbock

 

[cressida]

Originally posted by: Winchester

Originally posted by: CVSiN

Originally posted by: Winchester
In Lubbock, TX you are lucky to get a job that pays more than $8.50 /hr. It is saturated with college kids that graduate and never leave.

Im in Houston bro =)

Im in Lubbock

Hello Winchester,
I'm currently at student actually at Tech ... and the college girls here are very easy on the eyes . Congrats on the job, I know it's tough to get that kind of pay in a town that resturants is the main business. Right now I'm working at X-FAB doing a co-op with them.

 

[randomlinh]

i'd hate to be on call 24/7

 

[mugs]

Originally posted by: LikeLinus
a large partner of Sprint wants to move towards linux based on someone with no real background, knowledge or career in the field.

Time to change to Cingular or something.

Nothing against you..but thats a bit sad on their part. You might be awesome...but you don't sound qualified for the job.

Regardless..congrats!

I interpreted it as they were planning on switching to linux in the near future, and that made them more interested in him, not the other way around.