Posted: 2/27/2012 4:41:09 PM EDT
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I got contacted through LinkedIn over the weekend by the president of a cloud services company and have a phone interview scheduled for Wednesday. I have 10 years in IT but all have been in healthcare. I've never worked for a company providing a service like this would be. Any tips or good questions to ask?
Job would be a VMware Engineer most likely, they are also hiring Network Engineers I believe and I could probably do either one. I'll find out more about that part on Wednesday. |
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I got contacted through LinkedIn over the weekend by the president of a cloud services company and have a phone interview scheduled for Wednesday. I have 10 years in IT but all have been in healthcare. I've never worked for a company providing a service like this would be. Any tips or good questions to ask? Job would be a VMware Engineer most likely, they are also hiring Network Engineers I believe and I could probably do either one. I'll find out more about that part on Wednesday. Is it with rackspace? If so from my exp it will be a light interview and not to hard, but if you get called in for a fac to face you're gonna get hammered. |
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It's not with Rackspace. I'd rather not say the name of the place right now. It's smaller place I think, but they do have data centers in 5-6 different cities.
I have a feeling they might have a smaller shop since the president contacted me directly, and not some HR person, but he might just do a screening and then pass it off. I have no idea what to expect from him, just hoping to be ready for any direction it might go. I really want to get out of healthcare. |
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Mind if I ask why you want out of healthcare? I'm in IT and my wife is in healthcare and she's always telling me about all of the opportunities in Healthcare IT. Because it sucks balls. IT in other industries probably experience the same problems but I know there are plenty that don't. It's a 24 hour facility and they expect you to be available at all times. Especially in the smaller hospitals. We are decent sized facility but only 12-15 IT employees. No full time helpdesk, so the on-call person gets stuck with shit work. I didn't work my way up to be a Network Engineer so I could still do helpdesk and desktop bullshit. A few weeks back on a Friday, after doing my 8+ hours for the day I sat at home and took over 25 calls to reset password and other bullshit between 6:30-10pm. That wasn't the only day like that during the week either. Put in over 60 hours not counting Saturday and Sunday, and I'm salary so no OT. Larger facilities are better due to more IT staff but they still have their issues. Healthcare IT is secure but the pay isn't as good as other industries. Also, in a lot of cases the places can be on very limited budgets and they adopt new technologies slowly. I'm lucky in that I work at a doctor owned hospital and it's much easier to get new stuff approved but that isn't usually the case. If you find the right place it might be decent, but these are usually large medical institutions, smaller ones have no room for growth. When your wife refers to "all of the opportunities," what is she talking about? Does the facility she works at have a lot of openings in IT? If so there is probably a reason, just depends. |
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Mind if I ask why you want out of healthcare? I'm in IT and my wife is in healthcare and she's always telling me about all of the opportunities in Healthcare IT. Because it sucks balls. IT in other industries probably experience the same problems but I know there are plenty that don't. It's a 24 hour facility and they expect you to be available at all times. Especially in the smaller hospitals. We are decent sized facility but only 12-15 IT employees. No full time helpdesk, so the on-call person gets stuck with shit work. I didn't work my way up to be a Network Engineer so I could still do helpdesk and desktop bullshit. A few weeks back on a Friday, after doing my 8+ hours for the day I sat at home and took over 25 calls to reset password and other bullshit between 6:30-10pm. That wasn't the only day like that during the week either. Put in over 60 hours not counting Saturday and Sunday, and I'm salary so no OT. Larger facilities are better due to more IT staff but they still have their issues. Healthcare IT is secure but the pay isn't as good as other industries. Also, in a lot of cases the places can be on very limited budgets and they adopt new technologies slowly. I'm lucky in that I work at a doctor owned hospital and it's much easier to get new stuff approved but that isn't usually the case. If you find the right place it might be decent, but these are usually large medical institutions, smaller ones have no room for growth. When your wife refers to "all of the opportunities," what is she talking about? Does the facility she works at have a lot of openings in IT? If so there is probably a reason, just depends. I'm part of a two man IT dept for a manufacturing company with 4 plants. Up until recently our main plant had three shifts so I know exactly what you're talking about, I've been doing it for 15yrs. LOL Typically at night I didn't get user problems, just stuff like servers down. I'm salary also and I have put in 25hr days when their has been problems. I'm not real confident in the future of the company I work for these days (even though they've been around since 1948), so my wife knows I'm trying to get some certs and stuff as a safety net, and I'm a little worried since there isn't a lot of IT jobs in this shit hole town. She is in an out of places all day long (home health marketing) and see's oppotunities with more and more offices trying to implement technology as more requirements are being passed down, and I guess she just mentions them to me to comfort me. lol Thanks for the info though, and good luck on your interview! |
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Mind if I ask why you want out of healthcare? I'm in IT and my wife is in healthcare and she's always telling me about all of the opportunities in Healthcare IT. Because it sucks balls. IT in other industries probably experience the same problems but I know there are plenty that don't. It's a 24 hour facility and they expect you to be available at all times. Especially in the smaller hospitals. We are decent sized facility but only 12-15 IT employees. No full time helpdesk, so the on-call person gets stuck with shit work. I didn't work my way up to be a Network Engineer so I could still do helpdesk and desktop bullshit. A few weeks back on a Friday, after doing my 8+ hours for the day I sat at home and took over 25 calls to reset password and other bullshit between 6:30-10pm. That wasn't the only day like that during the week either. Put in over 60 hours not counting Saturday and Sunday, and I'm salary so no OT. Larger facilities are better due to more IT staff but they still have their issues. Healthcare IT is secure but the pay isn't as good as other industries. Also, in a lot of cases the places can be on very limited budgets and they adopt new technologies slowly. I'm lucky in that I work at a doctor owned hospital and it's much easier to get new stuff approved but that isn't usually the case. If you find the right place it might be decent, but these are usually large medical institutions, smaller ones have no room for growth. When your wife refers to "all of the opportunities," what is she talking about? Does the facility she works at have a lot of openings in IT? If so there is probably a reason, just depends. I'm part of a two man IT dept for a manufacturing company with 4 plants. Up until recently our main plant had three shifts so I know exactly what you're talking about, I've been doing it for 15yrs. LOL Typically at night I didn't get user problems, just stuff like servers down. I'm salary also and I have put in 25hr days when their has been problems. I'm not real confident in the future of the company I work for these days (even though they've been around since 1948), so my wife knows I'm trying to get some certs and stuff as a safety net, and I'm a little worried since there isn't a lot of IT jobs in this shit hole town. She is in an out of places all day long (home health marketing) and see's oppotunities with more and more offices trying to implement technology as more requirements are being passed down, and I guess she just mentions them to me to comfort me. lol Thanks for the info though, and good luck on your interview! If it is smaller clinics that need to implement stuff due to requirements I honestly couldn't speak much on it. Not much experience with that area. A decent sized hospital would be ok given the environment you are used to. I think part of my problem is local to this place so I really hate to make all healthcare sound bad. Just fed up with my current situation. 
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You need to start automating some of those support issues like unlocking accounts, password resets, etc. We've tried some but no joy. Upper MGT won't let you or does it violate some internal security protocol? Users are too fucking stupid to do it themselves. |
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You need to start automating some of those support issues like unlocking accounts, password resets, etc. We've tried some but no joy. Upper MGT won't let you or does it violate some internal security protocol? Users are too fucking stupid to do it themselves. Heh well I understand that. Do you have an internal website? Do you have an IVR phone line? Do you use a trouble ticket system? I built a automated password reset tool that taps into the trouble ticket system. Basically someone calls the IVR phone system, id's themselves (confirming who they are), selects to reset their password, and a ticket gets created in the trouble system. Then you have an automated task running every three to fiver minutes scanning the trouble system's db for a password reset request, once the task see it, it wil reset the user (via LDAP to the AD box) to a default user specific password like today+user's zip code (Wednesday12345) and then cose the case & shoot the user an email saying it's done. Another way would be to use the internal website and reset it on demand via CGI. They could borrow someone's machine to request it via the internal site. Again id themselves and then hang out until it's done. Just saying there are ways to do it. |
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You need to start automating some of those support issues like unlocking accounts, password resets, etc. We've tried some but no joy. Upper MGT won't let you or does it violate some internal security protocol? Users are too fucking stupid to do it themselves. Heh well I understand that. Do you have an internal website? Do you have an IVR phone line? Do you use a trouble ticket system? I built a automated password reset tool that taps into the trouble ticket system. Basically someone calls the IVR phone system, id's themselves (confirming who they are), selects to reset their password, and a ticket gets created in the trouble system. Then you have an automated task running every three to fiver minutes scanning the trouble system's db for a password reset request, once the task see it, it wil reset the user (via LDAP to the AD box) to a default user specific password like today+user's zip code (Wednesday12345) and then cose the case & shoot the user an email saying it's done. Another way would be to use the internal website and reset it on demand via CGI. They could borrow someone's machine to request it via the internal site. Again id themselves and then hang out until it's done. Just saying there are ways to do it. We do have an internal site, no idea what an IVR phone line is. Use a free ticket system called Spiceworks and it sucks by the way. A couple of us evaluated Manage Engines password self rest tool that is web based. It's pretty cool but requires all users to register and fill out security questions. How do you force them to have to use that instead of calling the helpdesk? Most users are pretty computer illiterate so it's not an easy task. And it's a main reason I want nothing to do with end user support. |
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You need to start automating some of those support issues like unlocking accounts, password resets, etc. We've tried some but no joy. Upper MGT won't let you or does it violate some internal security protocol? Users are too fucking stupid to do it themselves. Heh well I understand that. Do you have an internal website? Do you have an IVR phone line? Do you use a trouble ticket system? I built a automated password reset tool that taps into the trouble ticket system. Basically someone calls the IVR phone system, id's themselves (confirming who they are), selects to reset their password, and a ticket gets created in the trouble system. Then you have an automated task running every three to fiver minutes scanning the trouble system's db for a password reset request, once the task see it, it wil reset the user (via LDAP to the AD box) to a default user specific password like today+user's zip code (Wednesday12345) and then cose the case & shoot the user an email saying it's done. Another way would be to use the internal website and reset it on demand via CGI. They could borrow someone's machine to request it via the internal site. Again id themselves and then hang out until it's done. Just saying there are ways to do it. We do have an internal site, no idea what an IVR phone line is. Use a free ticket system called Spiceworks and it sucks by the way. A couple of us evaluated Manage Engines password self rest tool that is web based. It's pretty cool but requires all users to register and fill out security questions. How do you force them to have to use that instead of calling the helpdesk? Most users are pretty computer illiterate so it's not an easy task. And it's a main reason I want nothing to do with end user support. First thing I would do is figure out how many password reset requests you're getting a day/week/month/quarter. If it's enough, then you can justify looking at automating a solution. If you can gain access to the AD box over the network and you have a machine somewhere that can act as a "task box", you could certainly gin up something. The main thing is that you want to document the need, provide the solution, and then show how it's saving time/money/resources. The other thing is once you open that pandora's box os systems automation, some folks see it as a way to remove people, so be careful. |
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You need to start automating some of those support issues like unlocking accounts, password resets, etc. We've tried some but no joy. Upper MGT won't let you or does it violate some internal security protocol? Users are too fucking stupid to do it themselves. Heh well I understand that. Do you have an internal website? Do you have an IVR phone line? Do you use a trouble ticket system? I built a automated password reset tool that taps into the trouble ticket system. Basically someone calls the IVR phone system, id's themselves (confirming who they are), selects to reset their password, and a ticket gets created in the trouble system. Then you have an automated task running every three to fiver minutes scanning the trouble system's db for a password reset request, once the task see it, it wil reset the user (via LDAP to the AD box) to a default user specific password like today+user's zip code (Wednesday12345) and then cose the case & shoot the user an email saying it's done. Another way would be to use the internal website and reset it on demand via CGI. They could borrow someone's machine to request it via the internal site. Again id themselves and then hang out until it's done. Just saying there are ways to do it. We do have an internal site, no idea what an IVR phone line is. Use a free ticket system called Spiceworks and it sucks by the way. A couple of us evaluated Manage Engines password self rest tool that is web based. It's pretty cool but requires all users to register and fill out security questions. How do you force them to have to use that instead of calling the helpdesk? Most users are pretty computer illiterate so it's not an easy task. And it's a main reason I want nothing to do with end user support. First thing I would do is figure out how many password reset requests you're getting a day/week/month/quarter. If it's enough, then you can justify looking at automating a solution. If you can gain access to the AD box over the network and you have a machine somewhere that can act as a "task box", you could certainly gin up something. The main thing is that you want to document the need, provide the solution, and then show how it's saving time/money/resources. The other thing is once you open that pandora's box os systems automation, some folks see it as a way to remove people, so be careful. We use a call service so they are aware of the number of calls. And honestly, I just don't care anymore. I'm looking to move on, I'm done trying to get things fixed, upper management doesn't seem to care so why should I. |
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You need to start automating some of those support issues like unlocking accounts, password resets, etc. We've tried some but no joy. Upper MGT won't let you or does it violate some internal security protocol? Users are too fucking stupid to do it themselves. Heh well I understand that. Do you have an internal website? Do you have an IVR phone line? Do you use a trouble ticket system? I built a automated password reset tool that taps into the trouble ticket system. Basically someone calls the IVR phone system, id's themselves (confirming who they are), selects to reset their password, and a ticket gets created in the trouble system. Then you have an automated task running every three to fiver minutes scanning the trouble system's db for a password reset request, once the task see it, it wil reset the user (via LDAP to the AD box) to a default user specific password like today+user's zip code (Wednesday12345) and then cose the case & shoot the user an email saying it's done. Another way would be to use the internal website and reset it on demand via CGI. They could borrow someone's machine to request it via the internal site. Again id themselves and then hang out until it's done. Just saying there are ways to do it. We do have an internal site, no idea what an IVR phone line is. Use a free ticket system called Spiceworks and it sucks by the way. A couple of us evaluated Manage Engines password self rest tool that is web based. It's pretty cool but requires all users to register and fill out security questions. How do you force them to have to use that instead of calling the helpdesk? Most users are pretty computer illiterate so it's not an easy task. And it's a main reason I want nothing to do with end user support. First thing I would do is figure out how many password reset requests you're getting a day/week/month/quarter. If it's enough, then you can justify looking at automating a solution. If you can gain access to the AD box over the network and you have a machine somewhere that can act as a "task box", you could certainly gin up something. The main thing is that you want to document the need, provide the solution, and then show how it's saving time/money/resources. The other thing is once you open that pandora's box os systems automation, some folks see it as a way to remove people, so be careful. We use a call service so they are aware of the number of calls. And honestly, I just don't care anymore. I'm looking to move on, I'm done trying to get things fixed, upper management doesn't seem to care so why should I. If you don't think it would reflect favorably on you to come up with a solution (that could get you a raise, bonus, or promotion) and the upper managers aren't interested in making things better, then I wouldn't worry about it. You could fix it but then you may get stuck in that role. |
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If you are going to get 7x24 abuse get into financial.... they give you just as much work, the SLAs are similar the pay is like 20-25% higher, at least NYC area. Go to the vault.com and glassdoor.com and see what might be their on this company. I don't see anything on either site for this company. |
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You need to start automating some of those support issues like unlocking accounts, password resets, etc. We've tried some but no joy. Upper MGT won't let you or does it violate some internal security protocol? Users are too fucking stupid to do it themselves. Heh well I understand that. Do you have an internal website? Do you have an IVR phone line? Do you use a trouble ticket system? I built a automated password reset tool that taps into the trouble ticket system. Basically someone calls the IVR phone system, id's themselves (confirming who they are), selects to reset their password, and a ticket gets created in the trouble system. Then you have an automated task running every three to fiver minutes scanning the trouble system's db for a password reset request, once the task see it, it wil reset the user (via LDAP to the AD box) to a default user specific password like today+user's zip code (Wednesday12345) and then cose the case & shoot the user an email saying it's done. Another way would be to use the internal website and reset it on demand via CGI. They could borrow someone's machine to request it via the internal site. Again id themselves and then hang out until it's done. Just saying there are ways to do it. We do have an internal site, no idea what an IVR phone line is. Use a free ticket system called Spiceworks and it sucks by the way. A couple of us evaluated Manage Engines password self rest tool that is web based. It's pretty cool but requires all users to register and fill out security questions. How do you force them to have to use that instead of calling the helpdesk? Most users are pretty computer illiterate so it's not an easy task. And it's a main reason I want nothing to do with end user support. First thing I would do is figure out how many password reset requests you're getting a day/week/month/quarter. If it's enough, then you can justify looking at automating a solution. If you can gain access to the AD box over the network and you have a machine somewhere that can act as a "task box", you could certainly gin up something. The main thing is that you want to document the need, provide the solution, and then show how it's saving time/money/resources. The other thing is once you open that pandora's box os systems automation, some folks see it as a way to remove people, so be careful. We use a call service so they are aware of the number of calls. And honestly, I just don't care anymore. I'm looking to move on, I'm done trying to get things fixed, upper management doesn't seem to care so why should I. Dang man, sounds like we work at the same company. |