IT/Software career thread: Invert binary trees for dollars.

Xarpolis

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EDIT: Ok, change of subjects back to my friend that had the option of working full time for good pay or part time for also good pay while continuing school. Here's a small update.

Looks like him getting fired is off the table now. The company he works for is fairly large with many buildings in the country. His boss coordinates 5 people in his department, but other bosses do the same. Then there's a few thousand people in manual labor doing production of physical parts that the company sells.

Turns out his boss and another small boss elsewhere are trying to combine together to make a new branch of the company. This branch is successful if my friend works there, but not if he doesn't. It looks like he's the most knowledgeable out of his group of coworkers. So if this boss is really determined to start the new branch, he will need my friend to work there.
Update on my friend. He just got back from a week in California. The company wanted him out there to meet up with a new division that his current division/manager is doing work for. He builds proprietary software for his company that can only be used on a certain type of device (I'm being vague). His last project was completed, and he was the hero of that project. He's technically, still a paid intern ($35/hour) until that expires towards the end of August. But he came back from California this morning and his company already sent him an official proposal for employment. Which is only him working 20 hours a week while finishing school. He's going to be making $70k/year until he's done school, then get a promotion in addition to working full time. He was floored by that.

The issue he's currently running into (maybe) is that this company has pretty nasty insider shit. Divisions love to steal ideas and products from one another, just so they can appear in a better light for the CEO. So his current manager gave him the big proposal hoping that it will prevent other divisions from trying to steal him for their own projects. His current division created a product only to find out another division started showing the same product off as something they made. Which they didn't. It's strange how that works.

Anyway, his current job title as an intern is "Training Specialist". His new employed title is going to be "Software Developer", which supposedly is a better key phrase for linkedin.
 
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kudos

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What do you do when you automate your entire job? I'm having a hard time finding something to keep myself occupied. I've convinced my company I can work from home 90% of the time.

At this point I'm thinking of taking a different job when my clearance investigation is finished for it that is less pay because the payoff is better down the line. I feel like I've "beat the game" at this current job. I'm already head of IT and co-lead of R&D. I'm being made the FSO once I finish the stupid online course work. Nothing this company does challenges me that is relevant. The only thing keeping me here is the ability to spend all my time finishing my degree and them paying for my CEH certification that I can later transfer over for a masters degree credit.
 
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a c i d.f l y

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Does anyone have any educational material or resources for IT testing and automation? Specifically SOAP, Toad for SQL, Visual Studio, and any other tools that might be useful? I took on this new job a couple months ago, but I have zero experience writing scripts for automation, which so far has been alright, since a lot of what we do can't be automated. Yet. (assholes keep changing the xml formatting of fields every couple of weeks) I have a mild background in C++, so I can read code, but I'm so out of practice, trying to translate and write my own with the tools available to me has been a challenge.

Also, as kudos mentioned, what do you do when you've fully automated everything? My business is still growing massively with the group I'm in, so that won't happen for a while (18-24 month plan for growth), but it is a long term consideration.
 

kudos

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Does anyone have any educational material or resources for IT testing and automation? Specifically SOAP, Toad for SQL, Visual Studio, and any other tools that might be useful? I took on this new job a couple months ago, but I have zero experience writing scripts for automation, which so far has been alright, since a lot of what we do can't be automated. Yet. (assholes keep changing the xml formatting of fields every couple of weeks) I have a mild background in C++, so I can read code, but I'm so out of practice, trying to translate and write my own with the tools available to me has been a challenge.

Also, as kudos mentioned, what do you do when you've fully automated everything? My business is still growing massively with the group I'm in, so that won't happen for a while (18-24 month plan for growth), but it is a long term consideration.
Automation = Powershell everything if Windows based. Bash can do the rest of Linux, though Powershell has even been brought to Linux in some form so depending how deep you need to go you could even use it for Linux once it's installed.

Luckily these days everything is web focused with automation built in. After you set it all up you just use the built-in report function to email you daily. If you need some specific tasks automated then just use Powershell. VEEAM for example is 100% compatible with the option to select .ps1 scripts to be ran before or after a task runs or to control remotely.


Off-topic but VMware can be a mess when it comes to configuration. Some things can only be done with the vSphere client. Some things can only be done with the web interface. Good luck figuring out an option needs to be enabled for some software to function properly without even seeing it as an option until you look in 100 different configuration screens. Not to mention the URL used for the web client wasn't what the documentation or Google kept bringing up. After 4 hours of random Googling I found some hidden away documentation that gave up the correct URL. Someone said it's a DNS error on my part but I refuse to believe it. The https://[serverip] always takes you to the vSphere client download screen. I've never seen it take you to the web client.

Another off-topic rant because why not. What the fuck is with this "People Operations" bullshit these days? No, you are not in any form operations. You are HR. Stop creating titles to make yourself sound important.
 
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a c i d.f l y

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Automation = Powershell everything if Windows based. Bash can do the rest of Linux, though Powershell has even been brought to Linux in some form so depending how deep you need to go you could even use it for Linux once it's installed.

Luckily these days everything is web focused with automation built in. After you set it all up you just use the built-in report function to email you daily. If you need some specific tasks automated then just use Powershell. VEEAM for example is 100% compatible with the option to select .ps1 scripts to be ran before or after a task runs or to control remotely.


Off-topic but VMware can be a mess when it comes to configuration. Some things can only be done with the vSphere client. Some things can only be done with the web interface. Good luck figuring out an option needs to be enabled for some software to function properly without even seeing it as an option until you look in 100 different configuration screens. Not to mention the URL used for the web client wasn't what the documentation or Google kept bringing up. After 4 hours of random Googling I found some hidden away documentation that gave up the correct URL. Someone said it's a DNS error on my part but I refuse to believe it. The https://[serverip] always takes you to the vSphere client download screen. I've never seen it take you to the web client.

Another off-topic rant because why not. What the fuck is with this "People Operations" bullshit these days? No, you are not in any form operations. You are HR. Stop creating titles to make yourself sound important.

I was gonna ask. I'm dealing with a company that is interfacing with a 3rd party, that is then communicating with a 4th party merchant, so automating tests with the 3rd party is something we're already doing, but handling of the 4th party involves manual interface work. Nothing I've been exposed to utilizes Powershell, though we do have several VM systems in place for our internal operations. Can Powershell be used for outside systems and operations without an intimate knowledge of their infrastructure? I know how our data is sent, and the data that is received, but not how they're handling said data. Such as data filtering and standardization. How fields are converted and accepted, etc.
 

Nija

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What do you do when you automate your entire job? I'm having a hard time finding something to keep myself occupied. I've convinced my company I can work from home 90% of the time.

When I did that I got a second job. Negotiate the minimum amount of hours for full time with your current employer and get a remote part time job. If that seems impossible try hitting up contacts at previous employers and see what they have going on, and see if they need any part-time help from a known source.
 
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wilkxus

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kudos kudos what Nija Nija said first ...

Then in medium term, potentially consider branching out into consulting and eventually starting your own business. Perhaps finding your own clients and getting paid better for your work might be a decent option to explore. You can have more freedom to learn new things, develop new skills, courses (if desire to retool a little for a change or adjustment of career direction )etc. All provided you already have a decent base experience & skills in demand in with a decent enough market in your area.

Sounds like you are in a great position and these might be good career choices to ponder at least if youre bored because you are not challenged enough by your present work.

(edit) Do not be afraid of challenging yourself with developing and selling your own business ideas/services in the market!
 
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Lendarios

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Does anyone have any educational material or resources for IT testing and automation? Specifically SOAP, Toad for SQL, Visual Studio, and any other tools that might be useful? I took on this new job a couple months ago, but I have zero experience writing scripts for automation, which so far has been alright, since a lot of what we do can't be automated. Yet. (assholes keep changing the xml formatting of fields every couple of weeks) I have a mild background in C++, so I can read code, but I'm so out of practice, trying to translate and write my own with the tools available to me has been a challenge.

Also, as kudos mentioned, what do you do when you've fully automated everything? My business is still growing massively with the group I'm in, so that won't happen for a while (18-24 month plan for growth), but it is a long term consideration.
I always use Pluralsight and maybe lydia
 
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kudos

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Why the fuck does Virtualbox not allow VT-x even though it has the option in settings?

Why the fuck does VMware Workstation PLAYER not include snapshot ability?

I'm building a VM for some work computers but the software on it requires VT-x which works on VMware Workstation player but I cannot snapshot. Virtualbox runs better and has snapshot ability but doesn't allow VT-x ability (liars).

So I'm stuck copying the VMware VM files to another location and then creating a batch script to copy them back over when it needs to be reset.

FUCK.

Why is there not an all encompassing great FREE VM option?
 

kudos

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Proxmox might be something to look at.
I'm going to try with Windows Hyper-V tomorrow since it's a requirement to have VT-x in order to even use it. It's my last ditch effort otherwise it's staying the way it is with poverty batch script snapshot.
 

a_skeleton_03

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I'm going to try with Windows Hyper-V tomorrow since it's a requirement to have VT-x in order to even use it. It's my last ditch effort otherwise it's staying the way it is with poverty batch script snapshot.
I used Proxmox quite a bit to control all my VM's. Not a bad host in my opinion.
 

kudos

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I used Proxmox quite a bit to control all my VM's. Not a bad host in my opinion.
I have a few ESXi servers if local was the way I'm going. These VM's are being built out on laptops that will be going out to locations and rather than have to image them every time they return I'd rather they be snapshot back so I don't even have to touch them unless a significant upgrade is needed.
 

a_skeleton_03

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I have a few ESXi servers if local was the way I'm going. These VM's are being built out on laptops that will be going out to locations and rather than have to image them every time they return I'd rather they be snapshot back so I don't even have to touch them unless a significant upgrade is needed.
Ahh I see, makes sense now. Yeah Prox is not the way to go at all.
 

alavaz

Trakanon Raider
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Virtual box can utilize vtx. Just enable it in the bios on your machine. Hyper-v is included with Windows 10 Enterprise and pro. If your processor is new enough you can do nested virtualization as well.
 

sidewayzzz

Molten Core Raider
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Why the fuck does Virtualbox not allow VT-x even though it has the option in settings?

Why the fuck does VMware Workstation PLAYER not include snapshot ability?

I'm building a VM for some work computers but the software on it requires VT-x which works on VMware Workstation player but I cannot snapshot. Virtualbox runs better and has snapshot ability but doesn't allow VT-x ability (liars).

So I'm stuck copying the VMware VM files to another location and then creating a batch script to copy them back over when it needs to be reset.

FUCK.

Why is there not an all encompassing great FREE VM option?

XenServer - Server Virtualization and Consolidation - Citrix

GitHub - openstack/openstack-ansible: Ansible playbooks for deploying OpenStack.
 

kudos

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Not trying to do virtualization at the server level. I already have that covered with ESXi.

I got it working with VMware Workstation Player 12. I also had to create a "snapshot" batch file that copies a clean image over to the VM folder automatically since snapshot isn't available in the player. CPU is the bottleneck but it's working so whatever.

Virtualbox didn't work. Hyper-V didn't work.
 

Big Phoenix

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So I have a old hp dl360 with vmware on it to play with. Fired it up the other day and got as far as creating a vm and installing windows 7 on it. Is there any good tutorials or how to's to start getting some understating/knowledge of it?