2016-09 on Funky Si's Blog (Dev)

Looking back Ten years

funkysi1701@gmail.com (funkysi1701) — Thu, 29 Sep 2016 20:00:45 +0000

Next month I will celebrate ten years working at my current job, two weeks after that I will start a new chapter of my life at a new company. Lets take this opportunity to look back ten years at some of the great stuff I have achieved.

2006

In 2006 I had no IT experience. If you were to ask me where Event Logs could be found I wouldn’t know, and the letters DNS meant nothing to me. I was quiet and shy but hard working. The idea of making IT my career hadn’t occurred to me, this was just a job.

I started off life doing first line support and compiling health and safety files onto CD-ROMs (known by the company as Eurofiles) with HTML. At the time the company had a mix of Windows 2000 and Windows XP, using MS Office 2003. Server wise I can’t remember exactly but I think two domain controllers, a database server and a backup server using a tape drive. At this point in time I don’t believe I did a lot with the servers but I think the servers were running Windows Server 2005.

As time went on I learnt more and more about what the company did and how stuff worked.

Nagios

One of my early achievements was setting up a nagios server. I have blogged about Nagios before, but it is a server monitoring system that runs on linux. I am extremely proud of what I have achieved here, no one else in the company had my knowledge of how nagios worked. Initially I even experimented with using a cheap mobile phone connected to the serial port (remember when PCs had these?) to send SMS messages to alert of down time. However this was abandoned when I burned through all the credit on this phone.

Nagios is still used today, and my current team have been shown how to extend the system as the business changes. My philosophy has always been if we have a problem that Nagios didn’t warn us about we need an extra nagios test. These days the nagios web interface is publicly available on the internet so can be checked from anywhere (assuming the office internet is up!) and a mobile app replaces the SMS idea we originally had.

2011

At the end of 2010 the IT Manager resigned, then the Developer resigned and finally the Lead Developer resigned. I was alone. I was IT Manager. I negotiated my first pay rise since joining the company. I was IT.

Wow things were stressful back then. I had so much to learn but somehow I managed. I learnt how to Interview, yes I have employed some clangers along the way, but also some great staff. As well as internal staff I learnt to deal with contractors. We had contractors to help with our internal systems and also contractors to do development work. One thing I have learnt about contractors is that you will always have to chase them at some point to deliver what you are paying them for.

Server Migration

Around the start of 2011 our email server started to show its age. Exchange 2003 had a hard limit on the size of its information store and we were rapidly approaching this. Along with an IT contractor I worked to migrate to Exchange 2010, this was a huge project and caused all sorts of issues which we just worked through. Since then I have done other migrations so Windows Server 2012 and also virtualized many servers in 2013.

Bandwidth

A major limit with our infrastructure has always been the internet connection coming in. For a while we tried to load balance three ADSL connections, but the upload speed was always a limiting factor. It was a major victory for the simplification of our network when we got a leased line installed into our head office, helped by a government grant we gave us free installation. Not content with this I did the same again for our second York office, including the free installation.

Learning Development

Since I started I have always been learning development stuff. But in the past few years I have learnt a massive amount helped largely by two main things. My boss passing lots of my responsibility onto others and dedicating lots of my time to development tasks, and also the opportunity to learn with our outsourced development team.

Finishing off

There are a few things that have been ongoing that we have wanted to change since I started which I can’t really take the credit for as they are not complete yet, but I am proud as they may be finished in the next few months.

The company stores calendar information in one giant excel spreadsheet, this is being replaced by outlook calendars.

Our last Windows Server 2003 server and tape drive is being decommissioned. This is the only server that has been running for the entire time I have been here.

The way the company keeps track of work coming in and who does what is being reviewed. Over the years many people have tried to adapt the old database that one of the directors created in Access many years ago. I did a major overhaul recently to delete unused columns and added extra invoicing functionality. What is needed is a fresh system, maybe a CRM can do everything they want. I wish them lots of luck in doing this as I know it won’t be easy but it has to be done.

2016

There are many other projects and pieces of work that I have done that I am proud of. In 2016 I will leave a stable IT department. All clients are on Windows 10 and using Office 2010. We have virtual servers running Server 2012 and are using some great services from Azure to run our SaaS websites. There are of course things I would have liked to achieve, and things I wish I had done differently but on the whole it feels like the right time to move on, especially now long running projects are starting to conclude.

10 Ways to Survive as an IT Manager

funkysi1701@gmail.com (funkysi1701) — Thu, 22 Sep 2016 20:00:45 +0000

So after five and a bit years of being an IT Manager here is some advice I have learned along the way in no particular order. On the whole I have enjoyed myself but it has been a real challenge at times.

1. Figure out what plates are still spinning

Being an IT Manager is all about keeping everything running all of the time. A bit like spinning 5 or 6 plates. You have plates for your servers and network infrastructure, you have plates for bespoke databases that you maintain, you have plates for your staff (including any external contractors), you have plates for any websites or apps that you develop. That is a lot of plates to keep spinning and that before you start thinking about what your boss wants you to deliver. Make sure you know what is happening with all these plates, which ones are happy, which ones are on the way to the floor and which ones you need to get the glue out and repair.

2. Make it someone else’s problem

If you can blame someone else do so. If your internet goes down it is your ISPs fault. If your website dies its your hosting company’s fault. Take responsibility for problems but if when something goes wrong you can pick up the phone and ask for help, it will make your life easier.

3. Hire good staff

Hiring poor staff wastes time and money and makes you look bad by others. Demand the highest salary band for new staff that you can afford and don’t agree to hiring anyone that you have doubts about. It is easy to bow to the pressure to get someone quickly but this will always result in worse problems in the long run. Once you have a good team do your best to keep them, and warn upper management of the problems if staff leaves (basically make it their problem not yours!).

4. Learn, Learn, Learn

You may or may not have the opportunity to go on training courses. Whatever your situation spend time learning new stuff that will benefit the company and yourself. You can learn a lot by reading online, you can petition for training from your managers, you can fund training yourself, you can ask for help from your different suppliers. The more you learn, the more you can do and the more useful you can be to the company, plus the more interesting you will find the job.

5. Say No!

Don’t be afraid to say no. You will always be asked to do the impossible and if something is impossible say so at the start. It wastes everyone’s time if you spend a lot of time trying to do the impossible. Always give your reasons for saying no, and if you always say no people will think you are unhelpful. A better way to say no is to come up with a better solution. No I can’t do it your way but here is a better solution.

6. Don’t give estimates

If you are asked how long something will take you don’t answer straight away or give an exaggerated estimate. Go away and spend some time thinking of everything that is involved before replying. There will always be something that you forgot to consider when first asked about it and looking at the different components will help plan out the work needed as well as provide an estimate.

7. Know what to tell your boss, and what not to

This is a hard one to get the balance right for. You need to tell your boss enough so that they appreciate all that you do, but too much and they will stop listening and accuse you of talking in technobabble. I have never got the balance right with this one. I have always aired on the side of not telling my boss enough, and hence they don’t realize that I saved the day on Sunday night as everything is working again on Monday. Do repeat yourself. If your server is running low on resources start asking for replacement hardware early, and increase the frequency and the panic in line with the problems it is causing.

8. Understand the problems of the business

Businesses need to make money. If the one you work for isn’t making enough money you will soon be looking for another. If you work for IT you will quickly start to see the problems of the business, think about what simple changes IT could make to improve things that would benefit the whole company. Some of your suggestions won’t go anywhere, but some may have a massive impact. I can think of a few changes that IT have spearheaded that I am very proud of, upgrading our internet connection, simplifying or automating processes and delivering new versions of software.

9. Ask for help

Don’t be afraid of asking for help. There are lots of places to look for help. Other departments could take more on, you could recruit extra help, you could hire external contractors. You can ask questions on support forums like ServerFault or StackOverflow , many software re-sellers or other suppliers are a good point of contact for questions about things they supply. Microsoft Support was also invaluable for a server issue.

10. Think about disasters

Write a disaster recovery plan or backup policy. Yes there will always be something more important that needs doing, but just stop for a moment to think how you would feel if everything died on your watch. The one thing you can rely on with technology is that it will fail at some point. A back of the envelope plan of action is better than no plan at all, even better is a detailed plan of what to do when each and every service you rely on fails. Plan additional services with an idea of adding extra redundancy. Always have multiple Domain Controllers, think about what data you could run from the Cloud. VMs could be replicated to the Cloud, and servers could be run from there.

Imposter Syndrome

funkysi1701@gmail.com (funkysi1701) — Thu, 15 Sep 2016 20:00:45 +0000

This week I handed in my notice at a job I have had for almost ten years. In a few weeks time I will start a brand new job as a web applications developer.

This is a great achievement for me and a great chance to learn and expand my development skills.

However moments after I handed my notice in, a huge wave of uncertainty enveloped me. I have read about this and I think I was suffering from an attack of Imposter Syndrome.

Despite external evidence of their competence, those with the syndrome remain convinced that they are frauds and do not deserve the success they have achieved. Proof of success is dismissed as luck, timing, or as a result of deceiving others into thinking they are more intelligent and competent than they believe themselves to be.

I started to convince myself I couldn’t do the job I had just accepted and that moments after I arrived on my first day I would be found out as a fraud and kicked out the door.

My logical brain was no match for the Imposter Syndrome. Having been kicked out the door of this new job, I would become penniless in no time with no employer (even my previous boss wouldn’t want me back) or recruitment agency willing to speak with me.

OK lets see if we can fight off the Imposter Syndrome and look at a possible worse case scenario. I start at my new job, it is very hard work and a month or so later I have to move on.

No employer ever would sack me on my first day. My first day will be lots of learning how they do things, looking at procedures. I have lots of experience of learning new things, looking at procedures and if I put the work in I can make this new job a success. I have lots of good ideas and useful experience that no one at my new company has.

I don’t know what the solution is to Imposter Syndrome other than to try and ignore it by thinking positively and the knowledge that I have done amazing things in the last ten years and I will do the same in the next ten.