Think you've got the worst job in IT? You might think twice after our look at the seven of the dirtiest jobs in the industry.
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No. 5: Onsite reboot specialist
Seeking individuals for onsite support of end-users. Must be familiar with three-fingered Ctrl-Alt-Del salute and power cord reconfiguration. Ability to withstand a variety of environments and personality types; concealed-weapons permit a plus. Individuals with anger management issues need not apply.
Closely related to the help desk zombie, but even lower on the totem pole, is the onsite reboot specialist. Unlike help desk or support vampires, the onsite rebootnik must venture out into the physical world and deal with actual people.
Joel Bomgar worked his way through college as an onsite support specialist. He recalls hot sticky summers spent driving back roads in 100-degree heat, providing "sweatnical" support to clueless end-users.
"First there's the heat," Bomgar says. "Then you show up at the customer site, and the server room is a closet. Loud, dusty, dingy, and there's nowhere to sit down.
"You end up standing wedged between the server and the wall for hours at a time. It's like flying on a regional jet. Everything about it is uninviting."
It was this experience, Bomgar says, that ultimately inspired him to start Bomgar Corp (formerly Network Streaming), a provider of remote service solutions for SMBs. By adding a Bomgar Box appliance to a company's network, remote technicians anywhere in the world can access an end-user's PC and troubleshoot it.
Providing non-site support also puts some welcome physical distance between techie and customer.
"What makes onsite support dirty is interfacing with the user," Bomgar says.
"People's workstations are often a nightmarish wreck. They issue you into a tiny room covered with dust, grit and grime. The keyboard's broken and the mouse doesn't work, but they're used to it."
For their part, customers don't have to stop working while the tech takes over their machines (or stand near some college kid who's just been driving in 100-degree heat).
"Tech support becomes so much cleaner when you don't have to go deal with all those environmental variables," Bomgar says. "You get to interface with the technology without the grit, grime, and dirt associated with support."
NEXT PAGE: Where does Interdepartmental peace negotiator come in our list of the seven dirtiest jobs in IT?
Comments
Batch said: There are around 15 banks still using a system written in the 1970s to run on the DEC PDP-11 under a bespoke ie not DECs multi-user operating system and file structure This was subsequently ported to run under DECs VAXVMS and then on DEC Alpha It has its own programming language called AIMS a variant of BASIC with one of the most powerful string manipulation commands youll ever come acrossAlthough no longer involved in it myself its nice to know that code that I bashed out in 1976 is still running some 30 years laterAnd yes it has been given a modern eg web style front-end