RE: [ActiveDir] OT: new job

[joe]

Title: RE: [ActiveDir] OT: new job

I would tend to agree. I like big companies. The politics tend to be a bit more tricky but as Al mentioned, you get to focus on the tech that you work on. For instance, I loved running AD but not being responsible for DNS or clients. DNS and clients have never spun my propeller. You do have to get along well with the other groups like DNS and Network or else your life can be a bit trying. I feel the ideas that are thought up during problem times are more interesting as well because you have a lot of people with very divergent opinions and outlooks.

 

I definitely agree on the management styles in a financial org. Also the IT department always seems to report up through accounting in a financial environment. Those guys are happy with Excel on Win3.1. Hard to convince them that you need Vista for easier management or whatever.

 

The insourcing after outsourcing doesn't bother me so much. It seems a lot of companies like to outsource thinking it will save money, then a few years later they realize they have lost control of their environment and no one really knows how it works anymore. That or the cost is more substantial than they figured because work that might have been a subjob of someone before is now being charged for at real dollars or pounds or whatever. Many companies can't figure out if they want to maintain a staff of well trained people to take care of the IT needs, flip flopping on that decision also impacts the outsource/insource ping pong.

 

The one good thing about jumping to outsourcing and then later outsourcing to another vendor or insourcing is that you tend to take good strong looks at what you have. If you don't go through exercises like that there is a good chance you haven't the foggiest clue what some of those machines in the datacenter are doing. During the outsource I worked on we identified probably 20 servers in the main US Data Center that didn't seem to be running anything but the OS. That is a lot of waste.

 

 

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From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Al Mulnick
Sent: Saturday, July 23, 2005 1:06 PM
To: ActiveDir@mail.activedir.org
Subject: RE: [ActiveDir] OT: new job

As usual, that's a great description Joe.  I think Rick had a great sense about it as well.

 

I'm pretty sure I've seen some of the reqs for this company you're talking about.  Looks like an interesting challenge and one that would be hard to pass up.  One of the things that strikes me is the size and how they may want to have somebody who knows both AD and Exchange in a large organization to the degree they'd like.  That's not a small task as anyone (Joe?) that's worked a large organization can tell you.  Some of the larger companies will have dedicated staff for silly things like name servers.  Each company is different but the larger and more complex the company, the more likely that you'll have to focus in on a technology as a specialist more than a generalist as you may be currently accustomed.  Oh, you'll still need to know that other stuff, but it won't be your daily bread and butter and you'll have to learn to rely on teammates to get things done that today you consider simple. 

 

Personally?  I absolutely LOVE large companies. The bigger the better.  1 million consumers of the service and a team of rowdy technical folks in 15 countries?  Lets go!  I love that kind of challenge. Being a generalist is not my favorite compared to that challenge.

 

"normal" ??  I'm not sure what your definition of normal is.  Mine is that I'm normal and the rest of the world's population is weird. Not sure that fits your definition, but I suspect your perspective may be different.

 

Financial institutions are a funny lot.  I've found that when it comes to technology, they don't tend to attract the best management styles. There are exceptions, but I have to say if they made a deal to outsource and now want to insource with different people, I'm a bit cautious of the culture that led to that decision.  That's me though.

 

In the end, I'd say that the challenge is well worth it if you want to further your career.  Always looks good when you can say you've run a shop that serviced 250K users.  In fact, I'm jealous of the opportunity.  Hope it works out, Tom. :)

 

My $0.04 anyway. Feel free to ping off-line if you would like any further thoughts.  I haven't been keeping up with this list like I should...

 

 

Al

 

 

 

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From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] on behalf of joe
Sent: Sat 7/23/2005 11:02 AM
To: ActiveDir@mail.activedir.org
Subject: RE: [ActiveDir] OT: new job

"At will" is very standard in the industry, especially for contract work. I
have had several jobs that were set up that way and in each I was there
multiple years without an issue. It allows the company to dump if you if you
really really suck or if you just don't "fit in".

As for financial work. Expect a lot of focus on rules, regulations, and
auditing. One of my previous positions was in the financial division of a
very large company and we were independently audited for compliance at least
2 times a year, keep your paperwork in order. Be able to explain everything.

Finally I also have experience with boths side of the insource/outsource
world. I have been the one in an outside company taking over and doing the
work and have been the one on the inside insourcing the work. Insouring,
IMO, is harder than outsourcing. With outsourcing, everyone is mostly of the
same mind (with the exception of the people whose jobs will not be the same
in the company that is outsourcing). When you insource, you have the
concerted efforts of the outsource company against you. It shouldn't be that
way but they tend to be rather "evil" towards you.

Don't much expect to get documentation, etc on how things are done, why, and
when. Before you start taking things over, have a good idea of what is there
and the general big picture of it all. The insourcing I did (clearly seen on
my resume) was to grab back the AD I built when I worked for the company the
work was outsourced to previously (that I had worked on the outsourcing of).
However I had been out of the loop for 6 months and when I took it back
over, though I had a great understanding of what was supposed to be there
and how it all fit together, it still took about 18 months to get it all
cleaned up to a pristine environment again that I had left behind 6 months
previous. The thing I like to tell people, any idiot can screw AD up, it
takes a real wizard to go in and find all of the screwed up inconsistent
things and correct them. AD (and Exchange) can stumble along with lots of
things not right until there are enough not right things to knock it down
and then you are in trouble. The goal when going into an environment you
didn't build, is trying to find all of the things not right. This involves a
lot of careful listening to anyone who mentions any kind of symptom as well
as just browsing over the objects and getting a feel for what is there.
Expect to work some pretty heavy hours to get it under control.

My recommendation is to make sure the core things are working right up front
- AD,FRS replication, and DNS.  Then circle out from there. If you find
something wrong, put together a script to audit all other locations that
same thing could be wrong and anything similar that could be wrong.

Lots of luck.




-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of Kern, Tom
Sent: Saturday, July 23, 2005 10:09 AM
To: ActiveDir@mail.activedir.org
Subject: [ActiveDir] OT: new job

I just got offered a position with a consulting company where I would be
consulting full time for a major financial corp in NYC as their AD/Exchange
guy.
I'm a little nervous and I was wondering if anyone here had experience with
big financial corps and IT.
Is it very different from doing IT for a "normal" company.

Their situation is that they outsourced all their Exchange/AD infrastructure
and now they want to take it back and have someone support it full time.
As it stands, their relationship is not so hot with the outsourcing firm
which is reluctant to give them too much info.
In fact I don't think anyone there has Domain or Enterprise Admin access as
it stands.


Finally, the other thing that makes me nervous is, I'd be working fulltime
for the consulting firm(until after 3 months if the finanical corp would
want me to join them fulltime, I'd work for them).
In the consulting company "handbook" which clearly states is not legally
binding, the state in bold letters that they reserve the right to let you go
for any reason.
That kinda scares me.
Is that normal? Are they just covering their butt?
Thanks. My apologies for the way OT.
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