Ok this page is in reverse order really, so maybe you should read from the bottom up :-) It keeps growing as I add more roles to my ever changing C.V. Here goes! In July this year I managed to land a better paid I.T. job working for Countryside Properties. They seem like a nice enough company, they have lots of bits of paper that mean they train their people and that sort of thing. This is a permanent role, and I made my 6 monnths probation with no problem. I'm a first-third line support analyst at Countryside, so it's back to hands on tech for me which is good as that is where I am at my best.Sadly, it's a step back in time for me as I've done roles like this for the last ten years now and the money and type of calls I'm handling is remenescient of jobs I had eight or nine years ago. I'd like to move on in to the networking side of things as I am more than competant in that area, but unfortunately this compnay has no vacancies and no career progression through IT and they are not willing to train me in my MCSE. This makes the long term prospects somewhat limited.
Back in September 2003 I got a low-paid, non I.T. related job (well, not hands on I.T. related anyway) with a company called Syntegra who are a subsidiary of British Telecom. I was very grateful for the work having been unemployed for a year, but I cannot say I liked it. My job was to categorise and log requests from Essex County Council for I.T. equipment. It was very repetetive, required great attention to detail and the procedures changed every day. Still, it meant I still get to live in my house so I was grateful and I worked hard.
I used to work for BEA but back in September of 2002, two weeks after returning from holiday I was 'outsourced'. Sometimes, I think the universe has plans for us that we cannot control. Over the next five months both my parents again became seriously ill and hospitalised (both in different hospitals of course). My father died of lung cancer on January 20th 2003. My mother is still seriously ill, with among other things, a crumbled vertebre and MRSA (Thanks go to Adambrooks Hospital for the MRSA /sarcasm off).
These things meant that despite looking for work all that time, I was kept busy. In a way I am grateful I was able to give my parents my full attention in their time of need. None of this tells you what I am good at and what I have done, so here goes.
My old job title was Network Consultant when I was working at BEA systems, makers of Weblogic, an E-Commerce server. I was second line support to the northern europe region of offices. That meant I dealt with the more complex problems the users face in their day to day working lives with information technology.
I have always had a deep fascination with technology from an early age. I cut my teeth on a ZX Spectrum kindly provided by my parents when I was 13. Since then, I have always owned at least one computer of one type or another, finally culminating in the 8 machine NT network I now run at home (and which runs this very web site). I have worked in the I.T. industry since I was twenty after going to college and emerging with nothing :-) I have worked in many different areas from building machines from scratch to designing networks and rolling out a common operating environment to an entire corporate structure. Most of my roles have been centered in support, as my other great fascination is people and psychology (not to mention sociology). The support niche allows me to combine my two interests in one which works out quite nicely for me.
I am what Adam refers to as 'a Windows weenie' as I am unable to use Linux or Unix of any variant beyond a few simple commands. I have specialized in the Microsoft products, as they have been the most widespread for many years. That's not to say I'm a huge Microsoft fan, almost the opposite in fact, but at the end of the day it's applications running on their infrastructure that does what I want and need. It might not always do it quickly, or first time, or quite as I expected it to, but I am usually able to bend it to my will in the end.
I have worked as both contract and permanent, and find I have no real preference for either. Contract is more money and more hassle with paperwork and the tax man, permanent is more benefits and time off with less hassle from the Evil tax man. The social aspects of the two paths are apparent and quite different too, but that's a subject for another page.
That's it for now, I may expand the page if I can think of anything else relevant to it.