Southern Fried Thoughts

I don’t often talk online in specifics about my job because I don’t want to get myself or anyone else in trouble when I’m venting, and I know everything posted online carries that risk. However I’m about to start a new job tomorrow, and thought it would be good to reflect on the past year and a half I spent at my old job where I was a Systems Analyst for a school district in the north suburbs of Pittsburgh.
For all the drama and problems, was a good experience. I spent my days doing Windows administration, spending my time making System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) software deployment packages, and administering Active Directory and VMWare vSphere environments. I became the go-to Mac/iPod guy (with no formal training) as we got more Macs and iPod Touch labs in and had to make them work with infrastructure.

I learned a lot of good stuff there. I knew nothing about SCCM and the enterprise VMWare stuff before I worked there. Now, thanks to a Technet subscription, at home I’ve got SCCM running in a virtual machine running on VMWare’s free ESXi server. I got some experience working with enterprise SAN and backup systems, Microsoft Exchange, and rebuilt the district’s imaging system from the ground up.

I also learned how lucky I was working at the University of Memphis. There, I had the benefit of some excellent management that stood up for the people under them and didn’t micromanage us. Unfortunately the IT director at the district is wearing too many other hats. They really need someone in that position that is focused on the department alone. The morale in the department right now is horrible because there are so many complaints about the management. This is sad because there’s a lot of really good people working in IT there. I really hope it improves, but unfortunately I don’t see it happening any time soon.

Tomorrow I start in the technology group at the University of Pittsburgh’s College of Engineering. I’m really excited. I’ll be doing technical project management and license management. I’ve got nothing but good vibes from the conversations I’ve had with my new boss. It seems like things are being done the right way, and that I’ll be working on a lot of really interesting projects. The things surrounding the job rock too. My commute will be about 30 minutes shorter, my wife works just down the street, and I’ll be able to walk to class (I’m around halfway through a Masters degree at Pitt).

So there’s a lot of good things on the horizon. I’m hoping that I can really crush it in this new job and further advance toward my career goals.