All about Dirty IT Jobs: Be Glad that you are not part of them

Today, number of engineering graduates passing out of the colleges is increasing every year. The reason behind this is the number of jobs that are generated by the It sector. IT sector is seen as the most coveted sector by most of the engineering graduates. Most of us are running blindly after these jobs without knowing much about them. There is no reason to follow the blind cat race without having appropriate knowledge. One should remember that working in an IT sector isn’t pretty always. This is because it is not necessary that you will be required to work on the cutting-edge technologies every time. Besides, cutting edge technology jobs, there are other jobs in the IT sector that are considered as dirty jobs. Therefore, sometimes, one should be ready to perform these dirty it jobs also.

Though IT sector is seen as the most promising sector that has employed around half of the population of all countries but still there are some tasks that come under the category of the dirty jobs like working on the help desk as a customer care executive, hacking 20 year old codes, spending most of the time in conference rooms, mucking in human effluvia, etc.. However, it is important to notice that all these dirty IT jobs are necessary in every organization.

Today there are many jobs in the IT sector. If one can master in any of the job mentioned above then he is guaranteed a job in the IT sector. Some of the dirtiest jobs in the IT sector are given below:

IT job 7: to work as a Legacy system archaeologist

Main requirements of this job are individuals who are familiar with the 370, COBOL, VAX/VMS, AS/400, or other types of legacy systems that no one else remembers. For this job generally candidates with the minimum age of 55 are required.

There are having been many studies found out and from these studies one can conclude that there is still demand of COBOL programmers in many outsourcing firms. One can still find many advertisements in the newspapers who are in need of the COBOL programmers.  Companies like IBM demand senior program analyst with working knowledge of web sphere, UNIX, EDI, secure transfer protocol with COBOL.

Though it is believed that today there is no firm that would be making use of old and obsolete systems. However, that it is not true because most of the large companies, especially those that are dealing in with the financial services, retail, manufacturing, and health care require these big and old machines for their organizations and most of these machines require Cobol programming, so one can say that Cobol programmers are still in demand.

For example, there is a one major retailer that usually powers its site with the help of AS400 that is connected to the Web front end. It has been seen that the cost of performing rewriting or some migration of apps is very huge. Besides this, the risk involved in the process is also very high. So, they, therefore, look other possible ways through which they can reuse as well as reconnect to the modern technologies. One can compare it to the marine archeology where a spelunker is required to dive deep inside them, and to figure out exactly they can be duct taped or bolted into some other modern integration engines, like SOAP or XML front ends.

The good news for all the Experienced techs who are willing to do these kinds of dirty jobs is that they can discover a source of the reliable income streams at the time when they are moving towards the era of their semi-retirement.

One can notice that here an interesting principle of inversion is used. It has been seen that the values of all the people who possess skills about these systems is going down steadily since a long time. However, now, since the companies cannot find anyone who can work on these systems, the reverse is now becoming true. If you have been working as a consultant who has specialized in one of these older technologies, then it can be beneficial for you.

So, if you are a master in some age old technologies, then there is a reason for you to smile because there are still many job openings for you where you can earn a handsome salary.

IT job 6: customer care executives who can work at Help desks.

This is seen as the excellent opportunity for the entry-level people who are good at multitasking. Most of the freshers and graduates are these days running for this job because of its simplicity. There are simple requirements of this job. All that needs to have is the good command over the language. Besides this, one also needs to have a low self-esteem and should have an ability to read fluently from the scripts. If one has the potential to work as the bug scraper, tape rotation coordinator, or password reset technician then he or she can do really well in this job.

However, this is considered as the job that is hated by every IT professional. There are many people who define a dirty job as the job where one has to talk or visit their end users to entertain them. This job is known as many different names like help desk support, desk side support, and customer care, etc.

Besides this, it has been noticed that apart from the IT professionals, even regular people also consider it as a dirty job. It has been seen that when most of the people contact some tech support, then most of them feel that they are talking to some idiot or are being treated like an idiot. One needs to take care that there is a very fine line between being patronizing and being courteous, and most of the techs don’t know about this line.

As more and more organizations these days are moving to perform 24/7 operations, so, most of them need help of these customer care executives so that they can provide unrestricted services to their consumers. This has increased the demand of people who can work at the help desk. At the entry level one cannot earn much in this job but with the time, opportunities keep on growing under this job.

It’s often imperative to see that the IT folks. However, manage their off-hours so that it does not affect their daily business activities and other networks. There are some other jobs that is included under this category and that is to perform the System reboots, troubleshooting,  and patching applications. However, these jobs are done mainly after-hours. If these jobs are not done properly then there could be complete system failure so it needs to be addressed mainly during the time of evening.

IT job 5: individuals who can work as on the site reboot specialists.

This job mainly requires those individuals who can perform the task of on the site support for the end-users. The main constraint of this job is that people who have anger management issues cannot perform well in this job. They need to perform Ctrl+Alt+Del function and some reconfiguration of power cords. Individual applying for this job must have the capability to withstand various different types of environments and personalities. On the site reboot specialist need to have thorough knowledge about the operating systems and other technical information.

This job is related closely to various help desk zombies. However, there are many differences between the help desk and on the site reboot specialists. On the site reboot specialists are required to venture into the physical world. They should know how to deal with the actual people.

On the site reboot specialists are mainly treated as the remote technicians who can work from anywhere in the world and can access PC of any end-user to troubleshoot it. It has been seen that providing the non-site support puts some kind of the welcome physical distances between customers and techie.

The main reason why the task of on the site support is considered dirty is because of the problems faced while interfacing with user. It has been seen that the workstations on which People need to work are often compared to the nightmarish wreck. This is because they are provided with a small room that is covered with grit, dust, and grime. Sometimes, the conditions are so pathetic that even keyboard are also broken and mouse also doesn’t work properly.

One can make out that customers never stop working while tech takes care of their machines. These days tasks of tech support has become much cleaner as one don’t have to deal with all the environmental variables.

IT job 4: individuals who can work as peace negotiators between various departments.

This job requires people with self-starter skills who can perform the task of moderating all the tech disputes occurring between various kinds of warring factions that are present within the same company or sometimes between a company and the client. For this job, the individual needs to have experience in manipulative messages, ego-stroking, and hand combat. Their main task is to call in some negotiator who could smooth out the problems  and could break up with the fights.

Generally, these types of issues come to surface when different sides of an organization need to perform some collaboration.

It has been seen that most of the people in IT Sector want to have centralized control over the users while most of the typical users want that they should be able to move forward without any restrictions. This is because they do not want to wait for the IT sector to decide before making any forward move. So, sometimes satisfying both of these two camps become very tough.

One cannot consider this battle between geeks and suits because there are many incidents where this battle has been between geeks and geeks.

IT job 3: individuals who can work as Enterprise espionage engineers or black ops

This job requires slippery individuals who are very comfortable with things like lying, stealing, cheating, breaking, or entering inside any organization for the benefit of one’s one’s own company. The main requirements of this job are one should have the familiarity with knowledge of malware, hacking, and forgery. Besides this, the person applying for this job must be a fine working with all technologies. One needs to submit his/her rap sheet with the resume.

People working for these kinds of jobs are known by many different names like Social engineers, penetration testers, con artists, or white and black hat hackers. This is the only dirty job that is very interesting and fun to work in.

The best part of this job is that the person working gets the opportunity to wear many disguises. One needs to make use of his sharp thinking and analytical skills to breach the security of some organization.

There are many things that a person can do after breaching the security like sneaking into the security room, taking up all backup tapes, loading Trojans onto servers, or plugging wireless devices in the network so that it can be hacked from the parking lot. One can get any type of secure data from the backup tapes like maiden names, loan document numbers, Social Security number, etc.

Though this job is very interesting but one needs to leave behind all the ethics behind to do well here. The dirty part of this job is that one needs to come back the next day and has to face the same people that you have just owned.

In this job, the main point is that you need to learn from your previous mistakes and past experiences. Though you are trying to help your organization but this is done at the stake of others.

IT job 2: individuals working as a Datacenter migration specialist

This job is not very popular among most of the It professionals. This is mainly because of the complexity that it involves. The people working as the Datacenter migration specialists need to perform various types of difficult tasks. The task of datacenter migration specialist requires a person to perform the relocation and the reconfiguration of the datacenter over some impossible distances. All this needs to be done in a very short span of time.  One needs to have a prior experience of working as a cable jockey, console monkey, grunt, or a log zombie to do well in this job.

There are many people in this world who consider moving a datacenter as a dirty job. This is because if one has to move a datacenter one halfway across some country in just 48 hours then that’s really a dirty and a difficult job. However, there are many organizations that need to conduct this act very rapidly.

Movement of the datacenter is a very daunting task that requires a lot of efforts. Though there are many people who consider that instead of moving entire data center, it is better to create a duplicate data center over some new location. But for some people, this is very costly to set up a duplicate data center when they have the original. So they prefer to move the data center to its new location.

Loading and unloading of big machines along with their cables is very difficult and requires considerable effort and planning. While performing the movement of the datacenters one needs to keep the track of all the trucks with the help of GPS system. Just movement of the datacenter is not enough because after performing the complete movement, next task is to set up the complete data center again at the new location to make it operational completely. This sometimes requires a lot of time.

It has been seen that unplugging everything while cleaning the muck that has collected over many years is very bad. Sometimes, since most of the cables sit for many years in the half-baked type of air conditioned rooms, this makes the task quite nasty.

The main problem in assembling datacenters arises when the datacenters are not labeled properly. This generally happens when datacenters are put together by the different consultants or some in house employees who generally have their own ways of arranging things.

Fortunately, it has been that the task of migrating datacenters is not done by the firms very often. However, when it is done then it is a big chaos.

IT job 1: individuals working as the Sludge system architects

Sludge systems architect are those individuals who need to demonstrate their ability to perform the squeezing over, between, or under the confined spaces. This is done mainly to solve different types of technical problems that may arise in the organization. The main Requirements of this job is that candidates who are applying for this job must be prepared and should be ready to work for the long hours. The main disadvantage of this job is that besides long working hours the pay scale is very less. While working under the adverse conditions, Individuals working for this job should be resistant towards the allergies that may be caused due to things like vermin, sawdust, airborne pathogens, and sewage.

These days one can see that the technology is touching every part of life, and therefore, it can be found everywhere like in oil rigs, sewage plants, pulp mills, etc. so, sometimes dirty IT jobs can really be very dirty where one needs to clear up the mess to keep all the lights on.

Sometimes jobs where one needs to upgrade all the switches require a full day of the climbing and searching.  Besides climbing and searching one also needs to remove all the saw dirt that may have collected over the years.

IT jobs are not always very easy. Most of the IT professionals will definitely consider the jobs mentioned above as dirty. However, one cannot deny the fact all these jobs form an essential part of all the IT organizations and someone needs to perform them. Though some of these IT jobs are highly paying but some of them are not even worth paying. It depends on your skills and interests also that what kind of IT job you take up. Jobs like of hacker are very interesting and highly rewarding. However, jobs like troubleshooting specialists and on-site reboot specialists require a lot of patience and considerable amount of knowledge. If you choose to become a help desk supporter then you need to have low self esteem so that you can listen to your customers patiently and can answer their queries very easily.

If you are not part of such dirty IT jobs then it’s good, but in case you are part of these IT jobs then you need to know how to survive well in all the conditions. You need to have a detailed knowledge about your task so that you can perform it efficiently.