Diary of a Network Geek

Or, things I’d want to know before I seriously applied for, or took a new job.

The other day, a recruiter emailed me a super vague job description and we had a brief exchange about it. It was a little interesting, but, mostly, it was a mystery, because they just didn’t have a lot of details. Frankly, it sounded like the client wasn’t quite sure what they really wanted, except that they wanted to move all their IT support in-house instead of continuing to pay a managed service provider to maintain their systems. I made a post on r/ITCareerQuestions asking the question “What do you want to know before considering a job?”. I shared in that post these questions that I’d want answers to before being submitted for an open opportunity:

• How many users? And how are they distributed at multiple locations? (IE. How many end users in what city and state?)
• How many people are going to be hired, ultimately, to be in the IT Department? (I generally think one support person per seventy-five or fifty end users is a good ratio, if I can swing it. I always seem to support more than that, but it’s a goal!)
• What servers are they running? What do they all do?
• Where do those servers reside? (ie. On-prem or offsite data center or cloud)
• Are they ALL virtual? On what? If VMware, what version? What OS are the virtual machines running?
• What kind of physical host or hosts are the virtual machines on? Is it a cluster? Is there shared storage (ie a SAN)?
• If there is more than one site, how are the sites connected?
• How is email being handled now? On-prem Exchange? Hosted? Office 365?
• What is the IT budget currently? How do they expect to see that expand?
• Where is the main business headquarters? What’s the commute if I’m coming from [part of town where I live]?
• How have they handled COVID-19?
• What problem am I being hired to fix? Why are they looking for someone?
• What does the compensation look like? What are the benefits? Is there a 401k and how much matching is there? What does the health insurance look like? Is there a bonus structure and how is that determined?

Hopefully, I wouldn’t have to ask them all of the recruiter, since the job description would normally include some of this information. Also, these questions assume that I wouldn’t be relocating across the country. So far, one Redditor came up with just one additional question that I’d want to know the answer to; How often are performance reviews done and what does that process look like?

So, dear readers, what about you? Anything you typically want to know about a job before applying?

Advice from your Uncle Jim:
"It's better to keep one's mouth shut and be thought a fool than to open it and resolve all doubt."
   --Abraham Lincoln