10 things that would drive you out of IT

Some people assume that the world of PC support is a glamorous, Sheila E sort of life.
After all, it's technology, geeking out all day long. What's not to love? Famous last words.

For what seemed like an eternity, I served as a support tech for a managed service provider (MSP). Starting the job, I had no idea what I was getting into.
As the saying goes, "If I knew then what I know now…." Would I have stepped foot into the world of remote support? It's hard to say.
What is not so hard to say is why I eventually gave up being a support technician. In fact, I can give you 10 reasons why.

1: Stress

This is the number one reason why I left. If you've never experienced the levels of stress associated with managed service providers, you're in for a real treat. You have (possibly) hundreds of clients calling in all day to report their computers "aren't working." The queue lines up with people who can't get their work done because "you haven't fixed their problems." It's disaster management and triage all day and it never lets up.

2: Pay

The pay for an MSP engineer is not what you'd think it would be. I nearly exploded with laughter every time I heard a client say, "That's why you get paid the big bucks." I wanted to say, "You probably get paid more than I." But I refrained. Every time. The truth is, the pay just wasn't enough to offset the high levels of stress and frustration. It made more sense to move on.

3: Printers

Nearly half of what I did all day was fix printers. That's how I came to the conclusion that the very foundation of printing is broken. I never signed up to be a printer technician and would feel my blood boil every time I saw a support request come through that said, "My printers stopped printing!"

4: Ignorance

I hate to be one of "those people," even momentarily. Still, the levels of ignorance I dealt with on a daily basis were staggering. I was always professional, and I tried to be patient and kind. But fielding the same questions over and over — things as basic as, "What's a web browser?" — eventually wore me down.

5: Micromanaging

As a contract company, MSPs need their engineers working at 150 percent all day, every day, and each second must be accounted for and billed. So it's not surprising that they tend to micromanage the staff. Some people can handle this management technique. But it drove me mad to have someone breathing down my neck all day. There was also an avalanche of paperwork we had to do to ensure that we'd be covered in case of a disaster.

6: The pace

The world of PC support (especially of the remote flavor) can be boiled down to this: You have way too much to do, not enough time to do it, and not enough help to get it done. And as that workload piles up, you have angry clients who can't get their own work done. To accommodate this, you have to work at a pace you can't maintain for any length of time (which leads us back to #1: stress).

7: Windows

I've always been upfront about my opinion that Microsoft Windows is the reason tech support is so busy. I mentioned that half of my job was fixing printers. The other half seemed to be malware and viruses. Every day I fought the urge to blurt out, "If you used Linux or Mac, you wouldn't have these problems and you'd save a ton of money!" But I refrained. Every time. If you've experienced the stability and reliability of "the other platforms," you get this. You don't want to spend your day supporting Windows. You'd rather spend a portion of your day training users on another platform and watching them work happily ever after.

8: Multitasking madness

I am a multitasker. I often have two to three major tasks running at once. I'll be writing a tech piece, a work of fiction, and getting intense on social media. But the problem with working directly in IT is that you get your head buried in something you've been told is critical... only to be yanked from that task to do something like fix a printer for a CEO. You come back to the original task(s) and find your flow completely ruined and you're back to square one. This happens more often than not, and you lose a lot of work as a result.

9: The love of technology

It can be tricky when your work intersects with something you're passionate about. For me, technology is one such passion. But having to deal with tech issues (often caused by user-error or platform inadequacies) day in and day out was starting to ruin it. I even began to hate it. That caused serious problems for me, as I had to go home and toil away in front of a computer to create works of fiction, which is something that usually brings me great joy. It wasn't until I left the support industry that I regained my love for technology.

10: Burnout

There is no avoiding this. You will burn out. The pace and stress tend to remain neck and neck in the race to subvert your sanity. Working support will eventually take you down. And (at least for me), you'll find yourself carrying that stress home with you. You'll go through periods where that stress doesn't seem to want to wash down the drain and it turns you inside out. For me, that was too big a price to pay.

The last straw

Not every company and not every person is cut from the same cloth. There are those out there who will gladly tolerate what, in the end, sent me packing. I am also not pointing any fingers at any one company. Ultimately, the killing blow was my own lack of resilience and my inability to keep up with the choking pace of the managed service provider industry.

Pundits' predictions about data centers for 2015

Everything will be virtualized in data centers. This prediction is past conjecture. In 2014, I penned article after article describing how every facet of data-center infrastructure is or will soon be virtualized or software-defined. (Note: It seems those making predictions grouped virtualization and software-defined together under virtualization.)

If one were to prioritize the "things" in "everything," virtualizing networking infrastructure would top the list.

The IoT will impact data centers in a big way. This prediction is another gift to the pundits. Research firms Gartner andForrester have made, almost obscene, predictions about the growth of IoT devices. The fallout being a dramatic increase in information data centers will have to process and store.

There is one area of debate. Some feel large, centrally-located data centers will handle the influx. Others disagree saying smaller, closer to the "edge," and geographically-distributed data centers are required. Timeliness and network latency requirements will decide who is correct.

Data centers will both shrink and expand. This prediction, confusing as it is, simply means businesses with internal data centers are looking -- weighing the potential "issues" of transferring services off site against the benefits of less burden, less technology, and less staff -- to move existing services and or deploy new applications to the cloud. Colocation data-centers operators, who make up the cloud, are more than willing to absorb the services.

The bottom line: Services will shift from in-house data centers (shrinking) to commercial data centers (expanding).

Automating the data center. Automation is high on the wish list of data-center operators. The big three -- Apple, Google, and Facebook -- because of their in-house capabilities, have custom-built Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) systems in place. However, commercial operators, not having that luxury will make due with off-the-shelf DCIM systems.

Data centers must handle the four Vs of Big Data. The four Vs -- Volume, Variety, Velocity, and Veracity -- will impinge on commercial data-center operators in a big way.

Companies trying to address the four Vs are finding they have neither the space nor the money to build out internally and are looking to outsource. "The data center of the future will approach data as information services and view it through dashboards that enable efficient use of high-level, business-driven metrics," states this Hitachi Data Center report. "With the data center engine in place, organizations can better capitalize on increasingly expansive and complex data for faster and more advanced insight and innovation."

Modular data center design. Designers and architects who specialize in data centers are rethinking their construction methodology. Previously, data centers were designed with a 20-year life cycle in mind. Today, it is hard to fathom a data center remaining competitive that long without major rework every few years. That's why builders will increasingly think modular: from prefabricated components (power centers, cooling towers, backup generators, etc.) to entire data centers being "turnkey" modules.

Besides longevity, modular offers the following advantages:

• Quick project turnaround, and a simple way to scale.
• More efficient and standardized data centers: a significant benefit for commissioning and training employees.
• ● Turnkey data-center modules allow companies to react to market trends.

نصائح في إتكتيت التعامل مع الناس لتكوين علاقات ناجحة و مثمرة

عامل الآخرين دائماً بلطف واحترام

لاحظ الأمور الصغيرة التي قد تؤدي إلى إزعاج الآخرين لتجنب الغفلة عن ما يؤدي حتماً إلى ماهو أعظم 

تصرّف كما لو أن الناس من حولك لديهم احتياجات أكثر إلحاحا من حاجتك

أومئ برأسك كلما لمحت شخصاً تعرفه خاصة لما تجي العين بالعين، وابتسم، أو حتى قل مرحبا

الشيء الوحيد الذي يحق لنا هو ما نكسبه

مساعدة الآخرين تعود دائما عليك بالشعور بالرضا عن نفسك

لا تصّرْ على آرائك بإختراع حجج واهية

الناس يحبون أن يساعدوا الذي يهتم حقا في الآخرين، وليس في نفسه.

الناس يحبونك دائما عندما لا تتصرف وكأنك شخص مهم

إعلم متى يتطلب منك الوضع وقف إيجاد تبريرات لأفعالك و تصرفاتك

تندّر و أحكي النُكات عن الآخرين بحضورهم فقط عندما تعلم بأنه سوف تؤخذ بروح رياضية و إيجابية. و خلافاً لذلك إعمل نُكّات عن نفسك

لا تتباهى على الإطلاق. فقط لك أن تفخر بما أنجزت

ما يصلح لك قد لا يصلح لغيرك

10 Irritating Behaviors that Will Ruin Your Career

Linkedin- Jeff Haden

Talent, skill, education, experience -- all are important. But since no one does anything worthwhile on their own, treating other people with courtesy and respect is a key ingredient in long-term professional success.

Yet here's how some people get that really, really wrong:

1. They thoughtlessly waste other peoples' time.

When you're late to an appointment or meeting, what you're really saying is that your time is more important. When you wait until the grocery clerk finishes ringing you up to search for your debit card, you're really saying you can't care less if others have to wait.

Every time you take three minutes to fill your oversize water bottle while a line stacks up behind you, you're really saying you live in your own little world… and your world is the only world that matters.

Small, irritating things, but basically no big deal? Nope. People who don't notice the small ways they inconvenience others tend to be oblivious when they do it in major ways.

How you treat people when it doesn't really matter – especially when you're a leader-- says a lot about you. Behave as if the people around you have more urgent needs than yours and you will never go wrong… and you will definitely be liked.

2. They ignore people outside their "level."

There's an older guy at the gym that weigh over 300 pounds and understandably struggles on the aerobic and weight equipment. (Hats off to him; he's trying.)

Yet nobody talks to him. Or even seems to notice him. It's like he's invisible.

Why? He doesn't fit in.

Occasionally we all do it. When we visit a company we talk to the people we'resupposed to talk to. When we attend a civic event we talk to the people we'resupposed to talk to. Or breeze right by the technicians and talk to the guy who booked us to speak, even though the techs are the ones who make us look and sound good onstage. (Or maybe that -- fortunately used to -- just be me.)

Here's an easy rule of thumb: nod whenever you make eye contact. Or smile. Or (gasp!) even say hi. Just act like people exist.

We'll automatically like you for it -- and we'll remember you as someone who engages even when there's nothing in it for you.

3. They ask for way too much.

A guy you don't know asks you for a favor; a big, time-consuming favor. You politely decline. He asks again. You decline again. Then he whips out the Need Card: "But it's really important to me. You have to. I really need [it]."

Maybe we do, in fact, really need [it]. But our needs are our problems. The world doesn't owe us anything. We aren't entitled to advice or mentoring or success. The only thing we're entitled to is what we earn.

People tend to help people who first help themselves. People tend to help people who first help them.

And people definitely befriend people who look out for other people first, because we all want more of those people in our lives.

4. They ignore people in genuine need.

At the same time, some people aren't in a position to help themselves. They need a hand: a few dollars, some decent food, or a warm coat.

Though I don't necessarily believe in karma, I do believe good things always come back to you in the form of feeling good about yourself.

And that's reason enough to help people who find themselves on the downside of advantage.

5. They ask a question so they can talk.

A guy at lunch asks, "Hey, do you think social-media marketing is effective?"

"Well," you answer, "I think under the right circumstances..."

"Wrong," he interrupts. "I've never seen a return on investment. I've never seen a bump in direct sales. Plus 'awareness' is not a measurable or even an important goal...." And he drones on while you desperately try to escape.

Don't shoehorn in your opinions under false pretenses. Only ask a question if you genuinely want to know the answer. And when you do speak again, ask a follow-up question that helps you better understand the other person's point of view.

People like people who are genuinely interested in other people, not in themselves.

6. They pull a, "Do you know who I am?"

OK, so maybe they don't take it to the Reese Witherspoon level, but many people whip out some form of the "I'm Too Important for This" card.

Maybe the line is too long. Or the service isn't sufficiently "personal." Or they aren't shown their "deserved" level of respect.

Say you really are somebody. People always like you better when you don't act like you know you're somebody -- or that you think it entitles you to different treatment.

7. They don't know when to dial it back.

An unusual personality is a lot of fun… until it isn't. Yet when the going gets tough or a situation gets stressful, some people just can't stop "expressing their individuality."

We know you're funny. We know you're quirky. We know you march to the beat of your own drum. Still, there's a time to play and a time to be serious, a time to be irreverent and a time to conform, a time to challenge and a time to back off.

Knowing when the situation requires you to stop justifying your words or actions with an unspoken, "Hey, that's just me being me," is the difference between beinglikeable and being an ass.

8. They mistake self-deprecation for permission.

You know how it's OK when you make fun of certain things about yourself… but not for other people to make fun of you for those same things? Like receding hairlines, or weight, or your spouse and kids, or a struggling career.

It's OK when you poke a little gentle fun at yourself, but the last thing you want to hear are bald or money or, "Do you want fries with that?" jokes. (Bottom line: I can say I'm fat. You can't.)

Sometimes self-deprecation is genuine, but it's often a mask for insecurity. Never assume a person who makes fun of himself is giving you permission to poke the same fun at him.

Only tease when you know it will be taken in the right spirit. Otherwise, if you feel the need to be funny, make fun of yourself.

9. They humblebrag.

Humblebragging is a form of bragging that tries to cover the brag with a veneer of humility so you can brag without appearing to brag. (Key word is "appearing," because it's still easy to tell humblebraggers are quite tickled with themselves.)

For example, here's a tweeted humblebrag from actor Stephen Fry: "Oh dear. Don't know what to do at the airport. Huge crowd, but I'll miss my plane if I stop and do photos... oh dear don't want to disappoint."

No one wants to hear how stressed you are about your upcoming TED Talk. No one wants to hear how hard it is to maintain two homes. Before you brag -- humbly or not, business or personal -- think about your audience. A gal who is a size 14 doesn't want to hear you complain that normally you're a size 2 but you're a size 4 in Prada because Prada sizes run large.

Or better yet, don't brag at all. Just be proud of what you've accomplished. Let others brag for you.

If you've done cool things, they will.

10. They push their opinions.

You know things. Cool things. Great things.

Awesome. But only share them in the right settings. If you're a mentor, share away. If you're a coach or a leader, share away. If you're the guy who just started a paleo diet… please don't tell us all what to order – unless we ask.

What's right for you may not be right for others. Shoot, what you think is right for you might not even turn out to be right for you.