Matt Blogs IT

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What do you DO?

I get this question almost daily. It seems like a very easy question to answer, but when it comes to a technical job it becomes much more challenging to answer. When I started working as a Support Technician it was pretty easy. I am the guy who fixes computers, pretty much everyone understands that; even the older people I told it to. I usually got a reply like β€œOH! You are the guy that hates when they see me calling.” This is always fun to laugh off and tell them nah I love hearing from you it means I have a job!

When you move from front line defense in computer disasters it became much more challenging. Usually the questions start out at with β€œWhere do you work?” The simple reply is I work at Apparatus, and I get another followup question β€œOh, what do they do?” This is where it starts getting tricky. I usually just answer we are an IT consulting and managed services company, I know it isn’t the friendliest reply but I’ve yet to come up with an easier way to explain it.

Then it gets to the really tricky part of β€œWhat do you do there?” Most people can simply reply with their job title like I used to. However when you say I am a Systems Analyst people get a really confusing look on their face. So you try to clear it up, but when it comes to managing a small web server that supports one website to a server farm of 12+ servers that run just a few websites it gets much more challenging.

There is no simple answer to what I do, but I can say pretty simply you know all those websites you visit online. Things like Facebook, Google, and YouTube. I manage the computers that run websites like those, the websites I manage aren’t quite as popular as those however they still have anywhere from a couple people visiting it daily to over 10,000 thousand people visiting it per day.

The sad part of the answers I can provide are just a small portion of my job. Making the servers work isn’t everything, it goes into creating the servers, to helping people work using the software on the server. I also spend a good chunk of times in meetings about new environments and even teaching people about the environments you know about.

Overall when you want to know what I do… just trust me when I say that what I do makes the world what it is today.

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