Ex-IT Manager seeking a new opportunity

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fragtion

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Hi

I'm an ex-IT manager (focused on Sysadmin & Netadmin tasks). Previous employment was with a reputable brand-name SME for over 12 years. Self-trained (no formal qualifications)

Ideally looking for part time or consultancy/freelance work, but open to short-to-medium term formal/full-time employment as well. Based in Roodepoort/West Rand.

I would consider myself passionate and competent with the following:
  • Linux/Unix, and Windows operating systems
  • MikroTik, Ubiquiti router configuration
  • File Synchronization and File Sharing setups (Syncthing, Resilio, NextCloud, OwnCloud; rsync/unison/rclone/lftp)
  • Site-to-Site / Long-range microwave links (veteran JAWUG member) & HAM radio enthusiast
  • Remote Administration, Off-site monitoring & management
  • Systems Monitoring / Graphing, Dashboard solutions (MRTG, RRDTool, Grafana & InfluxDB, CGP)
  • Virtualization of Physical servers (ESXi and Proxmox), moderate experience with Containers (LXC & Docker variants, kubernetes)
  • NAS Setup/configuration (FreeNAS & Open Media Vault)
  • Scheduled off-site backups
  • HTML4 (& JavaScript/jQuery), PHP & MySQL/MariaDB web-based app development
  • E-mail server deployment & hosting (postfix & dovecot) including cloud clustering, shared mailboxes/folders, flexible wildcard and aliasing options
  • Outlook POP3 to IMAP or vice-versa migrations, PST/OST data recovery, migrating mail between service providers or to/from cloud-based solutions like Gmail and Outlook365
  • System, Networking/Wi-Fi optimization, Malware removal / dealing with unwanted browser popups
  • Computer & Laptop upgrades, servicing and repairs
  • Hard drive data recovery, drive cloning & SSD migrations
  • Laptop loose screen/hinge repairs
  • Driver updates for printers and other hardware
  • ADSL/Fibre router/modem setup, telephone line diagnosis and optimization/repair
  • BIOS updates, failed BIOS recovery, Raspberry pi project development
  • Also passionate about solar/wind renewable energy systems, Electronics, Electrical, battery chemistry & battery storage (power walls, inverters, etc)
And more

If you think we could work together or someone might need what I have to offer, in exchange for helping me survive impending ANC/Covid-induced financial doom, kindly DM me
 
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I think you meant HTML5 and HTML4?

Can I ask a question, besides the technical stuff, what business facing stuff did you do?

Everyone keeps on harping about the value IT adds to business , so if you were the IT Manager then you should have been doing this in any case I think working at an SME (not the usual tech / application support , which we all live with) .

My recommendation is to sell that value adding bit more than your technical chops . Speaking as IT Manager where I am super technical (bcos I love it) but just don't choose to sell the technical skills but rather sell the the way I can use IT and services to help the business deliver on their needs whether it's sales ,.marketing , BD, etc

Good luck
 
Of course, you may choose not to deal with users, and be technical so that's cool too. I know i am having a hard time getting my sysadmin to think big picture , and not only of nuts and bolts . She prefers not to.

Each to their own, but in her case, she will be out of a job here in two years as everything is being centralised onto cloud with third party partner managing technical bits and support. We are losing all control incl for example the ability to reset a password.

Not my decision personally but a global IT decision in the multinational I work at to go in this direction. So in this case, either she leaves to continue doing the same job she does elsewhere, or adapt to be more business focused (which she can do if she puts her mind to it and my job as manager to encourage) working on new types of needs coming in from business and using the tools / services at our disposal to build the solutions
 
Not yet too proficient in HTML5 (moreso the "transitional spec"), which is why I specified HTML4. Not a typo Just want to be clear about what I can and can't do technically at this stage

Honestly, IT manager was just the title... I was a 1-man show/department, handling all IT related work (talking about a 30-man business here including all warehouse/labour personnel) -- from cleaning/servicing printers and refilling toners....dusting out and upgrading old desktops, developing new web systems for things like barcode scanning or interfaces to legacy ERP systems to facilitate e-commerce expansion, implementing biometrics, transitioning from ADSL to fibre and all the headache that came with that (coverage, budget, etc), deploying and maintaining the wifi and telephony/switchboard, and CCTV networks, to building the company website (including the multimedia aspect, photographing & photo-shopping thousands of product photos etc) and helping the rest of the staff with day-to-day crap like their Excel, E-mail, and malware removal. So, very broad and generalized. In a sense I aim to move away from that kind of mundane and non-specific environment, and would prefer to join a more technically oriented team and develop/offer my skills in that kind of more psychologically-rewarding direction, than be that solitary "IT guy" who gets shoved into the smallest office in the building and is expected to do everything from putting up a projector and setting up Skype conference calls, to ordering a new laptop for the new sales rep that's starting next week.... Trust me, I was busy regardless... "Pulled from pillar to post", by my boss's own admission ^_^. I feel I have served my time as a "junior techie kid" well, and would now like to head in a more "professional" & specialized direction. I believe that I have the talent and skills to achieve this, even if it means I'll need to accomplish it alone in the end...

In fact, without meaning to allude to my own ego or perceived indispensability, really unless they had someone else highly competent lined up already who is as selflessly prepared to sacrifice and naively bow to every demand that I did, then I'm really not sure what in their right mind made them rationally believe that they could afford to dismiss me as I was single-handedly holding up their business from an IT perspective and can only wonder how they are even managing right now, especially in these difficult times... Perhaps that's what scared them off - the fact that they realized how much they depended on me at the time. Virtually everything was built from the ground up and unfortunately due to lack of spare time, very little was documented. There was no budget for IT, everything had to be approved by a stingy financial director, to the point that I was forced into doing a host of practices that would be deemed crazy by corporate/auditing standards, such as re-purposing desktop machines for server use. It goes without saying that most of the equipment was consumer-grade. I'll stop there because it does get worse, let's just say from a software licensing perspective....

So while I do in a sense enjoy being a jack of all trades, I believe I'd prefer something a little more specific/concentrated, even if just for the added peace of mind (focused environment, conducive to more meaningful productivity) that I'd expect from that... maybe work in a data center building racks or monitoring systems at the NoC, or for an ISP, for instance. In that sense, I would rather list my technical expertise than try punt how I could add more generalized IT value to any other ordinary business from a management perspective, but, if someone out there is looking for a general techie to take on a dynamic variety of tasks, I'll take that too right now, as I'm pretty desperate for any kind of employment right now. heck, I'm even prepared to try work for a TV/appliance repair shop, DSTV installation team, or as a plumber/electrician's assistant... I totally do appreciate your advice though and will consider making some changes to my advert ASAP to reflect some of your suggestions

As for your colleague being cloud-centric, I'd say I'm the complete opposite. Sure I'm happy to leverage the cloud for things like encrypted offsite backups, and other high-availability/distributed applications, but apart from that, I am old-school and prefer to keep all systems in-house as far as possible. I'd rather run a localised E-mail server than have the business operate on Office 365 or GApps, for instance. Maybe that will shift in time with global trends, and I am always trying to weigh out the benefits of both approaches, but for the most part, I still see the cloud as a gimmick/shortcut for pseudo "sysadmins" who seemingly don't have either the drive, knowledge, or resources to deploy an effective in-house solution, which as you say, they'd have complete control over... not to mention the privacy security as well, which should frankly be in any legitimate corporate's interest anyway if you ask me

Apologies for essentially spilling a rambling diatribe about my life, but I hope/trust that this will help add some more practical context/perspective about where I stand, and what type of person I am, in some sense better than any CV ever could ;)
 
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fragtion said:
Not yet too proficient in HTML5 (moreso the "transitional spec"), which is why I specified HTML4. Not a typo Just want to be clear about what I can and can't do technically at this stage

Honestly, IT manager was just the title... I was a 1-man show/department, handling all IT related work (talking about a 30-man business here including all warehouse/labour personnel) -- from cleaning/servicing printers and refilling toners....dusting out and upgrading old desktops, developing new web systems for things like barcode scanning or interfaces to legacy ERP systems to facilitate e-commerce expansion, implementing biometrics, transitioning from ADSL to fibre and all the headache that came with that (coverage, budget, etc), deploying and maintaining the wifi and telephony/switchboard, and CCTV networks, to building the company website (including the multimedia aspect, photographing & photo-shopping thousands of product photos etc) and helping the rest of the staff with day-to-day crap like their Excel, E-mail, and malware removal. So, very broad and generalized. In a sense I aim to move away from that kind of mundane and non-specific environment, and would prefer to join a more technically oriented team and develop/offer my skills in that kind of more psychologically-rewarding direction, than be that solitary "IT guy" who gets shoved into the smallest office in the building and is expected to do everything from putting up a projector and setting up Skype conference calls, to ordering a new laptop for the new sales rep that's starting next week.... Trust me, I was busy regardless... "Pulled from pillar to post", by my boss's own admission ^_^. I feel I have served my time as a "junior techie kid" well, and would now like to head in a more "professional" & specialized direction. I believe that I have the talent and skills to achieve this, even if it means I'll need to accomplish it alone in the end...

In fact, without meaning to allude to my own ego or perceived indispensability, really unless they had someone else highly competent lined up already who is as selflessly prepared to sacrifice and naively bow to every demand that I did, then I'm really not sure what in their right mind made them rationally believe that they could afford to dismiss me as I was single-handedly holding up their business from an IT perspective and can only wonder how they are even managing right now, especially in these difficult times... Perhaps that's what scared them off - the fact that they realized how much they depended on me at the time. Virtually everything was built from the ground up and unfortunately due to lack of spare time, very little was documented. There was no budget for IT, everything had to be approved by a stingy financial director, to the point that I was forced into doing a host of practices that would be deemed crazy by corporate/auditing standards, such as re-purposing desktop machines for server use. It goes without saying that most of the equipment was consumer-grade. I'll stop there because it does get worse, let's just say from a software licensing perspective....

So while I do in a sense enjoy being a jack of all trades, I believe I'd prefer something a little more specific/concentrated, even if just for the added peace of mind (focused environment, conducive to more meaningful productivity) that I'd expect from that... maybe work in a data center building racks or monitoring systems at the NoC, or for an ISP, for instance. In that sense, I would rather list my technical expertise than try punt how I could add more generalized IT value to any other ordinary business from a management perspective, but, if someone out there is looking for a general techie to take on a dynamic variety of tasks, I'll take that too right now, as I'm pretty desperate for any kind of employment right now. heck, I'm even prepared to try work for a TV/appliance repair shop, DSTV installation team, or as a plumber/electrician's assistant... I totally do appreciate your advice though and will consider making some changes to my advert ASAP to reflect some of your suggestions

As for your colleague being cloud-centric, I'd say I'm the complete opposite. Sure I'm happy to leverage the cloud for things like encrypted offsite backups, and other high-availability/distributed applications, but apart from that, I am old-school and prefer to keep all systems in-house as far as possible. I'd rather run a localised E-mail server than have the business operate on Office 365 or GApps, for instance. Maybe that will shift in time with global trends, and I am always trying to weigh out the benefits of both approaches, but for the most part, I still see the cloud as a gimmick/shortcut for pseudo "sysadmins" who seemingly don't have either the drive, knowledge, or resources to deploy an effective in-house solution, which as you say, they'd have complete control over... not to mention the privacy security as well, which should frankly be in any legitimate corporate's interest anyway if you ask me

Apologies for essentially spilling a rambling diatribe about my life, but I hope/trust that this will help add some more practical context/perspective about where I stand, and what type of person I am, in some sense better than any CV ever could ;)
Click to expand...


Yup, been there done that , and to this day still get lumped with solving an issue if there is a power attached and they can't find another IT person even if it is not IT related. Personally done with that. Thankfully, we have the proper budgets and while finances are paramount, am a senior member of the management team so there weight (and bite!) to my role.

They were brave to let you go considering you were the Single Point of failure for them. I always maintained - lack of documentation is considered job security :cool: . They should have got someone to be an appi for you first. Anyway, they will row what they seep.

Cloud is the future, whether we like it or not. Check out the Amazon jobs in CT. You can work from home in JHB .. https://mybroadband.co.za/news/busi...e-are-the-new-jobs-you-can-apply-for-now.html. I was looking at them yesterday, when I was asking myself if I should go back into a purely technical role without all the management bits :D
 
fragtion said:
Not yet too proficient in HTML5 (moreso the "transitional spec"), which is why I specified HTML4. Not a typo Just want to be clear about what I can and can't do technically at this stage

Honestly, IT manager was just the title... I was a 1-man show/department, handling all IT related work (talking about a 30-man business here including all warehouse/labour personnel) -- from cleaning/servicing printers and refilling toners....dusting out and upgrading old desktops, developing new web systems for things like barcode scanning or interfaces to legacy ERP systems to facilitate e-commerce expansion, implementing biometrics, transitioning from ADSL to fibre and all the headache that came with that (coverage, budget, etc), deploying and maintaining the wifi and telephony/switchboard, and CCTV networks, to building the company website (including the multimedia aspect, photographing & photo-shopping thousands of product photos etc) and helping the rest of the staff with day-to-day crap like their Excel, E-mail, and malware removal. So, very broad and generalized. In a sense I aim to move away from that kind of mundane and non-specific environment, and would prefer to join a more technically oriented team and develop/offer my skills in that kind of more psychologically-rewarding direction, than be that solitary "IT guy" who gets shoved into the smallest office in the building and is expected to do everything from putting up a projector and setting up Skype conference calls, to ordering a new laptop for the new sales rep that's starting next week.... Trust me, I was busy regardless... "Pulled from pillar to post", by my boss's own admission ^_^. I feel I have served my time as a "junior techie kid" well, and would now like to head in a more "professional" & specialized direction. I believe that I have the talent and skills to achieve this, even if it means I'll need to accomplish it alone in the end...

In fact, without meaning to allude to my own ego or perceived indispensability, really unless they had someone else highly competent lined up already who is as selflessly prepared to sacrifice and naively bow to every demand that I did, then I'm really not sure what in their right mind made them rationally believe that they could afford to dismiss me as I was single-handedly holding up their business from an IT perspective and can only wonder how they are even managing right now, especially in these difficult times... Perhaps that's what scared them off - the fact that they realized how much they depended on me at the time. Virtually everything was built from the ground up and unfortunately due to lack of spare time, very little was documented. There was no budget for IT, everything had to be approved by a stingy financial director, to the point that I was forced into doing a host of practices that would be deemed crazy by corporate/auditing standards, such as re-purposing desktop machines for server use. It goes without saying that most of the equipment was consumer-grade. I'll stop there because it does get worse, let's just say from a software licensing perspective....

So while I do in a sense enjoy being a jack of all trades, I believe I'd prefer something a little more specific/concentrated, even if just for the added peace of mind (focused environment, conducive to more meaningful productivity) that I'd expect from that... maybe work in a data center building racks or monitoring systems at the NoC, or for an ISP, for instance. In that sense, I would rather list my technical expertise than try punt how I could add more generalized IT value to any other ordinary business from a management perspective, but, if someone out there is looking for a general techie to take on a dynamic variety of tasks, I'll take that too right now, as I'm pretty desperate for any kind of employment right now. heck, I'm even prepared to try work for a TV/appliance repair shop, DSTV installation team, or as a plumber/electrician's assistant... I totally do appreciate your advice though and will consider making some changes to my advert ASAP to reflect some of your suggestions

As for your colleague being cloud-centric, I'd say I'm the complete opposite. Sure I'm happy to leverage the cloud for things like encrypted offsite backups, and other high-availability/distributed applications, but apart from that, I am old-school and prefer to keep all systems in-house as far as possible. I'd rather run a localised E-mail server than have the business operate on Office 365 or GApps, for instance. Maybe that will shift in time with global trends, and I am always trying to weigh out the benefits of both approaches, but for the most part, I still see the cloud as a gimmick/shortcut for pseudo "sysadmins" who seemingly don't have either the drive, knowledge, or resources to deploy an effective in-house solution, which as you say, they'd have complete control over... not to mention the privacy security as well, which should frankly be in any legitimate corporate's interest anyway if you ask me

Apologies for essentially spilling a rambling diatribe about my life, but I hope/trust that this will help add some more practical context/perspective about where I stand, and what type of person I am, in some sense better than any CV ever could ;)
Click to expand...
My dude

This sounds like a carbon copy of what I did in my last job.

And then after 3.5 years I flipped them two middle fingers, packed my **** and I was outta there.

Moral: Never give up, never stop looking, never stop trying. Your opportunity is out there.
 
Really appreciate the support and encouragement gents. Helps to know that there are people who can relate with an experience that could otherwise be interpreted as pretty weird or obscure, even by my own admission & eccentric standards...lol XD

Cheers! :cool: Here's to looking forward to & hoping for the best outcome
 
FrankyF said:
Hey man, just checking in, how are you doing? Have you found something?

@fragtion
Click to expand...
Sup Franky !

Am doing good, thanks for asking (and for following up!) =) ... how things going your side?

Job-wise, my search for now continues! I'm using the free time to sort out my CV/LinkedIn, and catch up on some training... I plan to start responding to/applying for some posts soon... Hoping for the best :laugh::laugh: Please keep me in mind if you hear of anything ;)
 
@fragtion, just a suggestion.

Have you tried Upwork?

I'm currently freelancing on Upwork and Fiverr. Currently still working on creating a constant income but its least something to keep everything else going.

There is a bunch of stuff people do on these websites and I think some of your skills could be useful on there
 
Pop me a DM if you still looking for something, we a consulting company and looking for someone
 
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