• ilinamorato@lemmy.world
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    29 days ago

    I’ve only ever met two types of IT professional. Either:

    • Their home network is immaculate and smooth as butter. It connects quickly and integrates with everything. They can manage it all from their phone, but they don’t have to because it’s all automated. Their server room (a) exists and (b) is cable managed. There’s a wireless access point and connected smart speaker in every room, including the garage and the back patio, but they’re carefully located for maximum sound coverage and to prevent signal interference. Their home theater is substantially better than a movie theater, and their media server is packed to the gills with content. Network security is hardened, with bespoke subnets for every user and tunneling for the media server and smart home functions. You feel a sense of calm and ease when connected to their network. “Everything I do at work, I try out at home first.”

    Or:

    • Their “home network” is a single Belkin router from 2011. They’ve had it since college, and it takes 9 minutes to reboot (which they have to do daily). It doesn’t even have Tomato on it and still uses the default password. They still watch OTA TV and Blu-Rays, so the wifi is exclusively connected to the smart switch that their tea kettle is plugged into so they can start their hot water before they come downstairs. You feel guilty even asking for the wifi password. “Why would I do any network stuff here? I do IT all day at work, the last thing I want to do is even touch a Cat5 cable at home.”
      • tempest@lemmy.ca
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        29 days ago

        Nah, I could afford nice shit but I’m still using a ubiquity edge router 8 from 10 years ago.

        There is probably something to be said that there is an in between to those two extremes. The “my network is made of a Hodgepodge of shit my employer threw out that still seems to work and brand new things I replaced because I had to”

        • ilinamorato@lemmy.world
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          28 days ago

          My first draft of this did mention that there was a version of the second type of IT guy who cobbled everything together with workplace castoffs and conference swag, but I couldn’t figure out how to make it work without just being over-wordy.

      • TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world
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        29 days ago

        No, it’s 'my life is IT and i never stop working" guy, and “IT is just my job” guy.

        I just order a new router on Black Friday to replace my 10 year old one. I also only console game now because PC gaming is too much of a headache. I spend my money on outdoor gear and pets, not technology. My new router is $90 bucks. I can’t fathom why I’d ever need a wifi 7 quad band router with 9Gbps of throughput for a home network, other than pure bragging rights. All my devices are like 5-10 years old and barely support wifi 6 anyway.

        A couple of my co-workers are the former. They will be doing penetration testing at 2am form their home lab in the morning because they their default mode is work work work. If i’m up at 2 am i’m watching TV and snacking.

        I monitor security updates, but my co-workers like get excited and ramble on anytime a new patch/attack is documented. I don’t get it. They revel in doing updates and rebuilding their VMs fresh every few weeks, I groan and clone.

    • marcos@lemmy.world
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      29 days ago

      “Everything I do at work, I try out at home first.”

      Absolutely no fucking way! And anything that touches work is isolated, their opsec sucks so much they didn’t even realized they mandate “security solutions” with known backdoors.

      • SleeplessCityLights@programming.dev
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        29 days ago

        I think it means they setup new tech on their homelab to learn how everything works and how to break it. Then when a problem arises where one of these solutions is needed at work, you can implement it without any large issues. It makes sense if your hobby is close to or adjacent your day job, and you are on Salary, and your boss treats you right.

        • marcos@lemmy.world
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          29 days ago

          Yes, I’m not doing almost any of the things we do at work in my network.

          I’m absolutely not running the same software. I’m not organizing the information the same way. I’m not using the same infrastructure abstraction, and even less configuring it in any similar way. I’m not writing the same languages.

          The work environment is dictated by consensus between many people, with varying expertise, and weighted by how much work one is willing to put into each aspect of it. Each of those parts lead to bad tech, even though they lead to good people organization.