RE: [WinMac] Studies on cost of Macs/PCs in offices???

Pierce, Ian(PierceI[at]stripes.osd.mil)
Wed, 16 Sep 1998 15:40:16 -0400

Well I'll throw in my two cents on this one.

I had a job as a mac network administrator for a small office LAN in a big
office building. It was pretty easy and the pay wasn't bad for what was,
for me, an entry-level position.

The company that hired me had to look for FIVE MONTHS to get someone for the
job, and when they did find me it was through some headhunter, who pocketed
15% of my salary just for finding me.

My point is that there aren't a lot of guys out there to support the Mac end
of the network. In my current job, in an IS department of five, I am the
only one who can troubleshoot mac problems; heck I'm the only one who cares
about mac problems. I was considering a different job, supporting some
holdout mac executives on a Novell LAN, and that position is still unfilled
5 months later.

So, decent mac techs are hard to find. Plus, with no MCSE-style
certification system, you have to rely on asking the right questions of
candidates for the job to make sure they know what they are doing. I refer
to my postings in newsgroups and on Experts Exchange when looking for work
since it seems to be the only way to really demonstrate that I have a clue.
And I show them the latest issue of MacAddict in my backpack :-)

On the other hand, I am completely self-taught in my Mac knowledge, starting
with some guys down the hall my first year of college who had a IIci and
IIsi, back when the IIfx was top dog. ResEdit, Norton Disk Editor, and
hacking the computer room security software became my goals, and that's how
I've learned. Plus the mac is significantly easier to comprehend than Win9x
or WinNT, so there's more room for do-it-yourselfers to find careers there.

Now, I will say that when I left that job, I gave them plenty of notice
since I knew how hard it would be to find someone. As it turned out, they
had someone in under a month, so maybe it's not really that hard to find
someone. But there simply just aren't as many people knowledgeable in the
Mac, and that's a factor I'd consider when thinking of my LAN and the legacy
you will pass on to the next lucky Administrator.

Lastly, I really hate writing all this. I love my Mac. I hate that MCSE
guys are unwilling to learn MacOS, but with an ever-dwindling market share
why would anyone but a real mac lover bother mastering that one-button mouse
and sad attempt at multitasking?

ian

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This archive was generated by hypermail 2.0b2 on Wed Sep 16 1998 - 12:48:27 PDT