The positive side to working in IT within schools.

[pcstru]

Only just noticed....................

Necromancy!!! Had me fooled too.

[aleach2]

I really enjoy working in Schools. I am fortunate to work in a school which supports me, has great staff and little real pressure. It pays pretty good too.

 

School trips for me are a great perk. Off to Iceland in October, London in a week and probably going skiing next year. Can't beat it. Being able to listen to some interesting guest speakers is cool too. Never too old to learn. Getting involved with sport and events are fun.

 

Can think of a lot of worse places to work. Don't get me wrong I have days when I think why do I do it. They aren't very often though

[Mullaney18]

I took my mini bus test to help the school out now and again, I was taken out for the day last Friday to take Nursery to a butterfly sanctuary, then we went to a park and had ice creams. At one point I probably had 15 nursery kids standing on my back. Great day!

[GRitchie]

Been working in schools now since 2013 (the year I left school - started as an apprentice).

I'm now a Network Manager at a small secondary school. The speed of which I have progressed 'through the ranks' is phenomenal IMO!

 

Schools are interesting places of work, to say the least. We all have our good and bad days, but I don't think a day goes by when you walk through the corridor and don't hear a student say something absolutely hilarious.

Students that are interested in ICT etc. are my favourite. They remind me of my eager days as a year 9 student, where I used to go to the IT Support office to ask what a Domain Controller Forest was...

 

I'm having a tough time at the moment, taking on my new role, enforcing changes to the system; security and policies. But I feel as soon as I've got this year under my belt, things will get easier (I mean, they have to - right?).

Causing me a significant amount of stress, unlike my previous role as a tech. But then again, now being a decision maker comes with its pressure. Again, I hope it will ease over time!

I imagine most workplaces give you a bit of a rough first year, to check you're capable of keeping up with the demands of the job!

 

To reiterate the things others have said, the freedom to do whatever you like/whenever you like (within reason) is just brilliant. The fact that one minute I can be plugging in a VGA cable for a member of staff who can't project, to then managing users on a domain controller is quite comical when you think about it. The variety and the challenges are what have kept me going I think.

 

 

tl;dr - schools are incredibly diverse workplaces.

[AuXDubz]

I like when the students are away from the school and it is nice and quite and you can get to play with new eqiupment

 

Agreed best time to work in a educational site is when the students are away!

[Koldov]

Once again it rises from the dead......

 

Outstanding work resurrecting this 8 year old thread.

 

Necromancy!!! Had me fooled too.

 

But what the heck, I'm up for it!

 

Cake...

Edited April 26, 2018 by Koldov

[Lonix]

 

An entire network which is yours!

The chance to gain experience far beyond that of a corporate helpdesk idiot.

A fair degree of autonomy.

 

What else can we add?

 

I'd agree with them.

 

Career progression is good from junior technician > network manager.

Down time of half terms - how many other places get effectively shutdown periods

I enjoy DYI jobs where we get our hands dirty or plan big projects as network manager

The days are rarely the same

[mikes]

my old job in an ISP Helldesk callcentre - solid, non stop talking/arguing for 8:30 solid hours a day, 8am - 5:30pm.

Normal corporate holidays; heartbreaking when you have a week off as you feel bad if you haven't done something special during every day off because you know you'll be waiting a long time for your next holiday. it meant that during a week off, I could only really enjoy upto Wednesday as on Thurs I'd be worrying about going back to work in a few days.

no chance to take a break and a sit down for 10 mins if you needed it, as the calls come in automatically and there is nothing you can do about it. always stressing there will be a shouter or an idiot every time you hear the incoming call "Beep". eventually you hear that Beep in your dreams.

All this for minimum wage; people actually looked forward to getting a job at the Aldi's / Lidl's across the road, someone who got in to Lidl's was called a "lucky bastard" that is how bad the place was.

no help if you couldn't fix a customers problems. you'd never admit to not being able to fix a customers problems as it made you look foolish, instead you learned to lie to the customer to fob them off the line; when they called back they were someone else's problem.

 

 

still it gave me the needed 6 months experience working; so I got into the School next.

= over £6000 more a year, doing 8-4 instead of 8-5:30. having almost 10 WEEKS MORE off a year. teenage boys who are more polite and better to be around than any of the "it's your problem mate, don't waste my browsing autotrader time" managers at that ISP.

having your own office here, when at the ISP I didn't even have my own desk or computer.

tbh when I got my job here I was amazed at how petty the things were that the staff here complained about. they would have been laughed out of any private sector job I've had

 

but tbh having the summer off spoils me in a way. I need a higher paying job than Technician due to the housing bubble, but working through the summer when it is a nice day outside just feelsbadman. I remember being so depressed in the callcentre, being stuck inside that dingy place (it had tinted windows, so on a really nice hot summers day, if you could even see outside the tints made it look dull and gray) - all my blue collar friends out in the sun and me stuck in there being shouted at all day

Edited April 26, 2018 by mikes

[Andrew_C]

I was about to reply, when I read this...

In a school I could have a classroom of full of the latest Vista Quad-cores in one room and Win'98 Pentium-III's in the next.

ahhh... the thread has risen from the dead!

 

Still, not BEING a teacher helps...

[spacebar]

Working in schools there is always something going on, you have a massive (most secondary schools) site to look after, whoever you are tech or manager. People are very nice to you (most of the time) because they just want you to fix things. People are much more easier going about getting things fixed, as long as you are doing a decent enough job.

 

As a tech starting out you have much more opportunity to get involved in systems and see how things work. At many large corporations this isn't the case.

 

Most teachers and school staff in any school, normally fall into certain types of people, most of them are nice. I have encountered some real nasty people, but these people never seem to last long, a school is a community, it doesn't matter what level you are at, if you are nasty to people, in the end it will lead to your own downfall. One guy I knew thought he was important, he wasn't, but treated everyone like trash, nobody wanted to deal with him, teachers were afraid of him, everything seized up, it begun to effect the school teaching, suddenly he was gone....... I am sure in some schools these types of people manage to stay put, but in the end, it will come back to bite them. In a business, I am sure these people would have no problem staying put!

 

Having worked in the private sector, in an office, I would never go back, I hated it, even though the pay was much higher. Unfortunately I need more cash, so may well have to find a compromise, universities seem the best bet......

Edited April 28, 2018 by spacebar