"I reached out to Kevin Mitnick yesterday..."
I never expected to hear something like that from anyone for whom I work.
I sometimes hate working with veterans and civilians who work with the military.
They use certain forms of English that just sounds so fucking stupid, I want to throttle them.
"I'll use the [Skype For Business] to facilitate at that time."
Seriously?
"We'll meet on Skype For Business" would have sufficed.
I'm not sure I care for people intending to facilitate me.
So I applied for two jobs, had very interesting interviews and I'd say both companies are a bit desperate to hire me, judging from various clues. Now I am undecided which offer to accept, so I am asking for some opinions of the resident veterans here.
Company a) has "linux system consultant" as job offer. Roughly 70 employees and maintains the server farms of engineering companies that need high performance computing. LSF, Grid Engine, etc.
37,5h/week, 30 paid holidays and a 13th salary. Job requires a few traveling days to clients' offices around the country. The office is rather functional and not really attractive. The boss seems to be 2-3 years older than me.
Company b) has "linux administrator" as job offer. About 10 employees (including the bosses), maintains the servers for some large banks. Syslog and splunk seem to be the main jobs to do.
40h/week, 30 paid holidays and a variable bonus at the end of the year. Job requires driving around in the region a bit. Option for a paid car. Office is more attractive and not so engineering-functional. The bosses seem to be 15-20 years older than me.
Both companies are about 20 years old, both seem to have dug into a market that offers secure future perspectives. Although both are connected to a renowned northern german car manufacturer. (Everything is in this region.)
Wether or not promotions are more likely in any of them, I am not sure. I can do the math on the wages myself, what I am asking you is:
What is your experience with similar company sizes, etc.? Or any other opinion.
Thanks.
:)
Company (a) looks like more of an adventure. A better pick if you're looking to have really satisfying work.
Company (b) looks to be a more solid long term prospect, but you could be a bit bored.
People who are creative and like to constantly learn new skills thrive in smaller companies, simply because there are more things coming down the wire that don't match to some existing employee in another silo who already has that skill.
I find it interesting that they're listing an info sec administration position as a linux administration one. That said - both Splunk and QRadar skills are exceptionally sought after in the InfoSec market right now (in fact, I'm seeking a SIEM consultant myself atm!) - and I do not see the need declining anytime soon. Both products are in growth at the moment, as well, so I agree with IG that if you want a long term prospect in information security the second would fulfill that better. The first one sounds like it has less travel....though that may be good or bad depending on your tastes.
The semantics of both job descriptions are a bit odd, indeed. Company b lists mosts employees as "system analyst" on Xing. That company is also more likely to be convinced of switching to Citadel :D
I talked to the boss of company a on the phone today and he wants to put me on a project where I do palladium level support for some IBM hardware that is used by aforementioned northern german car manufacturer. A team of 4 people sitting in the periphery of the manufacturing facility, far away from the mother company. 2nd level support, mostly phone and remote. It involves constant driving to that site, which is farther away than the mother company. And it sounds rather dull, with me being stuck in that project for as long as it runs. Probably very long. Anyway, they are sending me a contract to review.
Company b wants to put me on a fresh project, too. I did not see it as infosec, but now that you mention that... I also see it as more interesting and I would work at the mothership of the company, when not driving to a client's site for support. I also thought that the skill set which I can acquire there might be better suited to get another/better job in the future, if I ever want one.
Three other people told me to choose b, for reasons like "you can easily become indispensable", "it looks nicer" (I showed him the homepages), and "small companies have better christmas parties." I like the third reason. :)
Small companies... lack of money drives creativity. You work for a family as much as a business. Reduced process to focus on productivity. Politics reduced to a minimum.
Large companies... depends upon size of department. Everyone hates the part of the corporation outside your specific deparment, unless you have a large department, in which case they hate both that and the department head's office.
If you work for a small department that earns relatively little money to the rest of the company, you are in something like a small business, but with some of the problems of a large business. Lack of money, driving creativity, but with too much process to move quickly, so you pull sneaky tricks to work around the problem (and yet, get away with it, because you aren't important enough for them to ding you too hard).
Politics in a large department/company are enormous, ridiculous, and stupid. Avoid to the best degree you can.
Paychecks in a large deparment/company is more assured, and you are more likely to get your time off, as likely you are one of several people who can do the same job, so you aren't critical to anything. Unfortunately, your contributions probably won't matter as much, either, and you may not feel like your contributing anything of value... but hey... love that paycheck.
Large departments, you're likely to deal with people who are sucking off the company and not really contributing anything other than increasing the amount of process required to do anything because someone is trying to process to compensate for people not doing their job.
Heh.