IT/Software career thread: Invert binary trees for dollars.

Mine have been pretty serious and at least one had the person in the room with me

I havent taken a piss test in 10 fucking years..WTF this shit still happens for basic office jobs?

I even expected to take one when I started my current job...Was like "hey, where do I go pee in that cup?" on the first day. My boss then laughed heartily for like 3 minutes and said "If we drug tested, we wouldn't have any employees."

I work in a dev house, though.

As an aside; Just got back the approval to colo out to a datacenter, and a quarter million dollar equipment purchase. Biggest single purchase the company has ever made on internal equipment. They're banking on my move here being a success. Imma make it one.

Its fucking scary though; They saw me bring in a big chunk of cash handling and selling some one-off implementations and shit. Then I landed us an MSP contract.

Since then, they've been throwing fucking money at me (we have it, but no company stays in business form bad investments) to make a fucking department for me, hire people under me, and let me roll with shit. But this represents close to 300k in expenditure for this new offering; Something that projections say won't pay off immediately. Yet, the execs seem to have absolute fucking faith in this. I mean, I'm confident. I feel it can get done...But Jesus H. Christ there's a LOT of money on the line....A year ago I was hired as a support tech. This shit feels meteoric. I'm still in the "I make 40k" mindset. Even fucking seeing my paychecks is mind blowing...

Believe companies get insurance discounts if they test employees. Could be pulling that out of my sphincter though.

Aside for when I worked for the state of WA, I've always had piss tests and they've always been at some half assed lab where I was more worried my piss would get lost or mixed up with some heroin addicts. I've never enjoyed a drug enough to take it more than 1 or 2 times and they don't test for alcohol so I've never worried. I've pissed in condoms and shit for my pothead friends many times though and they always seem to pull it off and get the job.

The reason many office workers here get tested is "partnership" which is what most shops want to be partnered with their end client. Just like we were a partner to Exxon, they require all their suppliers/shops to be tested and such but it comes with a huge bonus. We got direct tie into their system where we generated invoices and they were normally paid in less than a week and never in years had one questioned. Didn't matter if it was cost plus, unit prices, or whatever they just paid and never questioned it. No bidding, just bill and get paid. That outweighs a lot of other issues.

But "random" is random but not really random. The company they contract out to come test will show up at the office and say "we're doing 5 test today" and the owner will pick 2 people he wants tested and the other 3 will come at random out of a list of employees.

Owners and office people overall are the ones in the 20 years I've seen it get hit hardest. They give you the option of going to treatment or whatever the first time. I've seen a fair number of owners and uppermanagement throw it away and most times it wasn't marijuana. Coke, heroin, you name it.

a_skeleton_03 said:

Supposedly they have to notify me 30 days ahead in writing before I can be drug tested ..,

What would be the point?

Weirdly like Cad I haven't done anything not prescribed and even those I usually give away.

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If it's a piss test it could be to determine if you are a habitual user. 30 days is largely enough time to clean your shit up and pass a piss test (hair test would look back about 3 months). Random testing with short notice IMO is a bit too invasive but do understand it's a companies right to establish whatever testing guidelines they want to use as long as they use them consistently.

Blood tests for suspicion of intoxication on the job. Piss test with a decent heads up if you want to make sure you don't have junkies working for you.

The company I work for is unforgiving for any violation, but you will only get tested if you are injured on the job (hair test before hiring). I tell my guys I could give two shits what they do in their own time but do not come to work altered and know that if you get hurt and are using that is your ass. Can't live people's life for them, but I'm not gonna say what a grown-assed person can or cannot do if they can perform their job.

Yeah here if there's a big accident and you were somehow involved they'll drug test and order a blood test for alcohol and shit

They sent out a big notice that even though weed is legal in MA it's still illegal federally so it's illegal at work. My boss said keep in mind they'll only test you if you fuck up and that was that

Anyone in defense do any side work or contracting? How do your companies feel about that?

LulzSect said:

Hoping to tap in for job hunting advice. So I'm in between consulting assignments. The firm I "work" for has only set me up with 2 interviews since the last assignment ended in Jan. I have since been applying to numerous places via dice.com, indeed.com, city jobs, gov't, etc. So yeah, I'm getting antsy about being out of work.

How have you found IT jobs? I'm somewhere between Senior Level Support and Systems Administrator.

Pls advise!

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What location? Do you know Linux? We're always hiring Linux peoples. In northern Virginia.

Noodleface said:

Anyone in defense do any side work or contracting? How do your companies feel about that?

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Some companies require that you get approval. It has to be reported to your security office. They can tell you they don't want you to, but their only recourse really is to fire you, so unless it is policy and you're a shit employee they'll probably do nothing. My experience has been that a lot of people do it and it is rarely an issue.

As long as your side work isn't defense related you'll have no problem. Even if it is, it's probably still doable as long as it's not on some contract your company is competing for.

On a side note, WSUS is a giant pile of shit. Even more so if you set it up in a disconnected environment. Time to do some reverse engineering.

Yeah place I used to work was running WSUS in a disconnected environment. Patching was a fucking circus.