I currently work for a health care underwriting company though truth be told I’m not exactly sure what that is. I am the IT Systems Specialist and have had that role for about 5 years now while I was previously an IT Technician for 4 years. My job usually consists of maintaining the network, managing the hardware, and assisting users with multiple issues though this description is very broad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I used to want to be a programmer but college sort of soured me when it came to programming. When I make programs for myself, it’s fun and I get to experiment but when I have to do it for a living, it takes all of the joy out of it. I sort of stumbled into doing more hardware, network, and software work as opposed to programming and found that I really enjoyed it. I remember a few years ago a co-worker asked me what job I was striving for and I told him that I already had it. It confused him since he was still trying to rise in the organization but I had already found what I wanted to do. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
When the previous IT Manager retired, they asked me if I was interested in the position. I told them that I wasn’t since it would be more bureaucracy and inter-office politics which I definitely wasn’t interested in. My position changed mostly in title and I became the IT Systems Specialist. The pandemic had two primary effects on my work which are both negative and positive. The first was that since everyone was working remotely, I had the entire office building to myself save a few people here and there so I got my preferred work environment. The downside was that the company decided to keep most people remote so that swapping out a mouse became a trial in itself to troubleshoot an issue over the phone, ship them the replacement hardware, and to maintain a more robust hardware tracking system. This sort of added complexity has become the norm throughout all aspects of my job.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We’ve started providing IT services to other organizations in the area and I have to say that so far it has been a headache to say the least. It increases the amount of bureaucracy once more since instead of swapping out a mouse, or shipping one, I have to put in multiple requisitions, justify the purchase, and even then they might be denied so the user ends up without a mouse making our company look bad. It’s very stressful and frustrating but I’m hoping that with time and a clearer understanding of the processes involved by the higher-ups, things will smooth out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I currently work for a health care underwriting company though truth be told I’m not exactly sure what that is. I am the IT Systems Specialist and have had that role for about 5 years now while I was previously an IT Technician for 4 years. My job usually consists of maintaining the network, managing … Continue reading Extra Credit Blog Post #1 – Current Job<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13794,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/derekinmancapstone\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/derekinmancapstone\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/derekinmancapstone\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/derekinmancapstone\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13794"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/derekinmancapstone\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/derekinmancapstone\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/derekinmancapstone\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28\/revisions\/31"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/derekinmancapstone\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/derekinmancapstone\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/derekinmancapstone\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}