Can someone with an IT job please answer these questions?

Question

For my high school technology class, I'm supposed to interview someone who works in the IT field. Unfortunately, I don't know anyone that fulfills the requirements of the assignment. Here is the list of questions:

1. Personal information (employee name, employer name, workplace address, work telephone number, job title, number of years on current job, years of computer experience).

2. What kind of computer system(s) do you use (hardware, software, printers, other related equipment)?

3. What kind of training have you received in order to use the computer system effectively? Do you find the IT Technical Staff in your firm to be helpful and easy to work with?

4. What business processes (operational) are supported by the IT systems in your workplace?

5. How does management use the IT system to support their activities?

6. Is your system part of a network? If so, who is the network administrator? How often do you interact with the administrator? What kinds of issues do you discuss with the administrator?

7. Are your computer systems connected to your customers, suppliers or partners? If so, describe how the system is used to connect to these entities.

8. As your career has progressed, what changes in IT have you noticed and how have these changes in IT contributed to your performance?

9. Has using the computer system at work influenced your life outside of work? If so, in what way?

10. What advice would you give to a new employee about the IT supported workplace?



*Apparently we're supposed to find someone with 10 years work experience. I guess if it's close to 10 it won't matter. At this point, one year would be fine.
**If someone kindly does answer these questions, would you mind if I e-mailed 5 follow-up questions? We need to come up with 5 questions of our own, and I don't know what to ask without prior information.

I know this might take some time, but if anyone is willing to answer these questions I would be eternally grateful!!!

Answer 1

1) Sorry, can't provide that type of information, especially in a public forum like this. Anyone providing it would open themselves up to tons of spam and unwanted contact.



2) I work with a variety of hardware ranging from desktops to large enterprise server systems. Most of the desktops are Dell or HP systems but I've worked with others based on customer requirements. For the servers, that varies greatly. I work with Sun (now Oracle), Dell, IBM, and HP servers, but there have been others on past projects. Server operating systems also varies from Solaris, Linux (Redhat or SUSE mostly), and sometimes Microsoft Windows Server. For printers, we use larger network printers that tend to be HP or Lexmark (although the Lexmarks seem to be in need of maintenance more often than not). Other equipment used includes network switches & routers, file servers (NetApp, EMC, Hitachi), scanners (HP), and large scale plotters (HP DesignJet).



3) My training was a few programming classes in college. My degree is in Geography, but I had a strong interest in system administration (UNIX first, then MS Windows) and software development. Most of the training is by being self taught through online tutorials and employer provided training. The IT staff I work with varies since the company is fairly large. Most are easy to work with.



4) Each project is responsible for their business process since this is generally customer driven. The company IT staff supports internal business process (accounting, HR, etc...) but leaves individual projects to maintain their own systems.



5) Tracking progress toward project goals, proposal work, documentation, design, and reporting.



6) Yes. We have many networks with most setup to emulate a customer network. These may or may not be connected with the company network based on different security policies. My employer is fairly restrictive with their network but some customers have different policies. As an example, a customer may require a different anti-virus application that isn't supported by our corporate IT folks so those computers can't be on the company network. As for issues discussed, this could range from initial setup to troubleshooting problems later in the project.



7) Indirectly connected. Some customers have VPN access into our network, but this is limited through security policies (i.e. they may be directed to a portion of our network).



8) Hardware and software changes are pretty impressive. The first systems I worked with were DEC Ultrix servers and terminal clients. I don't remember how much memory or the CPU speeds but the disk space was fairly small. I could do full backups to tape that held about 150 MB of data. Thumb drives today hold GB of data.



9) As a "computer guy", I find that most family and friends rely on me to make their computers work for them. I've always been a computer person though. My brother and I had a Commodore 64 system growing up (guess we got it when we were about 14 or so) and hacked into the system and programs we had for it.



10) Find something that you truly love to work with and go for it. Even if this isn't IT, you have to love what you do or you'll live to regret it.



Feel free to make up a person/place and use the above responses. Oh, I've been involved with IT systems professionally since 1993 but developed an interest from as early as 1983.

Answer 2

Whether this be for a sales position or any other job these questions should not have been asked for the fact that they are irrelivant to the job, they are racial, sexually offensive, a form of harassment and could be offensive to the person being interviewed. They can legally only ask you certain things that are not discriminating to anyone or any race and this person definately crossed the line. I would not be so concerned about this job. If they had the nerve to ask these things. Look for another position that is more suitable. This person sounds like he's got too many screws lose and you'll never be able to satisfy them.

Answer 3

I'd help you out but I have < 1 year full-time experience, 1.5 if you count part-time while I was in school.



Good luck!

Answer 4

Why dont you make them up



Simply make up a person and write down the answers :P