The Business Controls Caddy

Are Potential Employers Disrespecting Job Seekers?

Christopher Byrne — Wed, 8 Jul 2009 18:09:36 -0500

Around the United States, I and other colleagues are beating the bushes looking for jobs. The outlook has not been pretty. It is a buyers market out there, and it looks like some potential employers are trying to take advantage of those looking for work.

I found the most blatant example yet today, when looking at employment announcements on the Georgia Department of Labor web site, The employer is looking for a Websphere Portal administrator in the Atlanta area. This is what is being advertised:

Job Number GA7782262
Job Title SYSTEMS ADMINISTRATOR
Job Location MARIETTA, GA

Minimum Skills Bachelors degree in Computer Science,Management Information Systems, Computer Technology or related field and seven years progressively knowledgeable and skilled experience in systems analysis and development, including integrated systems analysis for linking processes across varying platforms, programming languages and technologies; additional years of experience in programming and applications support functions may substitute for a portion of the required education or an equivalent

* 24 Months Experience
* 12 Years Education
* Must Type 45 Words Per Minute

Preferred Skills Continue required: Experience administering IBM WebSphere application server and IBM WebSphere Portal Server V6 ,installing and configuring WebSphere Portal in a production environment. Experience with AIX system administration, Apache and IIS web server administration.Ability to resolve WebSphere Portal related technical issues.

Job Description Systems Administrative , Information Services. Closing date: July 12th! Hours and days to be announced.Work within structured portal and project framework, build and deploy portal and portlet applications, develop SQL including stored procedures and integrate Portal with back end data sources and other services. Work with business representatives, analysts and team members to analyze business requirements, translate requirements to program specifications and manage the implementation of comprehensive solutions for integrating existing COTS and custom software applications into the enterprise portal. Perform highly skilled technical work in broad scale systems analysis, design and management for major installations and/or support systems of the County. Provide administration of the Portal installations, hardware, operating systems, software installations, configuration and operations of the environment(s). Assists development team in activities such as Portal integration with back end data sources and building/deployment of portal and portlet applications. Assist in architecting hardware and software environments for the portal framework. -- Assists the development team in designing and implementing comprehensive solutions for integrating existing COTS and custom software applications into the enterprise portal. Manage WebSphere Server and Portal software and/or hardware upgrades. Employees in this classification possess in-depth knowledge of the integrated technologies and systems supporting major system(s) of assignment, and function as technical expert in system administration for other department technical staff, external consultants, vendors, and related business interests. Duties may extend to encompass server administration, network administration, database administration and programming tasks. Perform other related duties as assigned.

The punchline? The company is willing to pay a whopping $13.46 per hour! Yes, that equates to $27,997 a year, just $5,947 above the poverty line for a family of four, $1,533 BELOW the poverty line for a family of six. It is also $5,480 below the entry level salary for the federal government.

The economy is hurting. We all understand that and understand that we may not be able to keep our previous salaries. But to pay this low for an experienced WebSphere administrator (and apparently also a developer) is not only appalling, but immoral. Yes immoral. And if I could find out the name of the company advertising this job, I would publish it here.

It Really Is FREE IT TRAINING From The Government! (Part II)

Christopher Byrne — Tue, 7 Jul 2009 12:56:08 -0500

In Part I of this series, I told you how I surprisingly came across free information technology training from the United States Government, No it is not part of the stimulus package. And no, you don't have to buy one of Matthew Lesko's books. You just need to have an understanding of how this came to be, and decide if it makes sense for you to look into the training offerings.

Did You Say Free???: Yes, Matthew Lesko would be proud to tell you about something that is free, as long as you buy one of his books.

How The Training Came To Be

Back in the late 1980's, there was a big scandal involving Pentagon procurement. It was called "Operation Ill Wind." I still remember the FBI coming into our office to talk to certain people allegedly tied into the scandal. The aftermath of this, as well as Government Accounting Office (GAO - now called the Government Accountability Office) audits in subsequent years, led to call of standardization and professionalism of the government procurement work force.

This all fell under the Defense Acquisition Workforce Improvement Act (DAWIA) , which was signed into law in 1991, Subsequently modified in later years, this law enacted specific education and experience requirements for contracting personnel, as well as program/project management staff. The goal was to create a professional "Acquisition Corps" within the department of Defense.

In order to meet the requirements of the law, the Defense Acquisition University (DAU) was created, and is housed at Fort Belvoir, Virginia (about 15 miles south of Washington, DC). The DAU is responsible for the implementation of standards and training required by DAWIA.

The Training Paths

When people talk about government procurement and acquisition management, the focus is often on the contract specialists and contracting officers who negotiate and award the contracts. Often missing is discussion of everybody else who supports the award and administration of the contracts. This includes the program management office (PMO), logistics personnel, engineers, auditors, finance, etc.

So what training paths are available as part of the DAWIA?

Auditing

Business, Cost Estimating, and Financial Management

Business - Cost Estimating

Business - Financial Management

Contracting

Facilities Engineering

Industrial/Contract Property Management

Information Technology

Life Cycle Logistics

Program Management

Production, Quality and Manufacturing

Purchasing

Systems Planning, Research, Development and Engineering – Systems Engineering

Systems Planning, Research, Development and Engineering – Program Systems Engineer

Systems Planning, Research, Development and Engineering – Science and Technology Management

You will notice that I have highlighted (in bold) 3 career fields that would be of interest to those who work in software sales and development. Contracting and Program Management would appeal to business partners who do business with the federal government and want to better win and manage contracts.

The focus of this series is on information technology. DAWAI sets the following levels for information technology professionals.

YES! FREE IT TRAINING FROM U.S. GOVERNMENT! (Part I)

Christopher Byrne — Wed, 1 Jul 2009 10:42:31 -0500

Don't you love it when you get spam messages like this in your e-mail? Or better yet, remember when pitchman Matthew Lesko would appear on television telling you about all of the free money you can get from the Federal government.? Well sit back and read while I tell you about an incredible deal on FREE IT training from the United States Government. Yes I said FREE!

Disclaimer: This of course only applies if you are in the United States legally. So for my friends across the pond, my apologies in advance.

Some of you may know that my first career was in procurement for the Federal government. I was a buyer for the Naval Air Systems Command, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), I negotiated contracts and grants for systems software maintenance on the TOMAHAWK Cruise Missiles Project, aircraft retrofits for the Model E-2C airframe, diaherral disease research in Bangladesh, the creation of a joint vaccine revolving fund for children in developing countries with UNICEF, the privatization of the cattle breeding industry in Poland, and global climate change research.

I left the comfortable womb of Government service in 1999, spending the last ten years as an IT consultant. With the economy in shambles and needing to get back to work to support my family, one of the options I am looking at is going back to work in the Federal government. But here is the rub. I have been out of line procurement for over 12-13 years. In a conversation with the head of procurement for the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), I was told that I might have a lot of changes to catch up with to be effective.

One of the biggest changes has been the move to standardize and professionalize the education and training requirements to hold a warrant as a contracting officer. Although I held an unlimited warrant with the EPA, meaning I could sign contracts up to a zillion dollars if they existed, this is no guarantee I could do the same today. The new standards took effect after I left, and course names/content had changed, Since I was not in the position in 2000, I was not automatically grandfathered.

So I needed to do some research on what the new requirements are, and how my old training courses would translate. For those who like to be numb, this is what my training looked like:

Management of Defense Acquisition Contracts (Basic) - 4 Weeks
Management of Defense Acquisition Contracts (Advanced) - 3 Weeks
Government Contract Law (Basic) - 2-3 weeks
Government Contract Law (Advanced) - 1-2 weeks
Contracts Negotiation Workshop - 2 weeks
Defense Cost and Price Analysis - 2 -3 Weeks
Federal Appropriation Law - 1 Week

and the list goes on.

But how could I find out if these classes would translate? If not, how could I update my training with zero budget in this time of unemployment?

What I found is something that blew my mind. And as an added bonus, I easily racked up 35 continuing professional education hours, which will apply to my continuing education requirements to remain a Certified Information Systems Auditor.

And what I found may also help you, especially if you are a business partner that does or wants to do business with the U.S. Government. It may also help you if you want to broaden your information technology career from a project/program management side.

Coming next...The Source for Free Training

A Physical Security Lesson From ESPN's Kenny Mayne

Christopher Byrne — Wed, 1 Jul 2009 07:58:54 -0500

Yes, I know all of you have your servers in a secure, locked facility. But what can happen when key systems are not secure? Just ask ESPN's Kenny Mayne when he tries to have a little fun at work.

Updated at 12:48 PM, July 1, 2009 - Apparantly Keith Brooks could not view this in the UK because YouTube is blocked there. So I have replaced the YouTube video with a version from the ESPN site. Hopefully this works better.

Enjoy!

Getting Back Into This Blog After Winning an Emmy

Christopher Byrne — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 13:19:19 -0500

Provocative headline eh? Well the answer is yes, I did find out that I was part of an Emmy award winning broadcast this past weekend. I don't get a statue, but I can get a plaque and/or certificate. It would be kind of funny to introduce myself as an Emmy-award winning Notes Developer/Admin, but only if I let my ego get in the way, And I would never do that, would I?:-)

But back to the more important stuff. It has been about 100 days since my job was eliminated, and I have been trying to stay busy while looking for full-time work. I have completed a couple of projects that are keeping us afloat financially for now:

Ye Olde Domino Mail template Customization

I have been working with a customer with the customization of the IBM Lotus Notes Mail database template to flag messages for migration to a document archiving system. The coding work is about 99% done, but we are in a holding pattern. The third-party archiving solution we are trying to integrate with has been a performance dog that users will never use at current speeds. So until the vendor addresses this issue, the code cannot be rolled out for final testing.

And of course one of the network administrators at the client site learned a valuable lesson: Do NOT decide to move files on a System I integrated file system (IFS) during the day, and if you must move data, do NOT move the IBM Lotus Domino data directory. It is a testament to the rock-solid engineering of the System I that Domino did not crash when he did this. It just timed out on people.

ACT! for Notes Hell

I have tweeted before about being in an ACT! for Notes piece of hell, working with one of the worst user-interfaces imaginable, and undocumented, hidden back-end code. This had a big impact on a project involving the migration of ACT! for Notes Databases from 27 or so individual CRM databases into 13 new databases. This was a huge challenge because of messy data issues (i.e. inconsistency, missing data, incomplete records). In order to get things clean and make future migrations much less painful, I worked with the customer to re-engineer the data management process.

One of the big issues early on was that the customer had to get the correct server installed. They had a messaging server installed, but were licensed for Enterprise. The customer remedied this over a weekend so that we could leverage Domino Enterprise Connectivity Services (DECS) to pull data from J.D. Edwards. Using this and a combination of agents, all customer data now comes from J.D. Edwards, including changes.

The sales force can no longer create customer profile records in the individual databases. By using the agents, we make sure the information is correct and pass down a unique key that becomes associated with the Customer profile and any children documents. This will ensure that future data migrations will be automated and near immediate.

I also just finished a 35-hour on-line class from the Defense Acquisition University. It is actually pretty interesting, and I will post more on that later.

Tags: J.D. Edwards, IBM Lotus Domino, IBM Lotus Notes, Domino Enterprise Connectivity Services (DECS), Act! for Notes

My Job Was Eliminated Today

Christopher Byrne — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 16:02:23 -0500

I have been wondering if and when the economic downturn would hit me directly. Today it did, totally blindsiding me.

So needless to say, I am now on the market for work doing development, administration, process controls, or whatever is a good fit.

I love Fridays!

NCAA Men's Basketball Tournamant Schedule Now Live, Powered by Domino

Christopher Byrne — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 07:39:25 -0500

It is that time of the year known as March Madness. Once again, I am offering up the NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Tournament Television Broadcast Schedule as a IBM Lotus Domino powered database. Once the tournament is over, I can start to look into presenting this data next year via portal styled pages, oops I meant to say XPages;-).

The schedule is available over on Eye on Sports Media. The data can be viewed by school, conference. seed, region, game location, and assigned broadcast talent. The women's tournament schedule will be available later this week, as the invites are being announced tonight.