Certification Magazine - January 2008 - (Page 26)

JOB ROLES Phoning It In: Telecommuting Systems and Networks Engineer DANIEL MARGOLIS It’s late one night in August 2007, and Cassidy Kern is in a back alley in Chicago, setting off fireworks with two editors of this magazine. This isn’t exactly the type of environment in which one imagines “work” occurring. But suddenly, he steps away from the explosions to take a call on his cell phone. “Hey, what’s up?” he says. “Oh. Well, just download an open-source pop-up blocker; that should fix it.” Kern later explained that this call came from a lowerlevel tech support person at Positive Networks, a software company that enables remote access in the workforce. “That goes along with providing Level 3 support,” Kern said. “It was a Level 2 support person calling because they were having a problem with one of our larger customers.” Kern is a senior systems engineer at Positive Networks, based in Kansas City, Mo. He signed on with the company in August 2001. “When I started, I was in the office,” said Kern, adding that he was initially hired to be a network operations center manager (basically tech support). “Once we started to actually have a product and get customers, I started doing a lot of the server builds, maintaining the servers and doing software releases. I was also doing quality assurance.” Kern, at this point, was getting a little overextended. “I was doing support from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. for a while, because we just didn’t have enough people,” he said. “Then we hired some other people to start doing support, and I started moving into the role that I’m in now.” While remaining in this role, in ’07 he began formulating plans to move from Kansas City to Chicago. He decided it might be possible for his job to move with him. “Since we are a remote access company — it’s what we do — I decided that I would talk to my boss and find out if it would be OK if I worked remotely,” Kern said. Positive Networks granted the request. He moved to Chicago in early June 2007 and has since telecommuted on a daily basis. Commuting to the Basement The more than 35,000 IT professionals who responded to the CertMag 2007 Salary Survey reported that they are telecommuting, but not in large numbers and not all the time. More than 27 percent of respondents said they don’t telecommute at all. The largest group, 34 percent, reported telecommuting less than 10 hours a week. Seventeen percent telecommute 11 to 20 hours a week, and 8 percent telecommute 21 to 30 hours a week. Just 7 percent telecommute 31 to 40 hours a week, and another 7 percent telecommute more than 40 hours a week. Kern is a member of this select group: For the last seven months, he’s telecommuted 45 hours a week. “It can be longer if it is a busy on-call week or if I have a lot of maintenance to do,” he said. Interestingly, a day for Kern begins much the way it does for any office worker. “I’m supposed to start at 9 a.m., so I get up at 8:30 a.m., take a shower and get dressed, just like it’s a normal day and I’m leaving [to go] somewhere else,” Kern said. “I usually walk and get a morning soda.” All fairly standard, but instead of then running to the subway or flooring it to the highway, he just walks downstairs. “I have a separate room with several computers and my VoIP phone set up downstairs,” he said. Kern’s routine once he gets down to the basement is fairly standard as well; he checks on the status of the systems and networks he maintains. “The first thing I do is review e-mails that come from the automatic scripts, to make sure that the backups worked properly,” he said. “We have a lot of system monitoring because I need to be able to know before a problem happens. So, I have spent a lot of time setting up monitoring and writing scripts, and all of those 26 CERTIFICATION MAGAZINE January 2008

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Certification Magazine - January 2008

Certification - January 2008 Editor's Letter Contents Data Stream Tech Careers Academic Connection Dear Techie Virtual Village Making the IT Leap: How to Move Into the Industry Inside Certification Phoning It In: Telecommuting Systems and Networks Engineer Interface Band of Brothers: Why You Should Join an IT Association Ad Index Endtag

Certification Magazine - January 2008

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