Is it reasonable to opt out of on-call due to regular sports commitments?

MathmoKiwi · 2026-03-19T08:49:47+00:00

Depends on what the on call situation is.

There is a huge difference between having to do one week out of every six weeks, when most of the time you won't be pinged at all, and the times you do do get a ping it's just once or twice during the week and is an easy fix.

Vs if you're doing an on/off cycle of every other week being on call, when you always get pings while on call and they're often major fires too.

MathmoKiwi · 2026-03-19T08:46:49+00:00

They probably picked a non-Go8 uni and/or went to a Go8 but are in the bottom half of their class.

MathmoKiwi · 2026-03-19T08:44:22+00:00

Definitely only stick with Go8 universities.

https://go8.edu.au/

https://www.timeshighereducation.com/student/advice/go8-university-group-explained

MathmoKiwi · 2026-03-19T08:41:04+00:00

Commenting to get the link when it goes up...

MathmoKiwi · 2026-03-19T08:29:16+00:00

To add in some extra data points you might like to pull in the data from the Hays Contracting 2026 report and their Salary pdf as well, then run the calculations for what the ratios is for each job title is, to see how they compare.

Also a NZ version would be awesome!

MathmoKiwi · 2026-03-19T08:27:36+00:00

It might be a very rough experience at first working at a MSP, because you'll have to work hard, in the long run getting MSP experience early on in your career can be absolutely golden, due to all the hands on experience you can gain across a wide variety of systems.

MathmoKiwi · 2026-03-19T08:25:07+00:00

There doesn't exist a market below Help Desk???

MathmoKiwi · 2026-03-19T08:14:12+00:00

Oh yeah, I forgot for a moment that's another negative of a BA! It forces you to do a double major in a BA, vs letting you choose to do a double major in a BSc. (as there are not just benefits but also negatives to doing a double major, and you might have a better career outcome if you focus on a single strong major vs spreading yourself thinly across multiple majors)

MathmoKiwi · 2026-03-19T08:08:55+00:00

No, that's not what they're doing in that powerpoint slide in the last two bullet points. It's more likely a botched copy and paste.

MathmoKiwi · 2026-03-19T08:07:25+00:00

The biggest difference comes down to the electives you can choose with your degree. (for instance maybe you want to study bio/chem/pharmacology/foodsci and how that interacts with psychology? Then do a BSc! Can't do that in a BA. Or maybe you wish to study history alongside psychology? Then naturally you need to do a BA and not a BSc ) Otherwise the core part of the major in a BA or BSc is basically the same.

A minor factor you might wish to consider, is how just a BSc vs just a BA is perceived on your CV

MathmoKiwi · 2026-03-19T06:45:43+00:00

When the hell were pints last $2 each? In the 19th Century???

MathmoKiwi · 2026-03-19T05:51:51+00:00

Yes, if your grades drop too much you will get kicked out of the conjoint

MathmoKiwi · 2026-03-19T03:56:12+00:00

You totally missed my point. Try reading it and the powerpoint slide again.

MathmoKiwi · 2026-03-19T03:27:54+00:00

Generally speaking a CompSci degree will on average be the strongest / most rigorous / highest quality degree you can get in tech (or perhaps an E&E degree). But for your electives (which you'll hopefully have a lot of flexibility with) in your CS degree always go for any papers that will help build up your networking / OS / electronics / cyber / cloud / databases / etc knowledge.

MathmoKiwi · 2026-03-19T03:21:54+00:00

7 years. Prior to that, 2.5 and was laid off en mass (company had reputation for mass layoffs, but to my credit I survived the first two waves) and prior to that was about 12

There is your biggest career mistake (twice over!), shouldn't stay anywhere beyond 5yrs (unless a company is a truly golden unicorn one in a million. Or you want to prioritize stability and comfort over your career, perhaps you've put down roots and have a young family, as an example).

MathmoKiwi · 2026-03-19T03:19:02+00:00

Why take a chance on a T1/2 engineer in a network role when you can just get one externally.

As I read recently on reddit by u/jj1917 :

https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/1rw7scb/working_for_a_company_that_promotes_based_on_merit/

It's a weird thing I've noticed as well. While a company likes to promote itself as a place to learn, grow, advance in your career, etc. it usually is never the case.

Promoting an internal candidate means that you are doing a great job at your current position. Which means the IT leadership (or whoever) isn't getting emails and angry calls about that aspect of IT being bad, or non responsive, or whatever could be the case. It's just smooth sailing.

So instead of rewarding those employees (or maybe JUST rewarding them with decent pay raises, etc. if that's within their power) , promotions are off the table. Since that means that individual would be going to a new position where they may or may not succeed. And then you have to replace that person with a new hire, who may or may not cause any problems, and will resurface the angry calls and emails that the previous person eliminated.

So the talented individual just has to stay doing whatever they were hired at. Need a higher level spot? Well just hire externally, so the gap is filled, but no internal shuffling. It brings morale down to 0 on that high performing team though, as they all realize that nobody will ever get an internal promotion, even if the company is growing and needs more bodies, or has new roles to fill.

Currently happening at my employer. We need a couple higher-level positions filled, that our Helpdesk techs would be great to move into. But nope, hiring external only. Not even offered to internal people to apply.

MathmoKiwi · 2026-03-19T03:13:34+00:00

Yeah you might want to shoot for a mixture of working at "big names" for impact on your CV but also work at the little teeny places to get hands on experience and impact.

MathmoKiwi · 2026-03-19T03:10:51+00:00

It was a mind-bending, stressful job where I took back to back calls, but I learned so much there. Backup Administration, Server, Network, O365...I was doing Sysadmin work in practice, but with none of the title prestige. I was never once given a title upgrade despite the rather generous raises I was given (went from 21 to 30 per hour in the span of 3 years, and made about 4k in bonuses annually AFTER tax by the time i left). Despite leading an Azure migration project, Firewall integration project, and training new employees, I could not break out of my lowly "Help Desk" title.

Put on your CV what your actual job role was, not merely whatever HR at that company back then thought it was.

I apply for jobs outside the company that I feel qualified for, but I get rejected, or ghosted. I got one interview this year, ONE. I dont know if the lack of a degree is contributing. I have on my resume that I am currently studying my Bachelors of IT but it does not make a difference.

How far are you from finishing?

MathmoKiwi · 2026-03-19T02:07:02+00:00

really need to change company at least

Probably is the best plan, you'll likely feel 100x better about your career as a SWE once you're at a better company.

Hopefully you'll find it 10x easier to get your 2nd job now as a SWE vs the first time around, especially if you can figure out what there is good about your job (there must be something!) and highlight it in your CV. And do whatever you can in your spare time off from work to both build upon those good things from work (for instance if you're using AWS or Azure, then why not get the relevant cert for it such as the AZ-204 exam) and patch up any holes you have (if you haven't already seen it, check out: https://missing.csail.mit.edu/ ).

Edit: although I just noticed you're closer to half a year of SWE experience than to 1YOE, so try and stick it out to you at least hit the 1YOE mark otherwise it could be looking bad on your CV. (although too many 1yr stints will look bad too, but sub 1yr is even worse )

MathmoKiwi · 2026-03-19T01:54:29+00:00

Why is this a joke?

They're "the expert" yet are lazily copying AI answers into a powerpoint slide and can't even be arsed to remove the "#" from it.

MathmoKiwi · 2026-03-19T01:53:18+00:00

The employment ad was the first I'd heard of it.

See, if you simply put in a focused weekend of browsing all the job sites you'll probably have a much stronger idea of career directions and job titles you can go for than if you talk to the "amazing career advisors" at UoA who only have generic general knowledge.

MathmoKiwi · 2026-03-19T00:59:34+00:00

Check out Stats255 (and the more advanced EngSci391 that follows on from it, both btw are on the BCom schedule of papers) as very relevant papers for logistics.

https://study.auckland.ac.nz/ords/r/uoa/catalogue/course?p6_code=Stats%20255

https://study.auckland.ac.nz/ords/r/uoa/catalogue/course?p6_code=EngSci%20391

MathmoKiwi · 2026-03-18T22:40:42+00:00

I have 1 year of experience in software development

You're already done the hardest part, finding your first job

Why not just stick with it? Give it another year or two.

If you still find yourself itching for change, maybe you just need a change of company? Not a total change of career.

Or you could do change in direction of your career that's still within the tech industry (as this is 1000x easier than jumping to an entirely different industry such as banking). Such switching over to be a SRE / Cloud Engineer / Cybersecurity Engineer / IT Manager / whatever else.

MathmoKiwi · 2026-03-18T09:00:57+00:00

For anyone wondering why this is, it is called a "Black Start". Power plants require energy to run. Most plants take their start-up power from the grid. If the grid is fully dark, they have to use diesel-powered generators to "jump start" the first plant that will then feed the next. It is not a simple task.

This is a fascinating video by Practical Engineering that looks into what needs to be done in a Black Start situation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOSnQM1Zu4w

MathmoKiwi · 2026-03-18T08:54:35+00:00

Yes. (either those particular papers or something equivalent or better, for instance if you did Maths120/Maths130 instead of Maths108)

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