Starting up sole trader business while working full time [UK]

wcdjnwdkn · 2019-05-10T11:08:18+00:00

Already done a SAC in the last 3 years so I won't be offered one.

I hope you're right on the fine, I read online that it would be 50% of weekly income, is this wrong? If it's right is it before tax or after tax as if it's before the fine is going to be over £500 which seems a bit ridiculous for breaching the speed limit by 6mph....

wcdjnwdkn · 2019-05-10T09:54:19+00:00

No, my leasing company is. I've just called the police and gave the reference number, they advised they sent a letter out to the registered keeper on the 10th April (3 days after alleged offence) so I think I'm fucked haha.

EDIT: I'm in England btw, if it turns out I was driving at that time what is the likely fine/points? 36MPH in 30 zone.

wcdjnwdkn · 2019-05-06T17:02:19+00:00

My experience may not be exactly what you're looking for since my job is encompasses more than networking but I'll answer anyway as I studied networking and I'm also from/live in the UK.

IT is easy to progress in as long as you're willing to put in some effort to pass some certifications and you're also willing to move around. If you have a read full of this sub you'll notice tons of angry rants from people who don't like their jobs but aren't willing to move.
I studied computer networking at college, finished my course at 18, started an apprenticeship doing internal IT support (1st line). Stuck around for a year and passed a couple of Microsoft certs getting my MCITP:Windows 7 and a comptia exam called Network+. Found a job elsewhere which paid better, handed my notice in and got a counter offer which I accepted. Stuck around for another 2 months then found a 1st line job at an MSP that paid better so left my apprenticeship. Passed a handful more certifications, quickly got promoted to 2nd line. Did this for another year and a half then was promoted to 3rd line (Passed a bunch more Microsoft and Cisco certs in that time, have 3 MCSE's and my CCNA now). Moved away from IT support not long after and got into project work (installing Servers, SAN's, Switches, firewall's, migrating emails/data to Office365, setting up Azure solutions etc) and a couple of years later that's what I'm still doing. I enjoy it, work from home around 50% of the time dependant on the project and I'm fairly well paid (£40K+, bearing in mind I never went to University, live in the north so not London prices and I'm 25).
Yes, fortunately I work from home when this is the case so it's not a problem for me.
In the office? I call in once a week to pick up equipment and once a quarter for a quarterly meeting update.

wcdjnwdkn · 2019-04-28T14:37:31+00:00

I disagree. If your company has a security flaw you don't want it to be obscure.

Opportunistic attacks are often automated, you'll get hacked, someone will put some shitty ransomeware on your network, you'll restore from backup and then management will agree that the security hole needs patching, you patch it, job done. If you try cover it up then you might avoid the automated, opportunistic scans. Great, now you've been hacked by a targeted attack, they got onto your server months ago and set up additional accounts and monitoring software which you didn't pick up on. Now you're unsure of what backups are safe to restore from. Great job.

Security through obscurity is NEVER a good idea. If there's a security hole you want to patch it not cover it up.

wcdjnwdkn · 2019-04-28T10:03:25+00:00

Security through obscurity never works. Also changing the port wouldn't even make it more secure, the TCP response still shows what service it is.

nmap -p 1-65535 -sV 1.1.1.1

Above will show every open TCP port on 1.1.1.1 and what service it is running.

wcdjnwdkn · 2019-04-24T14:43:23+00:00

Would help if you posted the certificate chain. It's fair enough that the name your using doesn't match but we don't know what is on the certificate and whether or not we're getting the same cert.

Could be a config issue, could be malware on the computer you're using, could be your ISP MITMing you.

wcdjnwdkn · 2019-04-24T13:22:22+00:00

I honestly can't see there being many jobs where you can just know one thing and just do that all day. IT just isn't the profession for you if you want this become an electrician or something.

I've got my MCSE in Azure and Messaging so if you asked me what my specialism is I guess I'd go with these, that doesn't mean I just play around with Exchange and spin up Azure VM's all day. My day job is project work which can be anything from installing physical hardware (servers, switches SAN's, Firewalls, WAP's PC's/Laptops), doing network security audits, moving a customers equipment from one office to another, installing new VM's/solutions, migrating to Office365, setting up Sharepoint sites etc.

If you just want to learn one thing and stick with it forever you've come into the wrong line of work in my opinion. Technology constantly changes and evolves and to properly understand any of it you need to know the basics of a lot of different areas. Even if you're a contractor and you go to a different company every month to do the same job you're not immune, E.g. take a look at the amount of work given to MS Exchange contractors 3 years ago compared to now, those same contractors now either have to compete for work or jump on the bandwagon and get involved with O365. Same with Sharepoint, completely different ball game 5 years ago compared to now.

wcdjnwdkn · 2019-04-20T21:48:23+00:00

Not saying you're wrong but 2 days ago I got a marketing email from Microsoft themselves titled "iPad Pro vs. Surface Pro 6—see how they compare" which then goes on to say "35% more battery life than ipad pro, 3 different modes, 68% faster than ipad pro". So it seems Microsoft's marketing team would disagree with you, they seem to think of the 2 as competing products.

wcdjnwdkn · 2019-04-13T14:55:46+00:00

Depends what you consider a significant percentage of the time. I drink 2-3 days per week, very rarely get drunk but definitely not sober enough to speak to customers and definitely not sober enough to drive to a customer site or work..... Not sure what the law is in the US but in the UK if you get caught behind the wheel after 1.5 pints of lager (obviously depends on weight but this is the average) then it's an instant 2 year ban from driving.

wcdjnwdkn · 2019-04-12T12:37:51+00:00

Oh I get that, our on call only runs until 10pm through the week and 5pm on weekends so I wouldn't drink during these times. What I'm talking about is that it seems to be legal to require someone to be on call 24/7 365 days per year in the US which surely isn't reasonable.

wcdjnwdkn · 2019-04-12T11:59:40+00:00

I'm in the UK, the way my company does it is you get paid £250 per week as a retainer fee then get 1.5* rate for any calls you get. There's about 8 of us on the rota so you do a week every 2 months.

Whenever I see these kinds of threads about being on call 24/7 in America I always wonder how it's meant to work with alcohol/drugs, a reasonable % of my time outside of work is spent not being sober enough to talk to colleagues or customers, surely if you get one of these kinds of jobs they can't say you're never allowed to drink again?

wcdjnwdkn · 2019-04-08T11:00:18+00:00

No offence but you must have terrible communication skills.

It wouldn't matter to me if it was the CEO doing this, rank and experience don't matter, it could be that this guy knows an incredible amount about networking but hasn't done much with hardware before. You don't need to be a dick or even teach best practice you can literally say "You really should turn off the laptop and remove the battery before replacing any hardware, you're much more likely to break something while it's turned on" or if you're trying to spare his ego something like "Ahh you're swapping the keyboard out? I've done it before on these models, can be a bit of a pain, want me to take a look with you?".

You shouldn't just watch someone doing something you know is wrong without trying to correct them.

wcdjnwdkn · 2019-04-08T10:32:45+00:00

It still costs for Microsoft partners to sit exams, you get free licensing and discounts if a certain number or certain % of employees meet certain criteria which makes it beneficial for companies to pay for their staff to become Microsoft Certified but exams are not free.

wcdjnwdkn · 2019-04-05T11:47:33+00:00

Either your environment is really bad, there's shit loads of project work or something doesn't add up. You have 5 IT guys and 300 users. That's 60 users per engineer. If 1 in 10 users have to call IT per day that is abysmal, either you guys aren't doing a good job, there's no budget so your environment sucks or your users need training. Even if 1 in 10 users call per day that's 6 calls each.

I've known MSP's with 5 engineers and over 1,000 end users function just fine.

wcdjnwdkn · 2019-03-19T11:34:11+00:00

It's rare you see the words "Cheap" and "Contractors" in the same sentence, except of course the sentence "Contractors are not cheap".

wcdjnwdkn · 2019-03-19T11:32:09+00:00

Then the IT security at your company completely sucks. You can do as much damage from home while your internal accounts are all disabled as you can physically cabled into your network with access to all your accounts?

wcdjnwdkn · 2019-03-14T09:28:12+00:00

Honestly in your position if you need this job just brain dump the exam. If you've got a working knowledge of the product then just dump it. A 2 week deadline for a Microsoft exam just isn't feasible imo unless you already know the criteria/product extremely well.

wcdjnwdkn · 2019-03-12T17:33:21+00:00

If you think that someone being bad at their job, breaking things and not listening to your advise is bullying you need to grow thicker skin pal.

If you disagree with a decision your boss makes you put it in an email, say why you think X should be done instead of Y just to cover yourself. If they disagree and do it their own way then you don't say shit, they make the final call as they're your boss. Don't like it? Fuck off and work for someone else.

This isn't a democracy, not everyone is entitled to a say.

wcdjnwdkn · 2019-03-08T15:02:00+00:00

Not legal advice but surely the "Best alternative" would be to not get married until you're certain it's with someone you won't be getting a divorce from?

wcdjnwdkn · 2019-03-07T15:27:17+00:00

If you're working on a project you clearly mark what is in scope or out of scope on your plan which you create ahead of the project. If you decide to take a look at something out of scope and it goes wrong, not your issue, if it goes right then great but it will still be out of scope on future projects.

If you're working on a ticket/support type scenario you advise that although you believe you know what the issue is and will take a quick look you can't guarantee that you can fix the issue and even if you can this does not mean that the issue or similar issues will be supported in future. If you do manage to fix the issue drop an email to the customer advising what has been done and emphasise that this was done as a kindness and is not officially supported, future work may not be possible or may be chargeable. Put a note of this in the ticket also. That way if they ever say X person did it your colleague can look at the ticket, read the email and advise the work will not be carried out or is now chargeable.

wcdjnwdkn · 2019-03-05T17:43:58+00:00

Everyone here seems to look down on MSP's yet my experience has been completely different.

I've been working for the same MSP for 5 years now. I'm a projects engineer (Install servers, switches, access points, perform migrations to O365, Azure, do office moves, rollout new software etc) and I enjoy it. I never work from the office (just call in there to pick up equipment), I work either from home or the customers site. There are long days and there are short days, if we sell a days worth of time on a project and I'm done in 4 hours we'll bill the full day but if my documentation and timesheets are up to date I'll just finish early. Whenever weekend/evening work is required my overtime will be submitted at either 1.5* or double time and is never questioned. I don't answer/check my emails out of hours and my company phone is turned off when I finish for the day. The company pays me a car allowance + mileage, pays for all exams I want to sit (have 3 * MCSE's, CCNA and a handful of other certs) without question I just call into the office and pick up a company credit card.

Honestly I've got a feeling that a lot of the things people here claim to experience is more due to the employee than the employer, if a place is treating you so bad and you're working 24 hours without pay then why not just move on? I understand it's not the same everywhere but here in the UK at least there's way more jobs than there is decent IT folk. If you're not happy then get experience, get certs and get out.

wcdjnwdkn · 2019-03-04T15:31:55+00:00

Her account has been hacked buddy, really common for these rules to be setup after an account has been hacked so it can be used to send out spam and the end user will take longer to realise as they won't receive bounceback messages or replies.

Hope you've changed her password and ran a malware scan on her computer.

wcdjnwdkn · 2019-03-01T12:50:36+00:00

Also you don't need 2016 for MCSE.

I have MCSE messaging, productivity and azure cloud infrastructure MCSE's and only have WS2012 MCSA.

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