I’m not sure what my job is as I get e new title with each new job! “(outsourced) IT guy” seems to follow me so maybe that? Basically something IT-ish doesn’t work I come and fix it
So from my experience
Old hardware sticks around till it breaks so I think basic knowledge is worth it within reason.
Last month I came across a P2 or P3 with a TNT AGP and ISA sound (keeping my eye on that)!
You still need to know about Primary, secondary IDE, basic things like that. But anything beyond basic things like that just google it.
Software side Vista and anything later killed dos commands off with powerscript plus add group policy and even batch files are becoming more rare, and if you do need them you can always google how to do that too!
dos used to be good for low level boot disks for troubleshooting remote installs, etc but that’s Linux’s area now
I think 1 or 2 more waves of “old school” techies are needed to see out the older technology, Already some of the younger guys I work with don’t really understand Exchange 03 way of things They have only really seen 07 or above! 😳
Everything is going 64bit, or “cloud” based both of which is actually a bigger change behind the scenes then people realise.
But then again I learnt basic Novell but really I wouldn’t be able to support it. I only been to one customer that used it. But the older guys (5 years difference) still talk about “the good ol days”
As for the job that’s changed big time. I miss the days the techies had at least some say in what equipment was brought.
I spend a lot of time now doing reactive support as the customer will go out get the new “In” hardware like Mac’s smart phones etc without telling us, then it’s our fault it doesn’t work properly or complain when we tell them they need to pay to upgrade the server side of things as well.
Classic one was they decided to go cloud based signed contracts and all without telling us. That’s great but they had no way of getting their Blackberry server on the cloud, yeh that’s our fault apparently?