First job, circa 2000, at an ISP that was run very clearly as a business and cutting corners. Not only was it critically understaffed, but management was more interested in laughing their way to the bank than management. They had me - with literally no routing protocol experience - manage a live route advertisement transition between two peering providers. Result: all customers offline, ~24 hours.
Reaction was standard: mostly to point out I did my best in unfamiliar territory and things should be sorted soon.
Take aways were: (1) less support calls than expected - users put up with things. (2) you learn when you fail (3) always have a backup
They kept me on at that job but I left pretty soon anyway as I got a 'real' (as in creative) job hacking perl-powered VPN modules for those Cobalt Raq/Qube devices, and building a Linux-related online retail venture for the same employer ... that worked great, but failed commercially.
I worked at an ISP in NY exactly around 1997-2004 we had also the Rac/Qube devices and I had to manage stuff I was not familiair with :) I learned so much by trial by fire.
Reaction was standard: mostly to point out I did my best in unfamiliar territory and things should be sorted soon.
Take aways were: (1) less support calls than expected - users put up with things. (2) you learn when you fail (3) always have a backup
They kept me on at that job but I left pretty soon anyway as I got a 'real' (as in creative) job hacking perl-powered VPN modules for those Cobalt Raq/Qube devices, and building a Linux-related online retail venture for the same employer ... that worked great, but failed commercially.