My first real summer job was working for a computer store that also did tech support contracts with local businesses. I'll preface that the boss should never have given me the responsibilities he gave me, or should have gotten me to job shadow more experienced people, but the shop was tiny and I was actually the only full-time employee.
We had the tech support contract for the city's Mexican consulate. One of the things we were doing was patching and updating their server and installing a tape drive backup system. Server was NT4.
I'm in there doing work after 5pm, and wrongly assume that everyone's gone home for the day. Install some patches and the server asks me if I want to reboot. I say yes. Few moments later, a guy sticks his head into the server room and asks if I'd shut down or rebooted the server. Oh, whoops, someone's here. Yeah, I just installed some patches. Oh, OK, see ya.
Next day? Turns out he had been doing some work in their database where they track and manage visa applications. That database got corrupted when I did the server reboot while he was doing his work. That night, the backup process then overwrote the previous good copy database on the tape drive with the newly corrupted database. We had not yet started rolling over multiple tapes to prevent backups of corrupt data, though we were going to purchase some tapes for that purpose shortly.
Summer was ending, and I quit a week later to return to school. Horrible timing in terms of quitting! No idea what happened after that, as I was spending the summer in a city that was not my own. I do know that the original database developer contractor was on vacation at the time and so they couldn't reach him. I think the consulate was SOL. I regret rebooting that server without checking if anyone was working to this day.
Lesson learned? Don't assume anything when doing anything. Carried that lesson with me for the rest of my life. And find a boss who knows how to guide you if you don't have much experience in your area. I guess for founding startups, at least get an advisor.
We had the tech support contract for the city's Mexican consulate. One of the things we were doing was patching and updating their server and installing a tape drive backup system. Server was NT4.
I'm in there doing work after 5pm, and wrongly assume that everyone's gone home for the day. Install some patches and the server asks me if I want to reboot. I say yes. Few moments later, a guy sticks his head into the server room and asks if I'd shut down or rebooted the server. Oh, whoops, someone's here. Yeah, I just installed some patches. Oh, OK, see ya.
Next day? Turns out he had been doing some work in their database where they track and manage visa applications. That database got corrupted when I did the server reboot while he was doing his work. That night, the backup process then overwrote the previous good copy database on the tape drive with the newly corrupted database. We had not yet started rolling over multiple tapes to prevent backups of corrupt data, though we were going to purchase some tapes for that purpose shortly.
Summer was ending, and I quit a week later to return to school. Horrible timing in terms of quitting! No idea what happened after that, as I was spending the summer in a city that was not my own. I do know that the original database developer contractor was on vacation at the time and so they couldn't reach him. I think the consulate was SOL. I regret rebooting that server without checking if anyone was working to this day.
Lesson learned? Don't assume anything when doing anything. Carried that lesson with me for the rest of my life. And find a boss who knows how to guide you if you don't have much experience in your area. I guess for founding startups, at least get an advisor.
edit: spelling