Have you worked anywhere where the IT wasn't absolute dogshit?

[Sebastian Cobb]

AWS really need to get good and cheap enough to virtualise small company networks. It'd solve so many problems.

[Rolf Lundgren]

The places with onsite IT support have always been the best. Nothing beats having someone sit next to you explaining what's gone wrong and how they're going to fix it. The worst was a place I worked with 200 employees and one IT guy. If you forgot your password, you'd booked yourself 3 days off work because it took that long for him to come round and sort it out.

[Urinal Cake]

As people have said before IT is usually under resourced. Ususlly first to be sacked along with the ubiquitous middle management. Not enough resources during roll overs or maintenance. Sure IT workers on a normal day have a lot of downtime but you pay them to handle emergencies. That being said being the brunt of people's ire has led a few of them becoming jaded power trip assholes anyway.

[madhair60]

Derry, Maine

[dex]

The places with onsite IT support have always been the best. Nothing beats having someone sit next to you explaining what's gone wrong and how they're going to fix it. The worst was a place I worked with 200 employees and one IT guy. If you forgot your password, you'd booked yourself 3 days off work because it took that long for him to come round and sort it out.

We have a dedicated "tech manager" who never seems to fix things quickly, considering the work my team does is safety critical. We hot desk and one day the main monitor I was using kept flickering on and off and on and off -generally being annoying and prevents you recording information people need quickly. I hit the monitor a few times out of sheer frustration only for this tech manager to say "don't do that! We know about this fault." I was going to say "Why don't you fucking have it fixed yet then?" but pucelanimously didn't because I am only 2 months into a 9 month probationary period.

[Cloud]

Favourite word is "nope", blames the users for everything, and his favourite pastime is dismissing and contradicting any input I try to make.

Case in point this morning, maybe others would be on his side, I just think it's a good service thing...

Every so often, say every week or so, someone comes wandering in with "do you have an iPhone lead I can borrow?" - we supply iPhones and iPads to the sales team and executives etc.  They tend to leave chargers at home, which is understandable as overnight is a good time to charge, but humans being humans they forget sometimes or overuse it in the first half of the day etc.   Sometimes it's "help pleeease I need a quick charge right now as I have to hop in the car and go in 10 minutes".  And most of the time the answer is no as we don't have any spare leads.  There is one spare "dangerous and probably illegal Chinese fake 'Apple' PSU that cost about £1 on eBay" (because cheapskate) left which charges at 0.5A and has a less than comfortably above zero chance of killing you, a warning that he just dismisses, and that's about it.

So I suggested, why not spend £26.  £5 on a 2-pack of old iDevice leads (we get the odd guy who still has a really old iPad), £10 on a 2-pack of MFI certified new iDevice leads (the cheapo pound specials don't tend to charge faster than 1A at best) and £11 on a 2-pack of decent 2.4A Amazonbasics USB chargers.  That means people would be able to leave happy that we've saved their day, and they don't walk out muttering "what IT department doesn't have ONE iPhone cable?!" and having to send an email round the Everyone group begging.  Two of each means when invariably one fails or goes walkies there's still a spare one while we order another, and covers the possibility of two occurring at once.  It's 26 quid.

"NOPE.  If they've not got the lead we supplied at the beginning that's their problem.  As for PSUs they can plug into a computer."
"Computers only charge at 0.5A though, it's barely usable..."
"TOUGH.  Their problem."

Bang goes that idea then!
I mean the company as a whole is still in a bit of a belt-tightening phase but they still wouldn't blink at dropping a grand on some externally sourced graphics for Marketing or something.  Yet people are left struggling to charge their iPhone for  a last minute customer visit (and not too unreasonably blaming IT for being shit and not having the odd spare cable) and I get left feeling somewhat like Worf, for the sake of the kind of money that, to a business, is like a couple of pennies.

Am I being unreasonable?  Is the "well we supplied a cable and PSU - if they leave it at home or lose it then it's not our problem" kind of attitude a perfectly reasonable one?   I get that if we had loads of spares that we gave out willy nilly then they'd "disappear" constantly and we'd be haemorrhaging money but the odd one or two that we can do the "Ah, I really don't think we have.... OH!  You're in luck!  Sign here and be sure to bring it back." thing to save someone's day when they're desperate, doesn't make the cost equivalent of about 2 hours pay seem that bad to me.  If we're strict about loaning them out they'll last years.  We come out of it looking like heroes instead of the Office of Disappointment.  And just maybe, the professionalism of being in front of a customer noting something down on an iPad without "oh dear, it's gone flat, can I borrow a pen?" could win that £20k order.  You never know.

I assembled a projector pack one week when Rimmer was on holiday (a good time to get things like this done).  Cost about 50 quid to do.  Dongles and conversion to VGA for every conceivable laptop.  People love it - some business partner comes in to do a demo and is like "ok where's the HDMI por.. oh crap you guys still have that old VGA thing on your projector?!" (it's from before the HDMI port was invented) and whilst we can't supply a half decent projector and only have one that dates back to about 2003, at least we can save their day on the connectivity front.  Wouldn't have been able to do that if he was here.

That's my vent for the day, probably more Monday.

[New Jack]

the main monitor I was using kept flickering on and off and on and off -generally being annoying and prevents you recording information people need quickly. I hit the monitor a few times out of sheer frustration only for this tech manager to say "don't do that! We know about this fault." I was going to say "Why don't you fucking have it fixed yet then?" but pucelanimously didn't because I am only 2 months into a 9 month probationary period.

I've always prioritised things that HR can bash me for, like health and safety. Part of the job actually, not a personal choice (though I agree with it)

A flickering display would be one of the relevant issues. You might want to, therefore, kick it along to HR rather than IT along these lines.

[Mrs Wogans lemon drizzle]

I worked in IT support after leaving uni for about 10 years.

When stuff is working people assume that you're sat doing nothing and when anything is broken it's ALL YOUR FAULT, regardless of the root cause of the problem.  It is a thankless task.

I would say i'm a pretty chilled out guy but some users can be a complete mere to deal with and it can really fuck up your day.  Most people are nice but some treat you as if you're their digital butler.  After a while it starts to wear you down, hence the poor sods that don't ever progress past help desk jobs saying "no" all the time.

I still work in IT but fortunately work in a different area now, one in which i have nothing to do with end users.  hooray.

[dex]

I've always prioritised things that HR can bash me for, like health and safety. Part of the job actually, not a personal choice (though I agree with it)

A flickering display would be one of the relevant issues. You might want to, therefore, kick it along to HR rather than IT along these lines.

Link doesn't work buddy. Was that deliberate considering the topic?

[Huxleys Babkins]

I worked in IT support after leaving uni for about 10 years.

When stuff is working people assume that you're sat doing nothing and when anything is broken it's ALL YOUR FAULT, regardless of the root cause of the problem.  It is a thankless task.

Vaguely related, I once worked in a technical QC role and we used to get so much shit from the shop floor because we were "just sat at computers all day doing nothing" whilst they had targets to reach and a strict time keeping regime to deal with.

At one point we had a department expansion and we tried out some of them to potentially fill the role and none of them lasted a full morning. One even went to HR and suggested we were trying to "punish" them with "made up" terms and tasks. On the plus side, word got out how fucking tough our job was and everyone piped down.

[AsparagusTrevor]

Derry, Maine

:D

[New Jack]

Link doesn't work buddy. Was that deliberate considering the topic?

No. I'm on my phone on a bus, might be why.

Just search monitor flicker health and safety

You're looking for the HSE page. At any rate HR should shit themselves if you say it gives you eye strain or headaches!

[slicesofjim]

Whenever I've been to HR, whatever time of day, they're sitting around talking and eating. Sack half of them and use the money to give IT a proper budget.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Whenever I've been to HR, whatever time of day, they're sitting around talking and eating. Sack half of them and use the money to give IT a proper budget.

IT and HR are similar in that you can get away with doing fuck all and knowing even less about it.

[slicesofjim]

Whenever I've been to HR, whatever time of day, they're sitting around talking and eating. Sack half of them and use the money to give IT a proper budget.

Ideal world, sack all senior management as well. Compromise, just half of them.

[slicesofjim]

IT and HR are similar in that you can get away with doing fuck all and knowing even less about it.

I really don't think that's true of IT. I don't work in IT by the way.

[New Jack]

I really don't think that's true of IT. I don't work in IT by the way.

To do nothing in IT - the ITIL structure version of it anyway, as I assume most people are familiar with first line - suggests every ticket is closed or pending. That's rare...!

I got promoted a few times in a row by volunteering myself to write training materials or documentation or even have meetings with other managers to collect feedback. IT is often reactive but there's Always something to do.

I used to hate lazy colleagues until I got ahead.

Got sent to India for two months, expenses paid which was a fantastic reward, if a bit difficult (had to offshore a service desk). I'm glad I have a work ethic.

I've worked with some astoundingly terrible people, though that's not limited to IT.

[Sebastian Cobb]

I really don't think that's true of IT. I don't work in IT by the way.

i do, sort of.

[Cloud]

When stuff is working people assume that you're sat doing nothing and when anything is broken it's ALL YOUR FAULT, regardless of the root cause of the problem.  It is a thankless task.

Yeah that's an issue.  Except of course when genuinely sat doing nothing through demotivation...
One thing that really irks people, despite it being part of the hiring criteria, is the IT guys being calm under pressure.  I mean, a lot of the time whatever crisis is going on you're watching progress bars, waiting, and searching stuff on Google so there's nothing to flap at anyway.  But say a server is down and you're waiting for it to restart, they'd much rather see "a bit of urgency" (running back and forth screaming like your arse is on fire) rather than sat with your feet up watching it boot.  They're in a panic, and so should you.  Even though they both achieve the same result in the same length of time, except one shortens your life more than the other...

Email bounces = "what's wrong with our email servers?" (99.9% of the time it's a misspelling or the guy at the other end has a full mailbox)

[Sebastian Cobb]

There's nothing quite like the excitement of rebooting a dodgy server and having to wait half an hour for it to reappear.

[MojoJojo]

IT is OK here... but we don't actually have any IT people. Just some people who do necessary bits and bobs, and most people being expected to setup their own PCs.

Main problem is it's all a bit out of date. Still order Workstations, despite all builds being remote for last 5 years, so that Xeon really isn't doing much. No SSDs. Security is also awful with shared passwords used for all sort of stuff. Our newish cooperate overlords are starting to enforce some basic ground rules on this - I'm hoping they'll force us to upgrade the VPN from PPTP so I can log in from chromebook.

[dex]

No. I'm on my phone on a bus, might be why.

Just search monitor flicker health and safety

You're looking for the HSE page. At any rate HR should shit themselves if you say it gives you eye strain or headaches!

I shall check this out. Thanks!

[Replies From View]

We recently moved to "soft" phones via our laptops. Still doesn't work properly

To be fair, this sounds obviously shit even though I don't even know what it is.

Cut out the middle man and stick to phones that aren't soft, would be my advice.

[New Jack]

I shall check this out. Thanks!

You're welcome. Any time I can help, I will try! Caveat, you're going to have to overegg the pudding slightly... But there are such links behween IT technicians and HR that can be used. I don't say 'exploited' because I'm from an NHS background where its, if anything, heightened how aware you need to be.

-

I've always found corporate IT a bit slack, and as such, it's very useful when threads like this crop up. I'm out of work, I'm depressed about it to the point of diagnosis, and it seems unjust. So such threads are miles more fun than lurking the Spiceworks forums, as I think IT can be very cliquey and one criticism I can level at many IT staff is the simple: have compassion for yer users.

Thanks!

[Sebastian Cobb]

When I worked for cgi I was supposed to do sysadmin on our dev boxes, both wintel and solaris. Our pm used to book everything to sysadmin time if there was an overrun so preventative maintenence never happened. Because I was alright at my job I was always busy fixing things people couldn't so the graduates tended to look after the machines.

We had a worm come in one day and then they took security seriously and discovered all the ex logica kit was unmaintained. They insisted on using rdp jump boxes and 2fa but handing over the root password. Such an arse-backwards way to do things.

[New Jack]

When I worked for cgi I was supposed to do sysadmin on our dev boxes, both wintel and solaris. Our pm used to book everything to sysadmin time if there was an overrun so preventative maintenence never happened. Because I was alright at my job I was always busy fixing things people couldn't so the graduates tended to look after the machines.

Probably speaking to the converted since you're a dev, but Project Management is something I've seen blagged too many times. Dumping things to the programmers seems dishonest - leaning on my ITIL training a bit but change management processes (or, representation from the team who do the actual work) to discuss and approve or deny the changes is very valuable, if increasingly rare and luxurious - I've been in positions (Eg. Head Incident Manager) advising the rest of the business of protocol and being prepared, it seems lazy and sly to avoid preventative maintenance with project managers undercutting the established protocol just to get heat off them.

I happen to apply my theory of prevention to things as disparate as technology and health care. I've picked up project manager messes enough times to get wary. PRINCE 2 and ITIL don't even seem to overlap sufficiently, yet the impression from those qualified is they're holistic.

Reading your earlier posts though the 'process overhead' aspect sounds amiably low key for your current role, it's nice to get the issue without the middlemen of service desks and people from the business adding an element of panic without appreciating the actual commitment the fix requires.

We had a worm come in one day and then they took security seriously and discovered all the ex logica kit was unmaintained. They insisted on using rdp jump boxes and 2fa but handing over the root password. Such an arse-backwards way to do things.

Heh, rings bells. One upside of the fairly recent obsession with malware and ransomware (ransomware is fucking disgusting morally and I'm sad to say, I have friends who work for businesses who PAID THE FUCKING RANSOM) puts extra focus on infosec

Does it make them see security as a constant concern rather than a sudden issue though? Does it f

I've had to be quite protective over wild concepts such as upgrades or maintenance just to make sure they don't distorted with terrible results.

[Sebastian Cobb]

The culture at that place was shit. My boss was fairly honest about being promoted out of his depth (as in reasonable techie being made to be a pm). He also had 5 kids and  'worked from home' until about 3 in the afternoon most days.

He appointed 2 team leads to do his job for him under the guise of it being 'good experience' to take on his pm duties we saw eye to eye on that because I had no management aspirations so he couldn't dangle that carrot, he knew when I was malingering and never really pulled me up on it. The reason I didn't like him was because I never felt he had our back. Always cowed to difficult clients or shitty corporate process. He just let shit roll downhill.

Another problem with that place was they had so much internal reporting, the harder you worked the more bullshit you had to do. So I just stopped working for several years.

They also offloaded the desktop support to computacenter despite us all being professionals. This meant any it problem that couldn't be fixed over the phone in 20 minutes called for a reimage if you were lucky they'd pxe it, if not you'd have to wait for some wrister to drive up and install windows because you know, developers can't do that.

[Cloud]

Haha, further to my comparisons to Rimmer I just put on an episode of Red Dwarf, where he's boring the others to death with a long winded blow by blow account of a game of Risk, and is completely oblivious to the fact no one is interested.  Yeah that happens with "my Rimmer".  Completely and utterly oblivious to boring me into next Wednesday.