Uneducated IT Managers, and How to Deal?

R.Mason asks: "I work in an IT department for a small to medium sized family owned business. The job is great, except for our boss. He simply doesn't know nearly as much as he should. Our team finds ourselves teaching him or explaining remedial things far too often. Even when his own computer is acting up, he doesn't know what to do with it and has us fix it while he sits and watches. He spends hours and hours on the most insignificant tasks as if he has nothing better to do. Is it ignorant to believe an IT manager should be a knowledgeable in technology as a whole? A person you respect and frequently learn from? It creates an extremely frustrating work environment, and our team doesn't know how to approach the problem. It's becoming too much to simply "put up with it." What advice do those of you in the IT field have for this issue?"

Comments

You know

[Pope Benedict XVI]

It's just about impossible to find a job working for someone whom you respect. You would not believe some of the stupid things my boss has done!

Re:You know

[Thuktun]

"Pope Benedict XVI" wrote: You would not believe some of the stupid things my boss has done!

I can't tell, is that blasphemy or not?

On the other hand...

[Bruce Perens]

I was self-employed for two years, and boy was my boss a turkey! :-)

Bruce

Contingency For Ethernet

[Vicissidude]

My rather verbose boss, head of IT, wanted us to come up with a contingency plan for ethernet. At first we looked at each other trying to figure out what he meant. Evidently, he wanted an alternative to ethernet that still provided networking just in case ethernet failed. We're not talking about a device failing or the network being down, we're talking about failure of the protocol itself. And he wanted us to find a way around that... Did I mention we were just a regular office of about 30 people with a sum total of 3 IT workers?

Re:Contingency For Ethernet

[composer777]

I think that's called sneakernet. When the ethernet goes down, just write a protocol that has employees write the data to floppy/cd/whatever and then transport the data on foot. :) That should work for a small company.

Re:Contingency For Ethernet

[crazyphilman]

Man, you've got no imagination!

You should have gotten the other IT guys in on your action, and told the boss "Sir, you're absolutely right! We'll need a company credit card and a paid day off to go to CompUSA, BestBuy, and Staples and research alternative solutions!"

Spend 7 hours drinking at the strip bar and one hour buying some wireless networking gear. Presto! Everybody's happy!

Re:Contingency For Ethernet

[ScrewMaster]

I guess maybe I'm not geeky enough, but I just don't see how a bunch of IT guys sitting in a circle smoking some mediocre Mexican weed would help in this case.

Re:Contingency For Ethernet

[markana]

Oh, you mean Tolkien Ring? I'm afraid there was only one of those built (the prototype was lost in some industrial accident or something). Anyway, it was prone to failure in high-temperature environments.

Nazgul-Net was a much better solution...

Re:Contingency For Ethernet

[jrockway]

> Everybody's happy!

No man, you've got this completely wrong. This is slashdot! We all know that if a slashdotter were given the day off, a credit card, and orders to go to a computer store and buy shit until the card is maxed out, that's what he would do! Are you really telling me that you'd rather see some girls take off their bathing suits instead of setting a up a massively parallel RAID-5 array of 300G SATA-150 disks!?

If so, you fail at being a computer nerd! :)

Re:Contingency For Ethernet

[The_One_Ring]

Working in a consultancy, I have to deal with this every day.

I was once consulting for a firm that wanted to expand their organisation and communicate over the internet. I mentioned that it was imperitive that they use a firewall for security. The IT manager gave me a testy look and said "Well, that goes without saying, doesn't it?".

Fast forward three weeks. I turn up for another meeting and notice a bunch of workmen demolishing the computer room. I ask one of them what's going on and he says that they are installing fire-rated dry wall to replace the existing dry wall!

I walk into the meeting with a VERY large grin on my face and proceed to explain to the IT manager exactly what a firewall is. He turns bright red and then says to me "Well we were planning to fire-proof the computer room anyway!"