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Making the Most of IT support?
wetfeetl33t asks: "On Slashdot, we've seen quite a few stories about employees who are unhappy with their company's IT department, or are seeking advice on how they can whip their company's IT department into shape. So, enough of the complaints about the supposed stupidity of technicians, the incompetence of sysadmins, or the excessive network down time. A better question is: how can users work peacefully and effectively with their IT department and make the interaction between the IT people and other employees as productive as possible?"
Isn't it obvious?
Treat the people with some respect. Not only is it the right thing to do, but they'll probably fall over from you even doing it. Most IT people I know get treated like crap, and they don't deserve that.
Nobody does.
We just had a discussion on over-demanding end-user, is this end-user now asking slashdot how to deal with SpaceNeeded?
Honestly, while it's easy to say each side should try to understand and respect each other's work and schedule, there is always going to be inter-departmental conflicts.
So maybe a well-drafted SLA?
Virtual Betting on Facebook for non-geeks.
I find that bombarding IT with little requests like help with my desktop background, system volume, printers, plugging peripherals like my iPod into the desktop, and a bunch of other things that I could presumably do myself really helps keep those IT monkeys busy running up and down the stairs from their dungeon to my ivory tower.
The networks seem to be okay, and I have all my files, so it's not like they have anything better to do. Maybe they'd rather be surfing Slashdot. I don't know. But I'd rather they lost some weight and became more pleasing to look at. All the running around is helping their looks.
Maybe we should also install a shower...
By having a core administrator team that comprises of the IT as we know... the 2nd tier would compose of subject experts (i.e., Hacker, Whiz, Nerds, people that matters).
With that two-tiered system, the problem can be had by people going to their local expert firstly before going on to the IT.
This works best in medium-sized company where managements treats IT like crap or in large-sized but progressively-managed company where hiearchy is not rigidly enforced, particularly within IT.
We all know who the 3rd tiers are: Lusers, wannabes, clueless, frustrated or uneducated.
He'll fix your computer and then he's gonna make fun of you!
When Joe Cubicle calls the building manager about his heat or AC problems, he has (or soon learns) a reasonable expectation of what he can ask for, and what will get done for him.
/Napster /Skype / weatherbug/ etc.. and the company VPN connection won't work - they expect instant gratification.
When Fred Copyguy calls the Xero/Canon tech because he jammed the double-sided collated stapler function again, his company is paying for either a hefty contract or a site visit. If Fred does this too often, he is dealt with.
When Phil McCracken gets sued for sexual harassment, he makes an appointment to see counsel, and waits while the case is dragged through depositions and hearings.
Unfortunately, when these same nitwits call IT because they installed the latest Free Poker game
Corporate-think needs to perceive the computing infrasructure,including the personnel, as an expensive, specialized tool. If you want me to replace this [machine, router, 1st-level support tech] like a $10 pencil sharpener, then always keep a dozen spares around and ready, or give me an expense account so I can just run down to CompUSA and buy 6 or 8 on any given day. OTOH, if you want me to save that $80,000+ in dusty equipment and redundant training then treat the entire system with the respect and care just like you do the building / campus / Corporate Counsel office.
Plan ahead. Respect the time of your coworkers. When you suddenly come to your sysadmins with set of tasks which "needs to get done today", remember that your sysadmins need to push out other projects to work on your project.
The stereotype of a "Grumpy Sysadmin" probably comes from the fact that one minute we're deeply involved with a technical project performing mental gymnastics and the next minute someone is standing at our desk, demanding attention. Now. It is very difficult to return back to that project or remember where we were.
System Administraton is different then other jobs in the business. We typically deal with a very high level of interruption & multitasking-- and probably more then anyone else in the company. It's not unusual for me to have 12 hour workdays where absolutely NONE of the tasks were on my todo list when I walked in that morning-- a day and a half FULL of interruptions.
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
Now ready to take the 12 hour Microsoft interview, I'll share the 15 minute Cisco interview. No design or questions, create the site diagramed in 30 mins. Much advice appreciated to help me on microsoft's interviewing techniques.
c0d3r
I just want to get this out in the open for discussion because I think your mindset towards 'your work' vs 'their work' is prevalent amongst IT community.
Your job is to make sure the backbone systems of the company are running well enough. This absolutely necessary, and anyone who would argue otherwise is seeking to eliminate your job. Stated another way, your job is to make sure everyone else can do their job effectively.
That said, it also means that if something is working well enough and the users are satisfied with the performance of the backbone, then any upgrades or new system implementations are PURELY egotistical masturbation. What that means, in concrete terms, is that your IT plan which intends to migrate everyone over from the Windows 2003 Active Server server to the Debian Sarge LAMP server that you host in your mom's basement must take a backseat to user requests to reboot their computer.
It boils down to the fact that IT is a loss for the company. It is a net loser which produces nothing that makes money. If someone else in the company can't use their computer because of some IT-administrative issue (lost password, etc) then the company is losing money because they can't make any money with the computer in an unusable state.
The only time IT's tasks should take priority over normal user tasks is in the event of a backbone failure. If the network goes down or some servers go offline or any other bona fide emergencies that must be taken care of immediately, then IT should be able to prioritize the restoration of the backbone over any other request. Once the system is stabilized, then user requests must again take priority over the IT plan.
Discuss.
They only give you 15 minutes to implement the design in 30 minutes?
I guess they're looking for over-clocked engineers.
As a professional systems administrator for nearly ten years, I have certainly been in my fair share of crappy IT environments. I think the issues can usually be fixed by adhering to two principles:
1. You get what you pay for
This is a far-reaching statement. The first aspect is salary. Companies (well, universities) are always trying to get by with meager salaries that are NOT competitive at all (let alone poor to non-existent raises, benefits, etc.). In my opinion, it is better to pay one really competitive salary than two or three shitty ones. That one person is going to be so much more valuable than three scrubs; more experience, better attitude, maybe actually be happy with their job and stay for a while. Sure, you can get good people for cheap on occasion, but they are going to be miserable because they know how badly you're screwing them. That demotivates otherwise good employees, leading to decline in work performance as well as leaving for greener pastures.
In a field like systems administration, there is a really big emphasis on personal initiative. You have to proactively go looking for problems before they become problems, come up with bizarre-ass ways to fix things immediately or within the confines of your budget (usually small or zero), man-power, etc. If you're seriously unhappy with your job, it drains your initiative. I have personally experienced this. I want to do a good job, and I take pride in my work, but since I know that I'm being treated like shit (in ways other than pay too), I have a harder time caring as much as I would like to about my work. Thats just the way people operate; if you want the best out of your employees, you have to recognize that.
Stemming from this: you need to fire worthless people. The inability or unwillingness to fire worthless employees is one of the biggest problems for employers that I see. If a sysadmin is always causing more work just by his attitude and ineptitude, then they need to get the boot. If you don't do that, all of his co-workers who aren't fuckups are going to see that you don't care about the quality of their work. Another demotivator.
Also pertaining to this: you are paying these people to administer your computers. NOT to move furniture. NOT to hang pictures on the walls. NOT to do anything with anything that doesn't plug into the wall and beep when it turns on. Its one thing to do a favor for someone, its another to turn into a moving man when you ought to be doing a highly skilled job for your salary.
Aside from salaries, you need to pay for equipment. IT costs money, computers cost money, software costs money. Just because computers are $800 instead of $5000 now doesn't mean that they're free. IT departments need budgets, they need control over those budgets, and they need to be set at reasonable levels. There is a lot of waste here, from sending people to training seminars and paying for support contracts that you don't really need (or use). That isn't what we need. We need money for hardware. If you have to cobble things together, or use a production server to test out things, you're going to run into trouble sooner or later. A lot of the time out-dated, overly heterogenous or inadequate hardware is one of the biggest contributors to an overburdened IT staff. Getting rid of all those 400MHz PCs running Windows ME (when the rest of the place is using XP) is a huge help, more than worth that $800 you need to shell out.
Number two is: Let the experts handle it.
I have worked in a few places where computer decisions were made by someone with no technical knowledge, often based on the latest buzzwords or something someone told them or who knows what. Professors who need 24" LCDs because it will make their computers faster (false), people who think they need a LaserJet 1300 because its a higher number than 1200 (the difference is so minimal as to be a complete waste of time and money). On a larger scale, the complete decision making process of the computer infrastructure may be entirely out of th
Most of the time problems I have with IT Support usually revolves around the blame game. No one ever wants to admit that they're the creator of the problem. If people, both IT Staff and Users would stop taking things so damn personally, and just find the problem and solve it. "No you did this", "No I didn't" crap, be professional adults, work together and fix the problem.
hellboy1975 http://www.foutheye.net
All support requests, support time, delays, reasons, problems etc are logged. This would be useful in individual and team evaluations. In case of crisis - worm attack, largescale HW/SW movement, members would be exchanged among teams.
The people who request tech-support should be made to understand the work requirements of the IT team. Sometimes people get too jumpy about their request and ask others to treat it as one with the highest priority. This may not necessarily be a good thing and I see a lot of conflicts where I work because of the same.
A few days ago I received a laptop from the IT department for a business trip the day after. I told them to install some software on it. Net result was that I received a laptop with the software I requested - but without a login, and the software wasn't activated.
If the IT department thinks along with you those things shouldn't happen.
...because I already replied elsewhere in this thread and can't.
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
There's just no substitute, on both "sides".
In my experiences, users who don't know crap about IT consistently generate the kinds of user problems noted here, and IT people who don't bother to learn anything about the concerns of their users (and who tend to be like Nick Barnes) create the rest of the problems.
It takes time and effort to understand the other guy, and lots of people are unwilling to do it. Senior management has to set the example, which they often don't (though they like to give it lip service).
- Systems/Services will have a criticality assigned to them
- business critical (BC)
- department critical (DC)
- service critical (SC)
- non-critical (NC)
- The level of criticality will determine levels of response time/support expected for that system or service
- (BC) Reporting person is contacted by IT professional within 10-15 minutes with an assesment made to determine the nature of the problem and contact appropriate person(s) including possible management to get IT personnel immediately working on the problem
- (DC) Reporting person is contacted by IT professional within 10-15 minutes with an assesment made to determine the nature of problem and management contacted to determine if action is immediately required (if after normal hours of operation) or if it can wait until normal business hours and worked on by appropriate IT professionals, BC events take precidence
- (SC) Reporting person is contacted within 10-15 minutes (normal hours) or next morning by an IT professional with an assesment made to determine the nature of the problem and the appropriate IT professions start working to fix the problem BC, and DC events take precidence
- Processes are created for tasks
- Process for adding accounts
- Process for installing software
- Process for purchasing equipment
- Process for installing equipment
- Process for moving user desktop equipment
- Process for recovery requests
- Process for foo bar
- Expected levels of uptime are agreeded upon
- Budget requirements are tracked (i.e. tasks themselves are tracked so that time spent installing xyz piece of software on y number of systems can be used to show that X number dollars were needed for that task)
These are just some suggestions. This helps both the IT department as well as the user community because actions are tasked and tracked and accounted for. Budgets are also kept track of so that the money spent can be tracked (like when a Department Head starts yelling that the IT department is costing too much overhead the IT department can show that they spent $500k in time/manpower/infrastructure moving that Department Head's engineers to the shiny new building because he/she wanted the big office on the 4th floor).We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
Thanks for the post, it's exactly the kind of thing I was hoping for.
I take your point that IT departments ought to be split between user support and infrastructure support. However, I take exception with the idea that any company with only a couple IT staff is "too small to be of consequence". With the vast majority of companies being too small to be of consequence, doesn't that make them consequential?
What I'm getting at is that an overworked IT staffer in MicroBiz is no more replaceable than one in Megacorp500. If you treat them badly or overload them with work, they will quit (or grin and bear it), and losing 50-100% of your entire IT staff is much worse than losing 5-10% of the staff.
What it requires is some way to minimize the impact of a minimal IT department, I think. Easily-configured networks, plug and play servers, and automatic failure detection and prevention software are all necessary. To some extent these exist, but not to the extent that IT staff can be replaced by them wholesale.
We had someone at work who was shitting and pissing on the toliet seat. Yes, he was a disgusting pigdog, and yes pretty much everyone knew who he was.
Employees complained. The Janitors complained. Building Management complained. This went on for more than a year.
Finally said employee was fired, but not directly for shitting all over the place.
Now, if it takes a year to fire a "valuable" but insane fecal freak, don't expect anyone to care about your IT Janitorial duties.
What does:
The company somehow discovered that I had more pressing work to sit on my butt in another building doing nothing until it was time for the next round of layoffs.
mean?
...beer and hookers for $200, Alex...
well, you did ask, and that's my answer
...buy a lot of onions and carrots and the next time the support guy shows up cook and eat him. Frankly, from my experience, I can't think of any other use for them.
-- "Can't sleep, clowns will eat me!"
Try rebooting before calling me. That would cut my work in half. Yeesh.
But most importantly, it is nice to be able to vent to people who have gone through this (and much much worse)
Next week we talk about how we can never take a vacation (and yes, I have accumulated so much leave I am maxed out).
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
I will forever keep and cherish the emails that were posted to our in-house mailing list for techs a while back. The list is for people who actually do the work of making all our tools function. The people who actually spend billions on those tools aren't even aware it exists and would be very afraid of the technical expertise found there if they were to accidentally wander in.
A while back, some questions about wireless security policy and implementations came up. Some joker, I still don't know who, cc'd one of our executives who will be making the decisions on this issue in the future. I can picture this exec in his expensive suit, trailing an entourage, but that's just a fantasy. I don't know if it's true. What I *do* know is true is that the guy is a Blackberry addict. He answered the mail via his Blackberry. I don't think he could see everyone on his little screen. Literally dozens of people and a couple of lists with hundreds of subscribers were involved in what was a quite interesting blend of nitty-gritty tech and public policy.
Y'know, what? Every single email this guy posted (and he sent one every couple of hours) was along the lines of "Yes, we must be very careful and study this extensively." He had absolutely nothing to add. He was just making sure everyone knew he was around and didn't forget that he was in charge. Worse, he managed to reply specifically to some of the more clueless, technically wrong postings in agreement and it was obvious he was doing so simply because those postings were coming from middle managers who were throwing around the right buzzwords/executive jargon. It was totally freaking hilarious.
Then someone apparently told him he was showing his ignorance to a large group of people who could actually tell he had no idea what he was talking about. The Blackberry emails stopped suddenly.
Sad, really. It was fun while it lasted.
Three things get the users I support in trouble:
1. We're providing you with a computer to work on. It's not a toy, or your own personal PC. If users didn't go installing every application they felt like [1] probably 25% of support calls would go away. Besides the obvious malware, IE toolbars [2] cause many of our applications to become unstable.
2. Waiting until the last minute. The IT dept can't resolve all issues immediately -- even if that means a new hire sits without a computer because it never got ordered, or someone's job is on the line.
3. If it's important, store it on the network drive -- where it gets backed up. IT can't restore data from stolen PCs.
[1] Everyone is admin on their PCs. Yeah, I know.
[2] Non IE browsers don't work for our apps. Again, I know. But it pays the bills. [3]
[3] Yes, the job market here is that bad for people without security clearances.
It is far more cost-effective for our customers to:
:-)
1. Keep all CDs and license codes in the same place. The cost of me looking for them gets high very quickly.
2. If we give you a command line to type in, please type in all the spaces and correct slashes. The amount of people who can't tell the difference between a forward slash and a backslash is staggering.
3. Keep screenshots of those errors you are receiving. Hit PrtScr, open a new Word document, and hit Ctrl-V to save the evidence.
4. When we ask questions, we have a reason to ask those questions. We don't need to know your life story, so we will interrupt you with the next question after we get the information required. This may seam rude, but otherwise your bill will have an extra two hours attached to it. We've seen these problems so many times that there is simply no need to waste time listening to every little detail.
5. Learn to report problems. "It doesn't work" doesn't help me. I need detailed steps to reproduce the problem and ideally screen captures of the errors as well. Consider it to be more like a bug report, not a post-it note. "Word will not save documents after they are opened from Outlook and attempts to do so freeze the system" will help me a lot more because I knew that there was a specific bad patch released in the week prior.
6. Stop lying to us. We honestly do not care that you watch porn, we are there to solve your problems. Not disclosing fully your activities has a direct effect on your bill.
7. Be prepared to become a legal customer. If you are missing a license for something and you require us to reinstall that something, you should be prepared to buy the product.
In short, keep your answers informative and succinct and we'll have you back online in no time. We are there to solve problems, not be distracted.
OK, that's for end users.
Now for your datacenter
1. If we tell you something needs a dedicated server, that means you need it. There are incompetent people out there who'll dedicate a server to a 50MB MSDE database, but the majority of us are not that silly.
2. If we tell you that you need to upgrade, it could be because it would lower your immediate support costs and we wouldn't have to reinvent the wheel.
3. Spend the money on training your IT staff. Studies show that happy IT people who receive training provide a higher return on your investment.
4. Spend the money to get a good monitoring environment setup. This money will be saved on emergency situations.
5. If you treat your IT department as fire fighters, you won't get much done that is of strategic importance. If your IT people are doing the jobs of developers, you may need to find out what on Earth they are developing. It is likely more cost-effective to get a vendor customization with a proper SDK.
6. If you fail to plan for disasters and skim on disk drives, your recovery bill will be astronomical very quickly.
Just a few tips off top of my head.
Leonid S. Knyshov
Find me on Quora
The company I work at is fairly small and the IT department consists of 2 people, myself and my boss. Until recently there were no restrictions on user machines and no organized way for users to request help. We just impletemented an IT service request database where people can input their problems, suggest a date for completion, etc. This is a step in the right direction but the biggest problem we are facing right now is getting people to use the database. They think why should they have to fill out a form about their problem when they can just come to my office and tell me about it. We also just recently changed everyone's user accounts to just that, users. All these changes are going to be very beneficial in the long run but it's hard to change people's habits to adapt to these changes. I know alot of big companies probably use the same sort of strategies but I wonder if they are too much for small companies, perhaps at smaller companies a different approach is required?
;)
Addressing the rift between sys admins and users, nothing ticks me off more then when I go to someone's computer to fix a problem and they accuse me of causing it in the first place. I just started back at my job last week , it's a summer thing, and I go to help someone and the first thing he said was "Now I know you were on my computer and this wasn't here before, and I would like it changed back". I was polite and told him I hadn't touched his computer yet and the response was "well someone was on here". I'm not rude to my co-workers, I don't accuse them of doing their jobs wrong or question them, so why can't they show me the same respect? My question is, how do you deal with people like that without being rude or condescending?
Ah the life of a sys admin
One word: ITIL
how can users work peacefully and effectively with their IT department?
Simple.
STFU.
RTFM.
Dialectician. Archology.
Sometimes you ask them a simple question like "do you know when the network problem with new mobile phone will be solved?" and they give you completely inane answers like "it's gonna take several days, a technician must climb the tower to fix the antenna". No kidding.
Why would anyone in *business* need to even wonder how to 'get the most out of xyz'resource? It is so obviously an elephant in the living room type problem.
The PHB don't give a s***. If they did, they would fix the problem. The fix would likely even many of the things that have looooong be discussed in the forum.
While the managment doesn't care to manage, then processes and relations seek there lowest level of functionality.
I have always believed that there are two types of TechGuys, the good ones and the evil ones. The good ones listen curdiously to a user's problems, offer solutions, and know when to say they need to ask for more help. Evil techs assume they know things, offer explinations for problems but no solutions, and try to shrug off problems until people give up asking for help.
Which, granted I've done my fair share of, but it's still not something I do on a regular basis and I realize that it is a bad thing.
... and pay attention.
... ZZzzzzzzz..." Eventually, he gets to telling me what the problem is.
I can't tell you how many times I have had to sit through a minute of "Hi, this is Joe Blow, Manager of widget development for the south-western european region. I'm in the middle of a very important project that
Or... "Hi, this is Joe with the Baltimore Warehouse."
"OK, Joe, what's your last name?"
"I'm having problems with my microsoft."
"Joe, what's your last name?"
"It won't start."
"WHAT IS YOUR LAST NAME?!?!"
"What?"
"WHAT IS YOUR LAST NAME?"
Or...
"Hi, this is Joe Blow, Manager of widget development, and I'm having problems with Outlook."
"Ok Joe, let's start -"
"Hang on, I need to take this call..."
- Wait three minutes, hang up, repeat. -
Or...
"Hi, this is Joe Blow, Manager of widget development, and I'm having problems with Outlook."
"Ok Joe, let's start by making sure you're on the network"
"Oh, we can't do that now, I'm getting on a plane and have to hang up."
"Uh... OK, call us back when you're on the network and available to work then."
Don't call unless you're ready to work and paying attention! Otherwise you're going to make critical mistakes and the support people will just get ticked.
This space for rent.
I'm a sort of unpaid, semi-official 1st level support guy (like has been referred to in other posts here), called a Computer Liaison Officer (I kid you not).
... the office geeks, if you will ... but official recognition of my role was most welcome when the scheme was started years ago.
... it is fixed within that 2 or 3 minute time frame, and we all get back to what we were doing.
... if your management can acknowledge the help "power-users" "geeks" and such like people can render at a pinch, it's all good.
There are a few of us around
I spend most of my days actually doing basic document checking/data entry/acceptance type work for a governement department (in Australia) but my colleagues know that if they strike a problem, they can come and ask me a question or get me to look at their PC, to make an initial assesment.
If I can't fix it or don't understand it within 2 to 3 minutes, I'll tell them to phone the IT guys on the 4th floor. Often if it's something simple
It has taken training of all users, by repeated requests of "what was on the screen when it stopped working?" "what was the error message?" etc. but most of them know how valuable information of this sort is now.
I believe that a part of that job is to share as much knowledge as the users are prepared to take on, sometimes not a lot, but any they take on board helps.
I also get listened to, if I think there's something worth whinging about to the IT guys, we have a couple of "email forums" for discussions of tech issues etc. so the communication channels are open and working.
So I guess the key points I'm trying to make are:
1. Resources are not only time/money, people who know enough to share the load are an asset, treat them that way
2. Communicate! the more people know, the more they can help themselves+each other+you.
Don't blame me, it's usually 2 in the morning when I post
In one (only one of 15+) high tech firms I have worked for, the IT department billed it's hours to the other departments. This was company-wide interdepartmental policy -- the graphics folks billed their hours to back to Marketing and Sales, the loading dock billed it's hours to the package receivers, etc. This seemed to make all of the managers very cognizant of the fact that they were spending actual company resources when they got IT help, and that "this is costing me money" attitude made the managers act like very respectful regular (outside) customers. The managers attitude trickled down to the workers, resulting in the one of the best IT normal worker relationships I have ever seen. It seems folks only value what they have to pay for.
We have a guy in our office that will use IT Support as blame for anything he does.
"I'm using the wrong version of your software because you didn't tell us to update it. Because of this, I now can't do a quote for a customer that is sitting in front of me now."
- Yes we did, you didn't read the email that went out to all employees three days ago.
"The activation key for the updated product you gave me over the phone yesterday is wrong and is for a different version"
- No it's not. We gave you the correct key for the updated version that you should have already installed.
"I don't have access to xyz report, but Fred Bloggs can and he's not half as important as me! And you're the one that gives us the correct access"
- Fred changed job roles, but we weren't told, so therefore he still has his previous access until we sort it in 30 minutes time. And our CEO told us you're not having full access to xyz report!
Conclusion: Non-IT workers look upon us as an excuse for them not doing their actual jobs.