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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.
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."
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
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).
Here is the problem from my perspective. Lots of IT people have the mindset of 'your work' vs 'their work' because often it's the difference between what they've been hired to do and what a user wants them to do.
They are hired to keep everything up and running, implement new systems and plan ahead. Often because they are competent they also get to do other things like format and excel spreadsheet. Which then turns into "create a summary page, automate the process and draw conclusions". If I'm doing that then what is the point of the sales manager???? Some other examples:
* Training the training officer on how to use word.
* Video editing for the company day.
* Creating power point slides for presentations.
So when someone else is hired to do something but isn't capable of doing that because they aren't computer literate I consider that me taking time out of 'my work' (keeping the backend working smoothly) and helping you with 'your work' (what you a payed to do). Now when the company gets angry at me because the backend stops working because I've been helping everyone else to do the jobs they are paid to do I get grumpy and stop helping people with 'their work' because now the company has told me not to help any more because then bad things happen.
So the timeline is something like this:
1. My Work - New employee.
2. My work + your work - You discovered I was competent. Company agrees.
3. Less of my work and more of your work - You found it was easier for me to solve the problem than figure it out yourself. Company agrees.
4. My work isn't getting done so something minor goes wrong. I'm told to do my job and policies are put in place to make sure it doesn't happen again but I still have to help you when you need it.
5. My work isn't getting done and now I have lots of documentation to fill in as well as helping you. I can know choose two of the following documentation, my work and your work.
5.i. I choose not to do your work. You yell and I get told to do it.
5.ii. I choose not to document. I get yelled at and told that I have to follow policy.
5.iii. I choose not to do my work. The company is happy, your happy BUT
6. Something big fails. The company gets really made I explain why it happened and they tell me to "do my work"
7. You ask me to do something BUT the company has told me that I'm not allowed to without documentation so I tell you that you need documentation for me to help you and you complain.
8. Present.
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.