Who Plays the 'Blame the Tech' Game?

An anonymous reader asks: "I work for a marketing services company, and it is my department's role to develop and maintain reporting systems for all the data we collect. When a department manager sees a dip (or rise) in one of there KPI's the first thing they do is ask me to 'check out the reporting', because '[they] think there is a problem'? It's this just the culture of my company or have other readers experienced a 'blame the technology first, ask questions later mentality'?"

Comments

no kidding

[jacquesm]

How often is it that you are on the phone with an insurance company or a bank and they
tell you 'the computer made a mistake'.

That seems to be so ingrained in people that use computers but don't program them.

Re:no kidding

[stratjakt]

You will never hear a bank admit to making a mistake. You're unlikely to hear an insurance company admit to one either.

If one day the computer glitches and puts 20,000 in your checking account, they'd let you keep it rather than admit a mistake that could cause a run on the bank, or other investor panic.

Why do you think "bank error in your favor" is a monopoly card?

Re:no kidding

[drinkypoo]

How often is it that you are on the phone with an insurance company or a bank and they tell you 'the computer made a mistake

Never mind that the root cause is that a programmer somewhere made a mistake; the fact is that computer systems not infrequently produce invalid/undesired output. This IS a mistake. The action was taken by the computer. If I teach you how to do something, and I teach you incorrectly, you're still the one who made a mistake if you do something wrong; it's my fault, at least partly, but it's your mistake.

Re:no kidding

[QuantumRiff]

There is an old saying: "A bank never makes a mistake in your favor".

If they screw up, and put someone else's money into your account, (had friends that have had this happen), they yank it right back out. If they screw up and charge you some fees you shouldn't have been charged, you have to bring receipts, statements, (even though they should have them) and spend lots of time getting it corrected.

Re:no kidding

[jacquesm]

well, I'm not in the USA but in Europe and I worked for a bank here for a while
(a daughter of Chase Manhattan) and we would readily admit mistakes and fix them.

But then again, people here are not as sue happy so maybe that's why owning up
to a mistake is not such a big deal here.

One year the interest computations were off by a bit and the whole run had to be
done again, all the customers received a nice letter explaining the problem and
what was being done about it and it blew over without any problem.

But instead of the IT department getting the blame the customers and reps blamed
the *computer*.... go figure.

j.

Re:no kidding

[PingSpike]

I actually think he was alluding to the fact that most of these "The computer fucked up" situations were actually just human errors that are being blamed on the computer. Its the same as the "blame it on microsoft" stuff you get to do in IT. (Yes, its often at least partially their fault...but that didn't stop me from occasionally throwing a littl extra blame their way.) The computer in an inanimate object who won't get fired, nor does it care what happens...so you blame it on the computer. And since so many people do this, everyone accepts it.

Re:no kidding

[caffeinemessiah]

I don't think your analogy holds, because you're not "teaching" the computer to do something. You're giving it explicit orders and it has absolutely no choice but to follow them exactly. If you drive your car over an old lady crossing the street, you're the one who gave the instruction, you're to blame -- not the car. Guns don't kill people, people kill people.

Re:no kidding

[drinkypoo]

I don't think your analogy holds, because you're not "teaching" the computer to do something. You're giving it explicit orders and it has absolutely no choice but to follow them exactly.

This is only true if you're writing software to run on the bare metal. If there is a BIOS, a DOS, or any other kind of OS involved, or any code over which you lack control, you are not giving the system explicit orders, or at least, not instruction-by-instruction. You're telling it "go forth and do some things; I will leave the details up to you". If the documentation is incorrect, or there is a bug in some code that you must utilize without having control over it, then it's quite frankly not your fault (although you should be catching it in testing.)

The computer can only do what it is told, but you're not telling it everything. You don't control the CPU's microcode. You don't control the code on the video adapter. Et cetera.

Re:no kidding

[CastrTroy]

According to Joel on software people don't sue you because you admit the mistake, people sue you because they are mad at you. If you admit the mistake and try to fix the problem, they aren't going to sue you. If you try to pretend there is no problem, then they will sue you. The article linked above is a very good read for anybody doing any kind of customer support, or working in the tech industry in general.

Re:no kidding

[frdmfghtr]

The computer can only do what it is told, but you're not telling it everything. You don't control the CPU's microcode. You don't control the code on the video adapter. Et cetera.

This is true. However, the computer did not make a mistake. The code executed EXACTLY as it was written. Your portion of the code may be correct, but underlying code (interpreter/compiler, whatever) was incorrect as written/entered by the programmer responsible for it.

You're telling it "go forth and do some things; I will leave the details up to you".

No, you are telling it to "go forth and do some things; I will leave the details up to the programmer who wrote the OS or compiler or whatever other code is executing to support my instructions".

You are also correct in that it may not be your fault, but it's not the computer's fault either. The computer did not write the code it is executing, it is simply behaving as it is told, in a very exact manner.

Re:no kidding

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is that it is usually just an excuse, but the masses believe it. At the dawn of the computer age people believed it because computers were knew and they had no point of reference to believe otherwise. In the 80's and 90's more people had contact with PCs, however the software and OS was shoddy to say the least. All the reboots, freezes and BSoDs made them believe it even more. Unfortunately, until you have answered the request with a "Checks out AOK!" 50-100 times until they are confident in the results, it will continue. Human nature I am afraid.

Re:no kidding

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless you are driving a mid 90s suburban at about 7 or 8 mph when you hit the brake pedal hard and triger the antilock system. Then right after that hit an expansion joint in the pavement and let the front wheels unload. Then the antilock system will dump the brake pressure to the front wheels and the little wheel speed sensors won't pick up that the front wheels are turning again. Then you will slowly roll into the old lady, the suburban will come to a complete stop,and reset the anti lock system.

Re:no kidding

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I used to work for a credit union and that was the first thing the tellers would tell people. if I were at the teller line I would walk over to them, and while the customer was there tell them, "No the computer only posts info that the user gives it, so its the tellers fault."
If we do not get people to take responsibility for their actions they will never learn to do things right

The only reason that I posted as an AC is because I didnt have time to set up an account :)

Re:no kidding

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm pretty sure the bank *does* make a mistake in your favor in Monopoly as a result of one of the cards.

Re:no kidding

[FMota91]

If you're a High-school and/or College Student nowadays, you know, just like everyone else, that the computer makes a lot of mistakes.

At least around here.

Re:no kidding

[drinkypoo]

You are also correct in that it may not be your fault, but it's not the computer's fault either. The computer did not write the code it is executing, it is simply behaving as it is told, in a very exact manner.

You're correct that it's not the computer's fault. If you're not capable of taking your own actions, then you're not capable of being at fault for anything. You're not a you at that point, you're an it.

But it's also true that any programmer not responsible for all code in the system isn't really driving the bus. They're chairing (at best) a committee that will issue mandates to the bus on how to drive itself :)

Re:no kidding

[ghostcorps]

You forgot to mention paying 'trace' fees.

Any Clear Motives?

[eldavojohn]

First let me say that the part where the researchers say "Get me the president!" isn't upon the first discovery of an impending disaster. It's usually after the data has been double checked & verified by other sources (if possible).

So, if your manager turns these reports over to upper management or shareholders & these have dire consequences upon how your department is viewed--then maybe it's not such a bad idea to double check the equipment or software.

Also, you're employed for a reason. If your manager ever handed over a faulty report, who's ass is on the line? Probably not yours. It's their ass that should get canned if they give faulty information. Now, if your ass was on the line and some outlying data came out in a report, would you constantly double check it?

And, has it ever been wrong before? If this is the twentieth time they've asked you to check it and it's never been wrong before, then maybe they're overdoing it. But if it's been faulty before, give them some credit for just trying to get to the bottom of things. Maybe this isn't the blame game, maybe this is just extreme caution. I don't get this kind of treatment where I work.

The sad part of it is that they're your manager & if they're blaming you, then they're probably saying that to the managers above them also. However, if I were upper management, I'd see through that and can your manager for their inability to take responsibility for those reporting to them.

Re:Any Clear Motives?

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree; of course you have to double check before taking the news upstairs.

But that's not the point.

What he's saying is that, in his workplace, when bad news come in, the managers doubt the report rather than their department. It's easy so see why: one is their department after all. Plus if they ask the reporting service to double check, it costs them nothing, whereas if they ask their troops to check for issues, that's that much time they don't spend actually working.

What he's asking is whether such attitudes are widespread.

Re:Any Clear Motives?

[matt_king]

I work for the same type of company; the problem is that marketers live for their "numbers" and any change (especially downward) is either one of two things: Their campaigns are not doing a good job, or there is a problem with the software/reporting. Guess where they are going to look first?

helping family with computers is fun

[Anonymous Coward]

if you liked being blamed for all of their problems

They're asking you to do the job, grow up

[stratjakt]

Don't assume they're lying. There's a problem somewhere. Experience has told them (and myself as a developer of products heavily reliant on reporting) that the problem is more likely in the software, than the type of paper stock they used in the printer.

If the problem isn't the reporting algorithims, it's in the data - maybe you need to check validation on the front end.

Do you always get so defensive about these things? I doubt it's a vast right-wing conspiracy.

Re:They're asking you to do the job, grow up

[jayhawk88]

I doubt it's a vast right-wing conspiracy.

I agree. Clearly the left is to blame for this.

Re:They're asking you to do the job, grow up

[p!ssa]

You obviously never worked for Enron, Adelphia, Jorge Boosh, or

Re:They're asking you to do the job, grow up

[Anonymous Coward]

Try using that mentality when you, for example, have a customer whose job is to answer calls about system issues. In a normal world, having no calls would indicate that this person had a good day. In the world where I work, "the reports are wrong". This happens on a regular basis. (And no, the data isn't wrong. It's been right every day for nearly a decade, but if there aren't calls to this customer, it's OBVIOUSLY a data problem.) In a world where volume == productivity, it is unfathomable that anything might not fit that mold.

Re:They're asking you to do the job, grow up

[Xibby]

If the problem isn't the reporting algorithims, it's in the data - maybe you need to check validation on the front end.

Garbage in, garbage out. Even validation won't solve your garbage in problems. For some reason our line operaters got it in their head that all they had to type was 123456 in a field when prompted. 123456 is a valid value and within the realm of possibilities, so it validates fine and the system accepts it. Then a manager actually wanted a report involving that field. The report was useless. And so began back and forth. This report can't be right. It's right, everything checks out and that is the data that's in the database.

Eventually we walked said manager out to the line and had an operator demonstrate data entry procedures. "On this field we just enter 1234546." Manager flips out. Operator calmly pulls out his manual, flips to the document describing the procedure. Sure enough 123456 is part of the procedure. Document created by: Manager who is flipping out.

Nothing like someone shooting themselves in the foot to make a report writer's day.

Blame game is everywhere

[QuantumRiff]

RIAA: Its not that our music sucks, its cause of PIRATES!

Ford: Its not that our Cars are crap, and expensive, its cause the Japanese imports are utilizing a weak Yen

Sub-Prime loan companies: its not our fault these loosers we gave $500,000 to buy a 2 bedroom house with an interest only loan are defaulting, its the Federal Reserve for raising the interest rates!

Blame is everywhere, its not technology, its the data. The reports he's questioning came from a computer. If "Ted" had tabulated the results, your boss would force 2 other people to double check the data in the report, cause maybe "Ted" screwed up a decimal place somewhere, even though Ted has a masters in statistics.

Re:Blame game is everywhere

[stratjakt]

Ford doesnt make cars, they run a failing health-care coop. I think they run a little auto business on the side, though.

But you can't compare to this guys situation. We've all seen computer bugs. Anyone whos worked with reports has seen bugs.

If there had never, ever in the history of reporting, been any sort of computer bug - then maybe they'd be out of line asking the programmer they hired to check code to do his job.

To be truthful, I don't see any sort of "blame" in the article. Just a troubleshooting process.

Re:Blame game is everywhere

[inviolet]

Ford doesnt make cars, they run a failing health-care coop. I think they run a little auto business on the side, though.

:golf clap:

Very witty.

Indeed, I've read that every GM car includes $2000 paid out in medical care to GM retirees. In order to stay price-competitive, this means that somehow, $2000 in labor and materials must be removed from every GM car. Which means that a $10000 GM car contains $8000 of engineering. No wonder they can't compete.

Probably within the next decade, they'll get congress to assume the burden, and then they'll miraculously improve in quality. And our taxes will go up again. :|

Re:Blame game is everywhere

[ArsonSmith]

saying that money is coming out of the cars is kinda like saying that $2000 of that is also going to the current workers that build the car. and another $2000 is going to purchase and maintain teh robots that do the brunt of hte work and another $2000 is going to rent and heating/cooling. My god I $10,000 car is only really $2000 worth of engineering. If the GM employees worked for the company for 20 years, making there wage with the promise of a continuing wage ongoing when they retire that is all part of employee pay. It's not some crappy extra burden placed on them. It may be bad business for them to promise to much compensation, but that happens.

It's not just technology

[Anonymous Coward]

Project Managers often get asked to "rearrange the project plan" when it doesn't finish early enough. Employing more or different people so that the project finishes on time would of course be too obvious.

Re:It's not just technology

[qwijibo]

No, that doesn't make any sense at all. The purpose of a project plan is to provide a plausible set of lies that one level of management can use to mislead another level of management.

Though, I suspect that it's often the goal to have some projects fail. If you provide success after success, people will expect you to keep doing that, while slashing the budget because you would have failed if it wasn't enough. High profile failures provide an opportunity to request a bigger budget.

No matter whether you're blaming the technology, people, or phase of the moon, it's all part of the same plan - make stuff up and say it with a striaght face. Being able to keep a straight face is the difference between senior management and the guy emptying the trash.

Re:It's not just technology

[Anonymous Coward]

Though, I suspect that it's often the goal to have some projects fail I suspect that that happens more than some people think - hierarchies are competitive, and giving "undeliverable project X" to a capable and competitive underling may makes sense to a threatened boss.

Also, from personal experience I can think of at least one example where a sub-project that I was leading deliberately had no technical purpose whatsoever. Basically, a New and Exciting Project was happening elsewhere and was bypassing the poor saps that I was dealing with. My job was to make them feel involved by finding out what they wanted from technology related to New and Exciting Project without actually getting close to delivering anything. I succeeded in my bit, but unfortately New and Exciting Project didn't quite deliver what it should and so all parties retired to lick their wounds.

Actually...

[Xtense]

It's pretty simple. People always blame others first, and since the IT department is the closest thing to a scapegoat in the office... Well, you just need more red staplers i think.

Also, if you're a computer-illiterate person, you get quite used to call the IT dept. as often as you can with problems which seem "strange" to you, so very soon it just goes as your natural reflex. In my opinion though, it has nothing to do with mentality, just the lack of computer experience. For example: "OH NOES, my mail client can't connect to the mailserver! Plz help me, IT Department! :(" (which, by coincidence, is one of the first things new workers call for).

You're not crazy...

[ubernode]

It seems to be an epidemic. In other words, I've experienced the same thing (repeatedly). Does it stem from too many bugs in our code or something else? I have no idea. All I know is that pushing the "send to voicemail" button on my tele makes the problem go away until my boss sends me a ticket to investigate. Darn, we get it on both ends.

Cheers.

Re:You're not crazy...

[djSpinMonkey]

Does it stem from too many bugs in our code or something else? I have no idea.

You have no idea? Hm. That sort of suggests it may stem from too many bugs in your code. :-)

Everyone's fault.

[daeg]

It's everyone's fault. Users distrust software because there is a lot of untrustworthy software.

My users do the same. Before I verify a report is accurate, I make them go back and verify the data they entered is correct. Oftentimes, its user error, a missing field, or in my last case, a slight change in business practices, where a field used to be required, but now wasn't, which the report somewhat expected to be there. After they think they've verified the data, I'll go into the database and verify it by hand. Sometimes the report is wrong, but usually it's just displaying something different than what the user expects. 90% user error, 10% system error -- if you don't let anyone report problems, you'll never catch those 10%.

I try to give my users as many reports as possible and encourage them to pull multiple reports and cross-reference themselves. I don't hesitate to add reports, either, since they really take little time to adapt from other reports, even if it is just to help out that 55-year-old sales guy on the third floor that doesn't sell much but everyone likes because he's been there for 20 years. It gets me major kudos (and free lunches) from other staff who see a new report, run it, and realize that they could use it, too. "You're reading my mind, man! You just saved me 3 hours of work a week! How's about some lunch on me?!"

In other words: it's your job, now STFU & GBTW.

Your problem isn't buck-passing

[Anonymous Coward]

It sounds like the "blame game" isn't the problem you should be worried about.

It sounds like you should be more worried about all the meaningless support calls and hand-holding that your company expects you to do.

Worse Than that...

[Anonymous Coward]

...the numbers changed, in a way that we don't like, rewrite the reporting until it shows the numbers we want.

Mind you they have reviewed, and poked and critiqued the report in it current form and verified and re-verified the numbers a hundred times, and changed the reportsuntil they fit their view of the world, but now that self same report that they have poked at forever suddenly shows something they don't want it to show, so it needs to be changed, ASAP, and its your fault it now shows the wrong things.

Anonymous because at least one person in management here knows what my Slashdot account is...and this would be a serious CLM to reveal myself.

Who?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who doesn't play the Blame the Tech' game?

Are You Serious?

[GrayCalx]

My wife is a horse-trainer/lesson-giver. Her students constantly make uninformed claims that the horse was having a bad day, or that the horse was just plain stupid, completely ignoring their own inability to ride.

How many teachers have been blamed by parents for not teaching their kids enough or teaching them poorly and thats why little Johnny isn't passing his standards tests?

What about high ranking political officials who avoid bad-press/prosecution by passing the buck to an underling?

"Blame the [fill_in_blank]" game happens for every industry, for every body. What makes you think this is a IT-only issue?

Re:Are You Serious?

[renoX]

>How many teachers have been blamed by parents for not teaching their kids enough or teaching them poorly and that's why little Johnny isn't passing his standards tests?

Well, there are *also* bad teachers..
When I learned Spanish, I had a very cool/lazy teacher two years in a row, now I've totally forgotten Spanish, I had also a very good English teacher two years in a row: very strict, but made students progress *a lot*, I remember how I shivered in horror when the English teacher the years after this started speaking .. with a French accent!

I'd say that there are also probably bad days for horse, but I don't know much about horses.

Re:Are You Serious?

[Anonymous Coward]

"How many teachers have been blamed by parents for not teaching their kids enough or teaching them poorly and thats why little Johnny isn't passing his standards tests?"

Or maybe it's because little johnny is an institution that has no authority or power to kick out barbarian children that cause so much grief to little johnny, all in the name of capitalist efficiency(tm) and political correctness(tm) and elimination of more forms of violent discpline which are much needed IMHO, many kids are out of control because their parents live at work, we live in a culture of workaholics who have no fucking clue how degenerate they are. Most schools suck because they are 1) Not properly funded and 2) The staff while "educated" is no guarantee of teaching quality over time. Most of the teachers from my schooling career were 1) Burnt out and not interested in being involved 2) Overworked because they were understaffed and 3) Many unqualified people were allowed to teach the "useless" subjects like geography, keyboarding (you read that right: Typing class) history mostly due to not having qualified people who want to work there, most likely due to not being near a major city.

That's not so bad

[Ynsats]

Trying being an Oracle DBA maintaining databases of testing results and data for engineers that were plagued with Ingres for decades. Every time they screw up a query and get zero results, the call comes in to check something relating to Ingres that Oracle doesn't have or need. Either that or the servers get bogged down because the network group refuses to admit that there might be a problem with the network and that I need to "check my settings". Nevermind that all interfaces are either set to auto-negotiate or forced to maximum performance.

Anyway, I digress.

I have experienced it before and it comes and goes as the people in charge move up the ladder and others take thier places. Often times it can be incredibly difficult to get past it. However, that is one of the challenges of being in IT. Convincing people that the technology isn't the problem is difficult. I think the difficulty lies in the fact that as an IT professional, if you are doing your job correctly, your work should be invisible to the users. They should think that you do nothing all day. If that is the case then you have already done your job effectivly unless they are complaining about something. Then, of course, you have to fix it.

However, users are funny creatures. They will not notice the systems and immerse themselves completely in the computing environment...until something goes wrong. Then it's like The Matrix is skipping a beat and Agent Smith jumps in and gives them the stink eye. Then the phones start ringing and you, you slackass, you ain't doin' nuthin'! Since they never realize the good because it works the way they have come accustomed to it working, problems that boot them out of the environmental warm-fuzzy are glaring. It's not only a work stopage but it's like waking someone up by dumping a bucket of water on thier face. It's jarring to them and leaves as much of an emotional/mental impact as a work stopage leaves a physical impact.

The reaction then becomes more of a fight or flight type deal. A work stopage or less then rosy data results can be devasating to anyone. When these people you are dealing with see thier numbers come up less desireable that expected, the first thing they tend to do is panic. The blame starts flying every which way to get them back to thier non-panic striken happy place.

You will never solve the "blame techonology" problem because it isn't really rooted in a lack of education. It's human nature to find a scapegoat to accept blame to avoid the pain, physical or emotional, of dropping the ball and getting called on it. About the only thing you can do is do you job as best as you can. If they call asking about the reporting program, be professional and calm and work through thier problem with them. Afterall, you know things are OK on your side and things aren't ok on thier side. They don't know that though. They are just trying to follow every path as quickly as possible to find out what is wrong so that they can get a handle on it and maybe put a stop to the downward slide, quickly.

Above all, don't take it personal, you likely do not report to them. If they become unmanagable, refer them to your management and have your manager act as the intermediary. If you are the management then it is your responsibility to find an amiacable solution.

They shouldn't blame IT

[shadowrat]

When our software generates erroneous or otherwise false reports, i blame George W Bush.

They blame the techs for things that try to have..

[Joe The Dragon]

fixed but are told that theres is no funding for , we don't have the time to do it right so do it the fastest way, don't have time / hardware to test backups or new software on and so on.

Given the number of typos...

[Anonymous Coward]

...in your post, I'm not surprised that they hold your code suspect.

"I work for a marketing services company, and it is my department's roll ~is~ to develop and maintain reporting systems for all the data we collect. When a department manager sees a dip (or rise) in one of ~there~ KPI's the first thing they do is ask me to 'check out the reporting', because '[they] think there is a problem'? ~It's~ this just the culture of my company or have other readers experienced a 'blame the technology first, ask questions later mentality'?"

Re:Given the number of typos...

[TeknoHog]

Agreed. Why is it that computer geeks are always defending their lack of spelling/grammar in natural languages, while they (allegedly) work with programming languages that don't tolerate one single typo?

Re:Given the number of typos...

[Blakey Rat]

You missed "roll" for "role."

And yes, if your programming is as poor as your communication skills, I'm not surprised that you're frequently asked to double-check it. I agree with parent.

Re:Given the number of typos...

[Anonymous Coward]

Because there are no Natural Language compilers in our applications. AI would be needed, or another person sitting next to you doing what is called "proofreading."

Experience

[ObiWanStevobi]

I get it alot, and sometimes it is my fault. I don't always know alot about the program I am writing is used. Well, I know how it is used, I just don't know alot about the typical results are. I am happy to defer to their experience if they see strange results and want it checked out. Either you find some obscure bug and fix it, or you find a user error. Either way, you come out more confident in your program. Likely, you get paid either way, so there is no reason to be annoyed about it. Unless you are a flawless programmer that gets enough time to test every possible sequence of user actions and can predict any strange thing a user will input into a databse and account for it.

"and it is my department's roll is to develop and"

[bdonalds]

My department's roll is Tootsie!

You may be too defensive

[ccarr.com]

If I had an anomolous report, I'd definitely double-check the reporting process before I raised a red flag to upper management. Maybe they're just doing their homework.

Re:You may be too defensive

[shadowrat]

Yeah, i get these requests every week. I don't take it as blame. Most people realize that the reports are as error prone as anything else made by human hands. If there's something wrong, the important thing is to fix it. Sometimes our clients are asses. Then i roll up my sleeves and really dive into the investigation. Let me tell you, there's nothing more satisfying than going back to them with concrete proof that they screwed up the data, or failed to adhere to procedures, etc. Oh, that proof can also be accompanied by a big bill for the day i spent investigating as well.

Corporate Culture

[boyfaceddog]

I work in a Very Large Corporation where mistakes are met with instant and severe retaliation from management. It has become a part of our corporate culture that you don't do ANYTHING unless you have someone else's signature on it. Get somone to sign off and its they're problem, not yours.

That said, even if I were to get out and work someplace sane, I would probably do what your managers are doing. It just makes sense to check of there is a fault in the system before you stick our your neck.

Re:Corporate Culture

[sconeu]

Get somone to sign off and its they're problem, not yours.

And whom do you blame spelling ("somone") and grammar ("they're problem") upon?

Friendly hints:

loose = adjective, meaning not connected
lose = verb, meaning to be lost

their = third person plural possessive
there = location
they're = contraction, meaning "they are"

its = possessive, "belonging to it"
it's = contraction, meaning "it is"

to = preposition
too = adverb, indicating excess
two = a number, the base of the binary system

Re:Corporate Culture

[boyfaceddog]

Wow, maaan. Dis jest like when i were in skool.

I think I can smell the chalk and the flop-sweat from the nerdy guy in the high-waters in the desk in the front row.

Wait a minute, that's you, isn't it?

Re:Corporate Culture

[sconeu]

Dude, read my next post, I know I'm being an asshat about it.

Re:Corporate Culture

[Big_Al_B]

Damned odd that you don't remember the cirriculum as clearly as the environment.

Re:"and it is my department's roll is to develop a

[Anonymous Coward]

My department's roll is hot and buttered.

Unless it really is the car's fault...

[mr_mischief]

or the manufacturer or the mechanic. Generalizations being what they are, blaming the driver is a good place to start. However, brakes do sometimes fail even with proper maintenance. I've seen the pedal cover fall off the pedal on a car still under warranty, and if that happens at the wrong time (the driver's foot goes to the floor with the cover usually) it could cause an accident. Anti-lock brakes have been known to lock and cause an increased stopping distance. Defective tires have been known to blow out under normal inflation pressures, and cars with one flat front tire are difficult to stop or steer in a controllable fashion.

Yes, the car being the problem is the exception, but it can happen. Likewise, if you happen to have an accounting package running on certain older Pentium chips, or your PC comes with non-ECC RAM for some reason and is being used for important data... I think you can see the point here. It's an exception, and probably exceedingly rare. Rare doesn't mean nonexistent, though.

A gun that jams and backfires despite proper maintenance might really kill a person, even. However, the gun should never get the blame when a person fires it and the gun doesn't malfunction. That's the holder's fault, or a parent's fault if they let their kid play with the gun.

Of course, in all these situations that the object seems to carry part of the blame independent of the end user, that blame really rests on the manufacturer or maintainer.

ask questions later

[Threni]

> blame the technology first, ask questions later mentality'?"

They're asking questions now. "Can you check this out?". That's a question. They're probably asking other people questions at the same time, in parallel, rather than waiting for a reply from person 1 then asking person 2. Seems pretty efficient to me.

All the time!

[celardore]

I work as a credit controller (getting my companies money out of customers hands), and I frequently hear problems about peoples 'systems'. "Oh, you didn't get the cheque? We had a system error a while back...." And so on. If I went on what I hear on a daily basis, I wouldn't trust computers at all for accountancy!

Reinterpret the question

[linuxwrangler]

You provided a tool that gave a manager some information. This is a good thing.

The manager used it. This is a good thing.

The tool revealed something. This is a good thing.

The manager may be seeking to decide what action, if any, is required. This a good thing. (I hear lots more complaints from people who build systems that aren't used or where the information supplied is ignored. As someone once said, "If you ignore your consultant's recommendations, fire him. It doesn't matter how good the advice is - if your plan is to ignore it you are wasting your money." Similarly, a system that only produces output which is ignored can be scrapped.)

The manager wants to make sure the decision is based on sound data. This is a good thing. Especially if the manager is "situationally aware" enough to be correlating information from different sources. The information may not completely agree and your data may not be the only data being investigated.

So...look deeper into the question. It could really mean all sorts of things like:

I panic at the slightest change.

-or-

This is interesting, but your tool doesn't let me dig-down to the level necessary to get useful insight. Please help me.

-or-

Your tool has the ability to dig into the data, but I'm too lazy to do so. (Or it's too hard to use or the ability is hidden or.....fill in usability/training issue here)

-or-

Your tools have a bad reputation for accuracy so I'm double-checking.

So it's your choice. Treat the manager as stupid/untrusting/lazy. Or spend a moment to find out the underlying reason for the question. In the worst case you will build goodwill and political-capital for IT and in the best case you will let IT really shine by tweaking your systems and/or training to make the company more competitive.

Yes, I'm being a pedantic asshat

[sconeu]

Yes, I know I'm missing the word "errors" before the word "upon".

And yes, I know I'm being a pedantic asshat, but those four classes of errors really tick me off.

Not to mention "definately" (hint, there's no "a" in definite").

Absolutely.

[Canthros]

I do recall having multiple, overlong, involved conversations with users explaining that, no, the computer could not simply round a particular digit up, just because. (I forget at the moment if the particular digit had fallen prey to banker's rounding--thank you, Microsoft, for *that* headache!--or if it was rounded correctly, and they just wanted the number to be that extra hundredth of a percent higher.)

Or the conversation in which I explained the problems inherent in data duplication and during which I was assured that a particular piece of information would always be entered once, in one level of the data hierarchy. And then having to go back a month later and code around their unwillingness to stick it in the correct level of the hierarchy.

Or ... But the problem is multifold. Your users are used to software doing things 'wrong'. They are used to your department doing things 'wrong', and they may even be used to you doing things 'wrong'. Fixing that attitude can be a trick, and will require work on both ends (yours especially, since you must change their perception of you). Try to be transparent and up front about what can or cannot be done. Exercise due diligence in error reports--it may be your fault! Admit mistakes and fix them quickly. Make sure that your users understand the importance of requirements and specifications, i.e. if the report behaves as specified, but it's still 'wrong', then the problem is not with the report but with the specifications for same. Get user sign-off and buy-in at the design phase (this will be very difficult). When you get sign-off, hold them to it. It's their report: they need to take some responsibility for making sure that business changes are communicated to you clearly and in a timely fashion so that you can keep it up to date. So on and so forth. Push back when necessary, and be humble.

Oh, and tact, charm, patience, and humility at all times. I pretty much fail at those, but you need anybody who deals directly with users to have a lot of them and at will.

This all assumes that buck-passing isn't just SOP at your workplace, though. If that's the case, it's going to take a lot more to not be saddled with blame for every possible thing that can be shoved on you.

I want one too, I'm hungry!

[Anonymous Coward]

"and it is my department's roll"

Do they butter it for you?

sp

[Anonymous Coward]

there, their, who cares?

Buying time....

[FuzzyDaddy]

One thing this buys a manager is time to think over how to respond to the situation before having to tell anyone about it.

Not unusual

[Knara]

Managers (even good ones) read case studies that show that decision making effectiveness is directly related to the quality of information and data you receive. Assuming that a particular metric has a consistent behavior, if that metric comes in at a noticible variant up or down, it's very rational to include "did something go wrong with the process that measures it" as an initial part of the investigation.

How the hell did this make it on Slashdot?

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

...it is my department's roll is to develop...department manager sees a dip (or rise) in one of there KPI's the first thing they do is ask me to 'check out the reporting', because '[they] think there is a problem'? It's this just the culture of my company or have other readers experienced a 'blame the technology first, ask questions later mentality'?"

First, LEARN ENGLISH. ("role", "their") Until you do, respect will continue to evade you.

Second, if you submit something obscure to Slashdot, explain it. Specifically, WTF is a KPI?

Third, your manager DID ask you a question. If you want to avoid more of these questions, why not make the process of creating whatever a KPI is more transparent (e.g., make an interim detailed report available as a CSV) and let the questioners check their own work?

At the moment, people "don't trust the tech" because they don't trust the whiny, snot-nosed newbie churning out their KPIs. Prove yourself to be a reliable and detail-oriented person (OK, basically a 21st-century secretary) and maybe they will.

Re:How the hell did this make it on Slashdot?

[Anonymous Coward]

FYI, KPI is a Key Performance Indicator, i.e. the metric on which people's bonuses depend.

Do I need to explain FYI? LOL!

Coversheet

[rholliday]

Maybe they're just trying to hint to you to use the new coversheet format.

Re:Coversheet

[bh_doc]

Yeah, didn't you get that memo?

Stupid spell-check...

[thegnu]

it is my department's roll is to develop

You should really check out that spell-check feature. It doesn't seem to be working. *grin*
-Nathan

I work for a large insurance company

[adriansd]

I would say that every where I have worked, for that matter, we do not expect the data to just match with anything. That's just not a reasonable expectation in a multibillion dollar operation. We usually know there is something going on and would not typically blame IT or anything with a well-established report. On the other hand, we also tend to do our own acquisition of the data since all too often IT will just "turn the crank" to get us something. In other words, if we try to go through IT, it becomes some sort of formal project where we give them our "specs" and they write the query and it all takes months to finally make through a sufficient amount of project management. Then, when it turns out that the wizzle wasn't in the wuzzle and we need to separate out the shizzle from the fashizzle and so on, well that's another project! IT has never been on the hoook for a final finished product in any company I have worked at. So, I guess if we ever specified reports by their end product rather than the specifics of how to make the report, we might start going back to IT a lot more. But as it stands, everyone knows that if something screws up, then it is probably the downstream effects of something else (which may well be some other IT snafu but is more than likely the unintended consequences of some other signed off on project).

Re:I work for a large insurance company

[dctoastman]

Are you dogging specs?

I'm sorry, but your IT dept is doing its job and covering its collective ass by requiring those specs. Now instead of saying "I need a report for the fourth quarter accident rates" and getting all huffy when IT doesn't read your mind and doesn't exclude accidents reported in the fourth quarter but for dates that were actually in the third quarter, you have to specify and know exactly what you want before you ask for it.

That's what specs are for, to get you to think about what you want before you just ask for it.

Re:I work for a large insurance company

[adriansd]

Certainly. No one blames IT and probably because of those specs. Someone else has to take responsibility for making sure those reports say what they should be saying. I'm just answering the question of the original post -- Do we blame IT? No -- not really. If there is some new system going in, maybe. It's not so much "blame IT" as it is "blame change", perhaps.

This is why spelling and grammar matter.

[Anonymous Coward]

If your reports are as badly written and poorly proof-read as your submission was, it's not surprising that they don't trust them.

Who said anything about 'right-wing?'

[spun]

Jeez, defensive much? I can understand, given all the abysmal failures and outright crimes committed by the right wing recently, how you might feel that way, but really, why bring politics into this?

I think the guy asking the question probably knows more about the culture at his company than you do. You sound as though you are claiming that management never plays CYA and never makes inane decisions. Something along the lines of, "Shut up and do what your boss asks without question, wage-slave. Don't you know your place, peon?"

I don't know where you get that impression

[wsanders]

It's not a well-kept secret that, if you are not an asshole about it, most banks and credit cards will forgive occasional charges and fees if you just ask.

I have reversed checking overdraft fees and Visa late fees and interest this way. (I've had my bank account for 20+ years and my Visa for more than 10.)

Last month, I asked Visa to refund the $29 late charge on my account since I paid one day too late. "Of course!", they said, "and why don't we refund the $10 interest too?" And they did.

Re:I don't know where you get that impression

[webheaded]

Wow. What bank do you have? o_O

Re:I don't know where you get that impression

[dgatwood]

Most banks will do that if you aren't a habitual late payer. If you slip up once, they'd rather refund the fee and keep you as a customer. If you do it often, you're a higher deadbeat risk, and the fees are intended to make up for that extra risk.

Re:I don't know where you get that impression

[ReverendLoki]

It's a common practice. My GF actually worked in the customer service call center for a credit card for a while, and as long as this isn't your umpteenth late payment or something like that, they have a lot of leeway to help you out. Just remember to be polite and moderately charming when you call - the mood of the person who picks up that call will have a fair amount in whether you actually receive help or a stone wall.

Not only does removing the late fee generate a lot of good will and customer loyalty, it also makes more financial sense. True, those cust. serv. reps aren't making huge amounts of cash, but when it comes to the difference between paying them to talk to a bitching customer for an hour (that hourly wage pplus the benefits, remember) in order to collect a $15 late fee, it just makes more sense to cute the customer some slack and just collect from the poor schmuck that isn't trying to fight it.

Re:I don't know where you get that impression

[try_anything]

Interesting. I had a perfect record with my credit card until I missed a payment while moving. Then BAM they started charging regular fees on my previously no-fee account, my interest rate went up, and of course my credit limit went up. (Raising my credit limit was quite logical, since my missed payment was the first sign that they might someday make a decent profit off me.) Maybe if I had just called them I could have reversed all that :-O

Ingrained in programmers too

[wsanders]

Right now I'm going through a big cluster f*** at work with respect to a new, bloated, and slow web app that's about to be rolled out. Of course, it must be *my* fault that he app is slow, because it's the "network".

It can't possibly be because the web app unloads a 1/4 MByte steaming pile of Javascript into the user's browser on first page load, can it?

All too common

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to hurt my co-workwers feelings I'll post anonymously.

I noticed that this is a querstion of covering thier asses. I've had a few instances when staff had dome something (consciously or uncosciously) that threw off their nubers on the program (which I wrote). Usually when there is an error I am the first on the list of suspects. Since they are under the scrutiny of supervisors, maybe it's ego (I'm doing my job right!) or a FUD screen about the computer messing up their data. Most of those I was able to track back to the real issue (incomplete deletions not quite right data, erc.). To make everyone happy, I plug in another module to help audit thier work (which they subsequently forget is there) and add in a few extra things to keep my ass covered the next time it happens.

A couple that have really helped me: All my record IDs are now strings that encode when the record was created, on which compurter and with whose account. Sometimes I set up an activity log if it is more mangling of existing data. These have helped me get to the bottom of the actual problem many times.

I find when it is my error I discover it and fix it long before they would have noticed.

Re:All too common

[Doctor Faustus]

All my record IDs are now strings that encode when the record was created, on which compurter and with whose account.
Have you considered putting those into separate fields?

Good (reporting) systems are self-checking

[Bearhouse]

Hash totals, that kinda stuff. Whenever design a system to collect & roll-up data for reporting, put in some basic controls to validate the data - both how it is collected & how it is calculated. Saves red faces. As for the 'up' or 'down' stuff - take a look at some basic stats if you're not familiar. There's plenty of sources on the interweb. Many 'rises' and 'falls' are not significant, just noise.

Made a career out of it

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the phrase most I used most often in my Software Development/IT career is "Has anything changed since the last time XYZ process ran?" When the answer is "no" then I ask "Then why do you not trust the results?"

Part of it, admittedly, is that software is constantly in flux and, therefore, prone to error. Everyone assumes that because some bugs were fixed in one part of the application, errors arose in other parts. This is especially true in some of the poorly thought out, spaghetti systems I've worked on. Unfortunately, IT has to err on the side of caution and, at least, investigate if this is the case.

IT often gets the blame

[yuna49]

I think a lot of you are being too harsh toward this guy.

IT departments are often the first target when people don't get the results they desire, because IT as a whole has lost much of its prestige and clout in firms over the past decade or so. That's why older people keep leaving the profession, and the rate of recruitment among younger people continues to decline.

People who were once in thrall to technology and computing now think it's unreliable and error-prone. There are many reasons for this, but mostly it's because many people are more experienced with computers and with computing problems. They've watched their computers lock up and need rebooting. They've "lost" an important email. They've "lost" an important document. Who are they going to blame?

On top of that, it sounds like the original poster works for a company that assumes, as do many companies and their investors, that every quarter must show better performance than the last. In the real world, of course, economies move up and down. It's only in the fantasy world of corporate America that expectations of ever-increasing growth continue to be the norm. When the fantasy bubble bursts, IT is an easy target.

Re:IT often gets the blame

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I personally haven't gotten into IT in a big business because of the horror stories I hear about IT people just being treated like absolute crap. I'm not worried about prestige and clout, I think IT should be like a utility and should simply improve working conditions without people having to really think about it. However, in reality IT dudes seem to have extreme working hours, needless paper work, and being considered "on-call" 24/7. Well, being on-call would be fine, but only for emergencies -- and I hear about IT guys getting called like 3-4 times a week while at home or sleeping. Sorry, noone has 4 emergencies per week, that is simply employee abuse!

Data inconsistency

[e-scetic]

Your reports may not provide enough data for your managers to cross-reference and verify. Or they do and the data isn't consistent.

If the former then the solution to this problem of annoying doublechecks is right before your very eyes. You either need more reports or you've got a bug to solve.

Blame the poll game

[Kuvter]

Everyone can play it on /. when a poll has a missing option.

A bit sensitive this week, are we?

[NoMaster]

So what's the problem? They're blaming the reporting, not you - and, after all, it is your job to "check out the reporting", isn't it?

Sorry, maybe I'm just a bit narky on this subject. I had a job a while ago where week after week, month after month, year after year I'd get pulled up because the coversheets on my timesheet and job accounting reports were literally a sea of red, marking out dozens of supposed violations every day. Every time I got hauled up about this, I turned the page over to the actual reports and located the raw data for every single supposed "violation", showed how they were due to errors and incorrect assumptions in the incoming data and report generation, exactly where and how the errors were occurring, and exactly how to fix the data collection and reporting - or, failing that, the one thing they could do to prevent making the incorrect assumptions.

Their suggestion? To fiddle the system (which in fact broke other, less important, reports!) with the effect of slowing down my workrate, just so these particular reports came out "correct".

When I left that position 2 years later, it was still going on...

The problem, y'see, was the opposite to yours. In my case, the management's assumption was that the whole process of data collection and report generation was infallible. Despite repeatedly proving and explaining at least 100 times why it wasn't, it was still considered to be so.

Stop being so sensitive, and do your damned job.

Makes sense to me

[hey!]

They're applying the game theory concept of MiniMax -- their minimizing their maximum loss.

If there is no problem, and the may you double check, then they have one digruntled employee.

If there is a problem, and they don't make you double check, they end up telling the customer that custard filled clown shoes are the hot Spring fasion statement.

Checking out the numbers is often a good idea

[Alpha830RulZ]

When a KPI report (Key Performance INdicator, for the acronym challenged) indicates that you are not meeting some goal, it's a very good idea to dig in and figure out why. Key Indicators are supposed to measure the health of a business, so if they have moved, management is very, very, very interested in why.

Reports being what they are, compendiums of data from some source which might fuck up, it's a real good idea to make sure that the numbers work out before you reorganize your business because of those KPI's.

It can be a pain in the ass, but it's important to the functioning of the organization. If you have to do it often, consider rolling up some pre-written reconciliation reports, that break out the sub components of whatever you're tallying up. Do so in ways that let you verify against other reports that use independent sources of data. For example, sales should have some reasonable relation to bank deposits. Units produced ought to be reconcilable against units shipped (+- inventory changes). And so on.

Good KPI's are good because they serve as a leading indicator for problems, and digging into the data is just what good management should do. Wouldn't you rather work for people who go and find out facts before they make a decision?

Now, this rant presupposes that when the numbers are dug into, some interesting information comes out. If it's just an exercise of checking the computer's addition, and the answer is always the same (yes, the numbers total up, and sales ARE really down), then you have something to whine about. However, in my short career (pushing 30 years now), the numbers bear looking into more often than not.