First Thing IT Managers Do In the Morning?

An anonymous reader writes "When I was a wee-little IT Manager, I interviewed for a position at an online CRM provider in San Francisco, a job I certainly was qualified for, at least on paper. One of the interviewer's questions was 'What is the first thing you do when you get to work in the morning?' I thought saying 'Read Slashdot' wouldn't be what he was looking for — so I made up something, I'm sure, equally lame. I didn't get the job. But the question has stuck with me over the years. What do real IT and MIS managers do when they walk in to the office in the morning? What Web sites or tools do they look at or use the first thing? Remember, this is for posterity, so please be honest."

Comments

Coffee machine1st thing I look at

[Evil Al]

Coffee machine, foo!

Re:Coffee machine1st thing I look at

[scotch]

Probably a big dump. Why can't people shit at home? They were just there half an hour ago.

Re:Coffee machine1st thing I look at

[fractoid]

I misread that as "make sure the nightly backups are corrupted properly". Time for that coffee... >.>

Turn off the alarm

[JoeCommodore]

Otherwise I get a headache real fast!

Shower

[Aliencow]

I'm sure that would've been the right answer.

Let's see....

[alexfeig]

1) Shmooze around the office cooler for gossip. 2) Make sure my job is still there, and not outsourced. 3) Read Slashdot. 4) Call vendors and complain about service... so I can get free service. 5) Cut my budget even more. 6) Come unglued on a random user. 7) Read Slashdot. 8) Go home.

First thing?

[Anonymous Coward]

Masturbate. It's important you let them know you do this before you get to work. Sticky keys are nobody's friend.

Why, sir....

[digitalamish]

The first thing I do is come up with an action plan to provide a best of breed solution that will benefit both our customers and our stockholders. After I take a wag at my daily task list, I begin working on new strategies to augment and improve the current paradigm. Once I have liaised with my support staff to determine the readiness of our infrastructure, I take off my jacket and put my briefcase away. Sir.

The obvious

[Mike1024]

1. Park my bike, shower etc.
2. Turn on computer.
3. While it starts, get a coffee.
4. Log in, drink coffee, check e-mail/calendar.
5. Get to work.

I've got to say, that sounds like the sort of interview question that would get some pretty boring responses. Like mine, above. So I usually jazz it up a bit in interview:

1. Park my unicycle, change out of my superhero unitard.
2. Get a new guitar from the IT guys because I smashed mine at the end of my last performance.
3. Check in with each of the 10,000 people who work under my command, all of whom I know by name.
4. Have my executive assistant relay my e-mails to me, one character at a time, by throwing lettered frisbees back and forth between my company's two tower blocks.
5. Take my second breath of the day.

So far I haven't had any job offers, but I figure the market is pretty competitive at the moment - it's only a matter of time!

A good answer

[blhack]

When i come in, i immediately remove the backup tapes from last night and replace them with the ones for the night to follow. After that i sit down at my workstation and check the server logs to make sure that the backup completed successfully. Next comes email. There are a few automated emails that get sent to me when cron jobs are completed detailing what was done and how efficiently. If there aren't any problems that need to be dealt with, I start scheduling out my day in my notebook. After that i usually make my rounds around the office checking back in with users who had problems that required attention yesterday, to make sure that the solution worked for them and that everything is running smoothly. Once that is done, i log into the servers to check their state, make sure there aren't any runaway tasks, and basically ensure that everything is running smoothly. If there still haven't been any users with problems that need attention at this point, i will usually start looking through the firewall logs from last night to make sure nothing fishy was going on while i was away.

At this point, printers usually start exploding.

We're mostly Mac at my company

[spirit_fingers]

So the first thing I do in the morning is play Unreal Tournament deathmatch online with the Maytag Repairmen. They suck. Naturally, I pwn their asses. After that, it's time for my mid-morning nap. Then it's off to lunch! Two hours later, I'm back, and it's siesta time, followed by a bathroom break where I peruse the the NY Times. Then, back at my desk, I jiggle the hula doll on top of my Mac Pro and check my email. Yawn. Nothing happening there. Then around 3:00 pm, my supervisor usually calls and asks me to show him for the 300th time how to import his Van Morrison CDs into iTunes. By then it's happy hour in the employee lounge. A couple of brewskies, followed by a fevered round of pinball, and it quittin' time! Yay! I've earned my pay for the day.

Re:Check the sev 1s

[edittard]

Generally speaking if you have to check on them, they are not sev 1. If they are sev 1 you should have been contacted by now via automated(monitoring software)

Perhaps they're a C shop - so they count from zero.

Re:I fart

[Reverend528]

Well, the first thing I do when I get to the office is fart. That way only the people with real concerns will dare approach me.