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

Re:Coffee machine1st thing I look at

[paganizer]

yup. first thing is coffee.
after that, check the whiteboard on the door to my office to see where the problems are; when you have 6000+ systems and a cluster in each state and a few overseas, their is always a problem somewhere.
If anything is on fire, head to level 2 and check with the nightshift to see what the heck is going on before they escape.
If the fire is local, walk down to the NOC and see whats up, put out fire if appropriate. if it's in Dallas or Seattle or Guam, see the status of the local admin on the ticket queue, get on the phone if I see something they don't; start a team re-tasking operations at the site if it looks like it's going to take a while; downtime is not an option.
if it is Biz as usual, walk in, fire up the computer, and check the infrastructure; check the queue on SMS to see if anything major is being pushed today, basically just look around to see if there is anything that is going to require me to earn my salary.
if everything is smooth, or being handled, check e-mail; then, slashdot until the 10AM meeting.

sometimes I wonder why I retired. then, I remember. Paperwork sucks.