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Dealing With an IT Bully

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the griefers-are-everywhere dept.

jammag writes "'"You are an idiot." That was how I was greeted on an already gloomy, rainy Monday morning.' Eric Spiegel offer his a first-hand account of dealing with a tech world geek-gone-bad and presents some ideas for coping. 'These bullies are quick to aggressively divert blame for any problem back to someone else, because they couldn't possibly be responsible. Some are passive aggressive, where they will subtly lay blame behind your back. Others enjoy getting in your face and being as confrontational as possible.'" What experiences have others had that defied all logic and possibly made you want to start looking for rifles and bell towers?

10 of 521 comments (clear)

  1. Re:I think he had it coming, really by Nos. · · Score: 5, Informative

    Maybe you missed the second page... I'll quote the first paragraph for you:

    Granted, there was much pressure from top management to get this release out by Friday and thus documentation and any internal training were pushed aside. That being said, it turned out a major bug was in the new release and the on-call support engineer had run a baseline test, but couldnâ(TM)t put the results in context with the new reality introduced by this new bug. His only recourse was to escalate, and do it quickly.

    So:

    • Senior management was more interested in making the release date than getting documentation in place beforehand.
    • The support team didn't have the knowledge to document the problem properly.
    • Our "VP" (Eric - the author of the article) used a previously agreed upon procedure, they escalated to the developers by first notifying their manager (Eric) who then tried to notify the development manager (Dirk).

    From the details given, I'd like to know what you expected Eric to do differently. Management pressed for the release, even though they knew the support staff wasn't ready. When an issue happened, the support staff tried to follow process to document the issue, couldn't, and followed a proper escalation process.

  2. Re:I think he had it coming, really by moderatorrater · · Score: 4, Informative

    The support team that the author manages didn't get trained on the new version before it went into production. The author had requested it, but the release was pushed too fast for non-technical reasons.

    They didn't know how to support it or even talk properly about the issues. It was a major bug that needed to be escalated immediately. He followed procedure and the other guy didn't.

    They didn't follow up properly in documenting the case. Again, major error. When there's a big enough error on a production server, sometimes you don't document the problem. Sometimes you have to get up at 11 am and figure out why 30 leads are getting created every second by the same ip address and it's bringing down the server. As a tech support engineer (which I'm not, but assuming I am), at this point I can do one of two things: I can keep digging and documenting, or I can escalate. The author didn't tell us what the issue is, but he did say it was major.

    They woke up the VP of software development at 3 AM without having good data for him. They called, he never answered.

    I could continue, but I've got to ask: were you reading the same article I was? It's possible that the information that was given was wrong and biased, but there wasn't anything in the article that the author did blatantly wrong.
  3. IT != Dev by fishdan · · Score: 1, Informative

    You're certainly not going to win any friends by telling the dev team they are part of IT. It might be splitting hairs to the SUITS, but all the people who can set up their own internet connection should understand that dev, database, ops, QA and IT are COMPLETELY different. Now -- sometimes one person has to do all these jobs -- that's what a start up is. But if your company is big enough to have 2 vice presidents, I suspect there is separation. Besides. who besides dev ever thinks that having QA and dev performed by the same people is a good idea?

    --
    Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm
    1. Re:IT != Dev by benedict · · Score: 2, Informative

      Depends where you are. At $BIGBANK where I currently toil, "IT" is construed broadly to mean ... information technology. Everyone from the off-shore service team to the systems architects is considered "IT". It makes sense to me.

      --
      Ben "You have your mind on computers, it seems."
  4. Re:I think he had it coming, really by Skyshadow · · Score: 4, Informative
    You're still reading this like he's some low-level guy. He's not -- he's a direct report of the CIO and a peer of the company VPs. That makes him 'upper management' in my book. At that level, you're responsible for your area even if the things you need to do are hard to accomplish.

    If a new release is coming, it's his job to find a way to get his staff trained to support it and to make the others in management understand the necessity for staff training ahead of the release.

    The release didn't just happen out of the blue. His staff didn't get trained because he didn't make it happen. The same goes for his staff being unable to follow the support procedures -- regardless of the reasons, it's ultimately his job to make sure his organization's procedures work.

    --
    Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
  5. Thanks for playing, try again by bockelboy · · Score: 4, Informative

    One of the best things my boss has taught me to do out of college is to listen to people. Sometimes a person gets whiney or edgy (and if I got a call at 3am, I'd be bitchy too); listen to them, filter out the abusive parts, and find the parts which you need to listen to.

    Finally, if there's anything which needs to be addressed, let them throw their tantrum, and bring it up again later on.

    Don't know about this case, but it works 90% of the time for me.

  6. Re:I think he had it coming, really by Nos. · · Score: 4, Informative

    From the article, I can't make that judgement. Perhaps he had pushed to make sure training and documentation were in place before the release went live. I'm working from the information in the article, and trying not to assume anything. All we have is that senior management pushed for the release date, so that was above Eric's call. We don't know much he did or did not push to hold back the release. Secondly he, and his staff did follow proper support procedures. Its right there that they can go directly to the engineers for a major issue if the managers are notified, which they were.

  7. Linkedin by benh57 · · Score: 2, Informative

    Of course he didn't mention the company name...
    But... Funny thing about social networks these days. LinkedIn. I bet most people on slashdot are in his network. He's only 3 hops from me. So it's really easy to see all the places he has worked.
    http://www.linkedin.com/profile?viewProfile=&key=1953893
    I've added them to my list of 'don't work for these companies'.. :P

  8. Re:Slashdot ID... by cavemanf16 · · Score: 2, Informative

    ... you'll loose your job. ... OK, you're either British or a /. noob. This incorrect use of the word "loose" when it should be "lose" just drives me freakin' crazy. Can we all agree to just turn it into "luse" as the past-tense verb form of "to lose"? This new spelling would be totally 1337 (yes, I'm "old"!) for all the new little kiddies on the interweb tubes. Heck, we could probably even get it admitted as the new form of spelling to Webster's Dictionary.
  9. Re:Slashdot ID... by Tim+C · · Score: 4, Informative

    What's being British got to do with it? The word is "lose" whatever version of English you're speaking.

    --
    It's official. Most of you are morons.