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Abused IT Workers Ready To Quit
An anonymous reader writes to tell us that new research is suggesting as many as a quarter of all IT staff in small to medium businesses have suffered some sort of abuse and are looking for careers elsewhere (PDF). "The study also found that over a third have suffered from sleepless nights or headaches as a result of IT problems at work, while 59 percent spend between one and 10 hours a week working on IT systems outside normal hours. ... The biggest cause of stress among IT staff is problems arising from operational day-to-day tasks, the survey found. Another major cause came from loss of critical data, according to Connect."
59 per cent spend between one and 10 hours a week working on IT systems outside normal hours.
That's the problem right there: in IT, work can be endless. Saying no is key to keeping your sanity. But 2009 is not the best year to take risks. Good luck finding a job elsewhere.
It's bad in IT, but at least you get to use your brain (to some extent) and some of it is sometimes fun. That's a start.
Do fun stuff on the side and keep your skills current. That could become very handy sooner than you think.
--
FairSoftware.net -- the community for fair entrepreneurs
The number of BOFH increased significantly in 2008.
The study also found that over a third have suffered from sleepless nights or headaches as a result of IT problems at work, while 59 per cent spend between one and 10 hours a week working on IT systems outside normal hours. [...] The biggest cause of stress among IT staff is problems arising from operational day-to-day tasks, the survey found. Another major cause came from loss of critical data, according to Connect."
holy Jesus, that's some bad grammar
These 'small and midsize' businesses don't have the staff to hire a DBA, a sysadmin, a helpdesk guy -- you're it. You're the jack of all trades.
It's rather logical to think you're going to get abused, because the same person who is fixing SQL queries is now known to be the helpdesk guy, and unfortunately can't keep up with the work.
That said, I've been there. And working 80 hour weeks, I had enough, and moved to a large, massive corporation with good job deliniation. Not only do I learn more because I have the time, I work 40 hours a week (barely) and make far more money with better benefits.
Just a reminder folks, work to live, don't live to work. There is no such thing as a 'dream' job, because at the end of the day you'll always want more, best to find a job that allows you to live your life to the fullest and provides you a good salary as a bonus :)
Cheers and good luck to those out of work in '09, it's shaping up to be a tough year.
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
we're in a recession. If you can find another job, then great. Otherwise, suck it up. BTW, those in other fields of this economy work even more (physicians, lawyers, etc.).
Like the post office or public education...it never stops.
Unlike those examples, it never pauses. Face it guys...you are babysitting. Networks, servers, desktops, whatever... IT is babysitting. And this baby always needs sitting....
Instead of quitting in an "employers market"... try something like Gracie Jiu Jitsu... choking a motherfucker out makes me feel better after a day of IT BS.
On the bright side, we'll all be up shit creek when we use all the fossil fuels. At least your servers won't need babysitting anymore.
THL phish sticks
I'm going to check with my Aussie friend here at work, but I'm pretty sure he won't agree that 25% of the Bruces are actually whiny pussies. All the ones I know are pretty cool.
John
A study conducted today finds that an [extremely common thing] and [extremely uncommon thing] are happening a lot.
e.g. ... Because physical abuse is SO common at work?
A study conducted today finds that sleep and winning the lottery are happening to IT workers almost daily.
"But it is hugely disappointing that, all too often, this has led to them being verbally or even physically abused.
They fired me! They would spank me, and would respond with "Faster! Harder! Tell me how I've been a BAD BOY! Tell me that I'm a filthy little whore!"
That's when they discovered that I was a masochistic pervert and canned me.
While it is not the full problem. But the common Ego among IT workers exasperates the problem.
The I am smarter then everyone tone, you are stupid because you don't know to run the app nested in the menus of the start button. Without me this company will collapse. Type of ego.
A lot of the time working those extra hours are voluntary, but because you think it the collaps without you, you do the extra hours.
The I'm smarter then you, makes sure your boss doesn't feel bad about letting you go, or pushing you that much more.
We don't treat our selfs and others like humans, so why do expect other to treat us so.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
And at the very end of TFA:
"Ten per cent of the companies surveyed said they had lost critical data through backup tape failures."
Is it just me, or does 10% seem like a huge loss rate?
/Test your backup
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Yeah I'm talking to you. The wannabe computer programmer who thinks they are good at computers because they can click around the computer enough times and find the reboot button and 'fix' an inherently flawed windows system. You think you're cool because you can pirate photoshop but not know anything about it, get Microsoft Office for free but have the literacy of a 1st grader when writing a paper, and get a copy of Norton Anti-virus because your inherently flawed system is useless without Administrative privileges. Get a clue, you are not smart, you are just a corporate sheep for a company that will bury you if you ever tried to write any software that did anything remotely useful. You are a clickaround and all you know is your ugly gray existence that is Windows.
Want the source code to windows vista?
head -n 1000000 /dev/random > Windows.com
TFA mentions physical abuse as well. I didn't bother to read the PDF but I wish that they were more specific about that.
Reminds me of a true story: A former medium-sized employer which was ran like the mob and probably had mob connections(Los Angeles, no surprise there) had "promoted" their head test software engineer to an upper-mid level position in the IT department. Perhaps I'm naive, but why the hell would anybody be "promoted" in such a manner? They did give him a big raise and he seemed to be happy about the whole thing until suddenly, a couple weeks after the promotion, he came into work with a black eye and bitched that he was going to quit his job(and he did shortly thereafter).
Anybody wanna chime in about their similar stories?
The IT manager Book of Abuse:
* cat-5 strangulation
* bayesian water torture
* physical loopback devices
* burning and branding
* PROFIT!
The biggest cause of stress among IT staff is problems arising from operational day-to-day tasks
In other news, doctors get stressed by having to do clinicals, and retail workers get stressed out by daily customers.
Convert FLACs to a portable format with FlacSquisher
As someone who has done IT for a short time, let me say:
I've found IT to be stressful mostly because of the responsibility, whether it's part of the official job description or not. I worked in IT for a ~15 person company during my undergraduate years, and anything computer related fell on my lap. I found this difficult because the users were utterly dependent, I was the scapegoat for computer failures and estimating the time for certain repairs was difficult. Undoubtedly one of the most stressful jobs I've had. Do these things get easier for professional IT?
Managers who expect that data will never be lost, yet are unwilling to authorize equipment purchase and hours required to install and maintain a proper backup system.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
1 to troll in 2 seconds...
Honestly I think this acceptance of things going wrong and "thats just the way IT is" belongs in the Windows world.
I have personally quit 2 jobs in the past because I was asked to work with Microsoft products.
User friendly and sysadmin friendly are two different things.
Contact me. And I'm serious. I'm looking for work and willing to take abuse.
IT Director/Project Manager/General Windows IT guy in the Bay Area.
niceguywithagreatgirl@gmail.com
I can arrange my schedule to fit yours and provide a smooth transition.
Sorry to troll but this is from the heart. I'm not that big but I will straight whoop that ass if someone attempts to phsically abuse me in the workplace. Maybe I'll lose, and if I do I'll be back to jack up your car.
"I guess I'm gonna fade into Bolivian."
I hijack supertankers for ransom. It's fun and pays really well! Back in college, I never would have guessed those Somali language courses would end up being so useful.
While I don't condone abusing the incompetent, we have been doing our own source code repository backups in engineering, since IT admitted that they cannot recover the repository from backups. We can't recover the repository either, since IT "owns" it, nor are we permitted to use an alternative, but we do incremental and full backups regularly of a "latest" sandbox, and at each release tag, so we can reconstruct the data set.
We have a Linux development environment, but those systems are hobbled by a Windows-centric IT shop that has firewalls blocking access to Google from non-Windows systems and Linux-centric forums everywhere.
This level of incompetence is typical of IT at many small-to-medium (once, even large) places I have worked. Mordac(s), the preventer(s) of information services, work(s) at too many places, and I wouldn't miss them if they all quit and got jobs where they could be useful.
Small to medium sized businesses probably don't want to spend the money required for a decent IT department.
Most other departments won't respect the IT department because they're all dorks and geeks.
It is like the janitorial staff in the eyes of many. They don't produce anything they support the "real" innovators and money makers.
This is why I'd like to eventually move into a completely tech related company (in gaming ideally) so there are less of those types and more tech people.
Yes I work in IT I think TFA was referring more to the personality type that migrates towards the IT jobs being nerds. Thus being nerds IT types tend to take abuse rather than standing up for themselves. If someone is being abusive they are probably just stressed out themselves. If it happens where I work I just quietly walk away and they are usually falling over themselves to apologize later(so I will come back and fix their computer). This is not because of some god complex. It is because I treat everyone in our diverse workplace with respect. So I demand it in return. BTW I have thick skin so it takes a lot for me to walk away but I will.
"The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the naive forgive and forget; the wise forgive but do not forget." -Thomas Szasz
There is a severe lack of respect for IT; a number of comments in here are unexpectedly examples of it.
IT work can be easy. IT work can be hard. IT is generally very time consuming; whether it be easy, or difficult.
I've done the gauntlet, from network drops, router configurations, firewalls, server installs, application suites, application development, end user training, requirements gathering. In the end the biggest problem is that everyone seems to think everything takes only about 10% of the time it actually takes. They see that one instance when everything goes right and decided that it must always be that fast and easy. It seldom is.
God complex? You must be in a small shop where the "experts" always say "I'll do it" instead of explaining to the new hire how things work, which helps them keep their "know it all, do it all" facade intact. Most large shops have people who are more willing to help others by explaining how things work, DON'T copy corporate secrets to their USB drives, and try to make things easier for everyone. Emotional? Sure. Stress makes people want to become emotional. Whiny? maybe on some message boards, but most of the IT people I work with are stoic, in person. If ANYONE reads another employees mail, unless directed by corporate security or HR, will be fired if caught. I imagine most other large businesses have similar policies.
As someone who migrated away from a direct IT job to an HR job that is tangentially IT related,...
All the babes work in HR!
I realize that there is a general dislike for the PHB's of small/mid Biz's, but I'm not allowed to work in Aussieland without the expressed written consent of the Gov't of Downunda. And the trend for this to migrate outwards to the rest of the world is....nil.
You must be in a small shop where the "experts" always say "I'll do it"
Forgive my assumption that people would read the summary, but the story was about small and medium businesses. The title was about "abuse", but the content was about incompetent IT losing critical data. So yes, I stand by my jovial generalizations.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
When you're a small company, sometimes you have to try and get more out of a smaller number of people. Even if you discuss it up front, it can still be stressful. On the flip side of the coin I've had IT staff go off with little provocation.
It's a business with a lot of stress, a lot of ego and many times more than one right answer. That's pretty much a formula for hurt feelings.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
I'm a computer science academic, and so our department at one point got the brilliant idea that they could save money by greatly reducing the IT staff. After all, computer scientists have PhDs in Computer Stuff, so can run all their own IT, right? It turns out not really---and even when they can, it'd be a full-time job to do so, and they already have other full-time jobs (like writing papers and research grants and teaching classes and supervising grad students).
What's kept the whole thing running at all is that the reduced staff has two really excellent people who manage to pull things together, both of whom are much much better at their jobs than any numbers of CS PhDs would be at that job, because being a top-quality IT staff member and being a top-quality CS researcher just aren't the same job.
I suppose the change has sort of increased the respect the IT people around here get though: you definitely notice all the stuff that used to Just Work after the IT staff gets canned.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I knew it. I like to use shellac for primer when I paint walls &c. For the past few years it's been nearly impossible to get denatured alcohol at the local Lowe's or Home Depot. I also noticed the acetone spot was always empty, but the clerk assured me that a lot of cosmetologists were getting that for some reason. I'm talking Pallet loads gone before I can make it to the store. Sold out week after week. Fucking tweakers.
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
TFA is pretty thin. IT people are stressed due to the... economy?
/bias - Sysadmin in a medium-sized company/
Rant begins>
What's driving me mad at work is dealing with buzz-word spouting idiots. They can barely spell "computer" but they'll come with requests that I perform some half-witted change to fix a problem that they created. (that, of course, won't work)
If they could just summon the brains the come to me with a goal (i.e. we want the application to run faster) I could fix their problems. Instead, I'm not allowed to address the garbage they've created for themselves so they can avoid looking as clueless as they really are. And just forget about introducing new tech to make everyone's life easier. They'd have to learn something new. That makes me a bad guy, until we NEED that new tech, in which case I'm a slacker for not having already done it!
And, no, I'm not perfect, but when I make a mistake I admit it and fix it. Meetings are a lot shorter when you say "yeah, that was my mistake. Sorry about that. I'll fix it" instead of blame-storming the issue for an hour or two of my life that I'll never get back! FUCK!!! FUCK!!! FUCK!!!
So I guess I'm saying, it not the job, it's the people. In the end, it's way less stressful to lower yourself to their level and play the blame-game instead of trying to achieve something useful. Note: this drives you insane if you have a brain. Never forget:
- no good deed goes unpunished
- if you fix something it's your fault that it broke in the first place
Anyway, that why I think about quitting 5 times a day. Unfortunetly, now is not the best time.
Note: there are some rare semi-competent to competent people out there who can at least partially do their job (whatever it is). They are no problem to deal with at all.
I have had various jobs in the IT field for 13 (almost 14 now) years. Everything from Help Desk to Network Management. I have worked for myself, for the private sector and in education. I currently work at a smallish Midwestern university in a desktop support/network support/project management role and I love it. I have been here over 2 years and it is one of the best jobs I have ever had. I guess it just depends on where you go. But then again, I prefer the mid to upper level support to anything else.
Don't rush me, Sonny. You rush a miracle man, you get rotten miracles.
Happy to be self-employed. I only have to spend 100% of my time "outside normal hours" working.
Boo fuckin' hoo.
Get real, this is no different than most fields.
How many of those IT people are not truly qualify to handle the positions they are in? While many IT people are extremely competent there are many, many who are not. Seen some IT people spends hours and hours trying to get something to work, the competent Joe IT fixes it in five minutes.
"But I am MCSE certified! I know exactly how to do it."
Half of writing history is hiding the truth.
... a BOFH, then you'll start to gain some respect!
I find a lot of folks in the IT trenches tend to be reactive rather than proactive.
They seem to enjoy being the "goto" guy that saves the day by resurrecting the server with the melty motherboard and toasted power supply while hundreds of users anxiously sit by their desks in breathless anticipation. Merely, switching to a failover server would never be as rewarding.
They regale in bragging to their co-workers and more importantly, their bosses about how many hours they spent rebuilding databases and applying emergency kernel patches at 3 am.
Face it, what kind of attention do you get when your servers never fail? When you never lose a database?
Nothing.
Skip ------ See the latest from http://www.anArchyFortWorth.com
And IT is still the industry that refuses any form of unionization. Everybody is too smart and too privliged because of the technicality of what they do to see the benefits of working together to make things better for us.
And before you start flaming, think where you would be if you were actually on your own, if you had to code your own OS, compiler, library and every other piece of software you use in your job. Yeah, but you are a lone wolf. Keep it up IT
.
If everything worked as IT engineers/managers wanted it to, then all they'd be doing are things a cashier register host would do, @$12/hr.
.
Quit whining IT folks, a. that's why your job is hard, and b. that why you're paid the big bucks. If you want respect, tell your customers to tell your managers your high salary is not to get problems solved faster, but that problems are time dependent (i.e. at 2am) and they are hard in your environment. In some cases, that's why IT get a bad rap, some IT folks take advantage ignorance from customers and work at 10% capacity, charging 110% hourly rates. Same in the auto-mechanics industry (some are good, most are bad, but they all charge $100/hr). Also, no one takes ownership of a problem--it's Cisco's fault, MS's, Apple's, HP's, IBM, etc... Sure it maybe the right thing to do, but it sure loses respect from your customers quickly (I've been there, believe me).
At least they do for a certain type of personality.
While you are responsible for EVERYTHING, that means that you get to set up everything the right way. Your way. If there's a problem, you can fix it the right way.
As long as you can put up with the salary and hours, the job should be a cake walk.
Man are you clueless.......
Your comments reek of a know-it-all ego. First off you speak like all in IT have an ego. Farthest from the truth.
I will refute your anecdotal evidence with some anecdotal evidence of my own.
I used to be in IT. Specifically, I was a programmer. It felt natural and fun and really stroked my own inherent nerdiness. (Additionally, it was a way to insulate myself from having to be in uncomfortable social situations, but that's not really germane to the subject at hand...)
I left IT last March and have since been in sales. Now I spend much of my day talking to strangers on the phone. In other words, I am doing cold-calling. How am I doing? Well, the web app I wrote that tracks the results of my calls tells me that I have made 4063 calls since then with 703 conversation with "decision makers". Additionally, I have only had one person hang up on me.
It is a very, very, very different world here in sales. It's touchy feely, talky, and decidedly NON geeky. Well, there is a slight geeky side to it, but it's psychological and thus a "soft science". So I don't consider it to be true geek.
Where is this going? Well, since I'm doing b2b and providing a technological service, I occasionally run into business owners who tell me, "Our IT department handles that, you need to talk to them." I have to tell you, that's poison to my ears when I hear that. Why? It's because IT workers view me unconditionally as some stupid uppity sales weasel who knows nothing about technology and deserves to be looked down upon. I think this is partly due to the fact that by adopting my service I would be depriving them of a job, but moreso because they view themselves as the master of their domain and don't like to be educated.
And, honestly, I empathize with them. If I were in their shoes, I would view me as a stupid sales weasel. This is partly because I deliberately sound stupid on the phone (it puts business owners at ease -- there's that "touchy feely" stuff), but moreso because being smart and competant is very much part of IT culture. I remember feeling like I had to compete against all the other IT workers in my job. My brain power was my currency and my dick size in the IT world. I haven't ever worked an IT job that wasn't like that. You have to be able to build up a defensive barrier to survive in that kind of environment -- where all of your peers are going to try to show you up with their brain. You have to be ready to show them that they're wrong and know nothing.
In fact, isn't that what you did to the Parent by telling him, in essence, "You know nothing of what you speak, moron!"?
I also talked to my sister about this, since she works doing sales for web services in the UK. She shares my opinion, calling IT workers "smug" and "condescending". And she's right. I think IT workers and trained to be that way by their peers. If they have to be ready to defend themselves against their peers, how much respect do you expect them to have for some slimy sales weasel who makes much more money than they do and never has to think about recursion or race conditions?
But it still sucks when I have talk to an IT worker the phone.
I'll also add that my many phone conversations have allowed me to gain several levels in Wetware Hacking, which is fun.
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
Age and experience will shorten your fuse.
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
I have personally quit 2 jobs in the past because I was asked to work with Microsoft products.
Pshaw.
I quit an all-Unix shop when I found out my boss used emacs.
Burn, infidel!
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
I just don't believe the percentage of "abuse" is any higher in IS then other fields. I've been in IS for over 10 years now and I have never been abused by a manager (I have been verbally assaulted once or twice by disgruntled employees however) That being said, I have seen people get some amount of abuse. Abuse that someone doing a similarly shabby job in another field would also get. The difference is in another field they wouldn't cry abuse, they'd call it getting chewed out for messing up. I have to say. A lot of IS really does need to grow up and realise it's not all about them. This isn't highschool anymore. The jocks aren't out to get you. Do your job, do it well, Deal with the occasional unpaid overtime, and stop being condescending (most abuse I've seen has come from a "I can't be at fault" attitude)... Either that or go work in another industry and see how much "abuse" you get with the same attitude.
My bit of advice, from a former chronic "all nighter".
Don't sleep at your desk. Find a spot to catch those 2 or 3 hours of sleep before sunrise.
I preferred to sleep behind the big environmental units (AC + dehumidifier). The loud buzzzzzz of the unit was a lullaby to me. And sleeping on the floor was better than sleeping in a chair head in arms on desk, neck pain ow.
I'm convinced that there is a higher percentage of whiners in IT than in other industries.
Most jobs that pay well are stressful, have long hours, unpaid overtime (for salaried workers), and are not fun. That's why it is called "work" and not "play". Get over it.
Desire is not an occupation.
I work in a medium sized business, where I am the only full time IT staff. And your generalizations are still way off.
I'll grant you that there are a few that act that way, and they do tend to get the lion's share of the spotlight, but most of us enjoy the unique challenges the small/med sized business presents. And yes, I have worked as part of the large, mammoth organization as well.
I enjoy the variety you get from doing a little bit of everything. I enjoy having to learn about new technology and how it applies to us. I get to plan out our over-arching IT plans, and be in the trenches implementing it. I enjoy teaching users how to use the technology given them to improve their own working abilities.
What I don't enjoy are the small but very vocal handful of users who allow their frustration at their inability to understand some bit of technology to carry over to an immediate and irrational frustration at me. Luckily, I view these, too, as another challenge, though a more long-term one than most, and have managed to convert a number of them into, if not eager, at least willing learner.
Now, I'm not going to say right off the bat that you fit that category; I'm willing to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you've just been exposed to the minority IT group mentioned above. But how about you cut the rest of us hard-working stiffs a break, ok?
For the record, most users I support WANT me to be able to read their e-mail, to pull up what their current password is, and are surprised when I state that, for security and auditing purposes, I can't do that.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
Comment removed based on user account deletion
. . but only from behind because while her body's hot her face is not.
Signed,
A. Developer
Joking aside I'm okay with that. I'm the GP and yet, no email. Things can't be THAT bad.
I'd like to make about $3500 more a year just to adjust for my living expenses.
I see no one has taken the bait which tells me this article is crap. I'd ask that you mod the GP up.
No kidding, what responsible admin would take systems down during the day except for emergencies?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Read the PDF in the posting. It's a press release, effectively an advertisement for online backups.
And yet, somehow, our entire IT field hasn't actually quit. Funny how basement-dwelling programmers would rather post on Slashdot about how unhappy they are rather than actually do anything about it. If you want to quit, do it and stop submitting passive-aggressive stories in hopes your boss will read them and suddenly be nice to you. Protip: it won't happen.
You can't always say no.
I literally was up until 3:30am last night. During that day our SAN's SPS went offline and as a result, write cache was disabled on our SAN. This affected our file server and it would lock up, resulting in users locking up.
So I had to stay up late with Dell trying to get it fixed. What would have happened if I had said no? I would have to deal with all the problems in the morning, and listen to it from over 100 users.
Sometimes you just can't say no. But to make matters worse, once you give your boss the notion that you will work outside of business hours, they will expect you to do it more.
Much like getting a business phone...When I first hit the industry, I thought getting a work phone would be awesome!...Now? Because I checked my email so much outside of work, they expect a response out of me when they send an email.
The greatest revenge in life is massive success.
Worker: "This sucks. I'm going to find a better job."
Corporation: "BWAHAHAHAHA! Good luck with that. By the way, we're cutting your salary in half and instituting weekly floggings."
"We have a Linux development environment, but those systems are hobbled by a Windows-centric IT shop that has firewalls blocking access to Google from non-Windows systems and Linux-centric forums everywhere."
Why does the development environment need access to Google? Can't you google from your workstation?
Same deal with Linux centric forums. Are they specifically blocking Google and those forums from the development environment? Or is it that they are they blocking ALL web access from the development environment which makes more sense than you Windows bashing post.
So let's hire the least experienced cheapest overseas labor we can find for it and slave drive them to 100 hours a week of work on a shoestring equipment budget and blame them for everything that goes wrong.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
My job's ridiculously easy, with long periods of not doing anything, while the bosses try to decide what project they want to do next.
Sounds exactly like my job in IT. I used to try and use that spare time towards improving our existing systems. My boss is very quick to put a stop to that kind of non-sense, but then has me wait for weeks on end before giving me a project he deems worth my time. So I find myself wasting as many hours online as possible, I guess that's why I like Slashdot so much.
I went to eat some animal crackers and the box said, "Do not eat if seal is broken." I opened the box and sure enough..
I know people who love to work those 80 work weeks in exchange for the freedom to do updates on the live server whenever they wanted without going through 20 different hoops and having manager approval..... and they get happiness out of the situation.
They like to be stressed, over-worked, exploited, have no personal time and also appreciate being handed enough rope with which to hang themselves?
Stick Men
During the last bust (are we in a bust yet?), a friend of mine in a small non-startup company that had had enough of the small-company silliness slacked off (i.e., still worked, but demonstrated lack of motivation by only putting in 40 hours a week) so that he was one of the first to get laid off, which also forced him to look for employment which he didn't do while he was with the small company.
He's a happy guy doing Python programming for a big-name managed server company now. Oh yeah, he got a nice raise, too.
DT
Is this thing on? Hello?
... quote for every occasion:
Jen: "Why are you doing this, Roy?"
Roy: "For the same reason I do anything, Jen. To have sex with a lady!"
It's true! Just ask the Elders of the Internet.
Guaranteed! This comment 100% Anthrax free!
I would dearly love to get out the abusive situation I'm in, but there is no market for what I do (web design/administration/electronic and print ad design) in this area. I've been severely underpaid the entire time I've worked for this company, and the reason management has given is always "I don't know what you do" or "I never see you doing anything". So that was remedied recently when my workload was greatly increased and I am basically on-call 7 days a week for on-the-spot website updates.
I may not have to worry about it much longer as I think they've found a replacement for me who will probably work for even less than I do. But I wonder if it wouldn't be better to be stocking shelves at night and doing what I love (website design and webmastering) on a contract basis...
Employers wouldn't be able to abuse their employees if they knew they all belonged to the same IT/Programmers Union and they would risk losing all their IT/Programmers if they abuse even just one. No one cares about one squeaky wheel, you can even fire that squeaky wheel if it comes to that, but if all your wheels are squeaky, you can't fire them or else you wouldn't have any wheels to drive you car (business) on.
Oh, you'll just outsource or hiring HB-1 visas? Good luck doing that, you'll be getting a hell of a lot of political pressure from labor.
You'll just take your company and go crying to another country? Go ahead, another twenty companies will pop here to replace you and put you out of business.
As long as you make quality products, you can afford to treat your employees well and deal with an employee union.
most of the time
My last job was of the better ones I had. We start out small, not IT related (env. engineering). The work was interesting, e got to rollout new technology. Since it was a smaller company we spent a large amount of time with the end-users getting to know them, their problems etc. We really developed a good rapport.
We not only set up the infrastructure (email, networking etc.) but as there was no software to do many of the unique tasks of the company (I would look about 2 times a year) we got to do some interesting software development.
I left for two reasons:
1) I became very interested in Hydrology and decided to pursue that. I wanted a job with some field work.
and
2) As we got bigger the principals decided to hire a "real" manager. Big mistake. Up until then we were shipping software every few months in small increments to improve work flow, finding ways to do tasks for clients so we could bill out hours and be largely self-funded and basically maintaining a positive atmosphere. Within a short period of time costs skyrocketed, billable hours disappeared, the environment became toxic, the rapport with clients deteriorated and the department began to show no results. I'm glad I got out when I did.
The upshot is, if you find the right company and can create a good environment it can be fun.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
I am not a doctor, YMMV, and all the doctors I've discussed this ANECDOTE with have dismissed it. When you know in advance that your blood pressure is going to be driven up by some sort of CHICKENSHIT, take an aspirin. No substitutes, aspirin. I've found it has therapeutic effects to reduce the pounding in the ears, &c. that occur when I'm forced to deal civilly with someone who properly needs euthanisation, or when I am working with Microsoft products.
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
"Many of those working in IT will have used the Christmas break to recover from a tough 2008"
My colleague responsible for the "special holiday schedule" scheduled everyone around his needs.
This is how developers (like me), web designers and a bunch of people ended up sitting there in the office on EVERY SINGLE holiday during the "holidays".
This is of course a bunch of BS along with the others which made many people look for an other job starting this year.
When you are so overloaded you do not have time to document what you do (changes, code, db, net) your company will learn how expensive your leave is.
I for one do not have a single written line of contract as I work a full schedule as an external company. That means 2 things:
1. They can say bye and then I am out next day (they are FSCKD - no docs for anything due to the lack of time)
2. They keep pissing people off and I say bye, and then same as #1
I would like to make a good job, document stuff but there is NO CHANCE.... and at the end this is also my insurance in a way ..... I do not like that but I hear many people are in the same shoes.
I worked on 3 different projects today switching from C/Perl to PHP then ended up fixing some ASP code and then automating some "emergency urgency (complete BS)" project so someone can look at colorful crap refreshed every 20 seconds ......
This is a normal day considering I only stayed 30 minutes over-time, did not have a lunch break (ate breakfast at the desk) ..... ohh after that I came home and migrated a site (with db and scripts) between 2 hosts (3 hours project work) ....
Well ..... not to cry or anything but I wonder where this puts me in the "abused/exploited" IT crowd .....
Yeah baby is on the way, construction 80% ready (home office/movie-play-room moving to other building due to baby coming) ....... so that would be just a sucky time to quit considering that I am about to replace 1 car and get a second motor bike
just my 2c ...
Same EE program. Some of the same faculty.
But the University is more then half women.
Then there is 'Stephen's College' adjacent. Rich girls finishing school (0 straight male enrollment).
Then again our St. Pat's week wasn't near as insane as the one of yours I attended.
No 'Hop, Skip and Puke' at Mizzou.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Long hours, constant pestering by incompetent coworkers, a CEO who was known to call up and called us motherfuckers, and being involved in some not-quite kosher activities.
All that, and bouncing paychecks too!
Thanks, unnamed VSAT provider!
.. I have been in IT for 20 years. I love working with Technology. I love learning new things. I love finding new and interesting ways to meet business challenges.
That being said, I hate WORKING in IT. You work long hours and are on call 24/7 for the same pay as the people who work 9-5 and don't even check e-mail in the evenings. Management consistently overrides your years of experience and education in favor of their two year associates degree and 6 months of project management experience. Deadlines are set without your input. It is always assumed that if you estimate 8 man hours of work, then that means you will be done with it tomorrow. The only time anyone pays attention to you is when things are going wrong. You are never credited for the 99.999% uptime.
So I am working on building up a portfolio of rent houses so that I can quit the IT world and waste the passion, skills and experience that I have for IT.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
I think all you "abused" IT people should go to an actual abuse support group and tell them what a hard life you all have. You're all adults. If you don't like it, then grow a pair and don't put up with it. This is a bit like the old saying, 'you cant rape the willing'
I'm looking over the postings here and have realized that the people who are saying that IT workers are whiners and should suck it up - they have never worked in IT and have no idea what it's like. It must be just like any other job, right? No, it's not.
It's a job where upper management sees you as a cost center; you contribute nothing to the bottom line. They don't want to spend any money on IT upgrades either; that old server has been working this long, it can keep on working for years. Problems? That's why we have IT staff.
When things are working you've got management wondering why they pay you. They are constantly finding busy work for you so that you're not just sitting there. But when something fails - be prepared to work as many hours as it takes to resolve the issue. And don't be surprised if you've got executives standing over you and berating you while you're trying to fix the problem.
Imagine (if you can) the Exchange server taking a crap (like they're known to do). The database is corrupt? No problem, that's why we have backups. Now, restore the last backup and while it takes HOURS to complete you get to deal with every asshole in management demanding to know where their email is and why you haven't got it fixed yet. It's a test and if you don't have the right answer you're out of a job. Too bad there's no right answer - good luck trying to think one up.
I survived for eight years doing this job for a major international corporation. Would I go back to it? I'm not sure; the money wasn't too bad but oh geez, the working conditions were awful. It's not the actual problems with hardware and software that get you, it's the problems with all those managers and executives that seem to think that nothing should ever go wrong because they have an IT department taking care of it. And when something does go wrong it's because those IT people didn't do their jobs right and should be punished.
For those of you who think that this is overstated - go get yourself a job in IT and see how you like it. After you've done it for a year or two let's see if you still think the people who have actually done it are nothing more than whiners.
No, unions do not prevent people from being fired for cause.
Pro-athletes, writers, directors, and actors can make vast sums of money, are rewarded for success and creativity, and yet are members of unions. There is nothing about unions that would prevent you from making that six figure salary and getting that Viper you've wanted since you were 16 - nothing.
Yes, sometimes unions make mistakes, and some union members are lazy. But who hasn't worked at a non-union shop and seen lazy people who manage to keep their jobs.
Enron. Worldcom. Bear Sterns. Morgan Stanley. AIG. CitiGroup. Big companies that probably managed to lose a trillion dollars between them. Therefore, big companies are bad, will never work, and should be eliminated. Hey, it's the same tired argument that get's used against unions.
Unions haven't driven a single job overseas. Not one. You can blame executive greed and "free" trade for that.
No, union workers in Detroit do *not* earn $71 an hour. That figure is a lie, created by adding up all the compensation paid to current workers and the benefit costs to retired members, and dividing that by the current number of workers.
You work hard, you get rewarded. That's how it's supposed to work in this country. Yet if the minimum wage had increased at the same rate as the rise in productivity from the American worker, it would be $19 an hour today. If it had increased at the same rate as CEO compensation, it would be over $50 today.
Union workers make at least 11% more in compensation, have more vacation time, have *much* better health benefits, and have much greater job security than non-union workers. You may think you can do a better job negotiating alone, but it's simply not going to be the case. Unless...
Finally, say you really are the hot shit you think you are, AND ignore point #2 above. If you really are 10x as smart and work 10x as hard as the next guy, you don't want to be a worker bee in any case - you want to be in upper management, where union rules don't apply.
I worked b2b IT cold-calling in the UK too (you aren't based just outside Reading by any chance?), it was the most soul-destroying job I've ever had! All that mattered was the number of calls you made that day, the number of potential opportunities you made and the number you closed. The bosses cared absolutely nothing about how you were doing outside those stats.
I spent all day manipulating people down the phone till I got to talk to the head of the IT department, then trying to manipulate him into buying whatever crap I was selling that day. Whilst some people are happy to do their job and take home their pay check, I prefer to have something for my mind to work on. I couldn't take the mind-numbing boredom of it all in the end and soon quit to go travelling. When I came back I got a proper IT job and it's been a dream! There's little direct repetition, I get to work on interesting projects a lot of the time and most of all I don't have any hard and fast targets foisted on me (like make X number of calls per day).
I have just one job requirement: Make the IT system run well. Do that and my work life goes perfectly.
When IT does their job real well, people often don't appreciate it since they assume everything "just works". You you get the attitude of "Why do we need so much IT support? I mean the computers work great, they don't crash and rarely break down. No reason to have IT guys sitting around." They fail to appreciate that the IT people are the REASON it is that way. They figure it is just natural.
Also you are dead on about the CS/IT thing. I find that many people seem to think there is one general kind of "computer person". If you are said "computer person" you can do everything: administer systems, design networks, write programs, everything. There's no concept that it is a huge field and people are specialized. Thus if you have "computer people" for one thing, you don't need them for other things since they can do everything. Really annoying.
Why would a single employee want to pool their negotiating power with others against an organized management hierarchy?
What, are you afraid to defend your interests against 5, 10 or 20 managers or corporate officers?
Employee abuse is necessary for capitalism to succeed.
Bah, we've got bigger problems than labor unions. Can you imagine the damage that'll be done to a company if you're actually PAID for all of your 40 hours of overtime? Why, it could lead to communism - or worse, it could lead to fewer trips to Acapulco for your managers. You're fsckin with their God given right to profits and expensive vacations and international brothels. Capitalism don't play dat.
Work's a bitch, dude. It's meant to be pain and suffering and stress. Forget about unions, go find some stims. You know, some uppers. And when you can't take it any more we'll send tech jobs overseas and put America to work at McDonald's.
Yay, capitalism!
(end right wing parody)
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
You may already realize this, but wetware hacking with IT is dangerous. When I get a call from someone who is trying to pretend they know something, I'm immediately suspicious. Once in a while they turn out to be legitimate, but usually they go into the Indefinite Hold group. Claiming prior experience with my boss or a boss above is pretty much a straight trip to the "Send them to voicemail" queue. Every single call I get from someone that I don't know is in the potential hacker category until I have a reason to believe otherwise.
That caution noted, I welcome calls from sales people who have done their homework and are willing to give me an honest pitch. I'm expecting a call from a vendor who sells IT training later this month, who has taken the time to find out what we do, what we might be interested in and is willing to wait until I can spend the time to re-pitch his information to my boss. I'm looking forward to the potential to get training I need and it is because the vendor took the time to find out what we might be interested in and didn't try to BS me in order to convince me that we should talk. Contrast this with the vendor who called and wanted to talk to my boss, by name, about training but wasn't interested in talking to me about what or why. One vendor goes to /dev/null and the straight pitch man will likely garner a nice commission check, potentially followed by repeat business.
If you work for EMC, don't even bother calling. They have some of the best sales staff I've ever come across, but I've done business with your company after the sale and I'll recommend against it forever more. The phrase "gold plated turd" springs to mind. If you work for Network Box, then you can come to my office and tell me I need a platinum plated framis and I'll give you three hours to tell me what the contract I'm signing is about.
People are afraid of naming names, but when I'm trying to find out about a company, this type of reference is what I look for, so it's only fair I give it too.
B) Eliminate all the stupid users. This is frowned upon by society.
The IT industry has way too many morons in it again now anyhow. No different than during the recession after 2001. The jobs dried up at that time and most of the people that had spent the late '90s passing 'certification' tests to get jobs in an industry they didn't belong in went back to waiting tables.
Yes, I did have to change jobs. That "abuse" job was an awesome IT job for a small company for the first 6 years - being the technology "everything" for a ~40FTE nonprofit - but one day my boss just went berserk. Suddenly I'm in the land of unrealistic timelines, constant threats to my job, etc. It was a work environment that changed from positive to punitive. My mistake was giving the guy and the rest of the place a chance to come to their senses. Ha ha. Yeah, right.
The craziness never let up. I finally took ANY other job I could get - at a big pay cut - to get out of that place. Today, almost 5 years later, I barely put in a straight 40, get paid MORE, and get much better benefits, than if I had stayed in that shitty, abusive environment.
PS: the nutbag that pushed me out of that company eventually got fired, and the rest of them asked me to come back to work there. Unfortunately, they had hired another, different kind of nutjob as an IT manager. Insert "fool me once..." I got a nice raise from my current employer out of the deal though.
They were right - the revolution did not get televised. It was posted on YouTube instead. All in 120 characters. SLOOSH!
Or you simply stop caring. Why do you care about the IT infrastructure if management doesn't care enough to pay for the equipment you need? Or the salary you deserve?
At one place I worked, I came to the realization that I *couldn't* be fired simply because they weren't willing to risk missing any critical deadlines. So instead, I thought, "What do I want to do today..." I got mine, first. After that, I had the mental peace to tolerate what was inevitably coming next.
Instead of arguing with management, I just did what needed to be done, and left it at that. I didn't worry about it. If I foresaw a need, I found a solution. If management didn't buy it, I didn't care about it.
When Bad Things Happened (TM), my response was more along the lines, "So you're finally going to buy that server we need? ... No? ... Well, if you're not worried about it, neither am I..."
Typically, if you offer a solution, and they don't accept it, you can always accuse management of not caring about the situation when push comes to shove. Staff time is almost always more expensive than hardware, something you might want to point out to the bean counters.
(Me to boss) Wait, let me get this straight: You're going to use $1000 worth of my time to avoid buying a $50 UPS? Does the CEO know you waste so much of the company's money?
"I work in IT, and my boss just told me I can't play WoW at my job!" Sure, a lot of people abuse IT guys, but IT guys can also be some of the most obnoxious douchebags in the world. I've had IT guys refuse to give me the WEP Key to my school server because they were literally playing Warcraft. I'm sure IT guys get a lot of shit, but a lot of times there are just really douchey, obnoxious IT guys.
I gotta tell you, I laughed for 15 minutes straight after reading this. Thank you.
'The tyrant will always find pretext for his tyranny.' - Aesop's Fables
The issue in IT, at least from my experience, is not about missing deadlines or other planning, it's about work that springs up suddenly or constantly. These tend to be because of many factors:
a) Budget: A lot of small or mid-sized companies can't afford a huge amount of redundancy. If a server goes down, there's not a drop-in replacement for it. If you're smart there are backups, but one still has to get them up and running.
b) Time=Money: a little different from (a) Time is money. In environments that require near 24/7 uptime, downtime means money lost, which means that you're required to get things up and running ASAP, whether it's 3:00pm or 3:00am. Often again going with small-mid businesses, you may be able to afford all the expensive resources to keep things up (this includes redundant staff)
c) Other People: Plan all you want, but when your development team's latest project breaks a server at 1:00am, or marketing needs a last minute push, or a million other things... and you're the only one who can update or fix a live server... you're going to get a call.
It's funny though, because my previous job in a union shop with strict hours was irritating in the opposite way. I wasn't even *allowed* to work overtime except with large amounts of paperwork, so that means cramming what you would normally do "after hours" in a rather open schedule in a small and very stressful "window"
I set that shit up so it does fall over. then I go home and tap my wife in the pooper. We call it, probing the network.
I work for the biggest IT company of my country developing software to control most of our power grid. We won the project by promising absurd release dates, which is is our only concern during development. We work 12 hours per day. No testing or documentation whatsoever. More than half of the development team has 1 year of experience. We do so many extra hours that frankly, we stopped caring long ago.
Had we done things well from the start, we would be delivering quality in the same amount of time. But the pressure is so big that we started producing trash from the first moment.
Our client's ignorance of software development is beyond words. First I used to think "it can't be, i missunderstood something", but no, the client is that stupid. Also he pays a nonsensical huge amount of money for this project.
And as long as he swallows what we produce, we will keep delivering utter crap. Because the smallest the developing time, the more money we get. Who cares if people burns out? we are already hiring from other countries where they get a fraction of our salary. And Im not sure quality can get any lower anyway.
... don't rely on Dell for your SAN infrastructure. You have been warned.
Ok, ok, at least we CAN work from home right? Wouldn't you love to with these conditions? Nooo, this isn't just for some data entry jocky, the whole of IT.
Real email from today:
The following is an excerpt from IT Operations Policy that will go into effect next week if you work from home. Please assure you comply.
Work from Home
Participation in the Work-From-Home program is a privilege and not a right of employment.
IT Operations personnel working from home must meet the following requirements.
1. IT Operations personnel must track their activities through the day from a high-level view through their Outlook Calendar. A screenshot of this view will be submitted to their supervisor at the end of the day.
2. Cisco Soft-Phone is a required tool and is to be setup where the employee will answer the assigned phone number during work hours.
3. Microsoft Communicator is a required tool and will be set to "Available" while sitting at the workstation. The calendar link will be turned off by un-checking the "Update my presence based on my Outlook calendar information" box (shown below)
screenshot
This allows the Office Communicator to track presence at the keyboard with a green dot showing instead of showing in meetings, etc.
4. Personnel working from home are expected to be at their workstation for 8 hours during the working day. Absences of more than 15 minutes require an email to be sent to their working group and their supervisor advising of the departure, the purpose of the departure, and the expected return time. This is not for approval, but just a notification so others may know what to expect.
I work for a company where the IT dept is soo disconnected from the users that a good chunk of my time is spent working out what they did that breaks software systems. Renaming servers, changing domains and a network that has speeds slower than dial up. And the head of IT was selected as one of the top 10 in the industry. Hey, its a job
1. Companies exist to make money
2. Each person in a company is expected to make money for the company.
3. I.T. people DO NOT make money for most companies therefore I.T. is an expense.
Most companies, especially the people with their eyes directly on company profits see I.T. people as a begrudgingly necessary expense. Sort of like tires on a commercial vehicle. Tires are expensive, but you have to have them to run a truck. You can buy new tires (hire lots of I.T.) or you can retread the old ones and make them last as long as you possibly can (abuse the ones you've got). Retreading is a way to stretch every penny.
In all but a few cases I.T. is an expense to a company that has no perceivable return on investment to the casual observer. This is why we're often disliked by bean counters, we're service people so we're treated like second class employees (if we are employees, often we're contracted outsiders). We get the dregs because "we like technology and gadgets, leftovers are a favor". Sometimes they are, but often it's leftover crap.
To many people at many companies having I.T. staff is akin to having the guy who just changed your oil and rotated your tires come home with you, sleep in one of your closets and drink your coffee, a lot of your coffee. You want to just kick the guy out, but you know as soon as you do your car's going to break down so you're better off just utilizing him for every little thing you can, he's going to be there anyways after all.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
I go to a university with large programs in both various engineering disciplines and (comp sci/IT/et cetera) (http://www.rit.edu)
I am not in one of the aforementioned majors, and I don't catch any flak about it from students that are.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
Not all data loss is caused by incompetent IT staff. If the IT staff recommend a functional backup system but management refuses to shell out for it, there's not much that can be done.
I've been part of the IT team in small buisnesses a couple of times now. I prefer doing development, but during some of the lean times one does what one can. The first problem is the nature of the job. IT is just never going to be pure 9 to 5 work. There's too many things that have to happen when there aren't a large number (as in any) of the users using the systems. You can do maintenance during the day, but if you do you probably deserve some abuse, depending on how badly you wreck everyone's day. I've seen good and bad with this... bad is keeping half of the company from doing their jobs. Most small businesses can't afford that.
A lot of the folks that get hired to do IT for small to medium sized buisnesses aren't quite up to the job either. I've seen all sorts of technical mistakes made. The bit about backups is a key. People reuse tape (ok I'm old) or other media past the safety limit (which is a hell of a lot smaller than most people think it is) and then they also implement storage solutions that are almost impossible to manage or back up. They don't test backups, and they don't implement best practices because they don't have time. And because they don't do these things they never will have time to do anything other than react to the current crisis. Working for a small company is a lot harder than a big shop, one guy has to know a lot of fairly specialized things. Bringing a guy from a big shop down usually isn't possible, as no one can afford them. Even worse, the things that you do for large shops are often just not the right way to manage a small business. It's stupid to plan for a network that can fit into a 200000 person organization when it's not going to have more than 100 users. Virtualization isn't a good idea when you end up running everything on one machine, and you don't have any spare hardware to take up the load when that one goes belly up. (been there saw that... didn't implement it - argued about it, wish I'd been wrong!)
In all fairness there's a lot of pressure from the other side as well. Small business owners want the same kind of functionality that large companies have, and don't want to pay for it. I've seen eager IT guys running demos to prove they can do things, and then have the people who control their pay tell them to implement it with no budget. There's a skill to presenting the bill that most training doesn't cover. Even if it did, you can lose a job because someone brought in an illegal copy of something and made it look like you don't have the skills. I've also seen that small businesses can't afford the training to keep their people current. So they hire replacements when they change technology. The replacements usually can't handle the legacy stuff and the situation continues going from bad to worse.
And then there's managing the users. A lot of upper level managers don't understand how damaging it is when one department starts implementing crap that doesn't fit in the enterprize. But the users are often reacting to either perceived, or in many cases actual, neglect from the IT staff. If there's a real need out there and it isn't being met, you can expect anyone who's worth being hired to try to find a solution. The fact that it's a bad solution in the long term doesn't make the reaction wrong. I've implemented some of those rogue systems myself when I couldn't get an IT group to respond when I offered them funding to get the people and hardware they needed to do the job. That one probably cost someone I liked his job, but I still needed to solve the problem I'd been given. But there's also the lusers who can't seem to resist clicking on the destroy the system now attachement. Hell we had one CFO who wouldn't pay to have the AV suite license renewed... or the SSL certs. But it was the IT guy's fault when the company shut down for three days. In my opinion it was too, I was his backup and got the cash released by telling the owner what was going to happen if they did it again. But the other guy needed his job more than I needed mine - and was fired because he d
A quarter of IT staff in small and medium-sized businesses have suffered verbal or physical abuse at work,
Physical abuse?! Why the hell would you stand still for it even once, without immediately reporting it to the police? IANAL, but as far as I k now practically any form of physical abuse falls under the common definition of 'assault'.
So why the hell would anyone stand for it?
In my 2 IT jobs over the last 10 years, it has been my experience that the majority of my stress on the job, is caused by incompetent co-workers.
The people that hire IT/CS staff rarely understand that continuing education is what differentiates great IT staff from poor IT staff. The people that hire IT/CS sometimes having a good understanding of the 'buzzwords' or 'skillsets' required for a particular job, but do not understand how rapidly IT changes, and how important it is to hire people that are self-motivated learners.
Most of my major problems and frustrations as a developer/sys analyst, comes from working with people that have just enough knowledge to complete projects in their area, but not enough motivation or additional knowledge to complete their projects in a way that eases transitions over time.
As time goes on, the systems become more and more tangled and difficult to work with, to the point that any new project declared by management is 10x harder than it needs to be.
I consider management part of the "co-worker" set also. Most managers of IT sub-departments (manager of network services, manager of data center, etc..) have enough knowledge to direct their employees fairly well in their own little kingdom, but rarely have an understanding of the "big picture" as it comes to the IT services as a whole.
The net result of these little ignorant "kingdoms" inside an IT department, is a very frustrated worker trying to implement projects which are often much more difficult because of conflicting priorities and resource allocation.
One of the stereotypes of IT/CS work, is that it is too hard for the average person to understand: it is 'mysterious'. This view tends to reinforce the idea that it is OK to not explain your IT actions, and just 'fix the problem'. Numerous uncoordinated 'fixes' often results in project delays and failures.
To sum up:
While I haven't yet seen an 'in production' way to make sure that the right staff are hired, and I have seen a few ways that address the issues of managers communicating, and ways to unveil the natural secret-like way in which a lot of IT work is accomplished.
The first a quick 15 minute "who's doing what next week" type meeting. Everyone in IT, as well as super users of all the systems, meets on a friday afternoon and just rapidly spills out what is going on. Standing meeting to keep it fast. Just a quick mention of the DETAILS of your work. Whether or not everyone understands what you say is irrelevant. The major purpose being to throw everything in IT out in the air and see if anyone else sees a problem with it.
The second helpful thing I've seen is to have a group of USERS, not IT staff, help direct the priority of projects. IT managers have to present their projects and justifications for those projects, and the users decide what is most important. You'd be surprised how well that works to bridge the gap between IT and its user base. Oftentimes, a user/superuser of your systems can be frustrated by a mysterious network slowdown, a service outage, or or or... Keeping them in the loop takes that frustration away, which keeps it off your day to day IT workers.
And the last good thing I've seen is to make sure that IT has meetings that span departments. Your desktop staff, helpdesk, developers, server admins, etc.. should all be meeting together to just 'shoot the shit' every so often. It is amazing to see what could have been big problems adverted by having a no agenda cross department meeting every couple weeks.
At any rate, none of the above applies to small IT teams, but it has, and is working, for our larger 100+ IT staff at the institution that I'm working for.
I work for a small IT company most of our guys are out the door on time. The work is varied which helps keep it interesting. I don't think the IT industry is too bad. I used to work as an ICU Nurse and let me tell you it is a lot easier to tell a customer that they have lost $100,000 worth of data than it is to tell someone that their husband is dead. Like a lot of things it depends on the the place you work and the people you work with. The company I am with now is pretty good although it hasn't always been that way. It was the same when I worked in health care. Some ICU units were great fun and others sucked. The grass is always greener on the other side.
Windows was the abuse: go spend 96 hours removing a virus, and before it's complete, go again removing another one.
Why is it the best-and-the-brightest OS requires third-party software just to get through the day?
"My ability to tolerate bullshit is directly proportional to my salary."
Yes, I am a smart ass; it's better than the alternative.
New hire????
It's a joke son. Most large shops have all the help they need, and won't be hiring for another year or so.
-- "In order to have power, I must be taken seriously." -Mojo Jojo
I promise...
The checks in the mail.
I won't cum in your mouth.
I'll respect you in the morning.
Oh yes ATT's favorite!
We apologize for the inconvenience.
It says load PC Load Letter! What the F*ck does that mean??!!!
My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my Father! Prepare to die!
That was just beautiful, man. Just perfect.
The fact that you can demonstrate such an awesome grasp of this fundamental concept makes me want to vote you IT Czar.
Seriously. I want you to go all around the world and talk to absolutely everyone and repeat that little speech. I wanna see you show up as a guest on The Daily Show. I want to see them make "Backup Plane: The Movie" I want you to wander the Earth like Johnny Appleseed and Samuel Jackson in "Pulp Fiction," getting into adventures and imparting this wisdom to all you meet.
And then maybe, just maybe, on some faraway golden day, in a better world than the one we have now, I'll pick up my phone to hear some poor netadmin chump cry out for help and when I ask that vile bastard "Do you have any backups?" maybe, just maybe, he'll say "Yes, I took them yesterday."
And when that glorious day comes, ToasterMonkey, I swear I will find the tallest twin peaks in the world, and dynamite the first into the shape of a toaster, and the other into the shape of a monkey, in your eternal glorious honor.
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
Read a news story the other day about a city manager who wanted to cut the fire department by about half because none of the local fires ever seemed to blow up into anything major anyways.
The quotes from the apoplectic fire chief were hilarious and oddly familiar...
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
I think the real issue here is the lack of best practice by the IT people (and yes, I am an "IT person") to take the necessary steps and precautions to configure things the "right" way, or going with best practices. I understand that people have been turned down for budgets on upgrading items, but I also contribute this behavior to superior/supervisor misunderstanding. I think any wise IS/IT engineer should administer their systems to a point where they don't necessarily have to worry about day-to-day tasks. Many of these tasks can be resolved by looking in the root causes of issues instead of patching the issues or complaining about the issues without doing anything. Most issues are generally complicated more as they are patched by engineers to get immediate results. The more an engineer or supervisor can encourage less day to day tasks, the more successful and less busy the IT staff will be; therefore, allowing both more personnel training and less stress in the workplace. Information Technology, as an industry, is a very balanced field. You must be smart to be successful, and sometimes being smart involves getting off your a** and fixing the real problem. If you don't, it'll come back and bite you in the a** later on. TRUST ME. I understand that as an IT staff member you are asked to fix things when they break, be it in the middle of the week or night, but it's all part of the job.
if you were me, you'd think the same way
Documentation is your friend here. When you buy an item of kit create an operating and maintenance manual for it. These can simply be a folder with the hardware manuals and maintenance agreements in them. I also include the emails between management and the IT admins discussing the equipment order rationale as well as the purchase order. Make sure your emails make clear what the kit does not do as well as what it should do in these emails. Ten minutes of printing, hole punching and putting it all into a folder can stop a management witch hunt dead in its tracks for years to come. This is especially true if features have been cut due to management led budget constraints. Adding the relevant CD's/DVD's and build notes can make your life much easier in the future as a bonus.
Think of it this way: if it were not for stupid users, how many more of us would be out of jobs?
Here's a toast to all the stupid users out there! *glug* *glug* *hic*
Table-ized A.I.
Why did this remind me of that old Daffy Duck cartoon where he played Robin Hood?
Thus, I've also tagged this article windows. Though perhaps the pejorative microsoft has also been earned.
Seriously, this is largely a problem with a single product line. If you work with the various Linuces, BSDs (including OS X) or Solaris, then the job is mostly fun and productive. One of the things that has always rocked in IT has been doing cool things and finding cool ways to automate uncool things or at least do them faster, better and cheaper. But that means do you own evaluation and under no circumstances for any reason ever ever ever accept crap products, no matter what. The M-word products are not, in my book, "IT" for me they are politics and bullshit that block IT. put the fun back into computing. Avoid them and your stress level will be fine.
Also, suckers for MS products bring it on themselves: think about it. MS products are marketed as so simple even and untrained monkey can use them. Then when said products don't work (because they can't) as advertised or even as needed, who do you think gets the blame, the product or the monkey?
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
"I think the real issue here is the lack of best practice by the IT people .. to take the necessary steps and precautions to configure things the "right" way, or going with best practices"
...
If you don't mind me saying so, you're talking happy horse.shit. 'Best practice' in most businesses consist of the IT staff continually patching/repairing old hardware, in a misguided attempt by management to save on the IT budget.
"I understand that people have been turned down for budgets on upgrading items, but I also contribute this behavior to superior/supervisor misunderstanding"
It's also difficult to communicate with superiors, when you're not allowed to email anyone. You generally find out about the companies ' vision ' by reading about it in the trade papers. In an episode straight out of Dilbert, I arrive at work on 9:00am Monday to discover we are going to be launching a fashion Web site at 6:00pm. Management are going to have in all the fashion people, photographers, journalists etc.
Only thing is they forgot to tell us about it, so there is no web site to speak of. Someone did leave in a selections of photos, but never told us what for, as management consider IT types too beneath them to actually address them in the first person.
Oh, and btw, none of the IT people are invited to the reception. I guess this is why no one has worked for this company longer that nine months
davecb5620@gmail.com
I am currently employed in a medium sized business' IT department and I have started to look for a way out. I have wanted to get out of IT for a while and this place has been the final nail. I make less per hour than a factory worker and I only get paid for 40 hours even though I have not worked that few hours in a week since the middle of last year. Currently I am on my ninth straight day without a day off, and I have 5 days more before the possibility of having a day off. Recently, I started looking into contracting again and it is tempting with the higher pay and getting paid for the actual hours worked but I am pretty scared of what the economy might do in the next 18 months. I would love to go back to school but the cost vs. the change in my salary would not make sense for my field of choice (advanced degree in biology). I am old enough now that I missed my chance to pick a career that I love so I am stuck in the IT pit. As someone else pointed out though, it is generally good work compared to what I could be doing. I have relatives that work in coal mines, and IT certainly is nice compared to that.
I friends,
In Spain we have the same problem, but perhaps worse. We have done 2 demonstrations in the last 2 months because computer Engineers here are "not Engineers" as the others Industrial(or construction) Engineers.
Moreover our degree, in similar difficulty to other engineering degrees, they are trying to convert(divide) us to many degrees.. as specialists to other engineers, as little slaves for the others.. It's crazy, but our relative new degree has no profesionals and associations to fight with the other old reputed profesional lobbys...
Compared with the other engineers we get the lowest salary, but our companies get the best profits...
On the other hand we have many doubts about the honesty of our Universities and profesional headmen... We are near desperation.
I'm realizing that this is quite difficult to explain in detail :) ... Ok, I'll leave my mail, because we are near to found a new organization to defend ourselves from our corrupted headmen and stupid goverment, we would like to meet people from other countries to sign an international manifest, perhaps other organizations are interested in contact with us, to figth aganist this global problem.
Our profession is fairly prostituted around the world and we should have the same prestige as other engineers, because we get greater benefits and work much harder. it's not fair.
If you want to contact our organization, specially if you belong to other similar organizations, please write to
"dignidad.informatica[at]gmail[dot]com" (we are working in the new organization hosting, this mail is provisional.. ). We want to work hard in Spain and all around the world.
best regards,
David
What I look for when I try to find non-abusive IT jobs:
1. People managing technologists who have done technology jobs. And I don't mean just the team leads, I mean at least up to the VP and ideally the CTO/CIO level. In the case of a small company, I look for an owner who is either a techie (for a tech company) or is willing to trust me with technical decisions.
2. The work that the technical folks do shows up in the bottom line, either via increased revenue or decreased costs. Keeping the good ship rolling along will not get the department the respect and budget it needs to do the things it ought to do.
3. A clear and reasonable policy on on-call duties. Something along the lines of "in our 7-person department, everyone is on-call 1 night a week, and if a call causes you to work late you can come in late the next day."
4. Managers who can say no to the rest of the company. And by "can" I mean both emotionally capable of doing so and politically capable of making that response stick.
And I've definitely suffered my share of abuse, most notably being called in on a Sunday morning and told that I was not to leave the building until a project was done.
I am officially gone from
It's really not that hard. Granted, Exchange is a bit of a beast to install and manage initially, but once everything is set up and the other servers know each other it works pretty poorly
. Exchange 2007 has some pretty unfortunate mis-
features ...
There fixed that for you.
You shills never get tired of fiddling with the definition of "works". Sure if you ask the embedded sales team pushing the M$ junk in your organization, they'll say it works great, has wonderful uptime, is low maintenance, etc. Then if you ask the afraid-for-their-jobs non-management staffers that are stuck using it the same questions, they'll agree -- until you change the questions. Q: How often is the Exchange server down? A1: several times a day for both scheduled and "unscheduled" rebooting. A2: once or twice a month for extended period while the server is rebuilt. Q: How much mail is lost? A: Double digit percentages, at least. Q: Does turning off the spam filter help reduce the lost messages as the MSFT boosters claim? A: No. Q: Can you connect to the server with other browsers or other clients? A: No.
So really, what level of failure is acceptable?
C'mon it's 2009 and no one is gullible enough to fall for that same old line about "knowing" how to set up MS Exchange: it simply can't happen. You can send people to training, hire "experts", rent consultants, buy extra servers and pay for expensive upgrades but at the end of the day it, like all other M$ products, fails to deliver. Anyone who has ever actually honestly tried to use or maintain the crap that is MS Exchange, can see that. It's testable, repeatable, and consistent -- year after year.
Individuals have almost infinite capacity to accept and put up with awful conditions. Unfortunately institutions and businesses quickly reach a threshold, that once crossed, brings collapse. To MSFTers, lost mail may be funny ("only old people use e-mail") and useful by putting the staff into the easily manipulated crisis management mode. However, to real staff, lost messages mean delay (cost overruns), lost opportunities (lost income), decreased productivity (potential vicious circle of decreased productivity and stress) and, last but not least, wasted effort (unnecessary cost increase, demoralization).
The Bush administrated created this current economic depression, but MS products are making it worse than it needed to be.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
I got out of that crap 6 years ago & never looked back. It's simply not worth the stress.
There is a war going on for your mind.
Personal opinions; take 'em or leave 'em.
> ...IT is still the industry that refuses any form of
> unionization. Everybody is too smart and too privileged
> because of the technicality of what they do to see the
> benefits of working together to make things better for us.
I have spoken with people who are trying to discuss the sense of forming IT unions, and with people who are representing organizations trying to unionize IT people.
They are two different groups. Many of the people in the first group are intelligent, rational, and legitimately worried about real problems that could be resolved by collective bargaining.
The people I have met from the second group; the folks saying "here is our group, join us" have ranged from the cluelessly optimistic to the hopelessly incompetent.
Note that I am specifically referring to those I, personally, have met. I'm not saying everyone falls into those categories; just everyone I have met.
The clueless optimists all represent new organizations; they have no real membership, no real history, and no real plan, but are sure that if we just work together, we have the power. How will we organize? They don't know. How will we compete with offshoring? They don't know. How do we need to proceed beyond recruiting IT workers and beginning to bargain? They don't know.
The hopeless incompetents all come from existing unions; the Communications Workers of America being the one from which I have met the most representatives. But others I have met have the same attitude.
I've spent a fair amount of time talking to them, asking questions. Here is a sample of the kind of conversation I've had:
CWA: Join our union; we'll stop offshoring and get you the compensation you deserve.
Me: I am concerned with Quality of life. IT people are expected to be on call and work long hours; what do you propose to do to reduce or eliminate this?
CWA: We will bargain for contractual definitions that will guarantee you more pay for on-call and double time for overtime hours.
Me: I don't want more pay, I want less hours and less (or no) on call, as does everyone I know. What can you do to reduce hours?
CWA: Nothing; it's not in our plan to reduce hours; we want to bargain for more money.
Me: What about what we want?
CWA: We don't care what you think you want now; when conditions get bad enough, you'll come crawling to us. We can wait. We don't need you, you need us.
================
If a Ford salesman offered to sell you a car you didn't want, at a price you didn't want to pay, and when you refused said, "we'll wait; when you get good and desperate, you'll crawl to us," you'd tell him to go to hell and no one would tell you you're wrong.
When union organizers do the same, the reaction I always hear is, "you're arrogant techie jerks and you'll come around; just you wait!"
I'm not pissed about guys trying to unionize IT. I think collective bargaining could be very beneficial. But I think the people trying to organize it -really- need to see that this is 2009, not 1936.
Trying to do all your bargaining based on (A) overtime pay for working ridiculous hours and (B) guaranteed jobs for doing shitty work stupidly instead of automating it, rather than improved quality of life, is a huge stumbling block in the attempt to unionize.
It's not that IT folks are too smart, too cool, too technical to unionize; it's that we want something no one is offering.
That's my opinion, anyway; take it or leave it.
Crybaby bitches ready to throw tantrum.
Economists think they can take one IT person and replace him/her without any important consequences - in reality one skilled IT person can do the job of 10 less skilled IT persons. If you are one of those, never be afraid to quit. You should probably get paid a lot more.
With the ever changing techniques and languages, a computer science degree by itself is not really worth much especially if you want to develop software for the business world. Soft skills play a much more important role in today's development environments where many groups are using agile development methodologies which involve having business analysts intimately involved in the software development life cycle from day one and through each iteration leading up to each product release.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
Our Exchange server has gone down once during business hours due to a hardware fault. Two of our clients had a problem with the Exchange outbound delivery service. Mail was not being delivered outside the organisation. A restart of the service fixed this; no mail was lost, it just queued up.
Outside of business hours the services have short downtime a couple of times a month for patching.
On the Exchange server I run, I have redundancy by having mail delivered to a cheap GoDaddy POP service. I let the MX records do the work. Mail is stored there, and then when the server is back up the mail is taken from POP3 and put in to their Exchange accounts.
For sending mail redundancy I rely on the clients' Outlook to keep the item in "Outbox" until the server comes back up. For users dependent on OWA they don't benefit but since the redundancy is for the 30 minute or so outages when installing Exchange 2007 Update Rollout-XX at 3am, I haven't had any complaints. If the server goes down during business hours there is no redundancy for OWA users.
Perfect? No. Works well? Yes.
As of Exchange 2007, you can. I can access the web interface from Safari (Mac), Safari (iPhone, I also use ActiveSync), Firefox and Chrome. Only Internet Explorer will give you the full AJAX/ActiveX feature set but the Basic version of OWA is just as powerful albeit less elegant.
As for desktop clients, any that support IMAP will be able to integrate with Exchange. Any desktop clients that support ActiveSync will be able to integrate with the Exchange server a little more closely, or anything built on libmapi.
As I said before, I'm curious as to what size organisation you have experienced this with.
I'll subscribe to Slashdot when I see a month without a dupe, a typo, or an article the "editors" didn't read.
I worked at a place where one person decided that I would be a good person to handle the employee relations of a merger by placing me temporarily in a group of people who worlked for the company that we merged with. These people hated us and thought we were after their jobs and had no respect for them. I was chosen because I had a positive relationship with most of them having been a customer of theirs for several years prior to this job. (we were a consulting company merging with a datacenter)
What that actually was to entail was for me to spy and relay back to the new management team what the barriers were to the transition. Bucking the system and switching sides helped produce a successful transition and at least the old regime seemed to appreciate the effort.
During this time it was forgotten what I was actually capable of and my techinical responsibilities were continually reduced.
At some point it was clear that I was being grossly overpaid for what it was that i was doing (twice what anyone else in the dept was making) and I began to get non-positive reviews. I was told it was time to sink or swim.
Being exceptional at reading people, I knew at that point, the writing was on the wall.
I secured another job and kept the old one, the plan was in motion. Having been relegate to 2nd shift a month before the new job started, i was able to "work" both jobs.
I did the new job well and the old job, well, sometimes. on second shift we had very little to do anyway. We had satellite tv, and someone else to answer the phone and no management.
It was nice to get double paychecks and it was ver satisfying to tell people that I would get to their stuff, and just tuck it away.
What would make a normally decent person to commit such attrocities? Well, working from 8 am one day to 12 pm the next, then getting shit for leaving early and actually being docked a half days pay for leaving.
See, if you dont work the perceived shift, then you are not earning your keep and you dont get your full pay check, but you can put in 80 hours and get told you get paid "by the year" as some asshole posted earlier in this thread.
I figure they got theirs, I got some satisfaction that they got no help from me after I left.
btw, I did both jobs for about 5 months, and getting paid to watch television was awesome.
I now work for myself and make more than I made at both jobs put together and workd about 25 hours a week.
Call me on the weekend? 1 hr minimum at quite an huge rate.
Yes, I was the IT staff that "lost critical data". O
f course, it was the CFO, who was my boss, who ordered me to overwrite the good current data with the backup of the server containing the historical data. The historical server had been taken down and used as a server for a different project. The CFO ordered me to restore the last backup of the historical data even after I reminded him that we had been having tape problems for the last two months and he had yet to approve the purchase of a new backup unit and new tapes..
So, after I had made and verified the backup of current data, I restored the historical data to the current server. When I went to restore the data, the restore failed. All the current data was gone. So, the CFO fired me because I did as he told me to do or be... fired.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Hahahahaha! It isn't 1996 any more.
OMFG!!! Please stop the whining. We're so abused. Everyone thinks we're geeks. You're not geeks, you're pussies!!!!
I don't give verbal recommendations. I give written ones and have management sign off on it. So if they refuse it, my professional reputation isn't in jeopardy when something goes wrong. When all eyes are looking at me, I politely bring up my recommendations.
The buck should always stop at the top. I never allow anyone to pass the buck to me.
It is up to you to stop long hours.
Just say "no" or "how much do I get per extra hour?"
That will keep in line 99% of unreasonable bosses ...
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
In Europe we have directives that limit the amount of hours you can work.
Also contracts are worded differently. Here in the UK the amount of hours one is expected to work is spelled out, the understanding is that you will work extra when needed, but if the need becomes routine then you can claim even unjustified dismissal given the insane conditions of work, but I found even in place where workers had little protection you just have to be your own man and say no, in most cases this sorts out the situation.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
You have to judge if it is reasonable to do so.
If you are the only support person you simply should say no to be available 24x7 as a matter of principle, from there you cold negotiate adequate compensation for being called out with a suitable rest period after such an episode.
You don't have to accept to be exploited, not in free countries any way, and even in not so free ones I saw guys standing up for their rights in the workplace (Vietnam if you need further reference) and winning better working conditions for it.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
IT's fellow workers.
I write from Chile, to mention that from here, is also living the same situation, exhausting hours, excessive workload, leaves us all very tired, all the support.
greetings from the south of the world
Everybody can say no, all this "geeks are emotionl idiots" nonsense is most idiotic.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Very often they are blissfully unaware about real world restrictions (you know, little things like bandwidth, CPU cycles in a multitasking system, RAM and other such trivialities) .
Devs-IT is a partnership in which the IT people deal with the resources and provides them for the Devs wizardry. None is above each other, they are equal partners in trying to provide solutions based on efficient use of computing resources.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I always had the highest IQ on all the places I have worked :-P
In all seriousness people that can go through all the reasoning necessary to understand computing (languages, complex protocols, complicated topologies of all kinds, logical thinking and problem solving) can apply these skills to other fields (financing for example, I am pretty much insulated from the current crisis because I used my problem solving skills instead of following the herd).
What you say regarding becoming heroes is true: take your work and yourself too seriously and you will enter a world of suffering.
We all need to understand some basic things: you are replaceable, the world will not end if you don't fix that problem now.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I used to work with people in the oil industry: geologists, geophysicists and similar beasts.
They use highly specialized applications, and by sitting with them and understanding the basics of what they were doing I could do some basic tasks without having any formal training in the field.
That is what the other poster was talking about: if it is doable in a computer we are more likely to catch some of the stuff as is done in other fields of expertise.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
If you are a sysadmin and working more then 40 hours a week you're doing it wrong.
The whole point of a good sysadmin is you do things right the first time so they don't break, thus don't do much. Incident management and problem management handle the "I forgot my password nonsense".
At most you would be busy adding users and checking Security Access Profiles for new hires.
What are you spending all this time on? IDS systems should be paging alerts. System Management console should page on service failures. Hell before I retired I had 2200 server, 8000 users, 2 mainframes, 22 locations nation wide, 3 in India, and 1 Spain, 1 Italy, and 1 German location and I at most got 9 pages a day.
You need help getting that stuff straightened out, there is no reason for working more the 40 hours.
Work smarter, not harder. Need help let me know.
You need to use the technology at your disposal to make your life easier, that's the whole point of technology. You can drive a nail with your hand if you try hard enough but that's why we invented hammers.
Look at your automation possibilities, filter nonsense data out of your work day, work with you help desk and make sure they have the tools needed for their work and for God sakes quit working 40+. It looks bad. I've fired a few for working too many hours. I hire people to do it right the first time, not screw up and burn hours on end running around trying to fix things. If you came to me and said you were working 50 hours a week the first thing I would ask is "what are you doing wrong?" I expect my admins to be at home 3 days a week telecommuting and coming in twice a month on a weekend to deploy a physical server.
1) Break down you activities
2) Find out where you are wasting time
3) Find solutions to minimize or eliminate the most time consuming tasks
4) FILTER JUNK DATA. Trust me, 50%+ of the metrics people try to track aren't worth tracking
5) Automate Automate Automate. Watchdog services on *nix systems. Service doesn't report in for more then 5 mins. Shutdown the service via a signal and restart. No response after 2 minutes do a HARD KILL and restart. No response in 2 minutes, page yourself and handle it. 10 minute window is resonable for things like a mail server. Most Sev1 have a 15 min response window and a target 1 hour resolution by most standards.
sysadmins working more then 40 hours is like being proud you have to work on your car 40 hours a week. If you are putting that much time into the car, you need a new car. 40+ hours a week as a sysadmin tells me I need a new sysadmin.
Sorry to sound hard buddy but that isn't something to brag about.
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
Q: How often is the Exchange server down? A1: several times a day for both scheduled and "unscheduled" rebooting.
The last time I administered an Exchange server, we'd reboot it about once every few months for patches. Twice after ungraceful shutdowns (due to power, we had much more problems with big expensive UPSs failing than Exchange) we had to rebuild. No data loss, but longer than it should take to get a database back in a consistent state. But it was certainly easier than the people here make out. I always wonder how incompetent all the Linux nuts are because they all have tons and tons of stories about how they touch Microsoft products and they fail. Me, I touch MS, Linux, and such, and I don't have too many problems. Leave your mind open, research before you do something, and you'll be able to manage whatever you want without too much trouble.
Learn to love Alaska
I hated my boss (fat, egotistical jerk) and my job (because the company was badly run and IT-illiterate). After a couple months of job hunting I found a terrific career that paid more and had better opportunities. Send me $9.95 and I'll tell you more about it. (>_>) (_>) (Joking about the money part. But seriously, yay new job!)
if so, try switching to linux, even if you have to reinstall i doesnt take long ...
beware he who denies you access to information for in his mind, he already deems himself to be your master (SMAC-ish)
In Hong Kong, there're few laws to protect employers. People keep changing jobs to find a better place, but it's really Utopia since all the businessman are the same - they only care for the profit, ethics not exist in the dictionary of business. Without powerful worker union, abuse is a common scene in Hong Kong. Want to work in Hong Kong? Think twice!
Hong Kong - International Joke Center (after 1997-06-30)