IT Crises vs. Vacation: Sometimes It Isn't Pretty

CWmike writes "It's true that IT systems have become essential to business operations, but the successful functioning of the IT department shouldn't rest on any one person's shoulders. All told, vacations serve as mini tests to prove if a department can function when key players are away. That's the theory, anyway. In reality, IT departments sometimes flunk. The results can either be comical or turn out to be a serious wake-up call to organizations that need a better Plan B. To prime your mental pump before your own vacation, Computerworld compiled anecdotes about good vacations gone bad."

Comments

The real problem

[rsilvergun]

at least in the states is, companies have figured out they can get one person to do the work of two and pocket the other guy's salary. I'm seeing this everywhere in the form of longer wait times for services. It's also really screwing the economy because it means there's 1 less job available, so higher unemployment and less money circulating. We're heading back to the 1800s, when our masters argued that idle hands were the devil's playthings, and the lower class would just spend the time drinking anyway... Kiss your vacations (and your 40 hour work week) goodbye.

Re:The real problem

[JoeRandomHacker]

Here's a thought: stop working longer hours; you are just reinforcing management's bad behavior. At this point you are clearly too important to sack, so no worries there. Do your excellent job at a reasonable pace, and keep a backlog of things you have to do, making it available to interested parties who wonder why things aren't getting done faster. And when new work arrives, let them know that while you would be more than happy to fix their problems right away, there is a pile of other stuff to get through first, so it will have to wait. And most of all, stop worrying about it. It may be that nobody ever wises up and get you some technical help, but at least you'll be less overworked, and maybe a bit happier.

Re:The real problem

[todrules]

It sounds like you are really in a downward spiral here. You need to start looking after yourself more and putting your foot down. It is commendable that you work so hard at your job, but at what cost? See about taking your original, planned vacation. Fill your boss and coworker in on the upcoming deployment, and let them handle it.

Re:The real problem

[innerweb]

As always, the problem is management and management not knowing enough about what they are managing,

Most management has two issues they contend with when it comes to IT. One is they can not see how IT contributes to profit, and therefore see it as nothing more than cost. Another is they do not see how IT can help enhance and manage work flow.

For an IT person to be successful, they need to learn how their management hears things, and learn to talk to them in a way they will hear. Which means to get where you need to be and to get what you need you have to sell it by talking to them at their level. That may not be easy. Sometimes it involves golf games, sometimes fishing, whatever it takes to get to know management to understand what it is they see and hear (we all have filters). Once you learn how to communicate with them, then you have to start to educate them. Once they learn how IT truly can work, they will start to let you have projects that they would not have let you have before. Choose these projects carefully. The ones they can see and feel the success of get you *karma* points. These points become spendable for projects you need that they will not understand the benefit of. Do enough stuff they can see the benefit of, and eventually, they will see the justification of having another person.

Should it be this way? Probably not, but it is, so we in IT have to learn to deal with it. Remember that most management is ignorant about IT. And they want to stay that way . Management typically thinks it has too much on its own plate as it is. They manage things like IT by looking elsewhere and saying, hey see what they are bragging about, why are we not like that? Kind of like all those *investment* bankers who collapsed the economy on bad loans and derivatives. Many said, "Not smart", but their bosses ignored them, saying, "Look others are doing it and profiting , we need that profit as well."

We know that is not real management. But management does not care. If it does not bite them today, it is a good thing today.

That is why it is our job in IT to stealth educate our management. It is our job to know these things. It is also our job to communicate those needs effectively. That is where most in IT fall down. It is very hard to communicate IT effectively. It is even harder to do so when you do not have a grasp on the whole of the company's operations. To be able to explain IT in terms the rest of the company will understand, you have to know their jobs and how IT is used to help them. So, one of the reasons IT management is so extraordinarily tough is that you have to know everything about how the company works to be able to do the job effectively. That means not just running the IT department. It means knowing in full detail how the IT department impacts the company as a whole in every nook and corner. It actually means you wind up knowing more than anyone else in the company about how the company works. IT management is the hardest job in any company.

And that is a natural things when you think about what IT truly is in a company. It is everywhere in a company. The phone system, the desktops, the printers, the servers, the network, the data, the data sharing, the personnel, ... Companies work or don't work because of their Information flow. Information flows because of IT. IT becomes the lifeblood of the company. Wrong numbers in inventory, parts are not made. Wrong field size for an import, data lost. Wrong version of software, job might not get done. Nothing in a company is as pervasive as IT.

We could all go back to pen and paper to track things. We could remove all the digital IT in every company. The job could and would get done (well, most would). But, as what cost? This is probably the thing that an IT person has to understand the most to manage the company (not just IT). This cost reduction from using data systems is where management will understand you. But you have to understand it first. Only then can you demonstrate why hiring another person in IT is profitable.

Re:The real problem

[bigstrat2003]

It's like this. I work to enable me to enjoy the rest of my life, not for its own sake. If my life is really shitty as a result of my job, then I might be better off without it.

This is one of those things that happens because we allow it. If IT employees were willing, across the board, to demand proper respect and consideration from their employer, then there would be no problem. Until we stop cowering in fear of losing our jobs, we're going to be screwed unless we happen to get lucky and have a nice manager.

Re:The real problem

[EdIII]

Quit. Find another job, or at least start looking right now. Even if you safely move one foot to the other like a stepping stone, DO IT.

I am speaking from experience here. Salaried and was working 20 hours a day for over a year and half. I finally did a re-fi and cashed out the equivalent of 3.5 years worth of my salary (I was not compensated well in the first place).

First two weeks I slept 14 hours a day and woke up after having nightmares where I dreamed about cronjobs, databases, and SQL statements. I would wake up screaming with panic attacks wondering if certain processes were done.

Quit.

What it did was completely shot my adrenal glands. I had nearly killed them. Doctors put me on stuff for a year, and it took about that long for me to get back to normal sleeping patterns and feel better.

It truly is not worth it, life is too fucking short. Don't waste your life on this.

If you have children, a wife, or a girlfriend that IS suffering right now. If you have children you are performing a great sacrifice and being a good father, but you could be a better one being there. I can honestly say that I would have rather been a little more poor, eaten a little less, had less conveniences and video games if I got to see my father more.

The reason why this continues in this environment is that WE let it. An awful lot of IT people are not lazy at all. Some are driven to bad behavior and apathy, but more are driven to keep things alive at all cost. It is our purpose. I took it that seriously. It was like the Path of the Warrior and shit like that. The SQL server WILL not fucking do down BECAUSE I WONT LET IT. I'll figure out a way to work with what I have to make things as redundant as possible.

Quit. Quit. Quit.

Find another job, even if it pays only 80% as much, even if it is a different type of job. Quit.

If you continue down this path, it will be you writing this post to a possibly younger IT guy on some website in the future trying to tell him the same thing. Although, honestly, I would have ignored the advice back then and pushed on like a solider anyways... till I physically could not do it anymore.

Good luck.

Everything the article says is true, but ...

[Daniel Dvorkin]

... it won't make any difference, I suspect. There are (at least) three big problems here:

• Techie-macho. A lot of IT people have the idea that if you're not working at least twelve hours a day, six days a week, you're not really working. They don't just put up with sleep deprivation, irregular eating schedules, and the total lack of a social life when it's necessary to get the job done; they actively take pride in it. Vacation isn't even on their radar.
• Management ignorance. IT is seen as a cost sink, so there's a reluctance to hire any more than the bare bones minimum staff to get the job done (and often, not even that.) When the inevitable problems occur as a result of this practice, it's seen as proof of IT's inefficiency and an excuse to cut their budget and resources even more.
• (Often justified) paranoia. "If the boss knows the guy in the next cubicle over can take over for me when needed, I'll be the first one out the door in the next round of layoffs." This encourages "job security through obscurity," the creation of needlessly complex and poorly documented systems that only one person in the entire company can understand. It may not actually work, but people think it does, so they keep doing it.

And no, I don't know what the solution is. Just pointing out that it's a structural issue, and collecting anecdotes about how badly things tend to go wrong doesn't seem to be doing much to motivate anyone to try to fix the underlying problems.

Re:Law firm fails because of single disk failure?

[paitre]

I'm not at all surprised by this, actually.

In my experience, there is a significant percentage (IME, most, but others may differ) of businesses that rely on Best Buy for hardware replacements. They see additional hardware lying around as a waste, and will not keep spares handy.

I can EASILY see this happening. EASILY.

Re:My wife came up with a solution

[element-o.p.]

Why would you welcome a call from work to a boat you are vacationing on?

I've spent roughly one extra day this last week alone on the phone from home trying to fix technical problems at a couple of remote sites. If, as GPP stated, it was going to cost the company $5-$10 per minute to have me work those particular issues, that would be (($5|$10)/minute) x (60 minutes / hour) x 8 hours = $2400 - $4800, not including overtime (if GPP gets overtime; I'm salaried, so it wouldn't apply in my case), to fix the problem. That's somewhere between two weeks and one month's salary for another entry-level to somewhat-experienced IT person.

When it starts costing the company more to call me for help when I'm out of the office than it does to hire more help to take up the slack, they'll finally get the picture, and my life will get better.

Re:There can be only one...

[Flyerman]

You are weak to rely on your own knowledge to keep yourself employed. Be good at managing others in IT and you'll be far more indispensable.

You can, and will be replaced, and are foolish to think otherwise.

I would fire you for that

[sjbe]

The flip side to being "one deep" is you are more valuable. I would lean towards hoarding knowledge and being on-call. I don't WANT my employer to be comfortable functioning without me.

Business is a team sport and you are definitely NOT being a team player. I have fired people for doing exactly what you are suggesting. It doesn't make you more valuable, it makes you a liability. You are putting the organization at risk for your own gain. If you make everything dependent on you and then you get hit by the proverbial bus, your selfishness has endangered everyone who depends on you. Single point of failure is a bad thing and information hoarding makes you a single point of failure. If the people you work for tolerate that kind of behavior from you, they are extremely foolish.

Re:I would fire you for that

[Kjella]

Single point of failure is a bad thing and information hoarding makes you a single point of failure. If the people you work for tolerate that kind of behavior from you, they are extremely foolish.

Many companies don't spend any more time cross-training than they have to, there's always work to do and being productive always preempts being non-productive. Same with documentation, if I have to scramble to the second most pressing issue on your list I'll do that. They are trying to avoid single point of disaster, nothing more so if a mad scramble by everyone else can lead to a small to moderate degree of failure that's acceptable. Many other places are simply on a "when you have time" basis which make it easy to be an information hoarder, because you're simply always take on enough work to be busy. Or if you're simply dishonest, pretend to be busy.

Personally I've had it too much the other way around, nobody really wanted to or had the skills to do what I do so I didn't hoard it, I was trapped by it. In the end I resigned and started at a different company simply because I felt I was stuck being an expert in one area they'd never let me leave. I would actually think that happens far more often, it wasn't until I resigned they really got busy trying to cover my skills with other employees. Of course I had to learn quite a bit about the existing systems at my new employer too, but I could be a lot more focused on what would be rather than every gritty detail of the old systems they already had experts in.

Re:I would fire you for that

[garyebickford]

I've seen you before. You are basically stuck in a box. (the box of your preconceptions and way of thinking) That box is pretty closely related to the 'union thug' box, not to put too fine a point on it. That box pretty well destroyed Detroit over a period of 40 years. That box will prevent you from ever succeeding beyond a low level, unless you change jobs, get an MBA and go to work for the next group of Wall Street sociopaths (no, not all WS folks are sociopaths, but they're always out there - a separate topic).

When you take a job, you are providing a service in return for pay. This is a standard bargain, just like when you get a haircut. The barber offers a service, and you pay the barber. If the barber gives you an attitude, or doesn't do a good enough job, you will go somewhere else next time. If he/she does a real crap job or pisses you off enough, you won't pay him. But if he does a very good job, has a good attitude and goes above the standard, you might tip him extra.

Similarly, if you do a bit above the standard, look for how to make the company succeed, at most (not all) companies you are likely to be noticed, and sooner or later are more likely to be promoted, given a raise, or in bad times, less likely to be laid off. Sure, some companies don't follow that model - but even then, if you have done the right thing, at least _some_ of the folks in almost any company will be available to give you a good reference when you go somewhere else. So it's just good marketing unless you're a scam artist.

I used to work in the oil exploration business. There are about 30,000 oilfield engineers in the world. It's essentially a small town. If a field engineer made a mistake, that was usually not fatal. But if an engineer screwed somebody over, or failed to carry through on a promise, everybody in the business knew about it soon enough. If that happened enough times, that engineer would eventually be unable to get a job anywhere in the business - or would end up working from some scab outfit working with old crap equipment and cutting corners wherever they could.

Just so you know, the above is not a fantasy. It's exactly how things have worked for me, most places, most times, through a 40 year career. Because I always tried to do the best for the company, even when things didn't work out, I could honestly tell potential employers what I did do, what didn't work out, and why. And I never got negative feedback as a result. Potential employers can smell a rat, and unless they are rats as well, prefer not to hire them.

Re:I would fire you for that

[tophermeyer]

You go in, do the very least you can to not get fired, and go home at night. You don't go out of your way to teach everyone to replace you. You don't "cross-train" so that you can fill two or three roles without a raise. You certainly don't answer calls when you're off duty.

Hooray, you are a disengaged employee. You've got a terribly toxic attitude and you do the bare minimum you can to get by. Not surprisingly, this makes you a poor candidate for investment and advancement. Shocking. Understand that this is often a reinforcing situation, in fact it is an archetypical organizational systems dynamics problem.

I don't know where you have worked or what has happened to you to make you so jaded about employment, but trust me that it doesn't need to be that way. Maybe you had bad managers that missed opportunities to keep you engaged. Maybe you are just a terrible employee. Either way, your view of employee-employer relations is entirely too cynical. Plenty of healthy organizations exist that appropriately reward motivated employees.

There are other causes for this...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm in the IT department at my company.... I'm pretty sure if the Director of the department and our single Network Admin left simultaneously for any reason, the IT portion of the company would completely collapse.

This isn't the fault of people loading things onto them or what not, it's primarily the fault of an unwillingness to share information about the job. The rest of the department CAN'T start taking over to ease their load and their single point of failure, because we don't get told about things we need to know to do that.

It's infuriating a lot of the time.

LEarn from our Chinese neighbors

[Dainsanefh]

Your suggestion will work if we allow to BAN the republican party and also BAN Christianity.

Otherwise, only civil war and revocation of the constitution will stop the rich white euro-trash from enslaving the rest of the population.

perception vs. reality

[Tom]

Giving up vacation days because you couldn't use them, interrupting vacations or cutting them short for work - if you find yourself anywhere near that list, you're a fucking idiot, and the one you're fucking is yourself. And that was the polite way of putting it.

A few years ago, I've had to become a bit of an expert in vacations for business reasons (negotiations regarding vacation times, rules, company procedures, etc.). Two things are absolutely frightening when you do that.
One is that we need vacations at all - for thousands of years, there was no such thing. That's because work has become condensed to a point where it's detrimental to health at good times.
Two is how little almost everyone, employers, employees, even most union people, realize how important vacations and other free times are. I've seen many people crash and burn in those years and lack of vacations, interruptions of off-work time and not being able to "shut down" when you leave work were almost always present and at least contributing factors.

In all those years, I have encountered one group of people who can do that, who can go on without vacations and free days and suffer no ill consequences. These people share two important characteristics: One is that their time is self-determined to a large degree. In other words: They could close up shop and go away for a few days at any time if only they wanted. They have no boss pressure and no customer pressure that would stop them, because they've organized their work so that if they ever need to, they can. Obviously, most of them are self-employed, but not all. A great example is a cobbler who has his shop down the street from where I live: The official opening times of his shop, as posted in the window, are: "When I'm here."
Two, these people work their dream. They do what they want to do, they have meaning in their jobs, and they've cut out as much of the crap as possible, and some that other people thought would not be possible to cut. They never ask themselves "what the fuck am I doing here?".

None of them make a killing. But they make a living. And I try to be one of them over being rich, but hollow. I've worked with too many so-called "successful" people and seen their dull eyes. Five minutes with someone from the group above and you can never go back into the machinery.