Why Everyone Hates the IT Department

Barence writes "Why are IT staff treated with near universal contempt? This article discusses why everyone hates the IT department. From cultivating a culture of 'them and us,' to unrealistic demands from end users and senior management, to the inevitable tension created when employees try and bring their own equipment into the office, there are a variety of reasons for the lack of respect for IT."

Comments

Re:Reflections

[Anrego]

Yup.. works both ways.

Users can be real dicks.. but so can IT guys. Yes it's the IT departments job to keep the system running and secure.. but the whole point of that system is so everyone else can do their work. When IT starts unreasonably hindering that, you see the hostility build.

This is especially true in software shops, where everyone tends to be fairly technically literate and have unusual needs for their systems.

We made computers too simple to use

[El_Muerte_TDS]

How often have you heard things like "My nephew is good with computers, he could do X"?

In the short history that computers exist we've made them too simple so that the average person thinks it's not complicated to keep those things running correctly (or develop new and better versions of it). The average person thinks a car (or even airplane for that matter) is more complicated than a computer. And this believe also translates towards the price they are willing to pay for it. Although that's not a bad thing, expect when you expect a Trabant to perform like a Ferrari.

Re:Reflections

[Darinbob]

Look at it this way. Your job is to fix things that break. A programmer or engineer's job is not to keep things from breaking but to build a product, test a product, evaluate products, etc. This means they may NEED root access, or to install something other than Microsoft approved products. The big difference I often see is that engineers are working to improve the company's bottom line whereas IT may often be working for themselves. Sure you do extra work, but isn't the whole point of a job to be doing work? One failure I see often is that so many IT people have a generic set of skills and if they're laid off they just head to the next generic job so they may not bother learning what the company actually does or learning who the non-IT employees are; they don't ask "how can I help you and help our company".

To be fair a lot of problems can stem from IT management. This is where the insular nature tends to start. Management goes and meets other high level managers and IT workers are encouraged to keep their heads down. Productivity is measured with metrics (as soon as the word "metrics" shows up you know it's downhill from there), such as how many tickets can they close and how fast for each. A worker who spends time trying to help users with unusual requirements or problems gets dinged closing fewer tickets than the rest of the team. And of course management actually wants the generic workers with generics skills (aka, MSCEs) as they're cheaper and easier to staff up by using buzzwords in job reqs.

For instance we lost our two IT people who'd been around the longest and who knew everyone, the ones that everyone relied on, the only two left who understood macs (half the company uses macs and linux). Not sure why they were the ones to go, but the cynical side of me says it's a mix of them having the most stock options and highest pay plus them not being 100% MS indoctrinated.

I started off in IT (before anyone called it that). We had to go the extra mile because that was the job and the computers we managed belonged to the users' departments anyway they weren't ours to try and control. Being a research lab every single user had a unique set of needs. We had user representatives meeting with us often to plan out budgets and divvy up computer time and disk space. We were absolute a _service_ organization.

Re:Why contempt?

[ozmanjusri]

"They made me use Windows"

I feel your pain.

Don't worry, they'll be first up against the wall after the Ballmer Collapse.
http://www.businessinsider.com/steve-ballmers-nightmare-how-microsofts-business-really-could-collapse-2011-11?op=1

Re:Reflections

[anubi]

Reminds me of my "aerospace days".

Somehow, management got the idea I didn't know how to run my computer, which I had built from scratch. They wanted to delegate all computer stuff to the company IT department.

So, IT brought me a whole new machine. Configured to their specs. The same as every other machine.

And with special little screws.

That damn thing was useless to me. It was like trying to fix a car with a typewriter.

I had my old machine loaded with all sorts of tools I had custom crafted for my needs. DSP stuff. Digitizers and digitizing software. Unusual displays. Dual disk drives and RAM drives, along with drivers of my own design. Assemblers. C++ compilers. Schematic capture and PCB layout software. SPICE circuit simulators. Mathcad. Thermodynamics software. Disassemblers and debugging tools just in case something didn't work like it oughta.

IT did not want to support that.

I could not run them on the "company machine" I was "authorized" to use.

My new machine was optimized for writing reports for management, loaded with all sorts of office productivity software.

Boy was I pissed. I whined like hell.

And got laid off. Poor "people skills". Bad performance.

Last thing I want to do is go back and work in an environment like that. I'd rather be on welfare.

I am way too ornery and set in my ways to be a decent corporate engineer. When they have that much money, they can hire someone who will tell them what they want to hear,

Re:Reflections

[sg_oneill]

But when you're still providing us with Windows XP in 2011, you are doing it wrong.

You do realize that not every company or department has the funds to provide you with the "latest and greatest". Some of us have to work with limited budgets brought down from up above. XP isn't ideal, but it's still being supported for the next 2+ years, which gives IT time to make sure the business apps will continue to function after the new OS is rolled out.

The problem is, and its not necessarily an IT depts fault, is that its often *more expensive* to underfund IT.

My last job at a major company I had to develop software on an ancient mac with 2 gig of ram and spent most of my time staring at the beachball. Every time I hit save, the beachball would spin. Every time I searched my code, the beachball would spin. Hell entering a line of code would make the beachball spin.

So my simple request "Can I please have 8 gig of ram" was denied because "Well if we do that all the coders will want it."

I pointed out that since i was being paid nearly $70 an hour, and I'm losing a good couple of hours a day on computer slugishness, that the investment would pay itself off in about 2 days, since not having the ram was costing the company about $140 a day. No dice.

Eventually myself and the other coders made an estimate of how much the non upgrades where costing the company in lost productivity , close to $8000 a week, and took it straight over the IT depts head to the big boss.

The next day a very reprimanded IT dept head personally installed my new ram.