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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."
Why are IT staff treated with near universal contempt?
One reason might be because that's how IT staff treat everyone else.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
"Why are information desk staff treated with near universal contempt? This article discusses why everyone hates the information desk department. From cultivating a culture of 'why u no work' to unrealistic demands from IT managers, to the inevitable tension created when employees try and use optical drives as cupholders, there are a variety of reasons for the lack of respect for information desk." :)
To offset political mods, replace Flamebait with Insightful.
Because, BOFH forgive us, we have forsaken the way of the LART.
... to be the next one true BOFH. They may fall short, and remain PFY's forever, but that doesn't stop them from trying...
Check your premises.
The problem with many IT staff is that they can and often do impose more draconian controls than are strictly required; like lawyers they are simply trying to keep a company or client safe from harm, but they often cannot see that purity must often be sacrificed for the greater good of simply letting a business get work done.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I work with an IT that is treated with respect by the other business functions. You know why? Because we deliver what the business needs to provide customer value. Usually it's the IT functions fault for building a "them and us" culture, and that ultimately has a negative affect on the way they can benefit the business.
1. non-technical users are technical idiots
2. technical users are treated like idiots when they're not
I figure that out of every hundred users there is going to be at least one hater. I have three haters. If you are IT and feel disrespected it is probably by the few selfish and self-centered people. Just ignore their phobia and treat them like adults. One day they will grow up or get pushed aside.
Its the lack of follow-up of "heres how we can make this work" that gets to me the most
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.
IT departments I have come across seem to be staffed with the slowest tech workers who have no interest in technology. By contrast, their customers want the latest/greatest tools to keep the business edge. So while IT department sees upgrading from WinXP to Win7 as a win, their customers are frustrated about lack of support for OSX, Android and iOS phones.
It's not because a lot of IT is outsourced for processes that need to be handled onsite?
That, combined with intense budget constraints that mean resources are extremely limited, and what can be spun up at an offsite facility by Amazon cloud services in moments can't be replicated locally because of no disk space, no memory, etc.
Every company I've worked at that has been large enough to warrant it's own IT dept. has been standoffish because they're told not to associate with the desk employees. The reason being for "security", and the overall feeling I've gotten from those I've been close to is because they basically monitor employee activity. They create logs of internet usage, emails, instant messages, and any network activity. In the last 5 or so years that has extended into time logs of entering/exiting the office, and actual desktop activity. There are three companies I've worked at that have had this behavior, with the exception of the timesheet and desktop activity recording because that was all at the same company since then, (though I've gotten the impression that this behavior was "standard" for IT now).
Either way, I feel like checking out of the corporate world entirely, because it's just pathetic. Especially if you consider where it's going: http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/11/18/1419252/microsoft-patent-aims-to-curb-obnoxious-employee-behavior
I used to work in IT. When I was in IT I figured the reason we were so generally hated was that whenever we pop up it's to fix something that is broken or to change something that isn't. So either we showed up at an emergency or we showed up to create one...or at least I was sure that's how it was perceived. Most of the time it was to roll out changes of some sort. This never went over well. Add to that the difficulty of grabbing an IT guy for a moment for something small "sorry, fill out a ticket" sounds very cold. Of course if we didn't adhere to that system nothing would ever get done.
As seen from the IT department it's a dynamic issue, and a rather complicated one at that.
Now that I'm no longer in the IT department and have to deal with the IT department I'm pretty everybody hates the IT department because fuck those guys.
Pro-IT:
1. IT staff are asked to make computers work, when computers are a complex interaction between hardware and software, most of which is shaped by commercial interests for their own profit or created by non-profits with no interest in business use.
2. Users tend to be unreliable, inarticulate and lack the ability to remember basic procedures in reporting errors.
3. Businesses inevitably strangle IT for funding where it needs it, preferring to spend on the salaries of managers, touchy feelgood "training," and gee-whiz gizmos that achieve very little.
Con-IT:
1. IT managers have difficulty standing up to the demands from marketing and management in order to insist on what is likely instead of what "might be possible."
2. Most people in IT have poor social skills and aren't as smart as they think they are, leading to them projecting an aura of arrogance that offsets users. Sympathy for the user is often lacking.
3. Because IT is a hot topic job, the kiss-asses get promoted over the competent and stable, which leads to a proliferation of incompetents while the heroes get driven into the back room.
Futurist Traditionalism
What's IT? help desk? Sysadmins? Developers? etc.
They institute policies for their own convenience and security, rather than for the benefit of people who are directly engaged in carrying out the organization's mission. Admittedly, this is more commonly a characteristic of the IT executives rather than the local staff, but it's problematic nevertheless.
Fat cat CEO doesn't want to be troubled with the technical side of that goal, so established a proxy slave-driver: the IT department
Folks don't like proxy slave-driver.
surprise!
next-up: Fat cat CEO doesn't like bothering to fire or hire people. why-oh-why do people fear/hate the HR department?
Primarily dealing with end users, they are ignorant (not stupid most of the time) and feel inadequate, as though they should know how to solve their problems but they don't, an attitude that is about as realistic as being handed an F-14 fighter manual and told you will be flying tomorrow.
What happens when I come into contact with them is they are primed and expecting to feel dumb so they do, and it's some how my fault, God forbid I dumb the explanation down and they "catch on" to that, "I'm not stupid you know" yes yes that's why you're here talking to me.
To be fair my delivery does need work, I am sure something close to sarcasm leaks out on occasion, I just never saw myself as their therapist.
With management, I have to say I don't get management, they seem to be baby sitters and I don't need sitting, I am autonomous and some seem threatened by that.
They have their own set of issues all of which seem to be created to appear they are needed, created out of sheer ignorance (Peter Principal) or just simple minded D-bags that some how got promoted and now you have to deal with them or rather their egos and egos don't make good business/management/IT decisions.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Security is for the benefit of the people who are directly engaged in carrying out the mission, just ask Sony.
the IT Policy is what is universally hated, not the IT dept or the poor souls that make it up. Often there are some very bright and helpful people that will try to go out of their way to help out end users (especially researchers, who have "interesting" requirements -- we've gotten around this by setting up a department just to field their demands).
I also can't help feeling that IT depts have brought this reputation on themselves. "Our way is the One Try Way and you can't do it any other way". "Oh, yes, we installed this multi-million dollar pile of enterprise software that does not work, makes simple tasks week long epics, but you have to use it anyway".
Over the past decade, there has been a brain drain and now the IT depts are filled with "admins" that hardly know anything about only one particular platform and refuse to consider anything else (watch them squirm when the CEO / President walks in with a MacBook Air). To them, every problem can be solved by reinstalling the SOE, blaming the end user for installing "non-approved" tools etc etc.
IT is now looked upon as a cost centre. The business is quite rightly making comparisons with other providers who can provide the same service, for much less outlay.
Solution 1: if you can, work for an IT company.
Solution 2: Don't do desktop support.
I don't hate my IT department, I hate RHEL5. (They have good reasons for not upgrading to RHEL6 yet)
The fundamental problem is that most people don't understand that while they think that piece of software they want installed is PERFECT for their needs, it might not be something that integrates well into the rest of the company's systems.
The IT department KNOWS that any new system/software that is brought in has the potential to stick around for YEARS, and that it is likely that someone will want to integrate the data generated by that system/software into some OTHER system. Contrary to popular belief, not every file can be opened by every program. Not easily or cheaply anyway.
Basically, IT wants to make sure that we don't get into a situation where we are FORCED to develop expensive custom software (or expensive support procedures) because some non-IT management-type decided they wanted to use MS Publisher to create webpages.
In my experience, doing IT support is inherently a thankless job. Lots of people who do it are bad at their jobs, but the people receiving the support are rarely in a position to evaluate the competency of their support personnel, which makes things difficult. Even if you've done a really good job, the person you're supporting might not think so. If you're doing a crappy job, they might not know that either.
And a big part of the problem is that, by the nature of the job, if someone is calling you, they're probably already frustrated. They're trying to do something and their computer broke. They've probably already made a few attempts to fix things themselves. Often enough, they've put off asking for help for a little while already, and they're only contacting you now because the problem has hit the point of crisis. So now, then they're completely frustrated and pissed off, they call you, and they're looking for someone to be angry at. Guess what? That someone is you.
And often enough, you have to tell people that they can't have what they want. It's part of the job. Some employee wants Microsoft Publisher installed, but their boss has said not to buy them a license. "I have a disc. Can't you just install it? My son downloaded it for my home computer, so why can't you do that? If my son can do it, surely you can figure it out?!" Nope. Sorry, I'm not allowed to pirate. I'm not allowed to give you access to this file or that file without some manager's approval. I can't just buy you a new computer-- not unless your boss has budgeted for it.
The job requires dealing with people when they're at the end of the rope, and even then telling them "no". They're not going to like you most of the time. But they need you, and if you do a good job, they'll like you more than the alternative. It's what you need to settle for.
Lets see, i'm a fire alarm technician where we have about 40 buildings networked together.
We wanted to upgrade our network and the easiest way to do it would be to set up our own wireless mesh network. Our IT department said "no, wireless networks are our business and you cant set up your own" even though ours would operate on the emergency channels and have nothing to do with them. They whined to management and now we cant set up our stuff.
So they said "hey, use our network (internet)" ok, so we gave that a try. One big problem, when the building loses power, it loses it's internet, and we cant have our panels not monitored. so now we are stuck using phone lines with internet as a backup.
And half the time they cant even do a simple thing like provide a jack with a set IP address for us. They even tried to take away admin controls on OUR computers that aren't even hooked up to their network
if they had just stayed out of it, we would have a very nice and reliable system set up. But i dont hate them, i'm just taking note of all their failures so next time they say "let us do it" i can show how bad of an idea that really is.
IT is always portrayed in the media/culture/ads as somewhat of an outcast? Who amongst us remembers the rooster looking dude in the Ameritrade (I think that is what they were called) commercials to the "SWEET" idiot of the horrible CDW commercials. While many (if not most) of us were professional and CAN talk to an average user, we are portrayed as some weird punk-rock drummer.
This made us easy to demonize, and demote. We weren't 'leaders', professionals, or whatever.
Just a dude. Stuck in IT.
My anecdote. My new office mate moved into my office. IT did their duty and moved his gear, but setup the KVM switch incorrectly, so he got the wrong two displays on the wrong system. IT's response..."let him fix it". Um, no, assholes, your lazy asses set it up incorrectly. Even though we have the technical ability to set it up ourselves, your stupid IT policies won't let us. So when YOU screw it up, you can come back and fix it.
This is why we all hate IT.
#1. The IT techs do NOT (as a rule) "impose more draconian controls than are strictly required". They are TOLD what to do by management.
#2. If you (as a non-IT and non-management user) want something done differently, then put together a business case and send it up through your manager.
#3. If your manager gets his/her manager and the other managers to approve and fund it then the IT techs will implement it.
Yay! Everyone wins! Then we all dance!
No business case, no funding, no changes.
And that is the core of the problem. People WANT things because they WANT them. But they don't understand (nor do they want to understand) how their "small change" affects the whole company's IT system.
Let me say first off that the local Computer/Network Operators at my company (I refuse to use "IT" because, heck, a paperback book and a slide rule are both "information technology") are competent, helpful, and interact w/ the tech staff well. The overarching group (NorthropGrumman IT *Division*) not so much. Simple example: someone decided that Office2007 should be rolled out. Now, that person may have had worries about document compatibility with customers and vendors, in which case he was wrong, since there are converters which down-convert the _content_ just fine even if the fancy-schmancy eye candy doesn't. Or he may have simply decided (or been bribed) to pay $gazilliion to upgrade all machines. In either case, nobody cared to ask any users whether they were able to work more efficiently with Office03 than Office07. And, yes, I am fully of the opinion that a "power user" knows that speed and efficiency come from minimizing the use of the mouse in favor of keystroke commands, and that being able to customize menus is infinitely better than searching thru "ribbons" with commands placed in unintuitive, seemingly arbitrary sub-menus. Take another example: most employees think python is either a reptile or an old BBC comedy show, but those who actually want to write and use Python code should not be barred from doing so. You just cannot have a common policy applied to factory workers, administrators, software jocks, and science/engineering staff. I, for one, do not ask for "support" for most of the tools I use. I just ask for _permission_ to use and maintain them without coming in to find my machine has been once again rooted by the midnight auto-update patch monster.
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
It needs peoele with tech school skills / hands on work and not CS only.
Most helpdesk software are crap and I suspect it's the first step in pissing people off when they contact IT for help with whatever issue. It only goes downhill from there.
I work in IT and I'm relatively certain that the IT department at my company isn't *universally* reviled. In no particular order, here are some of the things that I think make us mesh with the rest of the company well: ...) all that often.
1) An emphasis on hiring IT people with good communication skills, sometimes even preferring the candidate with communication skills and a good "cultural fit" (e.g., excited about working for the company, interested in continuing to learn, etc), over the candidate with specific technical experience.
2) A company-wide emphasis on not hiring technophobes into jobs where they'll be in front of a computer 8 hours a day.
3) IT management that can say "no" at least some of the time
4) IT management with the foresight to actually calculate internal support costs (i.e., hours spent making it actually work) into the TCO of a technology
5) A top-down corporate philosophy of avoiding vendor lockin means that we tend not to get stuck with our backs to the wall (or over the barrel
6) Using bugzilla for support ticket management (or replace that with any other good way of keeping track of open issues). Our biggest problem in the past had been with users asking for support and those issues getting glossed over or forgotten about.
That's all I can think of off the top of my head, but I can certainly say that without all of those in place doing IT would be a *ton* harder and/or require more staff to get the same amount of work done.
^I'm with stupid.^
Maybe if the IT staff went on strike and demanded the pay and respect such a critical assignment should afford, we might be able to break the cycle.
Furries make the internet go.
Usually the IT department is not very good at selling things. Being technically right is no replacement for explanations. If you take some extra time, you can give things a completely different spin.
I have seen very successful IT departments which were headed by marketing/sales guys. They just focused on selling what their department was doing and why. For technical decisions they had their staff. They were much better off (budget- and apprecion-wise) than the average IT department.
It is a typical mistake in IT departments to think the manager has to know about every topic. Therefor the best technical guys often become abysmal managers.
Yours, Martin
http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/nick-burns/2786
Let me guess... The same organization that discovered a keylogger on armed UAV control systems and couldn't get rid of it for months?
Slashdotters will have a skewed perception of IT anyway.
The articles says "a department that is, after all, designed to help and support workers". For certain classes of users, this could not be further from the truth.
Last time I called IT, they commented on how little I called them. This is because the only reason I call them is for the occasional forgotten password. Everything else, I know it's going to take less time and frustration if I fix it myself. Yes, I know that some people who do this are rogue users who should be shot.
My department hates IT because they have to carry out the ridiculously over-protective policies forced on a large government department. And because the policy is designed for an army of clerical workers when we are an R&D organization.
They actually want to impose VDI on all of us - you have to justify not having it. Everyone I work with has a mix of custom tooling (users AND developers) that means that making a virtual machine image for each of them, or even for each user group, would be a nightmare. We are the least suitable set of users for VDI I can imagine, but hey, since we're the "tech guys", we get to be the guinea pigs and try it out first.
They're experimenting with Windows 7 - but not with 64-bit versions, which some of our apps are starting to need, because the enormous suite of software they install to enforce policy doesn't have a 64-bit version yet.
They changed our anti-virus from Symantec, which ate about 10% CPU time when checking, to McAfee, which eats about 40%. I/O heavy processes that used to take around 2 minutes now take 8. They got McAfee free in a bundle - it's a shame about the cost to our productivity. The snoopware that checks every path on your drive - including ones inside archives (yes, including jars - we're mostly Java developers) will thrash your disk for about 20 minutes and then will consume a whole CPU core for another 10 zipping up the list to send back to base. Since the change of antivirus, reading all those files of course also thrashes the CPU. This grinds some of our machines to a halt so well that you can watch the display being rendered, one raster line at a time.
Not a day goes past without my colleague cursing because his machine is doing the bidding of the IT department instead of compiling his code.
But what about the things they do for us? The things we ask for?
If you ask for software that's not sold by one of our official suppliers, they'll subcontract one of them to : buy it for you, mark it up 10% and then deduct the whole cost from your budget. Once this process took 13 weeks - by which time, the job the software was intended to speed up was already complete.
If you lock out your email account, they tell you to get in touch with your "local email admin". You can't get into the address book to find out who that is, without your email account.
To be honest, I ran out of anecdotes in that department there, because I barely ask them for anything ; as I said, it's easier to do it myself.
We get that IT is a department that perceives the majority of users to be hapless idiots who would install a worm that caused Armageddon in exchange for a smiley pack for their IM client. To be honest, as developers, we can really sympathise with that sometimes. But we get very frustrated being tarred with the same brush, because the tar makes doing our job so much harder.
Like a lot of departments today, IT is run by boneheaded bean counters who lack any comprehension of technical matters. I regularly have to fight with these moronic turds for extra funding whilst having to endure the wrath of irate "clients" who think network engineers can work magic. The term "chief shit stirrer" is used a lot when referring to system engineers and is considered (in my view) as both apt and offensive.
I have had a few jobs as IT and I have to say I (and everyone else in my field) were loved.
I was the guy that fixed your broken shit and got your thesis to finally work in an hour after you spent 5 weeks on it.
In general most people like help when they ask for it, and when you can perform magic in front of them and save then 50 hours of boring and repetitive computer work or tell them why the '&' symbol is not working in their HTML then they will love you for it.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
a. IT managers do NOT think like marketing / sales people. Sales is happy to go with the smallest option presented ... knowing that they can grow it from there. "In for a penny, in for a pound".
b. IT managers (in my experience) do not know how to manage the other managers. Hearing, "I know someone who can do it in a weekend for $100" from someone in Sales causes them to capitulate to unreasonable demands.
c. IT managers (again, in my experience) do not know as much as they think they know about IT or their systems. So they cannot provide an accurate cost (money / manpower) for any changes.
d. IT managers (a, ime) do not have plans for improving their systems over the years. Where will your systems / functions be 3 years from now? 5 years? 10 years? The Sales team can give you all kinds of projections. Maybe all lies. But they still have them.
Yep. Big time. Think about it. Do you REALLY know more about IT (your job) than that accountant knows about Accounting (his job)?
See all of my above comments. A good test for this is ... what CURRENT certifications does your manager carry? If any. How diverse are the certs?
I usually need a lot of tools because I have a versatile job. As a researcher in a university in a close R&D department, I often have to test tools and analyse data that come a little bit from everywhere.
Often I have root access on my machines. Once I did not have root privilege on my desktop because of "security policy". I ended up asking IT to install software frequently. For some reason the IT guy believed he could do my job better than me and knew which tools I need better than me. Every time, the IT asked me stupid question, like ... it went like that for about 20 minutes ... It went like that for 30 minutes.
"why do you need an installation of pdflatex? you have latex already!!"
"well, the journal we are submitting to uses pdflatex and our article does not compile."
"In my experience, journal use latex"
"!? well, this one doesn't"
"I see. Why don't you install it on your home directory?"
"I could, but installing a latex distribution manually is a nightmare. As root, it only requires installing one package and let the package manager do its job. In 10 minutes it is installed, properly configured and will update automatically with the system."
"Latex is not updated very often, so the automatic updates are not very useful. You could install it based on a chroot in your home directory"
Two days later:
"Could you install ruby on our computing nodes?"
"Why do you need ruby? It is not a very good programming language and it is significantly less efficient than alternatives like python."
"Because I need tool-foo which is written in ruby."
"Oh I see. Instead of tool-foo, you could use tool-bar which is written in java and does almost the same thing."
"Well, I need tool-foo because tool-bar does not have a feature I need."
"Which feature? In my experience users ask for many different tools without wondering if another tool happen to have the proper features."
the week after
"Could you install git on my machine and on our computing nodes?"
"Why do you need git?"
"To have versioning of my code and experiement"
"We have an svn server, why don't you use that?"
"because the svn server has a limited capacity and it relies on accessing the network, which is not accessible on our computing nodes. But git is point to point and works great over ssh."
"I see. I guess we could set up a git server to synchronize the machine..."
"Well, I don't need a git server. I just need the git package to be installed"
"... so I need to install a new virtual machine. But I will need to connect it to the LDAP. Oh yes the problem of accessing from the computing nodes, so I could modify the settings of the firewall..."
"I don't need a git server I just need git. I'll synchronize on the file system"
"... but if I change the setting of the firewall, you could access the SVN server. So why don't you use SVN?"
"because the SVN server will never support the load I am going to push to the repository"
"I see. In my experience, people in university use git mainly to contribute to open source software and not for actually working."
"... *sigh*"
I let you imagine the day I requested a kernel update...
I'm not pretending I know everything (there's a heck of a lot I don't know), so I do expect someone whose career is IT, when mine isn't, to know more about it than I do or I just can't respect you. It's that easy.
Having someone who knows less about networking, Windows, Linux, you name it, standing in the way of you getting something done just because they prefer to stick with what little they know is just infuriating. Either help, tell me where I'm wrong, or get out of my way. 'That's just not what we always do' doesn't cut it. Since you don't produce anything, your job is to assist, not to c#$@block people who are actually making products.
One of our IT guys is very good at what he does, helpful, and can suggest why I might want to do something a different way or why they'd prefer I not do that (which is fine). Sometimes he'll give me the go-ahead even though it's not official company policy. He knows what he's doing and I respect him, and will defer to his judgement.
So it's 'easy' - earn it.
cases like when the IT department decided to ship all engineers with a standard system that does not include a DVD reader. The fact that our software shipped on DVDs at the time apparently didn't matter to them. then there was the time when IT decided that we needed to have IT perform all software installs on our systems. I was in charge of creating install packages for six different product lines at the time. IT only relented when I scheduled five solid days of their time to simply press the buttons on my regression test systems.
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
It's not. Computers are essentially maintenance free these days. I mean what maintenance does a computer require these days? Security updates? They apply automagically, on my computer while I'm asleep. Software updates, pretty much all automatically. Defrag? Windows does this during it's quiet times. What do you actually think is required for a computer to keep it running correctly? Keep it virus free, but that pretty much applies to a car too (don't crash). If you actively need to do maintenance on a computer these days then maybe you should look at just what it is you are doing to the poor thing.
Now one could argue the complication of building it and setting it up. But this too is trivial. Your average teenager can assemble a computer, and your average grandma can run a windows setup. Neither of them would be able to actually assemble a car engine without considerable knowledge or specialised tools. Cars ARE effectively more complicated than computers.
Although that's not a bad thing, expect when you expect a Trabant to perform like a Ferrari.
My girlfriend just bought a new laptop. $700. Runs like a rocket, much faster than my $2000 pc of the day. Computers are cheap, disposable, and even the cheapest ones are fast enough to satisfy the demands of probably more than 95% of the users. People who need Core i7 and video cards that require a small powerplant to run are in the real minority.
Like it or not, computers these days are consumer toys. The age of the needing a nerd with big round glasses in the house to help set them up is over. Computers essentially set themselves up and maintain themselves.
Face it, in the consumer world we're obsolete. In the corporate world we're simply there to ensure the clever tech savey users don't screw things up, and the software update doesn't break anything.
I have been an IT support guy - I was a Netware admin for some time back when Netware was a solid product - and now I am an end user who occasionally is at odds with the IT dept. And the tension does go both ways. One thing we worked out where I am now was to assign an "IT liaison" to act as a go-between. It's not because end users can't handle the tech, but rather because sometimes the IT people aren't aware of why some resources are critical to users. The liaison is responsible for knowing who is responsible for specific hardware items across different depts so that if IT determines something is causing trouble on the network, the correct people are contacted.
Being as I work for the largest employer in my county, that is not a trivial matter. Our IT dept has responsibilities in over a dozen buildings in numerous zip codes. Just having one person know who to contact when IT has an issue with something makes a huge difference, and that person is our first contact when we need something beyond usual support requests from IT.
For example, we had the conficker worm running through our network, it was hugely valuable for IT to know who to contact for specific machines - especially if they were machines that for various reasons could not be kept under automated control of IT. Of course around the same time our network was ravaged by the errant Norton antivirus update that was identifying a standard Windows XP executable as being infected - and throwing every XP system into an infinite reboot loop.
So really, the conflict often comes down to communication more than anything. And by that I mean human-human communication, done by people actually talking with one another. Once people actually establish what they need and how to work with one another, tempers settle and work gets done. It's not terribly difficult and can be managed even in very large institutions.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
on the email client in question. We've had a user with Outlook so messed up that wiping the computer was the best option. We probably could have figures out the cause, but would you rather wait a week for us to get that done, or an hour to restore an image?
I've worked in a variety of IT departments over the past 15 years, and have heard stories about some of the more infamous local ones. I'd say the problems are usually at the top.
I worked for a Fortune 100 financial company about a decade ago which had all kinds of problems. Management and engineering would focus like a laser point in on certain regulations for machines in the giant server room, like that the fiber optic cable be laid out properly, and would flip out if we broke those regulations. Which is fine - but then they'd ignore the fact that the machine room was a bit over room temperature, meaning the surface of CPUs etc. was even hotter, and that this is what was probably causing a significant amount of the hardware failures. Meanwhile they're running around, testing the fiber cables throughput, and making sure they are laid properly, which in the big picture was not much of a problem. I should also point out things were much more hierarchical than in traditional IT departments, many of the engineering staff (with some exceptions) thought it was beneath them to even talk with lower level administrators outside of official channels, or unless there was some real emergency. I brought up the heat of the machine rooms a few times, but since I was relatively low level to the top IT management and engineering heads, I was ignored. It was a strange place in some ways and I didn't want to rock the boat much - I figured, why bother? I mentioned it a few times and didn't have much sway anyhow. To help morale, they had a round of layoffs despite enormous profits, and so after some weeks of worrying about keeping our jobs (and making us think of working elsewhere and pulling our minds from long-term thinking of the infrastructure), we had the workload of our laid off colleagues dumped on us. At one point we had a general meeting in an auditorium and senior IT and especially non-IT management balled us out about all the crashes and instability. Why we were brought in is beyond me - I dealt with crashes, and followed the procedure book to build new servers, I had no input into how to prevent crashes, and my suggestions about lowering the machine room temperature were ignored. So we were yelled at for things we had no authority to have control of, not something uncommon in crappy workplaces.
I'm thinking of women and the workplace, and somewhat tangentially, I went on an interview at Condenet, which handled magazines like Vogue, Brides, Mademoiselle, Allure, Glamour etc. The waiting room for the interview was probably the frilliest, most decorated waiting rooms I've ever been in. The room was filled with beautiful, blonde, well-dressed southern belles and girls from God knows where, also waiting for interviews. I talked to the girl next to me and she said she was interviewing to work at Vogue, where she had always dreamed of working, a Devil-Wears-Prada wannabe. I just wanted to schlep equipment around for whoever, as long as they paid me more than what I was getting at the time. I go into the interview and talk to a well-coifed, middle-aged woman who had never been on the Internet (this was 1997 or so - although many people were on the net by then), and who had absolutely no clue as to what my abilities were other than that I had not yet gotten all the credits for my Bachelors, i.e. did not have a college degree. I guess she deemed I didn't fit into their corporate culture (which I'm sure I didn't) and didn't get a second call. I think this all points to a problem though. Whether or not I could have done a good job, and in a technical sense I'm sure I could have as I performed well at subsequent more difficult jobs, I think I was deserving of talking to an IT person who could actually calibrate my skills. Why bring people in to talk only to non-technical HR people who are shocked you haven't completed your BA (for a then $60,000 a year position), something they could see on your resume or find out over the phone. What kind of people were they ultimately hiring? It's not like the best DBA
I wasn't very happy with the IT guy who "warned" me about my having created an account for my wife on my work (Mac) laptop. He redeemed himself, though, when he added, "Well, I have to say that." He also seemed to agree it was preferable to my simply allowing her to log in as me.
Yet another /. article talking about how IT is maligned. I guess people love to gripe about it, but it never goes anywhere. Instead we see some comments back and forth here about what the root causes can be.
It's a multi-factored problem. Bad management and bad policies, technical complexity making people blame others, enduring abuse from some users and giving abuse to other users, the list goes on. Not one specific clear problem nor solution to a complicated mess.
Case 1:
Onerous backups to a brain dead central system that constantly created havoc due to it's mixed local vs. checked in system. IT made this rather difficult, but we submitted and followed protocol. Later in the middle of a project we tried to recover from one engineer's hard drive crash. Utter failure, could not get a working copy of the main design archive to work. Numerous excuses due to [tech].
Case 2:
New company, mostly transparent backup (all network drives backed up, largely hands off from IT). Same situation, design got badly corrupted. IT was a hero, dug up a working archive from just 36 hours earlier. Still painful to recover, but we still taped out the design on schedule without a massive reset.
IT in my mind earns the reputation it gets. At the first company, it sucked and seemed to be one tentacle of galactic central, just another wierd edict spewing org. At the second company I walk by them daily, and they welcome you to drop into the help desk, and frankly do a decent job of knowing when they should not try to control things (i.e. let the engineers control their own machines). Backups are shady, and a more automagic solution is needed, but overall it works pretty good.
I hate our IT department because:
- They cannot keep ethernet working.
- They cannot provide correctly functioning DNS
- They purchase huge expensive redundant solutions and configure them incorrectly so that they don't work. Eg how about a huge redundant cluster of VMs to run stuff on that are accessible over a link that runs at 200 kilobits per second. Sigh.
- Help desk does not even read help tickets, suggesting 4 things in 4 independent mails all of which were clearly ruled out in the original mail. There's 'making sure', and there's reading comprehenension.
In short, IT is really fucking annoying when they can't make infrastructure work correctly.
When they *can* make infrastructure work correctly, you don't notice them, so what positive is there to say?
-josh
Development machines should be on a separate network that IT is forbidden from touching. A network that is insulated from the corporate office network.
Most IT departments simply cannot deal with their corporate users... when they end up in the engineering department conflicts ensue, and the engineers 1) are usually right, and 2) well, they are funding everyone's paycheck, so in a sense they can't be wrong.
What happens with the secretaries and suits... well the IT types can go right ahead and have their way.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
1. The quality of professionals in IT has degraded significantly. Too many community-college graduates (heck, university graduates) who have never programmed and don't have a clue how a computer really works beyond reading a vendor's marketing information. These staff cost every project at an obscene rate resulting in no progress ever being made. The major vendors are all staffed by these type of people, so I'll lump them into this pot.
2. Management, often transient MBA types, viewing IT as an overhead rather than an integral part of the business succeeding or failing. Short sighted and destructive, these senior managers hack IT budgets at it results in no consequences during their tenure before they move onto the next stepping stone.
The user's are caught in the middle and no one is really concerned about their complaints. Can you blame them?
It is a simple proposition. Once upon a time, Information Technology, or more properly *Computer Science*, was supposed to save the world. We failed for whatever reason. User's generally hate us. Get used to it.
"They made me use Windows"
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Isn't this a bit outdated? Who actually 'hates' the IT department? Some clarification is in order please, because there are large companies that have huge IT departments, where the entire company may actually be dependent on IT department for its main business case (things like telcos and even banks, especially trading, mutual funds and insurance).
Then there are IT firms, and unless they are in business of hating themselves, then this does not apply.
Then there are businesses that just need a few applications to run smoothly, that's all. Maybe it's these businesses? Well, then the answer is obvious - it's not their core competency and they hate everything that they have to do that is not their core competency and does not directly generate the revenues/profits, even if it helps to do that.
You can't handle the truth.
And when I've worked in ITish positions, nobody seemed to hate me. Of course, our current department is full of excellent, skilled and emotionally stable folks (the rest were fired or quit), and I've always gone out of my way to be helpful when asked a question. Maybe there are some clues here.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
I work in a moderately sized R&D group. We do fairly cutting edge work involving applied electromagnetics for antenna design, RF component design, photonic devices, MEMS, the list goes on.
My experience with IT is as follows: they are highly skilled, very knowledgeable people but they are either exceedingly lazy or very condescending. The laziness might be lack of job satisfaction, but that's no reason to ruin everyone else's job - look elsewhere. The condescending aspect is what bothers me the most. I'm not a network whiz so I'm pretty terrible at debugging things like setting up a connection to a license server for our electromagnetics simulation software or getting a new PC onto the network. Every time (and I mean literally every time) that I've asked for help, it's either like I've just asked them for the world, or that I'm the most incompetent boob on the planet.
So the last time it really reached a head, I lost it and asked the gentleman: "what would change around here if I knew every aspect about these computers and network?" to which my immediate follow-up was: "you'd be out of a job." And that's the truth. IT is specifically in place to make MY job easier because it's my work (and my colleagues') that keeps the lights on in the building. By that I mean we're the only ones bringing in revenue - obviously the maintenance people have a key role, but you get what I'm saying.
As subject. There are excellent IT people, willing to do their job and help their colleagues - and then there are people who think they are more intelligent or more important than any other janitor.
Remember, it's not your attitude which is wrong - it's everyone else to blame!
"Why every hates IT departments at companies that are not in the computer hardware/software business."
Little people who want to install the worst (mainstream) anti-virus on everything, as well as block everything (like Dropbox). They are inept and have a god complex at the same time.
It's a dream to work with IT at high tech companies where IT is a business enabler. Most of the rest, scared little fuckers itching to go home and beat their children and masterbate to kiddie porn.
My wife works for a very good company that depends heavily on modern technology. IT supports a VPN so that she can use her company supplied laptop at home if it's necessary. IT keeps changing the interface connection to the VPN as well as he access to her private and public company directories without telling anyone. She finds this out every time she brings he computer home. She ends up spending an hour or so trying to figure out how to connect to the VPN then to her online company storage. Usually she has to call IT from home and, if she gets in touch with a person that knows what happened, the IT person spends considerable time figuring out what went wrong and reinstalling the necessary aps. To restate: this happens every time she brings her laptop home. By the way, the laptop is connected to the company's intranet continuously at while she's at work. You ask why folks hate IT. Pretty obvious to me.
In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. George Orwell
My real gripe with IT folks is that they forget that they do not bring in revenue. They are meant to serve those who do. As is the rest of the support staff - hence the name. No one contacts the company I work because our deft IT management. Of course it is necessary but it is "the wiring under the board".
You sound like a typical arrogant, self-important salesperson. I'm guessing your attitude is compensation for all the brown-nosing and pandering you do on the phone - it's hard to respect yourself without being better than *someone*, isn't it?
Guess what? You aren't a member of a higher caste. You can't bring in revenue without decent IT folk. You need them. They know all about stuff you'll never need to think about, because that's how good they are.
And when their policies seem irrational, you're probably missing something really important. Question your knowledge and yourself before you question them. If you aren't getting the result you want from IT, it's usually more to do with your attitude and approach than it is with the people.
Stop puffing yourself up.
There are many ways IT can be run. I currently work in a 6 man crew that only has 5 people. We can't find qualified people to fill positions for the pay. We currently make half of what the local high school makes for comparative positions. We support 500-800 users on any given day. With only 5 people everyone does everything. Network, Server Admin, Software, hardware, development. Approaching management for more/better funding is impossible as we "already spend too much." We have no overtime in our budget so often we end up donating time. This is local government not business so I guess we keep going accomplishing everything with nothing. Most of my day is spent doing stupid work like formatting a word document and other stupid user requests. Spread very thin, no reason at all to be short with you. This also lends itself to the department is too slow to respond to new requests. It could have something to do with the 799 people that were in line in front of you with more business oriented requests. Let me drop everything to serve you though.
#1. The IT techs do NOT (as a rule) "impose more draconian controls than are strictly required". They are TOLD what to do by management.
#2. If you (as a non-IT and non-management user) want something done differently, then put together a business case and send it up through your manager.
Back at a previous employer, I administrated 6 servers running various flavors of *NIX, hosting some of our engineering applications. Over the vociferous objections of our IT department. They were charging us (departmental funny money) $40K per month per server that they supported. Administrating 6 servers consumed approximately 10% of my time. So I figure I'm worth $28.8 million a year. Yeah, right. But the sticking point was a requirement imposed upon us at the time by the FAA to keep the management and operations of our system (responsible for configuration control) within engineering. Cost and legal justification. Check.
But, in the end, IT management won out. The $40K/month/server charge was a means of 'cooking' the books in order to show the IT department as a lucrative profit center. Now, as everyone knows, the path to the CEO's seat in a manufacturing company is though engineering, manufacturing, sometimes legal or finance. But very rarely through one of the support services (facilities, IT, etc.). On the other hand, in an IT services company, anyone bringing in a customer willing to pay $40K/month/server is a hero. Possibly CEO material. Certainly in line for a big commission and a plush office (far away from the neck-beard crowd they used to rub elbows with).
So, in the final analysis, the big picture wins out. When the manufacturing company out-sources its IT support (converting a theoretical $40K/month/server into hard cash for the acquiring company), the in-house IT management goes with it. And with the benefits.
I guess it all depends on who's big picture we're all looking out for.
Have gnu, will travel.
Part of the reason is most companies hire incompetent morons to staff their IT departments. Just b/c you passed a few certification tests doesn't mean you can tell your face from your ass.
I'm lucky they don't demand to audit my home systems. All of which run Linux. No Windows systems anywhere to be seen. Much more difficult for them to audit.
Heh. They get their panties in a bunch over people who fiddle with their workplace desktop configurations. But management takes their company laptops home. Or people telecommute from a home system. The same system that Junior uses to download Warez when daddy or mommy isn't using it.
FFS, I've seen people get their Windoz systems infected and then bring them in to work where they upload firmware updates into aircraft avionics.
Have gnu, will travel.
You know, I'm always curious when IT people tallks about their "audit requirements". Would you mind explaining a little bit about yours? I mean, how do you proceed to audit the software the users asks? What are you trying to find? Or better, what do you think you can find?
If there is a bug, well, that a problem for the user. If there is some kind of malware, except something as simply that an anti-virus could detect, do you really think you could detect? Do you think you can assure it won't corrupt the computer it is installed on before installing it? Or that you can discover that it will behave badly on the network before at least some 10 people have it installed?
And if you look for all that, do you have enough findings to justify all the people you are employing to do that?
Rethinking email
Because they think they only need IT when something doesn't work. So when they call, they are already pissed off because something isn't working.
It's simple. Leave 'em happy and they'll treat you right.
They're using their grammar skills there.
"...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."
Gee, for a minute there, I thought we were talking about all the reasons for the lack of respect for users here, not IT. As many have pointed out, respect goes both ways. Then again, I find it a rather unfair targeting of IT staff. Anyone who is overworked in a high-stress position can become rather jaded in their position and have a negative attitude, regardless of department or title.
Our IT team is really the best. They are hugely popular with the staff and I can't imagine a better team. It's a 100+person R&D facility with 3 IT people. Here's how they do it:
1. Invisible firewall - there is one, but you can FTP, ssh, etc. to your heart's content without noticing it. It's even possible to run P2P apps. Of course, if it's non-work related then you're signing your own pink slip. Also, they do audit all PC applications on the network remotely, but I've never been queried and I run some really odd apps sometimes.
2. Simple to use Help ticket system - and they're fast in responding.
3. Adequately staffed - that helps.
4. No restriction on smartphones hooking up to the Exchange server - company doesn't pay for any phones or service though.
5. Multiple VPN services available, so if one doesn't work, try another. Worse case, SSL VPN is available or webmail over SSL. Helpful when traveling abroad or visiting companies that block VPN ports.
6. Support for Windows & Linux, but if you want to run a Mac you can. They'll support you as much as they know.
7. Software purchased under $2000 doesn't need to be vetted, reviewed, quoted or anything else. Just buy it on the dept credit card - with your manager's approval of course.
8. Printers everywhere - we are a printer company, so that helps, but we have competitor's products too, so if one fails and you're waiting for it to be repaired, you have at least two others to print to easily.
9. Copious amounts of network storage for shared files. All RAID. All backed up.
10. Large email quotas, which are instantly upgraded for power-users.
11. Overall a can-do, but pragmatic response to requests - want a load of email or docs archived? They won't waste their time or yours burning DVD's, but they will copy it to an HD and vacuum pack it for you.
12. Finally, no, and I really mean no, draconian controls or policies. Just don't set up a rouge WiFi AP or download porn. Basically, the cardinal rule is - get your work done and be a star.
Sure we have policies for our convenience. By restricting what you can install, it prevents problems, therefore allowing us to focus on bigger issues.
STORY ONE: One day, the CEO was in my office talking about his pet project when a coworker brought me a file on a floppy to print. I sent it to one of the network printers for him as I talked with the boss. A few minutes later, another guy walked in with another floppy with a file that need printing. After a third interruption for file printing, the boss asked what was going on.
"Well, none of the PC in this building can get to any of the network printers, but those of us with Macs can."
"How long has this been going on?"
"About 3 months. IT says it isn't a priority."
About an hour later, I got an email telling from the CEO telling me that he had told the Director of IT to solve the problem of only Macs being able to print in the engineering building. When I got to work the next morning, I found that printing from Macs had been disabled too.
We had a new Director of IT the next Monday.
STORY TWO: The charge number system at one company where I worked had the last character reserved for the project manager's use for internal tracking. I assigned 0 through 6 for various subtasks and 9 as "waiting for IT." I had some very interesting cost data on the true cost of IT "support" during project financial reviews.
This is why I hate IT support. Most people I have dealt with in IT don't really know anything about computers. They just read from a script/troubleshooter. Only once they realise it is beyond their 'expertise' will the problem get elevated to someone who actually knows what they are doing. Sometimes you will get people who know a little, but not enough, try to fix things and then cause critical services to break in the middle of the work day.
Also the company I currently work for has a very bloated IT department, even though all support and server stuff is contracted out. Even with all these people in IT, our IT infrastructure/support/service is terrible.
Everyone wanted that abomination gone. When I left they were on year three of their two year plan to excise that demon from their company.
After the first sentence in most of the enduser comments, I tuned out: Blah, blah, we make the real money, IT is just the hired help, blah blah we should outsource, blah blah PCs work automagically anyways. Yeah OK, let me know if VoIP and the new MPLS circuit really are plug and play.
Remember IT policies are like stoplights, they are there for a reason, usually its that somebody in your department screwed up, big time, and it took a lot of time to fix it. Look at the desired end result of the offending IT policy, if you have a better way to do it, say something about it.
If in fact, an IT policy is truly bad, it came from management, not your IT infrastructure professionals. People are hired into a IT management position, that are qualified as managers, directors, C-level, but lack the technical background to make informed IT decisions, which creates a nightmare for IT staff and the endusers.
Jimmy Fallon's skit is amusing, but this one sums things up better - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8_Kfjo3VjU/
Hail Mordac
for larger orgs this is a bigger factor; even smaller places its the owners who they must serve
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
I'm sure he is not "demanding" those specific controls. He is just demanding that X be accomplished and that is how IT is implementing X.
Want changes? Make a business case and show the CEO how much money can be made / saved by doing it a different way.
I have the opposite experience. Usually IT is the LAST department consulted. And only AFTER the software has been chosen and the purchase order signed.
Oh, we need a server to make it work? Handle that. You're IT. Servers are your job.
Oh, we need special backup software? Handle that. You're IT. Backups are your job.
Etc.
Again, my experience is the opposite. Someone in some other department loads SharePoint on a workstation (running a vanilla install of Windows 2008) and now it is "mission critical".
What do you mean everyone in the company cannot access that server? Fix it! You're IT. That's your job.
Don't talk to me about licenses for it. I don't have time to research what licenses are needed. You're IT. That's your job.
Business case. That's part of the business case. Your business case SHOULD show how many hundreds of thousands of dollars will be made / saved with the changes you want. So if IT doesn't have someone who knows it, they can hire someone. Or train someone on it. Where's the business case?
See my comments above.
Installing something is easy. That's the easiest part of the entire project. I can install a HUNDRED packages in one day and still have time for coffee and donuts.
The problem is SUPPORTING it after it is installed. That includes scaling it. Backups. Updating it. Security. blah blah blah.
Those take time and expertise and experience and MONEY.
If you need it so bad then it should be easy to build a business case for it.
Won't lead. Won't follow. Won't get out of the way. What's to like?
An interesting thing I've noticed scrolling through the comments: the angriest ones at IT are anonymous. Anyway, my 2 cents on this. I work the IT helpdesk for a medium sized company. As I do most of the running around, I'm the "face" of IT. The hate can go both ways. IT hates users too sometimes. YOU do something wrong and cause your program to not work right, and yet somehow it's OUR fault. YOU can't watch Netflix movies because we block the site, and it's OUR fault. YOU don't notice the smoke & flames coming from your neighbor's PC and it's OUR fault that we can't drop everything to plug in your monitor to the power strip. YOUR neighbor's cousin's kid is in town and he knows computers so you had him "fix" your machine and it's MY fault it doesn't work and will take me three times as long to fix. My hands are obviously full and I'm obviously going elsewhere to work on an issue, don't assume I'm going to remember your request when I get back to my desk 30 minutes later. YOU obviously didn't do "the exact same thing" when I sit at your desk as you watch and whatever didn't work, now magically does. MY budget isn't unlimited to buy you the latest tool/software/PC/monitor. We're not here to make your lives miserable. Pretty sure that wasn't in the fine print of my contract. Many of the rules we have are in place for a reason. Are there unintended consequences sometimes? Sure! But you're also there to work. Not watch youtube videos all day, not bring in any ol' device you want and plug it into your machine (for crying out loud, charge your cell phone at home), etc. And there are regulations like PCI that we don't control, we just have to implement. Yet we get the gripes. And we have directives from higher up the chain to follow, yet you complain about IT making the changes. Are there bad IT guys? Sure! But are there bad users? Yup. I try to be patient with my users, but it does get hard.
Except that without that SUPPORT you'd have no PROFIT rather quickly.
I have the greatest respect for the IT department where I work. They are forced to "make do" with understaffing and a management team that just doesn't get it wrt to the wireless network needs of a 100+ strong staff and 1600+ students.
If your company has an "IT Department", then the company too large. It is time to quit and go work for a smaller company.
In the course of every project, it will become necessary to shoot the scientists and begin production.
It goes something like this;
If someone is asked to approve a complex project that would take years to understand they generally trust the recommendations of the experts and say yes or no. They generally do not ask for changes that do not understand.
On the other hand, when people are asked to approve a project the understand or think they understand, like the construction of an outhouse, they are very likely to make suggestions and demands on specifics of the project. Should there be a hole in the door, If so what shape? etc.
Some of the frustration from IT is that ever dev tends to think they are "special". Yes, you may want to use the IDE you are used to but since IT does support that IDE they do not have any way of certifying that the IDE, or supporting installs, do not have security holes that can compromise the network. If there is a hole and it is exploited it is IT and not the user that gets in trouble. Possibly the IDE does not work well with the standard IDE and even though you may be more productive you may be causing other devs to waste time. Your builds may not be compatible with the production builds because your IDE uses different libraries. Even if you can prove that you are actually special you are among the X number of "special" people in the company each with "special" rules that have to be kept track of by every member of the IT team. There are many things that a dev does not see that go into creating a saleable or usable product.
One of the biggest issues that users have with IT is their seemingly frustrated and dismissive attitude. There are a couple of sources for this.
1. When an IT person refuses a seemingly simple request it may be due to the fact that IT wanted exactly that to happen but have been overruled by someone higher up. The IT person is not frustrated with you but is frustrated with having to shell out the party line that the IT department does not want to support but is forced to.
2. The refusal may also be due to best practices, investigation and experience that the user does not have. The IT person has taken years to acquire this knowledge and is not going to try to condense it down into a 30 second course for every user that makes a request. Sorry but "works on my home computer" is not a good enough answer for a corporate environment. Just because someone is a dev does not make them a network or security expert. Many devs these days are code monkeys that know little about how large networks or development departments operate.
3. Many times a dev comes up with an issue that should have been known before hand if the dev thought about it and made the proper request for an adjustment. Since that was not done the dev now wants the IT person to drop everything they were doing and fix the dev's issue. I hate to say this but the IT department is not sitting around on their hand waiting for emergency requests to come in from devs. I have seen this poster in many places;"Poor planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part". So now the dev wants a seemingly simple change to a server and it told to wait. What the dev does not know is that the small change may effect the test and production servers. What needs to be changed to accommodate the request? Those test images may be invalid and have to be re-done (test will wipe servers many times during testing). Will this change break other software on the prod server? A simple, " I need to use a new version of X" or "I need to use this package" request could have huge ramifications.
Many devs, even "senior" devs, I have worked with tend to be myopic and focus on how a decision effects them without looking how it effects the rest of the employees. One issue is the USB memory stick issue. It has become a major security hole mainly because Windows allows an autorun when a USB stick is plugged in ( that is a stupid decision by Microsoft). Even if there is a "do you want to run this" prompt too many users just automatically click yes. Many IT departments have outlawed them because they cause
One reason might be because that's how IT staff treat everyone else.
The Real Cause
It is due to poor management. The managers, C?O on down, are paid their large salaries and bonuses to lead and manage. If different departments are not getting along, look to whoever is above those departments and the department leads for both the cause and the solution.
Personal Opinion
The lack of respect is due to a lack of understanding, cultural differences if you like. People dislike that which is different from themselves. Then contempt comes into to play. IT gets contempt from other departments because it "serves" them. The same people that talk down about low income positions (fast food, cleaning, so on) talk down about IT. Of course, some in IT create the own negativity; things like lusers, pebkac, id10t, so on.
Then, there are situations that management just should never let exist. Like IT being responsible for remote deployment of software, and its performance, without having that same software to test locally. If IT says "No, we cannot deploy and support that which cannot be tested.", IT is seen as blocking something required for business operations. If IT goes ahead, and just makes it work after a few failures, and then something fails later, IT sucks, after all, anyone can install software. The difference between installing and installing off-the-shelf closed-source software in a remote custom environment, and it working with zero defects is somehow not understood.
And we still haven't touched the regulatory stuff, that IT ends up enforcing.
"What luck for the rulers that men do not think." - Adolph Hitler
HAHA. thanks.. I needed that..
I love that punch line.. I mean.. hell, we love how everyone bitches.. so we just make shit up and implement it.. Its not like at almost all companies the IT department isn't even on the leadership board, but report to the CFO, just like the accounting department (since IT started in accounting to help them process the numbers at these big companies.. So any director of some crap department in Topeka can bitch and moan and get their stupid web page as a shortcut on everyone in the companies desktops... and that legal, marketing, and any CxO tells IT what to do, and we have to do it..
Hell, where I last worked, the head of purchasing decided to order new copiers company wide.. With all sorts of fancy scanning options that one office liked. Told IT a month before they were to be installed.. She forgot to mention it, and didn't have any any to test with. Boy did WE look like asses for putting in copiers that didn't work with our current software, right in the middle of busiest part of the year.. IT is a bunch of idiots..
Seriously.. thanks for the laugh!
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
Why does everyone hate IT? Same reason everyone hates customer service, call centers, and law enforcement: You usually don't think about them until something's already gone wrong.
It's why I got out of sysadmin jobs. Management hated me because "Well, if they had done their job right, there shouldn't be problems for them to fix" and everyone else in the company was "Doesn't matter if I don't know what I'm doing, they aren't doing it for me. So I'm always going to save them as my excuse for why I had to miss a deadline: 'My system wasn't working and the IT guys couldn't get it working fast enough'"
I stopped reading it a long time ago, but it's why BOFH was funny.
On the other hand, most people's computers in my office are set up to print in black and white even they select a color printer to print a color document. This default setting cannot be changed by users, so it has to be changed manually for every print job, all because someone in IT was worried about saving color toner.
Fortunately, I'm mostly self-employed, not in technology (any more), and maintain my own network and software at home.
But I do hear IT hate from colleagues (who remember when I ran a computer company and think I still have a clue)...
One works in a highly time-stressed professional setting where she moves from room to room to deal with clients, using the computer in the room (no laptops). The system responds slowly and the main reporting software (written by the organization's IT people) has an inconsistent interface and commands. Changes to commands are implemented without notice and using the wrong 'old' command causes lost work. She's given up calling IT because technical explanations are irrelevant to her work. Now she hand-writes everything to enter when she can concentrate on what the system expects.
Another works where the previous system's back-end changed from Windows to Linux. The change seemed smooth enough because the employees' machines remained Windows, but previously functioning software -- particularly media software, which he uses in this job -- no longer integrates well or functions at all. He is given technical explanations about network issues, all irrelevant to his work. Material that once got out promptly now lags hours or days until IT comes up fixes as problems arise. Nothing is comprehensively solved.
A third teaches at a college. Each instructor has to log in to the whiteboard computer -- at which point updates begin installing. The system hangs for upwards of a minute when media apps are called up (such as audio/video players, Flash, or PDF readers). He's way into IT hate for losing class time. And yes, he's one who tapes his monthly required password change on the desk. The Moodle system recently installed is so slow that he's stopped using it entirely (the previous system called Blackboard having been abandoned for the same reason!).
What these have in common, I think, is that either IT wasn't interested in knowing or wasn't required to understand how the people actually work in their jobs. Of course, understanding or not, it seems to me you shouldn't be building systems that make people wait in time-sensitive situations, nor should you create complicated and changing interfaces. Ultimately, the organizations should be aware that IT is hindering effectiveness, not enhancing it. In the meantime, there's some seething IT hate!
Mordac, preventer of information services.
At worst, they're, well, worse.
My "favorite" IT story has our development team halfway across the world, needing access to a system in our DMZ from the customer's system. The IT team flat out refused to do it, citing "security". My boss had one of the dev people back in the US literally bypass them with an unauthorized Ethernet connection.
My second favorite involves a customer IT department who insisted on installing a broken anti-virus product on a VM I needed to work on, and then not being available to fix it. They were very unhappy when I managed to kill it (making the system usable again; it was trying to contact a server it had no path to, and using most of its cpu time doing it), especially when they realized they couldn't even credibly threaten me for doing it.
The interest of the IT department is to be an intermediary while buying software for the enterprise.
I knew a renegade IT professional once. Man he was good. You could set your system on fire and he'd restore it from the ashes using a spare hard drive he had in his back pocket, the old monitor that you didn't know was gathering dust behind the file cabinet, the backup you didn't know had been run, a piece of gold duct tape, and a penny.
He fought for the users. He wouldn't dress the dress code and he sneered at standardization. He'd install VMS on your sneakers or Linux on a pocketwatch if he thought you needed it, and if he didn't think you needed it, you didn't actually need it.
He read everyone's email, knew everyone's passwords, and kept everyone's secrets. Asset Management had to just trust him, because they certainly weren't ever going to get him to actually explain where everything went. Once he touched a piece of equipment, he owned its soul, and it was his. You could take a system across the country and lock it in a closet and when he whistled, it would gnaw off the security cable and brave mountains, deserts, snow, and rain to make its way home to him.
There was no better person to have on your side when the chips were down. He'd repair a crucial DVD by licking it just right, recover a crashed drive with a precision tap, and restore a cluster by whispering secret endearments to it in a forgotten language. He once kept the CEO's presentation running by bypassing the failed router with his body.
Did I mention? He fought for the users. Stuff worked in his wake. It usually wasn't pretty, it usually wasn't the standard answer, but dammit, it worked.
He got laid off. Upper management didn't see the value-add. They never do. Idiots.
Three reasons people hate IT:
1) IT issues are user-facing, and have immediate effects. ie. When your computer is down for a day or two as IT is recovering data from a failed hard drive and/or transferring backups to your new system, you're not thinking about how awesome they are for being able to do that effectively, or how cost-effective it is that they don't go over-board with overzealous backup solutions for all desktop PCs. No, all you know are that something IT is responsible for failed, and you can't do your work for a day or two because of it. This is very different from any other department.
2) Budgetary reasons very, very often force IT to NOT implement the level of redundant systems they know are necessary to provide a really reliable network, or implement the best solutions, or implement the features everyone wants. Additionally, budget reasons again often result in low quality people in IT, at least in lower-level positions, requiring lots of pain and shouting to get through to the guys who know better, and can help.
3) IT is also in the unenviable position of being the cops... nobody likes the cops. This ranges from refusing to install (or perhaps cutting off) whatever you want to use to get around whatever oppressive policy management has in-place, to looking at the code you've quickly cobbled together at the behest of whatever managers and saying "Hell no, that's not getting deployed to our production servers."
IT is a thankless job, and yet is by far the most profitable department in any company I've ever worked in. IT is the group that puts together and maintains all the systems that greatly reduces the number of people needed to accomplish a given job, and is usually the only group who cares and is responsible for keeping the production servers running, completely despite the crap code you've shovelwared out the door to meet your deadline and look like a hero, as everything completely falls apart behind the scenes...
The solutions to problems 1-3 generally require more communication with IT, far earlier in the process (designing a solution, choosing a program, etc), or communication with policy makers in the company to ensure that they know how their decisions may impact you, and find out if they are willing to accept the consequences of their own policies... eg. if management wants to ban something that will help you do your job, and is willing to accept that results will be slower and you will bill more hours for less work, then there's probably no quick fix for the problem in sight, and trying to get IT to help you, or at least allow you, to do an end-run around dysfunctional company policies is going to end badly and only frustrate you further, through no fault of IT's.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
And you're an example "why IT hates us".
Yes, because "you, developers" have no relation to IT whatsoever and your seniors conjured 32-core NUMA system out of thin air, but forgot to conjure a W7 disk to go with it, sure.
And no, I wasn't talking about developers with 32-core NUMA systems, and no again, 99% of developers don't have and don't need 32-core NUMA systems, and when they do, it WILL have appropriate software.
As you might have noticed, GP talks about desktop systems ("Windows XP" might have hinted you, if you weren't so blinded by rage) - when all desktops will be 32-core monsters, then we'll surely afford W7 from the change left from buying those machines.
Because really, for IDE, VCS and debug every developer needs a 32-core NUMA system.
Yes, if that developer makes > $1K/hour for his company he may have nice toys.
How much do you bring in, personally?
P.S.
NUMA is not a privilege but a bane and an unfortunate consequence of 128 cores (32 cores is so 2009!) fighting for RAM
Err, no, if those toys help him make $2k/hour instead of $1k/hour, _then_ he may have them. On the other hand, if he's as productive as before, he's now effectively bringing in ($1k-running costs of new hard and soft)/hour.
Two Vista systems slipped past me and sadly more than confirmed it's poor reputation.
As for using Windows XP in 2011 - I've still even got one system on Win98SE in 2011! The reason is the same in all cases, an utter crap bit of software that just is not going to run on a newer operating system and insane hardware restrictions (eg. evil dongles) prevent it running on a VM. The moving target of the MS platform and the various little undocumented quirks that were exploited by different software means that without bug for bug compatibility there is just some stuff that will not run on Win7. That sucks if it's anything out of the mainstream or the users just don't like any other software that does the task that will run.
As for "policy" - that is a word that means you are talking to completely the wrong person about the issue.
Let's say 1K to 1.1K. 10% gain in division's revenue is not something to sneeze at even if that PC costs $40K.
Dude - if you need a >32-core NUMA rig to write software, I do not want to know how much bloat you've got sitting in there. ;)
If you need a testbed with >32 cores and NUMA going, I'm fairly sure there's going to be a server or two purchased and rigged for you to do just that, and since they don't quote make laptops with those kind of specs, odds are good it will be waiting for you in the server room.
Now if you mentioned 32 vs. 64-bit Windows, you may have had a point (because, but only in my opinion, PAE sucks donkey balls and fully compatible XP-64 apps are damned few). If you had mentioned the fact that in light of Microsoft EA licensing (and most other modes), an XP license costs the same as a W7 one? Maybe, but that's only one small rock in a mountain of stones that IT has had to move before your company network becomes fully W7 compliant/compatible in the entire organization.
Personally, if I wanted/needed/whatever a different OS that badly? I'd try and convince them to let me have {my OS choice} and a VMWare Workstation license to run the corporate XP license on. I would then stipulate that the only support IT needs to provide is as follows: repair/replacement of any provable hardware failure, enough space on my network share to store a backup of the VM containing the corporate image, and to make sure the image in turn gets backed up to tape on occasion (which they would probably be doing anyway). Then I could satisfy their needs and my own. Then again, I've worked both sides of the house - dev and IT.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
IT isn't the problem. The insane fad of assuming everything can be a profit centre is the problem. If they don't do it they lose people, even if they do it there's a chance there will be a large unexpected cost (eg. payment to a "consultant" approved by someone above of IT) to drive them back into a loss so they lose people. It's a symptom of a dysfunctional organisation.
Well, then you should be telling this to your boss, and he should be telling this to CTO and after he talks with others and if finances allow for this, it'll get back to tech support guys, who'll have to install and support this.
Oh, and speaking about finances - are you sure you're "bringing in $1k/hour"? All those dev guys from recently restructured companies were making hundreds dollars per hour as well, right up to the moment they got axed. Unless you're working on a next major release that will bring in new sales, you might be "being a cost center wasting $1k/hour to provide support and fix bugs", and if you're an in-house developer, you're pretty much "a cost center" anyways.
I don't hate ours anyway. I love the fact that in this job, unlike my previous one, it's not my problem. I'm a developer - I don't want to have to care about networks not working properly, servers falling over or the phone system not functioning correctly. I love just being able to throw the problem at IT and someone there fixing it. I like just being able to do more core job.
The fact that our IT department are quite nice and don't actually go out of their way to stop us doing anything. There are IT policies, but they're quite sensible and not exactly tortuous.
Yeah, I had a sig once; I got bored of it.
In my experience theres ways of making things run smoother IT-wise. Im a teacher at a school with about 45 staff. We have our IT-support outsourced to a company through the local council and we have a very stable system. Things work just fine most of the time but getting something changed is a glacial process. There is little flexibility and most of our software is the same as five years ago.
Five years ago though things were not as smooth. We had a generally high incidence of support tickets, there was a lot of frustration and anger directed at the IT people. A large portion of the support tickets were simple things attributable to user error or lack of information. So, my boss and I decided to try and do something to fix this. Today almost all support tickets are placed by me. If someone has a problem they tell me and I check it out first. Im pretty knowledgable about IT and able to tell when its something I can fix and when its something I need to pass on. The benefits of this is that if the issue comes from user error, a loose connector, broken mouse or keyboard or something like that it gets fixed at once and I teach the user how to avoid this in the future. I hardly ever have to reinsert loose connectors these days. I spend maybe an hour a week on average dealing with IT stuff and thats less than before when everyone made their own calls. It also means that when I place a ticket I include screenshots if possible, the machine ID, an error report thats relatively verbose and how fast it needs to be fixed.
The not so good part is that it still takes at least two weeks to get software installed, often a month, and that our IT people still havent learned to call me before coming out so I can sort out access to the wiring closets and so on. The funny part is that their infrastructure people are usually better at this than the support guys. Most of the tickets I place now are attributable to stuff IT has done without telling me, like messing around with the printers, "upgrading" the email servers so that noone can log in and so on. Frustrating, to say the least.
Now the world has gone to bed, Darkness won't engulf my head, I can see by infra-red, How I hate the night.
When they do that's seen as part of the problem. Nobody wants to be made aware that they are not very important to the business and be made to wait while something more critical is attended to.
When they don't it's due to poor communication - it's rare that the new IT guy gets filled in with an honest account of how the business functions and what to give priority to.
Idiots installing a phone system wanted passwordless telnet access to it naked on the net in case they had to make some configuration changes remotely. Of course they wanted it open to anywhere instead of a specific IP address. If I'd done it I wonder how many minutes it would have taken before someone would have found it and used it for free international calls? So I flatly refused to do it, citing "security."
One of those idiots had an open can of drink on a mid sized UPS. If he'd spilled it the world would have one less idiot that didn't have a clue that an earth leakage circuit at the switchboard can't save your life if you short out a shitload of batteries. I got him to take it out of there, citing "safety".
Basically. Having an I.T. budget means that to end users, the services provided are perceived as free. It encourages poor behaviours on both sides.
Free means low value, if you are giving your services away for free (as most users experience the service). They are perceived as low value.
Worse than that, because the services are free, they suffer from Tragedy of The Commons effects, more and more work is loaded on to an under resourced organisation as budgets never match work loads.
Get rid of the budget and go for a charge model. Set up an internal IT Shop where people "buy" services using internal money which comes out of their budget.
They can "buy" network access.
They can "buy" 10 support calls
they can "buy" backups on X,
they can buy (Windows+MS Office(latest), Linux+OpenOffice, Mac+MS Office) + maintenance on their desktop for a year.
They can "buy" a 10Tb NFS file system.
They can "buy" professional services solution design for particular problems.
They can "buy" a 100Gb mailbox if they want.
I.T. often refer to their users as "customers". Well, real customers pay real money, and customers who don't pay, are not customers but free loaders. No pay, no service.
It aligns IT staff with real customers needs, free loaders get dumped as unimportant and the department has the resourcing to actually do what the paying customers want. You will find that customers actually start to behave responsibly when they discover their irresponsibility costs them money and they have to explain to their boss the extra 1 million for email + backups.
You will also find that paying for services dramatically increases the level of respect, particularly when
1. They discover what the trivial extra thing they are asking for is actually rather expensive.
2. You cut people off for non payment.
Problem solved.
Deleted
There are many folks, with wast experience and academic knowledge, that do know as much or more than IT staff from the phone...telecommunications (nodal networks) and from wear/tote computers to routing (cell, packet, switch) to RF/spectrum freq-hop/share, HF/VHF, walkie-talkie ....
IT management a/o management have degrees, certifications, little or no experience, and are technology idiots/Luddites. IT/IA security is just one more of their TFSU.
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
Reasons people storm into the IT office.
1) printer is:
2) windows is:
3) internet is: a) f#cked up
4) network is: b) slow
5) files are: c) gone
6) icons are:
People get pissed at these things and take their anger to the IT office to vent. They always seem to think their problem should trump all others and their argument always comes down to "I don't have to do that at home". It's just as exasperating for IT people to work with end-users who have the technical IQ of a carrot or don't think the AUP applies to them.
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> Yes, it can. For example Win7 can use > 32 threads (cores). It can also work with NUMA RAM. Win XP can't do either.
So? Neither of these bullet points are particularly relevant to your typical desktop Windows use cases. If this is really the best you can come up then the "XP does the job just fine" contingent of the argument just won.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
I've seen half a dozen IT departments, with reputations from stellar to horrible. The really good departments are the ones that largely trust first and ask questions later. They tend to get out of the way of competent users yet still provide a rather decent computer image for both desktops and laptops. The network works OK, the local reps pop in to do cabling as needed, and if you ask for something odd the first response is generally "let's work together to find the best fit that doesn't break the rules we're all stuck with." I've seen four such groups keeping companies as small as 12 and as large as 15,000 employees rolling along.
Then there were the other IT groups whose first question was "why isn't X good enough?" I needed MediaWiki, they asked why Sharepoint wasn't good enough. I needed to model stuff with at least Java, Clojure, or even C, and they asked why VBA wasn't good enough. I needed to access some web sites the proxy filter broke, and ultimately just went home rather than start yet another fight. But I learned something: the IT folks at the corp HQ would bend over backwards to help the people at their site, it was just us in the satellite facilities that perceived IT as an obstacle rather than a help.
Which leads me to my three generalizations: 1) Outsourced IT leads to a two-tier experience, with the "locals" getting much better service and thus supporting IT to the hilt against the remote folks. 2) IT folks who only know Windows and other MS products tend to be extremely hostile to everything else. 3) The users can have a lot of influence in being allies to IT, but only if management backs them up; IOW companies get the IT they deserve.
...Everybody lies...
That goes double for users...
Number of times i've been on the phone supporting a user who's computer "Just stopped working" & "I did nothing, just trying to do my work"
and after 20-25 mins of talking through the problem they are having, they let slip that "well I installed a program..." and I then find out the user's manager has a copy of the admin password on a sticky on his monitor.
Next thing you know their manager is on to my boss wondering why IT has not got the machine running and complaining of the downtime and loss of money it's costing him!.
Then i explain to my boss that the user used an admin password they found on their manager's desk to install non approved software.
Now may boss is upset because i've spent 30 odd mins with a user with a problem with software that we are not supposed to support.
The user is upset because he's now in trouble with his manager and blames IT for not getting it fixed.
And the boss is now in an argument with the users manager about password security....
If the bloody user said at the start he'd installed software without permission, i'd have charged him a 6 pack of beer (or lunch at local pub!) and fixed it in 10 mins max and everyone would have been happy! (quick restore from last nights backup and he's been good as gold!)
Laters Sol "Have you found the secrets of the universe? Asked Zebade "I'm sure I left them here somewhere"
As soon as I see the phrase "IT Department" I feel something is wrong.
While this is fine for a 1990's world these days IT is so ubiquitous and essential to businesses it's becoming more and more old fashioned to departmentalise IT.
Successful companies using IT to modern extents today seem to be the ones where everybody has good knowledge on IT but the IT department only coordinate these already knowledgeable people.
As an example of where an IT department seems like a bad idea how's about my company.
I work in a department that makes use of embedded systems. These systems connect to Windows systems. The interface is not always that clear however. In addition the IT department are responsible for IT systems connected at sea which are often out of satellite connectivity.
There must be a better way of organising this. One idea I had was to have one person in each department with an IT background spend time in the IT department and then act as a representative for that department. Have you any documentation on other ways to arrange IT support other than a monolithic department I can show management?
A blog I run for the wealth
This is true. I worked in IT and I hated myself and wanted to die.
Most linux users don't know this, but the man pages were named after Chuck Norris. Chuck Norris fsck'ing hates noobs!
And, if said 10% gain fails to materialize, will you be reimbursing the company for the hardware?
As his bosses deemed it plausible and agreed it's worth a try (unless they didn't), they'll get this question first.
As the proponent he'd still be responsible to some degree, but it's management's job to evaluate proposals like this and take/don't take the risks.
They hate the IT department because the users/management don't understand why they can't perform magic, because that's how they understand computers, it's a magic box. The term "Computer Wizard" stems from that kind of logic.
Twinstiq, game news
I worked in the Electrical Engineering Dept of an Electric Utility (Eventually Eng Systems Admin). We did everything sooner, faster and better than they did. We strung the first lans - after they heard we got a memo from the IT VP "No one can buy LAN equip without my approval". We were under the VP of engineering so we tore it up. This was a while back so if someone in a remote location had no email, the system would automatically FAX a copy of the email to them. The backup system not only backed up our servers but backed up the hard drive on every individual computer. For a friend I wrote a program on the mainframe that would parse a COBOL program and create a structure chart. It became the most executed piece of code in IT. They'd code the program, create the chart go for approval and if there was a change they'de change the code and create a new chart - just the reverse of what they were supposed to do. Budget? Every time they built a transmission line or substation (I wrote a 3D substation design system) - fairly costly items, we would specify what hardware and software would be required (using the term loosely) to build it. It would be capititalized into the structure and depreciated over time. IT was pure expense. Now it's C++ (which Linus Torvalds calls "a horrible language" and Java (C++--)). Real men code in C.
When I was at T.J. Watson (as an intern), the other guys I worked with who were researching a new CPU architecture were roughly divided into two camps: people who were doing the same thing as at least 10-15 other people, and people who were doing something either completely unique, or working with just 2 or 3 others. The guys that worked with 10-15 people worked with IT to get the source control system (Jazz) and basic dev environment standardized, and working with relative 'ease'. The people who were on their own were working on advance projects, or very unfinished parts of the system, and consequently were liable for their _own_ IT. Basically there was a pyramid, broad support and common need at the bottom, and no support and total control at the top. There wasn't this Us vs. Them attitude: IT helped us by figuring out how to support popular parts of the project that had broad use, and didn't interfere with more complex and unfinished bits unless called upon (e.g., to help configure a personal MySQL server for some reason). I have had similar experiences at other good software/hardware shops, and have come to believe this is really how it ought to be.
--"You are your own God"--
Computers are essentially maintenance free these days. I mean what maintenance does a computer require these days? Security updates? They apply automagically, on my computer while I'm asleep.
Domain policy to enable updates, check. Domain policy to block the end-user's ability to disable these updates, check. Local software install to periodically scan computer to ensure all updates are being installed, check. User complaints when they can't do something due to all of those domain policies and the fact that the scanning slows down their boot or whatever, check.
Security updates are automagic when you own two computers at home. When you own 10k computers they're not - since you get in trouble if only 3 of them get viruses.
Software updates, pretty much all automatically.
Uh, what software are you talking about? Maybe on iOS or Android, but on Windows very few software packages reliably update themselves. Certainly ManageMyVatOfChemicals v12.5 doesn't auto-update. Oh wait, you're working in some corporation that doesn't use anything but MS Office?
Now one could argue the complication of building it and setting it up. But this too is trivial. Your average teenager can assemble a computer, and your average grandma can run a windows setup.
Sure, but will they apply every one of those policies correctly so that all your machines are identical? Will the backup software be properly configured so that when an employee drops their laptop the company isn't out more than just the cost of the hardware? Will the full-disk encryption software be properly configured so that when they lose it your company isn't on the front page of the Times?
My girlfriend just bought a new laptop. $700. Runs like a rocket, much faster than my $2000 pc of the day. Computers are cheap, disposable, and even the cheapest ones are fast enough to satisfy the demands of probably more than 95% of the users.
Will it run some web-based time reporting system that is IE6-only? Will it run some Java business applet that requires enhanced permissions, but not let the user agree to give enhanced permissions to some random java app on the web? Will it connect to the corporate VPN? Will it run your Citrix-based inventory app?
Like it or not, computers these days are consumer toys.
Maybe in the world of secretaries and more senior managers, this is true. In the world of people who actually do work, there are a lot of things that can still go wrong.
Also, things that "just work" often don't work well enough to trust them to manage your fleet of 10k computers. If somebody wipes out their home PC by mistake they bear the punishment for their own mistakes. If they do the same at work then that is lost productivity.
I'd love to see things more to an app store model where apps are jailed and systems are encrypted out of the box and generally suitable for corporate use. However, we're not quite there yet. If you are a senior manager or an attorney chances are you can play with an iPad and be a lot more productive. However, if you're the guy creating all those documents the managers are consuming, or if you actually create something other than documents then chances are you don't have that solution available yet.
The problem is that we as the IT dept often don't have a choice in the policies that we implement. Management may make the call "no pandora" but we are the ones who take hatred as a result of it. Management states we have to use tool XYZ, yet we are the ones who take flack from people who want to use ABC. Sure, you may be a wizzard on ABC, but when it breaks (and it will break), we are the ones who suddenly have to support it despite having zero training or experience with it.
The best comparision to IT in another field I ever heard was that we were like doctors. We have to know every problem and solution, expect users to lie to us about how the problem started, and learn everything new as it comes out.
All that and since we produce "no value" (despite keeping everyone else online so they can) our budget is constantly getting cut. Its a wonder why the long term IT guys are rarily in a good mood....
Because when you ask an IT guy what he does for a living, he doesn't say potato farming, or hospital, or insurance or whatever, he says "IT" or "computers". Which isn't all their fault, of course, since business sees IT as just another thing peripheral to their real business that they can farm out or subcontract or offshore, rather than integral to their business, or even the core of their business. What is a bank these days, if not a huge computer application?
You missed the entire bit where we were talking about consumers options and not big business practicalities didn't you? Which is kind of my point. Computers just work, maintenance free. The fact that a company imposes additional restrictions to secure themselves against attack / litigation doesn't meld with the minds of a commoner who's computer at home never once has needed a visit from someone more technically minded than its owner.
The put a car analogy in the discussion, it's like owning a car is simple. It really is. So people can't appreciate the work that goes into managing a fleet of company vehicles which can often become a full time job for several people in a company.
As for software that updates automatically, just going over the programs in my taskbar (home computer):
Windows itself, Office, Firefox, Google Chrome, AutoPano Pro, Adobe Lightroom, Windows Media player, BitComet, JDownloader, the software I use to design circuit boards, the software I use to calibrate my monitor, the IDE I use to program embedded devices, Steam. In addition to that several other programs seem to magically update themselves too like Acrobat and Flash, or my NVIDIA drivers.
So yes the consumer will draw the conclusion that computers magically take care of themselves. What other evidence do they have? We have made computers so damn simple.
I've been in IT for a long time and one thing that I have found which ALWAYS ingratiates you to end-users...COMMUNICATION. You would be surprised how far a simple email or phone call (when possible) goes with non-IT folks. They just want to know what's going on and stay "in the loop" as it were. If you, as the IT expert, can develop people skills and make users feel like they matter--TRUST ME-- when the s--t hits the fan and systems really go down end-users (generally) are willing to give you a break and cut some slack. If you treat end-users and management with disdain then you get what you deserve as the "hated IT person". I've worked with many IT folks and, yes, there are jerks out there who think they are God's gift to computers and turn everyone off. You've got to be better in other areas--not just the technical ones and if you cannot manage an understanding of people or businesses then you might as well look for other work because you are worthless if all you know is one facet of IT....peace all! Oh yeah, just to piss off some out there Merry Christmas!! It's OK to say Christmas....
It is way past time to turn this post into a list of stupid user jokes. Please limit it to actual true cases. I had a user write click on her desktop. I asked her to right-click on the desktop and then choose properties. She said nothing happened. After a few repetitions of this I walked down to accounting and there was the work CLICK written on her physical desk top. I invested in remote control and imaging software every place I have worked since that one.
Management and the Customers, as two centric groups, give all of the above departments something to hate in unison.
The best companies have some form of similar setup, excluding the ones where everyone somehow loves each other.
- We're generally more intelligent than the average user.
- We take pride in our work, and are (more or less) happy with our career choices. And it shows. I think users get jealous.
- We sometimes know more about how their business works than they do, and they feel threatened. But they have to have us around, so the backlash is mistreatment.
- Did I mention that we're smarter than they are???
Huh?
Shouldn't your bigger picture be simply helping the rest of the company do work? IMO, IT has no other bigger picture than that, and if they do, they're working to the detriment of the company.
Check your premises.
That's what security does. It allows the workers to do work without their computers or data centres being disrupted by malicious software or people.
Apologies - I misunderstood the point you were making.
I agree this perception gap is the source of many issues. Finding your way to a plane is easy, making sure that a tour group all boards a plane on time is hard, and so on.
more like someone in Accounting didn't like paying the bill from Xerox for color copies. I see ours and it is expensive, but it is better than being the printer repair guy.
Quite a few reasons I'm not a fan of IT, though I work there:
1. The jobs where you get to be creative no longer exist*. I started as an application developer / coder and thoroughly enjoyed it. (Though the boredom did set in as 2k of the 3k source code modules were strictly profit reports.)
*Unless you have a Ph.D. in computer science AND 35+ years experience in technologies that were only out for 2 years.
2. Where I am currently, IT is cannon fodder for every reduction. (This has been going on 2-4 times a year for the last 12 years.) Given the constant increase in additional responsibilities, hours are often unpleasant. They can get away with it, thanks to a loophole that allows abuse of "exempt" employees on overtime pay: If you are in IT they can ask you to work 24 hours a day as a condition of your employment, no overtime.
3. While I'm a "knowledge worker" in a "specialized field", I spend 90% of my time fighting the "cookie cutter" workstation image which breaks my development and security related tools. (Never mind the hour and a half reboots, corrupted file systems, occasional A/V scans in the middle of the day, failed automated installs and other periodic checks that make the machine unusable for at least 2 additional hours of the day.)
Had I seen all this coming, I would have left programming as a hobby and found some other way to make a living.
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Change (n) - The actualization of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics.
When your day-in-day-out job is to deal with the angriest person in the building, you tend to either have an emotional breakdown or you ice-over, harden up, and learn to bring a healthy level of disdain with you. It's about survival. Trying to actively be everyone's friend gets you beaten pretty badly in the field. You can't give everyone what they want.
Finally, because of policies, you have the be the bad guy. You can't simply choose not to enforce the policies. Someone higher up the chain makes those decisions for one reason or another, and even if they are good decisions for overall policy, there are bound to be problems that arise. Because policy will always be in need of update and will never completely respond to the needs of users, you, the IT monkey, becomes the lightning rod for every ounce of ire that cannot be directed at the policy.
Everyone expects that IT seems to either magically know exactly what's going on at all times, or that they're know-nothing lower primates. The truth is they're working stiffs like anyone else and that their job revolves entirely around dealing with the problems that noone else really wants to touch.
It's janitorial work w/ computers and added stress.
I like losing arguments, it just means that I can take your point and make it my own.
It also allows the users to work longer without problems, so it's win-win.
(and it also protects idiot users from themselves and from the wrath of the IT department)
This is the sig that says NI (again)