Slashdot Mirror
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
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 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.
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.
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.
Any good manager knows the slackers. Just because the slackers can use the computer should not move the problem from HR to IT. Fine if they need to use the IT policy to fire. But that should be the end of IT involvement.
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.
Solution 1: if you can, work for an IT company.
Solution 2: Don't do desktop support.
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.
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.
Like you can't do in place upgrades? Or more correctly, in place upgrades don't preserve system settings, services or data so Redhat strongly suggests fresh installations when moving to a new major version?
#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.
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.^
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
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.
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...
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.
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?
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.
"They made me use Windows"
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
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.
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.
#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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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
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.
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.
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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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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.