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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
... 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.
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."
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.
#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.
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
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.
"They made me use Windows"
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
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.
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.
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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