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IT Managers Are Aloof Says Psychologist and Your Co-Workers
dcblogs writes "IT managers see themselves as 'reigning supreme,' in an organization, and are seen by non-IT workers as difficult to get along with, says organizational psychologist Billie Blair. If IT managers changed their ways, they could have a major impact in an organization. 'So much of their life is hidden under a bushel because they don't discuss things, they don't divulge what they know, and the innovation that comes from that process doesn't happen, therefore, in the organization,' says Blair."
"They despise stupidity wherever they see it, and they see it everywhere."
Kryten 2X4B-523P
If God forks the Universe every time you roll a die, he'd better have a damned good memory.
Worked in the IT field for over 30 years. Seen things and learned things about people I REALLY didn't want to know. But the not sharing of information from IT management to direct reports is very common. Even worse in government IT. But gossip does exist in IT. It is just not as useful. Most of the gossip is personal stuff and not what is going on in the organization. But then again, most organizations never share information with IT (maybe distrust?). So IT is the last to know about changes happening.
Speaking for myself, when I try to describe IT projects that I find really cool to non-technical people (say 75% of the organization), they're just not interested. Not saying they're too stupid to get it, not saying they're too stupid to understand its significance, but they've been conditioned to think of IT as something that other people do. There is a problem on both sides of the culture divide. I don't know, nor do I particularly care which side "started" it, but to overcome it, IT people are going to have to share, and non-IT people are going to have to be more willing to engage.
Most people can fake being nice for a few hours...
Many people are mean bickering backstabing jerks. Many have no clue they are either. Bitching about what others are doing and doing it themselves.
Yeah, we're just afraid you'll all find out our dirty dirty secret that networks and computers really ARE magic.
Repairo Catfiveo!
I'm a software developer in a company with a six-figure-ish headcount and in almost twenty years of working here, I have never met anyone from IT.
Flip Side -- we need to be proactive about communicating with the retards who break our system. How many times have you pushed a patch that breaks something, intentionally? Usually a security threat. You've got the power, send an email to all that explains why you're fixing something, and what liability the company has if it's not fixed. This is called propoganda, and it's good. Also, send out good propaganda when you can. The fucking marketing drones didn't sell anything. Your website sold $300M of product. Make IT look like a profit center, and you look like a god. Make it look like a bunch of dick-bags and you'll be an easy cost center to target.
...with people whose eyes glaze over the second they realize you're talking about computers.
I don't know anyone who didn't start out as an ever helpful enthusiastic talkative person, and they all become jaded over time. People just don't want to hear about it. They have their job, they expect you to do yours without bothering them about it.
Sums it all up perfectly. Why the base was hacked, and why the base commanders did not find out until after it was published in Wired.
I like me.
-Caboose
Linus Tarvoldo!
Yes, all magic incantations end in "o", but you must put a semicolon at the end for it to work... unless its vbscript.
Present a better idea and it doesn't get a fair hearing. Get brain-dead unappealable policy decisions because the system is geared to the lowest common denominator. Being TOLD what the best UI is.
You end up serving the fucking data, rather than the data serving you.
btw it's light under a bushel -not life (I didn't read the article, but I am assuming that the mistake is by the /. editor and not the doc)
it's from the Bible and it is a metaphor for letting one's talents shine rather than covering them up
and yes -IT managers should be evangelizing the work their department does and explaining what the real benefits of their various initiatives will be for their users OR the organization.
-I'm just sayin'
Boohoo.
"We must find more ways to break down the defensive walls of IT. You know, the ones they built for themselves by spending their whole lives learning, instead of just exploiting the hell out of people around them and casting them aside. Once that's done, we can kick them around like your average receptionist (we call them customer service reps, to give the illusion of respect). We want swappable cogs we can throw away whenever we want! We 'productivity specialists' are sure that's how you foster, 'innovation'."
IT Managers Are Aloof Says Psychologist and Your Co-Workers
The wrong people always get promoted. This is not news for nerds. This is reality.
Give me a story where somebody intelligent and thoughtful gets into management and this would be news. Even on Slashdot, you've got a lot of Managers getting up-moderated for basically telling people that they only promote hard working people (I think we all know this is a lie). Of course Managers and supervisors think of themselves as fair and intelligent, and as rational as Adam Smith's invisible hand. If only they knew!
References:
http://ask.slashdot.org/story/11/12/28/0058250/ask-slashdot-handing-over-personal-work-without-compensation
http://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2593454&cid=38510268
http://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2593454&cid=38510098
Wow, what a ridiculous pile of pseudo science. I've been in IT for 20 years now, and worked with three or four organizations in very different industries. Each time I start out with a really positive attitude, a "this time it will be different" approach. I'm going to be interested, and helpful, and friendly, and communicative. After about a year I can't do it anymore. It's not for lack of interest or trying, it's because the average user approaches the technology they must interact with daily as either a black box or an inconvenience or both. How a person can know the intricacies of double entry bookkeeping but fail to understand why opening every single attachment they receive is verboten is beyond me. Learn a little - just a little - about the tools you need to do your job and then pay attention to what you're doing. Your computer is not that complex to use, and essential to your job. You know the rules for arbitrating a marital dispute in Iowa, but you can't remember not to Save As the document you insist on using as a template?
If I had wanted to be a cat herder or a kindergarten teacher, I would have pursued those options. I went into a field where I had assumed I would be dealing with adults who even if they didn't understand exactly what they were doing they would at least take responsibility for their actions. You can only endure "I didn't click anything" or "I know you've told me before, but how do I...?" so many times. Eventually you really start feeling like you're not being listened to or appreciated, and then you start wondering why you bother talking at all. Nobody I know in this business wants to keep secrets or appear aloof, but when it becomes apparent that nobody is listening to you when you talk, why bother sharing at all?
... who ask for utterly stupid things. For example the secretary that called IT for support because she was required to change her password and it wouldn't let her change it to the same one she had been using for the past year. Please, Billie Blair, why is it that WE IT people have to deal with such stupidity.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
to that aloofness?"
In other words, this whole article biatched about IT workers, but never even bothered to look for one moment at the other side of the coin: the users who habitually refuse to change habits, who blame IT for every mistake they make, make demands on the IT guys and girls that are not reasonable, and then wonder why IT sees themselves as beleaguered and under siege.
Instead, she boasts that she knew how to tame IT when she was a dean by bullying them with her position---exactly the reason why IT people see themselves as abused and reviled.
How but they install all the same monitoring and key logging software they install on the worker bee employees computers onto the it managers computer then they will be able to see exactly what he/she does or doesn't do.
Rocket Surgeon.
IT subordinates don't like the business decisions passed down from non-IT workers and non-IT workers don't understand the technical implications of the business decisions they make. The IT Manager sits right in the middle of this clusterfuck.
sysadmins and parents of newborns get the same amount of sleep.
In a large organization, I see other folks behaving the same or worse as IT managers: ...
- Human Resources, ever try to reason with one of them that their policy needs to reviewed or does not help in attracting talent?
- Finance; yes, once I have the PR, the sole source agreement, the market analysis, I'll get a PO and the invoice will be paid in six months after the vendors berates and tells me that they'll never do business with us again
- Legal or Privacy department; seriously, never ever try to disagree with them or propose a different point of view
- Researchers; full of primadonnas; the leadership is even worse
The article is BS; most of the items could apply to any other area or field
Wearing pants should always be optional.
The IT (in US terms, not technical professions in general) guys are there to enable everyone else to interact. They aren't given much power - only what is minimally needed to give everyone else what they want.
I can empathize with your typical IT guy attitude - you strive to help every day, and do help a lot of people - but end up seeing the same self-inflicted wounds over and over again. At some point, the only way to meaningfully care for people is to take a zen attitude, point them to resources, and accept that most will refuse to take even the simplest steps towards understanding how things break as they misuse them.
And you have to rely on humor over time. The net appearance may be 'aloof' - but it's difficult to help the sometimes aggressively and willfully ignorant often looking to place blame and not end up with the eyebrow-raised incredulous look coming up.
It would be lovely if we could all have a Carl Sagan friendly sage look about us in every difficulty - but we won't. Even Carl Sagan probably looked perturbed and sarcastic at some points along the way - same with Gandhi and Mother Theresa too.
Better aloof than full on BOFH.
Ryan Fenton
I am not someone who is offended easily. That said, the author of this article and the 'subject matter expert' that was interviewed have offended me greatly.
Three pages of stereotype. Here, let me summarize and save you wasting 5 minutes of your life. . . . . . "IT people are not the best communicators." oh, wait, this comment was made by someone with an advanced degree in in psychology, I guess it must be legit.
Here is the rest of the article in a nutshell -
IT managers are aloof, technical people with a skillset that an organization cannot do without. They have been 'gifted' since childhood with a technical mindset and they believe that the world is against them. They want people to bow to them as the come into the room (direct quote) and it is difficult to get anything out of them.
I had to laugh when the sme stated that as a dean she could "force them off their high horse". From experience, when managers "force" technical people to do something or provide something, the end result is a piece of garbage that doesn't work right, upsets the customers, makes the IT department look bad and does the "forcer" get blamed for the poor results? No, the IT department loses credibility in the end.
This person doesn't get that most of the reasons IT folks "don't communicate" with those outside of IT is for a very basic reason . . . . . we start talking and we get BLANK STARES as a response!
I love her definition of 'c-level' folks.
The final straw in this article is the last paragraph. Steve Jobs was a BUSINESS MANAGER, not an IT professional. He ran a company and and 'forced' the technical people to dance for him.
It might help to understand where the "typical IT manager" goes wrong by seeing how it can be done right.
One of the first IT jobs I ever had was working for an IT manager of a ~150 user organisation. He was relatively new himself, which wasn't unusual because all of his predecessors were fired one after another. They just couldn't get along with management, couldn't make their needs understood, etc...
This new guy is still there, over a decade later. Why? Because he talked to managers in their own language. Instead of turning up to monthly board meetings in jeans and saying some buzzword-laden crap, he'd turn up in an expensive suit, put on a gorgeous powerpoint presentation which very clearly showed simple charts and graphs of things like "this is going to hit zero in a month, and that's bad because it'll stop our business". Half the time, he didn't even explain that it was disk-space he was talking about, or put numbers on the graph axes. Every month, he'd turn up with nice consistent reports full of simple charts printed in colour onto glossy paper, ending with a simple multiple-choice business decisions with dollar figures and pros and cons.
In the eyes of senior management, he turned IT from a dark pit where money is burned into a clearly separated set of projects and ongoing expenses that made sense to them. Yes, we have twice as many people now, so we're going to need twice as much storage. Obvious if stated right, not so obvious to someone who doesn't even know what "storage" really represents, why it runs out, and who uses it for what.
Here's the thing though: He couldn't solve a computer problem to save his life. That didn't matter, because he just hired competent underlings to do that work.
I think there needs to be a ban on non-C block languages. I hate it when a language has to be implicit with its blocks, so childish. Just use C style blocks and end the damn expression with a semi-colon. We have to learn so many languages it is crap to have to reprogram your mind to deal with someone's "smart" constructs that diverge from a well known style that has no learning curve and with no real reason. VBScript is a pain in the ass; why? Maybe they were trying to hang with the impossible crap you have to deal with in a batch file.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
because managers often don't have a clue how computers work, IT can bullshit their way out of any disaster and create a level of job security for themselves that many other professions can only dream of.
if you can't beat them, join them.
If more women would sleep with us, we'd be nicer people!
project. its really , really, cool... you see we take the general account ledger, and we balance it based on the length of time the charge has been on the current report, whereas before we were simply going line by line ,
im sorry, .. are you ok? it almost looked like you fell asleep there. my brother in law has narcolepsy -- horrible disease. did you know that the first person to discover narcolepsy was sinus grimbald in 1823, when he happened upon a lemur collector in guernsey.. .
Shush! we don't want the Muggles finding out :)
There ain't no such thing as proprietary standards only proprietary formats. Standards are by definition open.
There is a flip side to that coin.
I walk around a good portion of my day talking to users and seeing how things are going. I am the opposite of aloof and quite approachable. However, I have been told on many occasions, "Why do you have to make things so complicated?". Drives me nuts.
They literally cannot tell the difference between bullshit and the truth. Both makes their eyes gloss over and they stop listening.
Do you think doctors are bullshitting you? Do you expect them to explain things to you in technical terms as if they were talking to another doctor?
So why IT?
That's the problem. Everyone expects computers to not be that complicated and that we are just overrated janitors. They have no idea just how complicated it can be, and no real appreciation either.
We are damned if we do, and damned if we don't as far as explanations go, and nobody wants to take any responsibility.
How about the famous line, "But you touched it last?!"
I used to work in IT back before I went to college. Without fail, every single coworker I ever had had some sort of weird fetish with being "in charge" of everyone else's data. Regular venting is normal of course, but I found myself constantly having to remind people that we existed only as janitors to support and digitally clean up after everyone else. It seemed to just be some huge inferiority complex.
And from time to the users have earned that ALOOF or BOFH response. (not really saying that I would kill anyone or cause major injury). But what I have done is gone to management, with documented proof of violations of policy attached to the policy and asked what action they would like me to take. **I only do that for termination offences. Where I work IT can have someone fired. And I have accomplished that task on more than one occasion. Management knows I will take action "only in defensive measures". Most of the time, when I ask management (note non IT management) what action they would like me to take, the response is first silence followed by - "I will make sure this doesn't happen again". But.. then I am labled aloof or not a team player. It wears off after a while, and the older management respects me for defending IT and the policies THEY set. Do they pay me enough for that? HELL no. Am I aloof, not at all! But if it's going to be me fired for something they did... I am not going down alone.
...what our co-workers think.
Given the article, does your attitude qualify as irony?
It's called scope creep. IT isn't all that much smarter than most of the workers in an organization, they're just a lot smarter than management. Management, for some odd reason, are the stupidest people in most companies. I think it must take a special kind of idiot to "go along" with upper management, so the best idiots get the best management positions. You mention to an idiot that it's "possible" to get their most favorite software onto a smartphone and the next thing you know you're the project lead on the next doomsday project: "In Q2 everything will change!!!" And you curse yourself for ever opening your mouth as you hear the iceberg scraping down the side of your career.
(from the article): "They view the world in terms of "us against them" and see others in an organization as pests or threats to their IT universe" I have seen this attitude over and over again, both from IT managers and regular IT staff. More of them need to learn to think of non-IT employees as customers. Patience, basic customer service, kindness, and an ability to teach are important traits to have when working in an IT department. NEVER make the end-user feel stupid.
A pseudoscience with a lot of power is still pseudoscience (sorry L. Ron). Since you mentioned fallacies, that's the "Argumentum ad Baculum".
Research confirms what IT managers have long suspected, organisational psychologists are perceived as "manipulative" and "self serving".
"I really don't like talking to them," says 20-year IT veteran Charles ("Heap Space") Edwards. "They always seem to have some agenda on their mind, but they can never tell you what it is short of wooly motherhood statements. I want precision, but I've never seen a decent spec come out of the OrgPsy team".
According to the report, 9 out of 10 IT managers "wouldn't piss on an organisational psychologists if their keyboard was on fire".
(Where'd my mod points go!?)
Any conversation with someone you've just met will eventually get onto the subject:
Q: What do you do for a crust?
A: I work in IT
Q: Oh - I need another drink, be back soon (yeah right)
Nobody outside the field understands it. They don't care (& why would they) unless their poxy PC has problems.
Of course IT are going to be somewhat insular.
Yup, I am a smoker. And yes that helps to some degree, but less as the years pass and the taxes on the cigs goes up here. over 6 bucks a pack now, so we share lot.
everyone WANTS computers to be easy, but I don't think they EXPECT it. in fact, they often expect that things will go wrong at every upgrade. the IT department is always at the receiving end of a long list of expletives from all and sundry, so to man the trenches of IT you have to be hardy enough to brush off the insults and realize that it isn't really you personally that they are swearing at, but the system itself (hardware, software, procedures, etc). a lot of people hate being dependent on an IT department, particularly if they are a little savvy and reckon they could fix the problem themselves in half the time, but most people also realize that an IT department is a necessary evil. in many companies there is a mystique about the IT people; many don't even know what IT people do on a daily basis. ask some people and they would be convinced that they look at porn or play solitaire all day (especially if they haven't heard of UT or Battlefield). to a lot of people computers are to be feared, holding them at ransom, a threatening menace that will destroy them should they do something wrong, or that they will get dragged off to prison if they trigger an "illegal exception".
the only other profession that comes close to IT in its ability to baffle the common folk would be the various fields of professional engineering, with all their respective hodge-podge of numbers and symbols.
Most people can fake being nice for a few hours...
Hell, even my wife managed to do that. If she could do it, almost anyone could...
I have been around since the 50's, and have observed management styles change like fashion.
It struck me hard in in Aerospace, when management went to "training seminars" and came back all holier than thou. I was more concerned with stability of phase-locked loops at the time, and I became very concerned over the lack of concern our managers seemed to express about our products. Everything became "the bottom line". Cost centers. Profit centers. Presentation. What is the minimum amount of effort that will result in getting paid. Suddenly, "Pride of Workmanship" became a bad thing as it was an inefficient use of manpower.
Well, we banged around for a few more years riding on the reputation the guys before us earned.
As we "redefined the organization", our clients re-evaluated what our name meant.
Things dried up.
Being one of the noisier ones bemoaning the micromanagement I had to take, I was one of the first dismissed..
Yes, I have studied "Obedience to Authority" by Stanley Milgram. I would urge everyone to read his book. Its tiny. Its a research paper by Stanley Milgram of Yale University, a psychology major, doing a thesis on what got into the German people to do the things they did to the Jews.
I found the book very shocking. What he did was set himself up as an "authority figure" by wearing a white lab coat, and he would see just how far people would go in obeying him. People would actually electrocute others they did not even know once they had shifted responsibility of their act to someone else. Stanley called this state of obedience as "agentic", as being an "agent" for someone else, who was - as you know - Stanley himself.
Some of us have a moral compass that will not let us do such things. Stanley noted that. There were a few that simply would not obey when they were ordered, no matter what he did. He did not label them "not a team player", but I am sure today's "leadership types" would.
This crap even got into my church.
I have pontificated on slashdot long ago on my spiritual beliefs, why I believe there is a creator, and my frustration with religion.
I sat through one "leadership" lesson, and was told things like "if you need them, you can't lead them".
That goes against everything in me. I have got to make those under me feel worthless and dependent so they will follow me? I call bullshit.
If they are going to follow me, they will do so if they believe I know how to do it and have all of our best interests at heart. More down the line of the of the leader of Terra-Nova. Not because I threaten them with bad performance reviews and layoffs. I've been there. No way I want to inflict this bullshit on anyone else. This kind of crap is for the kids who like to pull the legs off of bugs. The worst leaders I have worked under were the ones who placed great value on "being the leader", not "doing the work". I work best with those whose prime ambition is "doing the work".
This new stuff sounds like some greedy industrialist trying to staff a 1800's style sweatshop with the cheapest possible labor, Its the form of capitalism that gives the whole concept a bad name.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
I/O psych is huge and much of it is about improvement efficiency and workplace conditions for employees. This guy might be going beyond the studies a bit, especially in extrapolating intent from behavior, but if what he says is based on research then he's not talking about all IT managers, but the tendency for IT managers to be that way.
Of course, if you don't like the science, you're feel to take the creationist's path over it and be all butthurt. That works, too.
Well said. In my experience as a IT manager, I found most of the users to be clueless and not really interested in the processes on the network that they worked on.
I got tired of being saddled with by people who seemed to want to bitch and whine, rather than doing their jobs with the tools provided,.
Subsequently I am no longer an IT manager
My two bits.
Clive DaSilva Email: clive.dasilva@gmail.com Ubuntu 18.10 Kernel 4.18
My kingdom for a mod point!!
Sand's overrated... it's just tiny little rocks.
A badly structured IT department will end up being a bad IT department. A typical scenario is that nobody knows what exactly the IT department does and ignores it until it explodes. Then they rain fire upon the heads of IT. How many IT people have done the heroic all night'er putting out some huge fire because the company was basically non functional while some system was down. These IT departments then become highly risk adverse and become the "Department-Of-NO!!!" This is a reasonable reaction to this structure.
The problem with this reaction is that you end up with IT departments that get locked into IE6 and other legacy problems that only increase the risk and effort required to make the leap into the modern age. Also you end up with the staff doing end runs around the IT department such as outsourcing their own solutions. I have witnessed a situation where a local cable internet connection was secretly brought in on a weekend as the Internet policies were so completely bonkers.
The solution is actually quite easy. The IT department needs to realize that they aren't management. They are a utility. Thus they need to provide a basic set of services such as internet and working machines. Like a real ISP the assumption must be that the customers are going to screw up as much as they can. Thus you create a bulletproof internet connection/email system/whatever common systems available where the individuals can't ruin the whole system. Then when a department wants to switch to Apple products you tell them that they won't be able to turn to the IT department for help as IT doesn't know Apple. The department will make this decision themselves. If a department wants to install a new accounting system the IT department should give advice and maybe a quote if the system is going to be say difficult to back up. If the department doesn't like your quote then they might make a different decision or decide to proceed anyway. That is why companies hire people to run other departments; the company trusted them. Companies don't hire the IT staff to run the company they hire it to run IT.
A great example of this sort of paternalistic crap is why RIMM is dying. I was using a CEO's blackberry the other day. I clicked on twitter to see how the app worked but it said that that I needed to ask permission from my administrator to run this app. Holy crap this was the CEO's phone. I can see IT departments loving RIMM if it allows them to reach their power tripping right out into people's pockets. I can also see why people want iPhones for work to replace their Blackberries. Freedom.
Org-psych is closer to science than individual psych. One reason being, the data from which to investigate group behavioral theories in an organizational setting is very easy to obtain in sample sizes adequate for scientific analysis, due to the nature of the settings, which are more uniform than with individuals.
But you still have to watch out for the hacks. If they start trying to teach you organizational psychology concepts, instead of just administering their tests and gathering their metrics and taking the results away for analysis, you are probably dealing with a hack. Note, however, just because you think a survey or group "team building" activity is "summer camp" lame, does not mean that it is quackery -- as long as the org psych person is gathering lots of data from the activity and then applying theory to it, they are likely professional.
Someone had to do it.
I'm not aloof. I'm just an asshole. Get it right!
And get the frack out of my office!
because managers often don't have a clue how computers work, IT can bullshit their way out of any disaster and create a level of job security for themselves that many other professions can only dream of.
Heh... except when your manager has done your job before, and proven him (or her) self in order to get that managerial position. Unless you know that manager's background, tread very carefully when trying to bullshit them, because I can guarantee you that I know enough about your job to see through it (I was a trainer for third line helpdesk before I moved into my current position), and if you try that crap with me your job will be at far more risk than if you simply tell me the truth. Everybody screws up from time to time, even me, but I have no tolerance for people who think they can slack off and lie their way through life. And the real bitch of it? You probably won't know why you lost your job, because if you tried bullshitting me, I would smile and nod and act like I believed you, and then post the opening for your replacement as soon as you left my office.
What does it mean to 'reign supreme'? It means whatever you say is gospel, and whatever you say that needs to be done is carried out by whomever, your superiors and your subordinates. There aren't many hurdles to what you want to do and what you expect to do.
If this is what she believes "reign supreme" means - then yes, IT departments reign supreme. If this is not desirable, why does the rest of the business allow this to happen?
Because the answers to IT questions, much like other engineering related professions can not have "feel-good" or "mostly right" answers.
Many other professions have the luxury of being able to occasionally get things wrong. Marketing programs can be "mostly effective". A product design can be less than optimal and still sell. Food products can be somewhat good...etc..etc..etc.
In IT we need to get the answers right or stuff breaks - sometimes with devastating consequences to the business. If IT departments do the wrong things, bank accounts get hacked, flight control systems fail, emergency communication systems don't work when needed, pharmacies can't fill prescriptions..etc...etc...etc.
Engineers and Doctors probably have it worse than we do in this respect, but at the end of the day EVERY company needs IT to do its work. IT departments are expected day in and day out to provide the systems that make this work possible.
If IT departments "reign supreme" it's simply because the business requires it to be so.
Just because you can't understand the BOFH, doesn't mean his knowledge is secret. If you can't understand him... how do you know he didn't already tell you everything????
They don't divulge what they know because it would most likely be a security breach if they do so. Why do the user community in a company feel that they need to know the details of how the corporate IT infrastructure operates?
Think of any job in terms of customer service. The 'customer' may change: an actual 'paying' customer, the user, the boss or whatever it may be.
Even if the one who uses the service provided by you does not directly pay your pay check. They may not fully understand the service, they may not even have any clue other than their expectations of what they want and how things will happen - this can sometimes be very far from real life.
I hook up cable for a living - very basic IT. Do you have internet once I'm done or not? The task itself is not quite so cut and dry. On any given day there are many people who have DSL, and point to the phone jack to 'help me out'. So I might ask something like 'is there a cable jack in this room?' And get an answer such as 'What is that? There is the phone jack.' "Now that I have canceled my internet service from some other provider, do I need to change my email?' - Another frequent question.
This isn't the crack head in the ghetto either, these are intelligent people, with good jobs. They simply do not know the difference.
Bertok is right - it's all about presentation.
When trying to explain things to them, if their eyes glass over, I change the subject briefly. I then come back with the same information, in a new manner.
If you constantly get the 'eyes glassed over look' you are probably presenting the information incorrectly. It's 'customer service' - if you don't have a 'customer' your user or your boss is probably it. Do them right – In the end, they kinda sign your paycheck.
The only hard-nosed "dictator" manager I ever had was actually my shop-floor customer in one of my early jobs working at Northern Telecom. But it turned out it was just how he measured people's skills and knowledge -- if you weren't willing to defend your ideas against his "attack", he felt you hadn't thought things through and needed to go back to the drawing board.
Once you earned his respect by arguing your ideas successfully a few times, he became a real joy to work with because he respected your opinion without you having to prove you were willing to defend it again.
Maybe if more IT staff took and applied their courses in logical discourse and philosophical arguments, they'd be better prepared for dealing with such management styles. Too many of my co-workers over the years were lousy speakers and presenters, and couldn't convince anyone they were right about anything, so they were always frustrated and claiming that everyone was against them.
Try Toastmasters or sign up for some philosophy courses at your local university. If you need the practice at presenting an argument, it's invaluable and a lot of fun.
Don't blame people for "not understanding" if you don't know how to express yourself.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
I had an instructor in school who proposed the hypothesis that all electronics were powered by by magic smoke. He proved his hypothesis by "releasing" the magic smoke from the device and showing it no longer worked.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
You had me until that line. Any doctor, neurosurgeon or not, who would decide the worthiness of a patient by his station in life or whether or not he is an addict, is not fit to be called "Physician". One of my best friends in life was the head of surgery for a major US teaching hospital. She was the first woman to perform a heart & liver transplant in the US. She testified before Congress numerous times on various issues regarding health and medicine.
She would never hesitate to "take splinters out of some crackhead's big toe" and she actually spent a lot of time treating people who others might consider society's dregs.
I know it was a throwaway line for you and you were just trying to make a point, but to be honest, that attitude seems to have informed your notion of "IT" as well. That IT workers would need to "gear down" their brain to translate things to "normal" people in order to not "snap and take a claw hammer to peoples' faces".
It' doesn't take a "lower gear" to communicate with people who don't spend their time with information technology. In fact, there's not much harder than explaining things simply. It's a skill that few people have, and very few who work in IT. Being able to communicate without condescension is an amazing skill, to be treasured and cultivated. Even (or especially) if your some "Redhat Certified IT Pro".
Just remember, IT pros, there's a clock running on your specialty. Every day it becomes a little less special. If you don't take the time to broaden your approach a little bit, and learn how to communicate, you're going to find yourself about as useful as an IBM card-punching machine in the 21st century.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Australia
Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so. ~ Douglas Adams
As a retired IT manager of 25 years... albeit I was a dino even a decade ago, I don't agree with this assessment. 1) I was never aloof, always super friendly to all, and made my mark by being open with non-IT folks, going the entire 9 yards to explain and communicate - YET- 2) I don't think I was all that successful. I am not sure non-IT folks ever understood (or could) no matter what the effort, and 3) this gained me no respect within the IT community, which would have rather had me keep my mouth shut and spend my time helping them get ahead instead. It was a rough situation.
I think therefore I can't be ~TTNH
I doubt it. The article is about IT managers being difficult to get along with. "datavirtue" is complaining about syntax variations in programming languages. Managers don't know anything about programming at such a low level, so it's impossible for datavirtue to be a manager. Managers only know enough about programming languages to make up impressive-sounding soundbites about synergies and gaining traction.
If one more person rudely interrupts my answer to their question by proclaiming their ignorance for the Nth time, I may just snap.
Many times I've imagined interrupting someone's unwelcome narrative by making this proclamation. Considering it's usually a one-sided broadcast, tuning them out is an easier choice. Choose your battles and all...
Imagination drew in bold strokes, instantly serving hopes and fears, while knowledge advanced by slow increments...
Given the article, does the fact we all seem to have kingdoms to give away qualify as irony?
No one can be stupid enough to think that immigration is typically a result of a country "sending" their citizens to another country. Can they? Can a person be so stupid while simultaneously existing long enough to learn how to walk and talk?
You're not familiar with Australia, are you?
Do you think doctors are bullshitting you? Do you expect them to explain things to you in technical terms as if they were talking to another doctor?
Actually, yes, I do, or at least fairly close. Maybe I'm weird, but I learned enough about anatomy in my education somewhere that simple terms like "fibula" aren't going to trip me up, even though I'm not in the medical field myself. Even if I don't understand everything the doctor says, I'd rather hear it all and ask for clarification if necessary, as I understand enough to know if he's bullshitting me or if he really does know what he's doing. There's enough incompetent doctors out there that I want to make sure I found one who isn't.
Everyone expects computers to not be that complicated and that we are just overrated janitors.
Actually, they think of you as overrated auto mechanics, and they think computers should be just as simple. The problem with computers is that in many environments, you're dealing with not only something that's enormously complicated and to be quite honest, not very well engineered, but you're also dealing with something that's quite opaque as all the source code is secret and you have little idea of what's really going on under the hood, and little to no way to find out. At least with cars, everything is highly modular, each module is engineered and tested, and if you're a dumb mechanic you can just swap in a "known good" part until the problem goes away to isolate the problem. There's no real engineering in most software.
The world doesn't want or need another arrogant IT worker with a "I'm smarter than you because I admin this network" chip on their shoulders. And people wonder why we outsource to India.
While I think outsourcing is generally a byproduct from the papermill MBA doctrine of the 90's, I wholeheartedly agree with you on the arrogance bit. The days of the BOFH-all-users-are-stupid mentality has no place today. If you don't communicate early and often to your users and generally act like an arrogant ass someone else will do your job for you. Granted, technically they could be inferior but at that point does it really matter? I'm sick of the arrogant fiefdoms some IT pros and SA's think is cool to promote. I can't stand the negativity that mentality creates. I'm a Sr. SA in a small, global team of Linux sysadmins supporting a fortune 50 - negativity and 90's-esque god-complex BOFH has no place in an environment where things just need to get done and things have to stay up and running (and improving).
Have a squat over at the hobo house.
OT
"Any doctor, neurosurgeon or not, who would decide the worthiness of a patient by his station in life or whether or not he is an addict, is not fit to be called "Physician". "
And yet they exist. And most transplant wards don't have issues with splinters. Ask your friend if she would implant a donated liver into a practicing alcoholic even if the alternative was to let the liver go to waste. Then ask her if her hospital would.
That was a throw away comment from you Ratzo - and I love your posts in general :/
Slashdot, where armchair scientists get shouted down and armchair theologians get modded up.
There's a reason they have parachutes.
Often the best way to make money is to milk the company for all it's worth and then bail out with a suitcase full of stock options before the plane crashes.
People in theory shouldn't be able to both:
1) Glaze over when you talk to them about IT
and
2) Refuse to trust you.
IT is often a needed service in a business, and us geeks are to computers and networks what doctors are to anatomy and medicine. The job needs done, and if you're not smart enough to do it yourself, at least have the manners to trust us to do it for you.
If you don't trust us, why hire us?
Why manager dffjhjlj;lhk
No, it was spoken by a retired literature professor (tenured) who (at retirement 2007, age 50), made about three times what "the IT Pros" do.
But it's not about money. The best of any field know two things: 1. how to communicate their difficult concepts and, 2. how not to be an asshole and lord their little technical skill over people who have not chosen their particular specialty as their life's work.
At best, "IT Pros" are engineers, and as anyone who has ever watched The Big Bang Theory knows, engineers don't have room look down on people. Hell, it's a good job, and at best it can be at the same level as a 20th century tool and die maker. But tool and die makers didn't look down on auto mechanics or plumbers. I know this because my dad was a tool and die maker and he thought my uncle the plumber and my uncle the auto mechanic were the shit.
Believe it or not, computers ain't rocket surgery. There's a reason there is no Nobel Prize for Information Technology. Get over yourself. Nobody ever go laid for being a systems analyst or "Redhat Certified IT Pro".
You are welcome on my lawn.
This actually raises an interesting point - in most companies, IT is sort of "in between" layers of the org chart, so it doesn't really fit in. IT is just as answerable to the managers as workers, but it has power over the workers ("No more nfl.com!"). So, consequently, workers don't like IT so much - they're the "no fun" crew that prevents them from playing Adult Swim flash games all day and updating their Facebook statuses. However, since IT (usually) doesn't have the power to hire, fire, provide raises, or otherwise do anything directly meaningful for the average worker, there's no need for the average worker to hide their disdain for this particular font of authority. On the other side of the fence, management doesn't view IT as "one of them" because IT isn't (usually) directly responsible for the daily business of the company. IT is viewed as an instrument of management, just like sales, customer service, or any of the other departments of the building, so why should IT be treated any differently from the girl doing data entry for minimum wage downstairs?
I imagine accounting and human resources have similar issues, come to think of it, though those departments usually have a less direct day-to-day impact on how everyone in the company works.
The sad fact of the matter is that to users, IT is just a bunch of computer janitors.
this is my sig
That's nice and wonderful and I applaud your friend. But she wouldn't run down to the local clinic and pull a splinter from Cracky McCrackhead when the President of the United States is in her operating room needing her talents. I know it's hyperbole, but the vast gulf is about the same.
I liked your IBM punch card reference. You do realize that the tech advances, and people advance with the tech. People who were doing the punch cards, if they were really IT, they would be rolling with the changes. That is part of the nightmare of being IT, you have to deal with a field that is evolving at an exponential pace. Now your good doctor friend on the other hand, I am sure has a tough job, but she isn't dealing with evolution every 6 months. Once she understands a human mechanic, it doesn't change. Sure there are an obscene amounts of variables she has to contend with, and I am sure her field is complicated, but she isn't having to constantly run to keep up with the changes. She isn't having to read about God putting out "liver 2.0".
IT puts rules in place for a reason. One of their chief jobs is protecting not only the business, but the employees from outside attacks through the network. The vast majority of the problems I have even seen were from people violating these rules. Its hard not to consider people stupid, when they are told something, and ignore it and do what they want and cause serious problems. This tends to be the "smart" people, the ones that think they are more intelligent than the admins. They might be, but on this subject, they are morons it seems.
Don't tell me you haven't seen professionals act like retards in an area outside their expertise because their ego got the best of them. Here is something else to consider. IT will be the last thing that goes in the information age, so don't feel like gloating at the IT people like someday they will be going the way of the IBM punch card machines. Like I said, IT adapts to the tech, those machines aren't around, but I am sure plenty of the people running them still are, but have evolved with the tech. Secondly, technology is replacing lots of people and it's not going to slack off. Robots are what the "experts" are worrying about taking our jobs, not illegal immigrants.
Once the technology gets to that point, only IT will be required to maintain it. But don't worry, once we have AI, IT will be obsolete as well, but so will the rest of humanity. They call that a "singularity", the point in artificial intelligence happens and from that point on. The implications of such are profound to say the least and much fiction has been published about it. None of it is cheery by the way, but I think that is the nature of selling a book. Most literature I find that is any good tends to be an exercise in voyeurism into some dystopian-ish setting of some degree.
Your doctor friend also deals with certain realities that people react to differently than they do with IT. For example, if she does a liver transplant, she doesn't have to tell the patient not to run around hallways throwing themselves headlong into everything until they rip open their stitches and about bleed out on the floor before anyone can get to them. IT has to deal with such craziness as people who will violate a policy, require a fix, then do it all over again next week. It's like the patient doing that, then blaming your doctor friend for it happening, then wondering why she gets an attitude, when she has to do 5 surgeries on the same moron for doing the same thing.
IT often gives simple answers. They tell you don't do this. Then you want to know why. The reason why could be a vastly complicated reason that you will turn glassy eyed 10 seconds into. Are you versed in this technology? No? Then what will an explanation do for you? Will it satisfy your ego, knowing that you commanded someone's time to speak something you don't understand to you? Ask your doctor friend how she likes her years of expertise argued with by patients who have read a page or two of WebMD. Ask her how
Take the Red Pill.
No. No it doesn't.
http://thatsnotironic.com/
--Not to be worried, Pitr fix.
I noticed the same thing. However /. got the quote right: the author in TFA did in fact say "life".
I created this account just so I could comment on this story
I am a reasonable IT guy. I am one of the new ones whom accepts personal devices in the network.....as long as they are safe. I want to be put under this test!!!!
"That's right...I said it."
I see the hatred towards IT from non IT comes from the companies higher management.
When IT and upper management get together, they seem to agree on purchases, directions, procedures, levels of security, SLA, costs, goals, and expectations.
These "things" that are agreed on are never explained to the non IT people or managers in the company and it seems these other managers that do know don't tell their own people what they agreed on and why or do not want to take the responsibility for admitting they agreed to the plan. The IT department staff from the bottom up is left to fend for themselves and try to explain the reason we are doing what we are doing and why, often times, you are explaining this while you are in their office under a desk replacing their KB or while in the elevator coming back from lunch. Does everyone think that a Tier 1 or system administrator is responsible for the company IT policy and budget or that even the IT manager sets his own spending and policies without input from non IT company managers?
I see this in my own company daily. I work in a law firm. Our tech committee works with our CFO to form the IT budget. The tech committee is high level IT management and different high level attorneys. They want to reduce costs and agree to cut back on staffing, the CIO tells them we can only do that by only staffing the support center until 9PM instead of 12 PM. Everyone their agrees. Oddly no one tells the other people in the firm and they get pissed when they call the support center at 10 PM CST and no one is there and they have to wait for the on call person to call them back. They complain to the IT department that "this is unacceptable". They should be complaining to their own technology committee person who agreed! IT does not make rules, policies, or buy things at will. They follow agreed terms and guidelines that they were given.
ha ha! Linux! You would think that would cut down on your headaches. If there ever was a IT demographics that has room to be arrogant it would be the linux people I would think. But working in that environment you probably have a more intelligent user base, no? It's one of the hallmarks I look for in a competent IT person, how well do they know linux. Frankly, I delved very little into it. I set it up as a network between two computers back in 1994 when myself and a friend of mine wanted to learn it because we wanted to start the communities first ISP. We were BBS sysops at the time and could see the writing on the wall.
We bit off more than we could chew, not to mention we couldn't get a phone company to work with us. We were looking at laying line over a hundred miles just to get it to town. It was a crash course into deep telecom territory and they weren't a bit helpful or friendly. We got routed to their "advanced product team" who knew even less than we did it seemed or at least pretended to. We gave up on that project before we went blind reading reams of manuals we printed out. Frankly I got lost at the kernel, it and my Pentium 90 were fighting it out, but it would go on the 486DX just fine. By the time we got the network cards to talk to each other, I was ready to kick puppies over the moon. I gave up, I was too young to die of a heart attack or aneurism from stress overload which was going to happen at that pace.
Take the Red Pill.
So why IT?
The last two out of two IT managers I have known were basically incompetent to do their jobs. Having faked their way in somehow, their personal objective unsurprisingly becomes to avoid exposing their incompetence. Usually by making lots of arbitrary decisions, usually involving office politics and seldom technically informed, then enforcing these no matter what the pushback. Two out of two, should I draw a line through those two points or what? If the line goes where I think it does then do you really have to ask "why IT?"
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
The sad fact of the matter is that to users, IT is just a bunch of computer janitors.
With attitude.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
This is the 3rd It whine artile in a week. I think this is a deliberate pattern by people trying to get hits on their articles by touching on a sore point within IT.
I did not read the article, dont care what it says, and will not respond (even to post something like this) to such articles in the future. I advise you all do the same.
"Non-IT workers see IT managers as 'computer janitors" in an organization, and are seen by IT managers as difficult to get along with, says anyone who has ever taken a call at the help desk. If non-IT workers changed their ways, they could actually have a working computer once in a while. 'So many of our sins are hidden under a bushel, because they are moronic, embarrassing, and illegal, that it is a wonder the IT manager ever leaves my counseling office without a fresh bottle of pills and smelling of Ripple', added Blair."
That's why when I can't dazzle 'm with brilliance, I baffle 'm with bullshit. :)
This is the sig that says NI (again)
I can see the circuit breaker cut out usually in less than 30 seconds, and I consider myself fairly skilled at talking at their level.
Judge your skill by results. It's the only thing that matters.
http://marriedmansexlife.com/
Part of the problem is the (media promoted) idea that an education.means being vaguely literate, and knowing how to learn some guff by rote.
While I accept that most Western educated people know a bit more than the Nigerian terrorists who believe that "book learning is unIslamic (haram)" (makes it easy to persuade a few illiterates that they are good Muslims), the reality is that the margin is not as great as it could be. Far to many people have the attitude "never mind the learning bit, I just want the certificate".
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
Everyone in the organization with a lot of personal responsibility is going to be that way. IT managers are under a lot of pressure.
They also often don't have enough power or influence to meet those responsibilities. So users will screw things up and it's the IT manager's fault for letting it happen. How do you stop that? Well, you try to increase your status within the organization. That might mean acting like you're better then everyone else in the hope that people will treat you that way and possibly someone will listen to you. Because if the users think you're not better then them then they can do whatever they want. And that means the whole thing is going to get screwed up, no one will listen to you, it will be your fault, and everyone will hate you... and you're fired.
As to the IT workers... similiar situation. Those people need to represent the interests of the IT department and keep everything under control.
IT is not an easy profession. It has two conditions. Condition one, no one knows what you do, no one respects you, no one notices you exist. Condition two, everyone hates you because something isn't working and it's all your fault. That's it. Those two conditions.
Now try being the manager of that department.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
...the money for his dog food.
Who want to hear, what an IT manager (or any IT person) has to say? At least 75% know better anyways: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect/. The rest does not care for the one or the other reason.
Don't worry, it'll soon be the 1% vs the 99%.
The US is now in Cameroon territory when it comes to Gini coefficients. That's when heads start rolling.
Deleted
A few weeks ago I asked a railway-technician why my train had not yet departed. As I suspected the engine had broken down. However, this being a real technician and not some kind of manager he did not just say "it's broken" but started explaining that the 2 out of 4 propulsion-units where below 50% of there optimal capacity, or something along that line.
After a few seconds my mind blocked and I presume my eyes glazed over. I thanked the man and made myself scarce.
It took me a few minutes to realize what just had happened. I'm a nerd with a passion for technology. I'm usually fascinated with every machine I encounter. Yet this tiny bit of pressure (a late train) was enough to completely eradicate that and turn me into a "I don't care about your technology, just fix it" zombie.
Absolutely, I've seen this directly a number of times, it's in fact a major factor in deciding to leave my old job.
I worked for an engineering firm, and it's background was that it had split in two about 10 years ago, with it's IT staff going to the other section, leaving no one in IT in the section I was working at. As a result they chose one of the engineers who had a "passing interest in IT" to become the IT manager. Over the next 10 years by paying enough consultants he'd managed to cobbled together something that roughly resembled a network.
I joined the firm as a software developer, with the aim of starting out their software development section from the ground up, but as I had an IT support background I found myself rapidly becoming relied upon for IT support help because I was the first person who had entered the organisation in 10 years who actually had a proper idea of how IT should really be done.
The problems weren't just technical though, the IT manager held grudges, if someone had asked for some last minute help before they went on a business trip, he wouldn't like that, he'd hold it against them and do his best not to help them, sometimes outright maliciously moving their network file share without telling them and waiting until they'd spent some time figuring out why they couldn't connect before fixing it for them. He was socially inept to a massive degree such that when our phone lines went down he dissapeared to another site because he was too scared of the concept of picking up the phone and talking to someone at the other end to get it sorted such that our company was without phones for 2 solid weeks. For the same reason he wouldn't get quotes from other IT suppliers such that the supplier he'd been using all this time was charging him £800 for £450 laptops with the same kind of markup on everything from software to printer cartridges- the fact the supplier had a brand new £50k car, and took him to lunch every christmas didn't act as a clue that his supplier had far too much spare money. I offered to train him on IT security so he could get a policy written and in place pointing out that if we got hacked and data covered by the data protection act stolen, he could be held personally responsible and at the end of the training he said "Right, so can you write the policy then?" as if nothing I'd spent the last couple of days teaching him had actually entered his inept mind - his excuse was that he was too busy, but then as he also had never bothered with IT support issue tracking software and did everything ad hoc, ignoring those users he didn't like's issues then how could anyone ever know what his workload was? Laughably when I'd already made the decision to leave, he managed to lose the entire intranet due to hard drive failure because well, setting up a backup on a Linux box would require some actual effort on his behalf. Lucky I'd taken a copy of the database for local dev work on it. He'd avoid sharing anything with me because he saw me as a threat, knowing full well I could do his job AND mine, but it didn't really work, because I understood his systems better than he did anyway so the only stuff he was hiding was stuff I could figure out myself anyway. Oh, and he didn't believe in UPS' on servers because he had one on a server once and it made it crash, apparently.
I raised it with HR a number of times when it reached a point where it was an outright danger to the business, and whilst they recognised my concerns the attitude was "Well, we've got to give him a chance...", as if the last 10 years of utter ineptitude wasn't bad enough, but the problem is that they'd never known any better - to them, this was a good IT manager, they had no idea how it was supposed to be. Our company was taken over and as part of that our UK operations expanded, lo and behold, they'd been taken over by someone with IT even shitter than they had so he was promoted to head of UK IT, when in reality what they should've done at that point was bring someone wh
'So much of their life is hidden under a bushel because they don't discuss things, they don't divulge what they know'
..
Or in a lot of cases, they don't divulge what they don't know. For instance a "Network Engineer" consultant who can't figure out why gmail keeps timing out on Citrix clients running virtual Windows desktops
You're a computer janitor not a teacher, you're there to clean up the mess not lecture people. That's why they switch off because they don't care about your favorite topic of computers, they just want you to do your job so they can get back to doing theirs.
It's like the janitor in your company coming up to you and saying that if you took off your shoes he wouldn't need to clean the floor so much and then going into details about the different types of floor cleaner he uses.
Society deems it a science. A psychologist can sign you into a hospital for evaluation, the cops will bag you up like you are wild life on Wild Kingdom, and put you in a padded room. For a "pseudoscience" that is a lot of power.
This is one of the most retarded arguments I've heard this year. Having power and being scientific are in no way correlated, or at least not correlated in the way you suggest. A few hundred years ago a catholic priest could have you burned at the stake, that is far more power than any psychologist has today. That doesn't make Catholicism the pinnacle of science. Do you even know what the word scientific means?
I would have to take the entire lot of them out in the country and put a .22 short in the thin of their skulls due to the fact they shouldn't be allowed to pass their stupidity on to other generations.
I thought the above was just a momentary lapse of reason, because some things you write actually make sense. Ha. Turns out you really are a retard.
It would depend on which President of the United States was in her operating room.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Good point. There is a difference between putting a donated liver into someone and taking a splinter out.
You are welcome on my lawn.
As a programmer, even I say the same thing to the IT people. Not that computers are complicated, it's the labyrinthine policies and the circuitous explanations about why something cannot be done. IT people guard everything so you can't do anything yourself, obscure information so you can't show how simple what you want done is and make simple communications extremely difficult so you can't just talk them into doing something.
"There's a reason there is no Nobel Prize for Information Technology"
There's no Nobel Prize for Mathematics either so your point is, again?
From my experience a lot of the people in IT start out as withdrawn kids. After all we did find that little box of electronic parts so fascinating that we were willing to spend hours and hours in front of it instead of going outside. Most us of seem to eventually come out of our shell and join the rest of society. It really isn't surprising to me that some continue along their antisocial path. I think they are the ones that these type of articles are written about.
Isn't the article from the same site where GMGruman hangs out?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
So much of their life is hidden under a bushel because they don't discuss things, they don't divulge what they know
Is it that they are not divulging what they know and witholding secrets? ... Or is it that they just don't really know anything? Think about it.
In IT, the knowledgable ones never get promoted because funding is slashed to the point where the handful of guys remaining are doing x3 the work they used to, and now they are knowledgable and indispensable in their current roles. In todays world, knowing nothing but how to BS, deceive others, getting an MBA online and being a sociopathic asshole is the only fast track to IT management.
Most of them wouldn't know how to fix or maintain their cars either. But at least some of them can drive.
I don't think cars are as simple as you make out. Have you never heard someone use the expression "what goes on under the hood"?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
how one sided. Every hostile IT shop I have ever encountered is always run by insecure, almost talented wanna-be s, who believe they are so good at what they do, no one would ever understand what it is they do. and 100% of the time so far, they have been completely wrong. as an old boss of mine said "never believe your own press" the best IT shops go out of their way to show the rest of the company the value they bring to the company, in terms everyone understands, and can respect. The one thing these shops have in common is an understanding that what they do is just as an important as what others in the company do, and take an active interest in understanding what it is the COMPANY does. In other words, IT is one of a very few professions where you can be an insecure ass, and still keep a job. So, keep feeding your sense of entitlement. Keep feeling like IT is the most important thing in your company. I promise you, unless your company makes 'it expertise", you are just overhead to the real job being done there. and it may be painful to replace you, but the smarter managers are learning, they don't have to put up with your attitude to get your so-called expertise, when there are plenty of more well adjusted people out there to take your place.
So true... a past co-worker of mine went to one of those online colleges and ended up hiring someone online to do the coding part of the curriculum after offering everyone here with any coding ability money. When we turned him down he went elsewhere, got the work done for him and moved on with his certificate that he can program in Java and a bachelor's degree.
Most organization have Silos (every department that does their own thing). The IT Department is one of those few departments that works with the other departments. We need to make sure there are no conflicts between other departments. For example the information that one department collects needs to match up with an other departments data. So an Engineering Department work with a full breakdown of every part a product uses. The costs and expense of each part will need to be in the finance system. Even though the finance department doesn't really care about parts. But they care about the money flow. So IT needs to keep all these departments who never talk to each other working in sync.
Most newbees in IT want to tell everyone what goes on. What happens, we get yelled at. Because each silo doesn't care what the other department needs they only care what they need, and they get mad because they think IT is giving special preference to the other guy. Your system went down, we got it working, but we don't know why it went down, is not a good answer. Your system went down, we got it working, and we found out why here is why, is not a good answer because then they will point fingers left and right and trying to figure out why IT didn't think of this department use case that they were never told about nor is in their scope to know it will exist. When we do try to explain the problem, most of the time they don't care so they will cut your short.
The reason people hate IT, is because we cannot say Yes all the time. If we did then we wouldn't be doing our jobs. We need to come up with issues and problems to be worked out before hand and make a process for it. Other Departments hate dealing with this level of granularity and think of us just being a bunch of no men. That and because of all the things we need to deal with, we need to stay calm when everyone else isn't, so we just seem cold and impersonal.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
nothing is wrong with it. but if you can't communicate well, how are the rest of us supposed to know of your awesomeness?
the answer is, we won't, because someone with the same skill set, and better communications skills will drown you out. furthermore, why do you suppose ANY job outside of a code sweatshop does NOT require communications skills. either step up, or set your expectations lower.
"If you're so smart, empty the bin yourself".
"If you're so smart, fix the computer yourself".
Compare and contrast.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Sounds like you have a bad IT department. I'm glad that the IT department at my office is great to work with (from my perspective as a developer). I know most of business still thinks that IT uses a magic wand to make things work though and has little or no interest in wanting to know more. They actually seem to tend to work more directly with the software development side of the house to move things in to place and then development works with IT on the server side. Obviously client issues still go direct to IT though, but those are normally minor issues.
AJ Henderson
Maybe the reason is that users say "we don't care about all that technobabble, just make the damned thing work the way I want to". And, of course, users don't discuss things, don't divulge what they know, and the innovation that could come from users sensibly discussing what their needs are doesn't happen either.
That are aloof (as visible, but far),
Long time ago in my IT days, I was called by a user who had a problem sending a fax.
You could hear the remote modulated response.
Out of the blue, I picked up the fax machine handset and started vocalizing something like fax parlance: -"pxzrrrbgt rgtbrbrpkt..."
The user looked at me and said: -Wow! how can you do that?!
She literally thought I was talking "fax".
(And I hope she still does)
And you want IT to relate?
Now if I could just get you to tell that to my boss and actually convince them that just because I don't happen to have a 4 year degree (graduated from a 2 year commercial art school), and nevermind the fact that I'm their best employee in terms of attitude, knowledge, professionalism, and attendance, they should not pay me less than someone who knows nil and is an idiot who just happens to have a piece of paper documenting they spent 4 years taking classes. It's ludicrous and insulting but it seems to be the industry standard for any industry.
I've met I.T. managers at companies that I think would fit the description in this article. What they don't cover is the fact that nobody cares about I.T. unless something doesn't work. The rest of the org has no desire to hear about what I.T. thinks or what it's needs may be. I.T. is considered a barrier to them because someone (usually high up in the org) wasn't allowed to have bittorrent on their work laptop to download music at work, or they couldn't load a copy of their software from home (which they probably didn't own anyway) on their work computer. Now we're the bad guys. I'm more than happy to explain anything I do to anyone but usually it's met with the attitude of umm ok that's nice I've go to go. People don't care about our jobs and what we have to do all day. They only thing they care about is that they get everything that they want.
They don't even care about the rest of their company. I can't tell you how many times I've said something along the lines of...well yes technically I could do that for you but here's the problem, it won't scale up to fit the rest of the company and now I'll have this island system sitting out here for you, and perhaps for another department if they want to do something similar, and then well wind up with all of these disjoint systems that can't talk. We should really do this right and get it funded so we can make it work for everyone. The response I get back? I don't give a **** about everyone else I just want this for our department. If someone else wants it, that's their problem. What they don't get is that it's our problem. We're the ones expected to make all this work and we have to look at things from a full organization perspective. Most department managers could care less about what any other department needs or how what they want will affect the rest of the company.
People look down their noses at I.T. as being under them and then they complain when I.T. starts giving them the same level of respect. Suddenly it's our fault and our jobs to change. It's a holiday dinner, we're perpetually seated at the kids table while the adults talk about adult things and wave us off if we try and add something to the conversation as not being able to understand it or contribute to it and now we're faulted for not being a team player. Look in the mirror guys, you're a big part of the problem. The fix has to come from both sides.
They literally cannot tell the difference between bullshit and the truth.
And those who can, you simply avoid.
They have no idea just how complicated it can be, and no real appreciation either.
In my experience, most complications in IT come directly from the IT department trying to make their own life easier.
What's more, IT managers do not see the complexity as something negative. Quite the opposite: it provides justification to hire more subordinate admins.
We are damned if we do, and damned if we don't as far as explanations go, and nobody wants to take any responsibility.
What a load of B.S. Management of my department spent about 3 years wrangling from (mostly Windows-centric) IT our UNIX servers, to put them in our responsibility.
Otherwise, yes, comparison with janitor is a good one, really. And your dismissive tone in relation to janitors is just showing your own overrated ego. Disclosure: in parallel to being a junior sw developer, i was working part time janitor for several months. You should try it yourself.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
There's no real engineering in most software.
I wish that every person with "engineer" in their title understood the implications of engineered software and worked diligently to bring them about.
-
Actually is is even easier to bullshit managers like you (who believe that they know enough!), but here i see another problem for you. In most cases you would fire responsible people who are really trying to tell you the truth, but because you are son of b/*****, you would not believe them. The result? Incompetent manager attracts incompetent employees.
Linus Tarvoldo!
Yes, all magic incantations end in "o", but you must put a semicolon at the end for it to work... unless its vbscript.
Then it will never work.
There's a difference between being able to do something and being able to get something done. Basically, unless you have people skills you'll forever be in the position of executing someone else's idea. We need people who can execute so that's not meant to diminish those roles, it just means theres a limit to what you can accomplish.
If you want to be in a position to execute on your own ideas for how to get things done or what to do you'll need to develop the people skills necessary to convince someone else that your ideas matter and should be implemented.
If you're happy executing, great. However, if you are frustrated that you have all these great ideas but "nobody ever listens" you likely need to improve people skills rather than technical ones. In my own career I reached a point where I realized if I was going to put X amount of time into coming up with an idea I'd need to plan on putting X or even 2X time into convincing people why my idea was worth doing. This doesn't mean lying or playing games but simply figuring out what the best and fastest way to convince someone totally unfamiliar with the problem I ways trying to solve that
1) a problem exists
2) I have a solution
3) this solution is preferable to all alternative solutions
It really has made a huge difference not just in getting stuff done but also in helping me refine and improve my own ideas. Give it a shot.
This is, what, the fifth one this week?
Amazing.
Bad IT department.
I have seen it from every angle. I am a programmer, sysadmin, tech, grunt, etc. Laid CAT5 in the walls, used punch down tools, programmed apps, database maintenance, created and repaired workstations and servers from scratch, etc.
Currently the CTO for a medium sized business with a bunch of branch offices.
I don't want to guard anything so that I have to do it myself. Prefer that you do it. However, my biggest challenge is balancing security. Developers always seem to want root. That's not happening anytime soon, and for good reasons.
You would not have those kind of problems working with me. If you need something, I will figure out a way to get it done as long it does not compromise security to an unacceptable level.
People are far less prone to bullshit than most everyone believes. Being more or less technically literate at the time really has nothing to do with sensing bullshit. From the tone of his comment, I'd say the GP would spot bullshit readily.
Bullshitters misunderstand the word explain. Matters not if you have or don't have the techo-jive, that word means "Say that again so I will understand it."
An honest person will make the attempt to communicate. Even if no understanding is reached, both parties readily recognize the attempt and don't sense bullshit.
The bullshitter will simply vomit more words. Doesn't matter if those words are accurate, the bullshitter failed the request for more understandable communication.
Hence: The IT person who spews techno-babble inappropriately is (although correct) indeed bullshitting.
sweetie, darling, I'm not a son of anything or anybody... and I can guarantee you that I know enough about how IT does their job, because I got my start doing IT. I moved on from it, and into management, by consistently being a top performer, by having social skills, and by going to University and getting a degree that was applicable to people management. That got me into a low management position doing training, and my performance there (and the performance of the people I trained) is what got me to where I am today. The sheepskin that's on my wall is for an arts degree, but it doesn't show you the 20+ years spent tinkering in the innards of computers and other electronic devices, the hundreds of different distros and operating systems that I've used over the years, the numerous computer networks I have designed/built, the cellular and POTS networks I was involved in setting up when I was in the army (to any Canadians in the audience, I was a Jimmy), or any of the other myriad experience that I have in technology.
Just because I now have a different job does not mean that I don't know what I am doing, or that I can't do your job. I can't code for the life of me... I can understand the logic, but I don't know the specific function calls and syntax for most languages because I have never had to do it. But hardware, software, and other stuff that IT is actually there to support? Yeah. Try me. If I'm calling IT, it's because there's something that's actually wrong, or because I need a tool installed and don't have admin rights on my PC (not stupid enough to ask for admin rights on a work system... especially not at a company that forces me to use internet exploder 6 to access internal web-based tools). Your conviction that just because somebody's in management, it automatically means that they don't know what they're doing? That's going to cost you in the long run, in the form of hurting your eligibility for promotion.
I'm going to try to save you time, and let you in on something that was a very hard lesson for me to learn. Whether you choose to internalize it or not is up to you, but I can honestly tell you that until I absorbed it, my chances of ever advancing beyond IT were basically nil: the person you're helping isn't an idiot. They may have a different skill set, and different knowledge, but that does not make them dumb. Every time I hear some nitwit in IT complaining that you should have to have a license to own a computer, I pity them. How much do you know about brain surgery, out of curiosity? Would you feel comfortable operating on your own skull? So why do you assume that the person you're talking to on the other end of the phone is a moron because they don't have that level of skill? I can guarantee you that they have some skills that are completely beyond your ability. Empathy is an important skill in life, probably the most important skill you can have.
Ah yes, resort to the name calling, that really drives your point home with such eloquence.
I didn't know that we were suddenly back hundreds of years, or are you bringing up a completely irrelevant point? Of course I know what the word means, I have to wonder if you do. I am also aware of how territorial geeks are about what they deem as "science". I've dealt with this little quirk with various professors and I always find it worth at least 5 minutes of them ranting if I press those buttons.
As far as the ".22 short to the skull" statement, that is something called hyperbole. It's pronounced HI PER BO LEE, not HYPER BOLE by the way. Look it up, that is your education assignment for the day.
I find those who critique the "science" of psychology, tend to fall into a few simple of categories.
a. The butthurt hard science geek. Nerd rage because your precious field is obviously one of "science" yet others have the audacity to call what they do science.
b. Newbies who regurgitate what (A.) nerd raged about, thinking they can be smart by parroting what they heard.
c. Various combinations of a and b.
Personally, if I was going to work in the field I would head into the "neural plasticity" aspect of it. This I believe can be can be according to Nerd Hoyle, a real "science". I wasn't aware of that particular term "neural plasticity", I called the application "neural remapping". I will not bore you with the details, but setting up scenarios to study is relatively easy, hence replicating it for study over time, can be done. It's not a perfect "science" like chemistry, but we are dealing with the human mind which have a lot of variables, making it problematic by nature to replicate situations to study.
It's a damn difficult field, and it's littered with land mines, such as the entire SCIENCE of it having credibility problems. Rightfully so with as many "hacks" infesting the field, but not so much as the techniques of those who truly are approaching it "scientifically".
Let's get back to the my first point. The minds of today, which are echoed through our system and the laws of the land, deem it a science and use it as a practical application. If you don't think we have come leagues away from hundreds of years ago when we burned people at the stake at the word of a priest, then I should pipe down and realize that you are completely mad. Surely you aren't so naive or undereducated to think that psychology has nothing to offer, that there aren't techniques in it that have merit.
I going to chalk it up as tunnel vision and caught up in a passionate/nerd rage argument about the ever lasting geek eye tick argument of what constitutes a true "science".
Take the Red Pill.
Posting to undo moderation.
Far too many IT managers get caught in the "I don't want to know how it works, I just want the magic button to do what I want when I push it" trap in the company. Busy users don't care what it takes to keep their machines or the network running, they just want to do their jobs across the network, and have instant access to whatever they think is needed next. Department heads are among the worst in this light, as they have demands on their time and resources and anything that isn't in their direct control is just an impediment to getting their quota out. Projects they need are based on what it will do for them, and that it will require X resources, or X amount of time, and cost thousands for the server and systems they checked off as "ok" and promptly forgot about while talking to the vendor of the shiny new system until the date they plan to have it all installed (and of course, all installations take 30 minutes or less, including the server.) Eventually, even the most innovative and proficient IT folks stop trying. The lack of technical peers in a small organization, and their efforts to accomplish often quite demanding tasks to make the "magic button" work is not hidden because the IT folks want to keep it to themselves - it of often "hidden" because no one else in the organization has any idea of what it means, and, quite simply, don't care.
(I assume their spy software is reading what I am typing now!)
I was not arguing whether psychology is a science; I was commenting on your argument "It is a science because the people practicing it have power." You seem to lack the capacity to distinguish between these two which makes this little conversation kind of pointless. Have a nice life.
Do you work for HCL, by any chance?
Stick Men
Every department has secrets they don't share.
Ask the finance manager for a list of the salaries in the company. see what that gets you.
Even the janitor doesn't publish a list of trash pick up dates.
as an IT manager, I've seen stuff that departments don't want to share with other departments, or which managers don't want to share with subordinates. sometimes the best way to keep your IT job is to keep your fat trap shut.
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
I started my professional career as an engineer, and am now working in tech. And from my perspective most IT managers, and staff, who work for non-tech companies are special just by the sake of being one-off. If you are the IT guy in an engineering firm, you will likely have more pull than 95% of the engineers. That was true in every engineering company that i worked for. It is the same with lawyers and accountants. I would imagine the IT guy at a law firm would have the same position, while the lawyer at an IT firm would have that roll. This is something i've never completely understood, but it is simply the way i've always seen things work.
My point being that ANYONE treated like they are "within the inner circle" acts "aloof." So, the solution seems simple to me - stop treating your one-off staff as if they are somehow more important than your main workforce.
I don't think cars are as simple as you make out. Have you never heard someone use the expression "what goes on under the hood"?
They're simple enough that some guy with a high school education at best is competent to repair them, or even build one from the ground up (heavily based on previous designs, granted).
The thing about cars is, unlike computers, cars are highly modular. You can remove various components and the remaining components still work fine; take out the power steering pump and you'll still have a working car, but with heavy steering at low speeds. Take out the A/C compressor and everything still works, but you don't get cold air. There's few or no complex dependencies between various components, except for a few isolated places (e.g. you need the engine running to produce vacuum to get boosted disc brakes, and unboosted brakes are nearly unusable in modern cars).
It simply isn't like this with computers. You can't easily remove IE from Windows 7 and expect everything to work right. It's easy to get Windows into a state (when messing around with the underlying system) where things are broken and you need to either restore from backup or reinstall the OS because you just don't know all the related dependencies. And this doesn't even account for programming.
Good luck with that. Doing real engineering with software takes a lot of time and manpower, and management never wants to devote that time or those resources to the task. Engineers can only do what management allocates time and resources for them to do.
Myself and another (Joe) were hired to roll out PC upgrades at the FAA in Oklahoma City. Basically all we had to do was grab a machine, ghost the standard image to it, transfer user files to it, and then physically install it at their desk.
My background: I have a Net+ certification that I got from going to a 2-year trade school, NO college education, 8 years of working with computers non-professionally, and about 2 years with computers in a business setting.
His background: Bachelor in somethingsomething, 4 or 5 years in a good state college, no computer experience (WTF?). His major was in sports, or cheese, or massage therapy, or something totally not related to computers.
So on the first day, after we were told what we would be doing, and given basic instructions, I got to work on my first machine... Then Joe started asking questions, I thought he just forgot specifics about the settings, so I helped him out. Then he started asking more, and more. Turns out Joe had never done computer work, ever . So in the midst of doing my job, I had to teach him everything he would need to know in order to do the very same job.
At the end of the three month contract, they ended up hiring him on full time, and decided to cut me completely. He was more personable than I was (I am pretty quiet, do not really initiate conversation, etc. {Probably Aspergers, but everyone has that these days, so who knows}), but he could not troubleshoot his way out of a paper bag. I even tested him a couple times, asking random computer questions that got increasingly simpler, he never knew what I was even talking about. So I guess in the end, education matters significantly over experience.
Thanks Government! Keep up the good work.
That's what Obliviate is for! The fact you ever made it out of your first year continues to amaze me. :rollseyes:
Far to many people have the attitude "never mind the learning bit, I just want the certificate".
Far "to" many people think that do they? I reckon we all oughta git us some learnin.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
That last paragraph should have a watermark with the word "Touche" written over it. That is a very excellent observation, and something I tend to forget a lot. But only in the moment. Typically before/after a call, I realize that the person on the other end is not a computer expert, that is why they are calling me. But they are a WHATEVER expert, which I may just have to call some day to get some assistance from their whatever expertise.
I am most often reminded of this when I visit a mechanic that is having problems with his computer. I know how to fix the computer, he knows how to fix my car. Now if only there were some sort of barter system here, we could all be happy.
Ok, stop right there. As a retired lit prof, you are going to talk out your ass about IT AND Engineers? Seriously? You can rail on IT all you want, but lumping Engineers in with them is down right insulting, and has to be a result of ignorance. Then you dash off into tool and die makers, auto mechanics and plumbers? WTF?
First if you are to compare and contrast IT with any of these it would be an auto mechanic. Each of the other fields are involved with making something, those two are just maintaining a system. They aren't braving new worlds, they aren't creating anything out of raw materials. IT at BEST in their creativity write software for an already established system. Of course they have to be creative in their solutions often, but they aren't reinventing the wheel, they are keeping it greased.
Before you start pissing on Engineers, know everything around you is a result of engineering. If you don't think so, lets drop you off in some God forsaken part of the world that has no engineering influences on it whatsoever. Let's see how long you survive without resorting to some kind of engineering. You wouldn't even be a lit major without engineers, there would be no books produced in mass, hence nobody but the elite rich would own them because they would have to be penned by hand.
Science and Engineering are two different things, but incredibly related. I know I don't have to explain that to you. IT is a byproduct of both of these and it's new and part of our wonderful information age. But it's a child field of these, it doesn't overshadow them.
Take the Red Pill.
Now I understand, it's a reading comprehension problem on your behalf. I was replying to some tool who belittled psychology as a pseudoscience equating the situation down to the cliche sexual repression statement. If it's such a bullshit smoke and mirrors snake oil act, why is our system embracing it and it can be used to sign you off to a nut ward? It goes to the heart of establishing something called CREDIBILITY in real life situations, not just what wonders through the mind of geeks in defense of their e-peens. It's called looking at the end results in real world applications.
I understand the need for a geek who feeds 500 frogs an aspirin and another 500 frogs a placebo to defend his "science" from those who aren't doing "pure scientific research" like he is. It's his tiny little "feed frogs stuff" science world and he needs to feel good about it. For him or one of his lackeys to rail against another science really cries out for them to have some perspective. Yes, you can feed Kermit an aspirin, but a shrink can effect where a criminal spends his incarceration, or they can have someone hauled off to a nut ward, or even have your kids taken away from you. That's pretty good for a bullshit pseudoscience, no?
I understand, and forgive you. You came in late to the conversation and jumped to conclusions without really fully comprehending the conversation. It happens.
Take the Red Pill.
Really? Computers aren't modular? Really? Computers can't be built from the ground up with just a high school diploma? I"ve been building my own machines with different parts since middle school. When my RAM goes out, I replace it. When I need a new video card, I replace it. Computers are some of the most modular shit out there. You don't want Windows? Install Linux. You want your computer to hook up to a telephone line, you buy a modem. You want a new game, new applications, new web browsers? This post is complete bullshit. Even windows is modular. You can install IIS, or not. You can use Active Directory or not. You don't even have to install all the themes.
If I can just reach out with my words and touch a butthole, just one, it will all be worth it.
Really? Computers aren't modular? Really? Computers can't be built from the ground up with just a high school diploma?
Hardware, yes. Software no.
Even windows is modular.
Bullshit. Good luck fixing it when the registry becomes corrupt. There's a reason reinstalling the OS is standard practice.
I had a direct boss tell me to write an inventory system for our computers.
I refused. Told him the only way I was going to do it was if he and a few others were willing to spend time explaining directly to me why the other 5 inventory systems we had weren't sufficient. He got all pissy but I held my ground saying use this system or use that system but that I wasn't going to write a 6th system and have it fail just like all the others.
He finally narrowed down exactly what information he wanted about our computers and I wrote him a miminalist system--already having demonstrated from the other failures that too much info or too many fields is not useful and that if you don't keep it up-to-date, then the numbers are flakey and that's because of the manager and his people, not because of the IT person who wrote the 'last crappy system.'
But he still holds a grudge against me. I made him have to think about the questions he wanted answered instead of just demand answers. Non-IT people hate that shit.
There are actually two ways to prosper: Licking someones' ass, or just doing your job. The first method is perfect in short term, but disastrous in long term.So, to answer your question, i did not lick any manager's ass, i have changed many companies, and now i do know a lot a lot more than any other "social" ass licker, of which you are apparently so in love. Oh, also i have developed a lot of social skills being forced to deal with all the different kind of ass managers, and i do have even better understanding of how their mind work (or more how it does not work), and of course i am using this knowledge for my benefits. Business as usual, right? Anyway, now, when i am forced to work with such a "managers" (which means what? what are they actually managing? how to scare the best, and how to hire to worst?), my first response is to smile and show them how much i do respect them, after which i go home and start looking for new, better paid, and with more benefits job. Again, nothing personal, business as usual.
No, its like the janitor in your company coming up to you and saying that if you only learned to shoot better or stopped & actually dropped your paper balls in the trash; he could charge you less in cleaning up after your misses.
Try to explain to a non technical person what is the difference between remote desktop and reverse remote desktop, and then ask him/her to give you proper and and sane requirements for such a client..........then i will admit you are right, and i am wrong.
You don't have a chip fab plant in your backyard, so GP will no doubt claim you aren't really making it, just assembling it.
Then again, the number of people straight out of highschool who could do the equivalent with a car (do you know how to machine a crankshaft?) is a darn sight closer to zero than the 100% he says.
I'd say that people who don't do it for work or as a hobby are equally clueless whether the "it" is computers or cars, or possibly anything else.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Next time you will know, don't share your knowledge. Let him earn it.
Sorry you got the shaft. But you just gotta trust that real soon, this knucklehead will have to do some computer work on his own and his incompetence will become obvious to all. You may be long gone and unable to swoop back in, save the day, and get the position. But he'll crash and burn and get his comeuppance for sure. And you are probably better off not being paired with a guy who is incompetent and could only slow you down and perhaps make you look bad if your assignments together are riddled with errors. Move on, trust karma, good things come to those with skill, dedication, and patience. A rude kick-in-the-pants awaits the doofus you helped do his work. Good luck! --Josh
You got me all wrong. I love engineers. My point was not to say that there's anything wrong with engineers, but that you'd never hear an engineer complaining about simplifying his concepts to better explain them to a customer. The engineers I know are not arrogant, they would never say "I'm not gonna waste my time explaining things to a lowly customer" the way the IT person I was responding to was doing. Engineers are grounded people for the most part. They understand better than anyone that the meaning in what they do comes from function, from it functioning for people.
The remark I made about engineers and The Big Bang comes from the fact that arrogant theoretical physicists and mathematicians often look down on engineers (until they need something built). For some reason, there is this streak of arrogance that runs through many information technology workers, and it would do them well to remember that their little priesthood doesn't really amount to all that much. That the world may not hold them in as high a regard as they do themselves.
Maybe you won't understand this, but that works both ways. Without literature (and I know you understand that literature means more than just fiction and poetry) there may well not be such skilled engineers, mathematicians, and theoretical physicists. Last time I checked, all three rely on books. There is a reason that the sum of scientific (and engineering) history is known as "the literature". As a literary theorist (ret.) I concern myself with the written word in all its forms. Even readme files and user guides tell a story. Even the comments in code. Maybe especially the comments in code. They all tell a story.
You are welcome on my lawn.
To be honest I didn't take literature out that far in meaning. My exposure to it has been at the undergraduate level and with classic short stories and certain authors. I am all for the enriching experience of eduction. I am the guy who feels that philosophy is something we should be required to take. The liberal arts are essential to human growth and development, it shouldn't all be meat and potatoes of math and science. My literature classes have been exercises in critical thinking mostly, interpreting subjectively the authors intent if any.
Here's a question for you as a lit major, I proposed to my professor that "A Rose for Emily" by Faulkner was inspired by the life of Emily Dickinson. I wonder if it was his subtle way of expressing his impression she was a bit of a weirdo. I know she is held in high esteem, and I get the whole ordeal about how women suffered in those days. But frankly, I don't know how else a person can look at her as being anything but one very odd bird. My professor didn't have an answer for that question.
Of course I think that I was that person who talked about "gearing down" to talk to customers. I stand by that and here is why. I.E. Telling a customer that in order for them to get email they need to go set up their POP3 account, isn't going to cut it, especially if you work the help desk, which contrary to some belief is an IT job and part of that industry. I can't count how many times, I have had to walk customers through it, "click on Start, go to Control panel...." and it's an act of patience that if you don't have the right mental make up for it, it will drive you insane after a while.
When I did it, I took my time and tried to understand what my customer understood. I had customers that would haunt me for years wanting me to do more work for them because I was easy to talk to. They would complain about other IT people around and how they talked down to them and it annoyed them. I understood, the ones they complained about still to this day are egomaniacs. I am immune to IT arrogance though, especially to those guys in particular. I know them personally and its more of a defensive reaction they have around me, being I have been in IT before them, and they can remember when they had to come to me for help. Not to mention, I can flip the coin over from being nice and charming to a weapons grade asshole at will. Let's all just get alone, I say and we do.
Sorry to come off guns firing on the engineer thingy. I switched majors and am working towards a degree in a sub field of engineering, doing mechanical engineering technology...or better known to older folks like myself as a "drafter". I can remember doing drafting in high school with the old pencils, straight edges, compass...etc. Now it's all 3D software and there are engineering concepts that we have to learn along with just drawing parts. Our professors tell us that companies like to come hire students from where I am going because they can get two of us for the price of one engineer. We do engineering work and a real engineer signs off on our work or not.
Frankly, I am not crazy about being some engineer's lackey. I picked this "drafting" degree as a start. I look at it as a way to understand how to put my ideas into motion. We work on a lot of product design which is what I want to understand. I plan on stuffing as much hard science into my brain as well along with the "practical application of technology". It's simple and down right exciting, the more I know, the more my imagination has to play with in terms of finding solutions and innovations. Now if I had only started 30 years ago....lol
I have one product already and I really want to get it into production before I am a two year student. My goal is by the time I am done with this program, to have a successful product out, paying my bills and off of the government tit. I want to further my education and pursue projects, but money is a problem that needs solved. No big deal, just another problem to conquer. Besides, there is nothing sweeter tha
Take the Red Pill.
What definition of modular are you using here? Ok, so the registry dies and you reinstall the OS and you retain all of your data. You have to reinstall some software, but when your engine falls out of the bottom of your car you have to reinstall a bunch of stuff as well to get it to work with the replacement engine.
If I can just reach out with my words and touch a butthole, just one, it will all be worth it.
Physical damage due to gravity isn't a problem with software. I'm talking modularity in the OS itself; if your car's engine dies because the crankshaft broke (sounds crazy, but a real problem on GM cars in the 90s), you can take out the engine, take off all the accessories, put them on the new engine, drop in the new engine, and the car works again. If your registry dies, you can't replace it and expect the rest of the system to work correctly; you have to reinstall the OS, which is equivalent to sending your car to the junkyard and buying a new one. What if you want to remove your web browser, or use a different web browser? Again, not possible with Windows 7; IE must be installed, even if you don't use it for all your web browsing activities. What if you want to use a different kernel? Or modify the kernel that's there? Not possible. The entire Windows OS is a giant monolithic piece of software. Since this is the software that's powering most PCs (esp. most PCs which IT departments have to service), expecting IT personnel to do much with it when something goes wrong with it is asking too much IMO.
"commodity trading arm of an energy co."
they probably purposely do not want to comply with SARBOX, so they don't have to get dragged in front of congress and read back their own emails.
you are the boy scout screwing it all up. they cant have plausible deniability when someone is shoving their own crimes in their faces.
yes, makes perfect sense. take one guy make him do 3 guys job. you could hire 2 guys, but that would be 'inefficient' and the shareholders hedge-funds would be unhappy.
of course the traditional solution is to form a labor union. or at the very least, go on strike.
One along those lines I can't forget is "how do I do a website without knowing all this computer shit?". FTP to publish the files was all way too hard for the user, even though the user had fireftp on firefox and stuff built into the content creation tools that I think just needed clicking a menu item saying "publish". Sometime after that they produced a beautiful thing with lots of animations and drop down menus (which went nowhere) and a 100MB animation that needed to load before a user could see anything. It looked very nice, but only worked on the users PC and if it was on a web server it would have presented a visitor with a blank page for over a minute no matter how fast their connection is, then sit though several minutes of a slideshow. Advice given before this was even attempted and at various times along the way was greeted with "don't talk to me about computer shit", even when it was nothing but "keep the files small so they can load quickly".
Some people don't even want to learn how to do their job if it involves computers.
Yeah..... much the same experience over here :)
7 MB jpg background picture uploaded to the site. Why is it taking so long to load? You guys suck at keeping the server running or must use crappy services.
Two developers that could not figure out to sync the site between them overwriting their changes on each other. Have we been hacked? What's going on?!
A "developer" that was hired based on their fluency in javascript, html, css, etc. handed over a page with instructions, "hook it up to the database. otherwise its ready". They just copied and pasted javascript functions from tutorial sites, etc. without even binding them correctly. I knew that, and I am not a web developer :)
My favorite was a web developer who claimed he was better with computers than I was simply because he could make a website and I couldn't (Which is not true. I just hate CSS and cross browser support so much I refuse). "I could replace you with somebody from geek squad".
That's the difference between "developers" and "programmers" :)
The peasants have ideas above their station!
Let's see... IT problems, in my experience, tend to come in three basic categories... Things that people broke, things they're not supposed to do, and things that wouldn't have happened if they'd Read The Fine Manual...
They're NOT aloof, they're something that's a mixture of bored, disgusted, and amused...
Once in a while you get a real technical challenge... but that always seems to happen when they wanted it yesterday
I've worked with several 'good' IT managers who are worth their weight in gold. 'Bad' IT managers are, unfortunately, the norm. There are several problems I always had with 'bad' IT Managers.
First, is the IT Manager who knows NOTHING about IT. Often they are accountants who have risen through managerial ranks and somehow talked their way into IT positions. They make demands like 'ripping out the firewalls' which they think do nothing and are an 'expense' or 'remove all Linux boxes from the network' because Linux is free and therefore can't possibly work. They're also naturally arrogant sods who think they know better than their underlings because 'they're managers' and if the underlings actually knew anything they'd be managers.
Second, is the IT manager who has risen through the ranks of IT to make it into management. They often know their IT stuff quite well, but due to their 'nerd' nature are often poor communicators, loners with poor social skills (brush your teeth 'Mister Sticky Green Teeth'! Sorry, flashback to an IT manager form 1988), and treat anyone who doesn't know 'everything' that they know like they are idiots, (and with 20-30 years IT experience under their belts, they think they know it all).
BUT the flip side to this is I've also found people don't care / want to know what IT does, so IT managers NOT explaining things sits well with them. Then there are the users from 'hell' - those who like to 'fiddle' with their settings till they break - those who expect computers to 'read their minds' - those who expect the computer software to do things how THEY [the user] wants it to work, not how it was designed to function - users who think you are an expert on every piece of hardware / software etc even invented, (Had a conversation today that went something like, 'Where can I buy a TX75 card? I used to have a TX65, but the manufacturer stopped making it and the TX85 is now out and I can't find it in the store, but my old TX75 stopped working and I thought maybe you'd know where I can get one.' 'Er, what's a TX75 card and what does it do?' 'Oh, come on, you're in IT. You know what it does! Have you heard what specs the TX90 is getting? I heard it was phasing out USB two point zero support and had an internal SATA jack that can be attached from outside the box.' *faints*)
Sure enough, the cow costume was hanging up next to the superhero outfit and sailors uniform. (S,Spud)
Most IT Managers are unable to comprehend TMTOWTDI
Casteism
I'd really like it if you finished your stories.
I know tobacco is bad for you, so I smoke weed with crack.
Probably, it has the same tone of ignorance as all the previous articles.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
My coworkers already think I am a magician...I walk in the room and suddenly their error isn't happening anymore. I don't attempt to change their opinion though. :)
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
What many non IT people, such as yourself don't seem to understand is; it isn't us doing that.
-We are forced to get everyone's approval for changes to be made; management has learned through past experience that any change can blow up, and when it does, would you want to be the one the managers are glaring at when things blow up?
-Many of the things we do can blow up in pretty big ways. Creating a distribution group, or forwarding a mailbox can if done wrong take out the whole email server, would you trust people without the proper training to do it on their own just because "it's easy!"?
-We "guard" this information because frankly, it is pretty complex stuff, it is much more complex than you give credit for. Also, many times it is for the security of the network, to prevent attack and prevent data breaches.
-We in IT are saddled with an enormous amount of rules. Depending on the industry, Sarbanes/Oxley, HIPPA, rules from managers, rules from C-levels, laws governing security of personally identifying information, whatever I may have missed. You may not understand these laws, but if they are broken, the company we work for could very easily stop existing, we could go to jail, or be held personally/financially responsible for the issue. These laws/rules from on high pretty much have a gun against our head to prevent you from using the latest shiny, or doing whatever you want on the network.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
The problem with communicating the complex issues of IT to people in simpler terms is that people just simply don't want to know. After doing it for years on end with no change in the behaviors, you either realize they don't care and stop trying, or you leave the field. I can explain to you all day why that email you got from the Nigerian prince isn't real, but if you don't care and still send all your money to the prince, I can't stop you.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?